“Where do you think you’re going?” asks Coulter. “You need to apologize, Cassidy. Now.”
I look at Banner. “I’m not going to apologize for something I didn’t do.”
“You won’t?”
“No.”
“Well, there’s another way you’re related to your grandfather. Fine. You’re welcome to return to your tent for the night. You lose all your riding privileges until you can own up to your mistakes.”
“I didn’t do it,” I say.
“Have it your way,” says Coulter. “Guess we’ll break out the beef jerky and hot chocolate, compliments of Cassidy.”
Everyone groans again.
Then I remember.
I grab the tongs and get down to sweep the briquettes off my last oven. I lift it up out of the fire pit with the tongs so I can put it on the serving rock and dazzle everyone. It’s ten times heavier than when I put it in there. I hear a noise as I move, but I can’t see anything because I’m holding a giant swinging hot thing. Suddenly, Charlie bumps me from behind. Or I bump him. The cobbler flies like fiery peach pellets into the air. Burning hot juice scalds my hand.
“Whoa,” yells Coulter. “Whoa, Cassidy.”
I frantically wipe my hands on my pants to get the burning juice off. It still burns. I stand up and face straight ahead. Everyone glares. Let them.
I walk past Alice, Ethan, and Charlie on my way to the tent. Even they don’t look up at me.
Chapter Thirty-One
I HEAR THE scratch at about eleven. I’m wide awake. I rolled into my sleeping bag before everyone came back so I wouldn’t have to talk to my roomies. The only good thing about faking sleep is that I’ll hear it if Banner tries to get out of bed to do something else to ruin my life.
The second I hear that scratch I know what it is. It’s not a mouse. I put on my jeans and boots and slip outside. I know that Banner could be fake sleeping, too, but it’s not a crime to walk outside the tent.
Justin is in a dark sweatshirt and beanie. The whitest thing on him is his smile. I know he’s not going trick-or-treating in that costume, but doing what I’m supposed to hasn’t really kept me out of trouble. I follow him.
When we get outside camp I whisper, “Where are we going?”
“I told you. To check on some horses.”
“Where?” I say a little louder.
He looks away, like he’s figuring something. “I’m sorry about what happened tonight at dinner. Banner’s a wench.”
I don’t want to talk about Banner. I want to talk about what we’re doing. I want to talk about the questions I have piling up in my head. “Do you really think that the BLM’s intentionally hurting the horses? Don’t they have to gather them up or the horses will eat all the grazing grass to nothing?”
Justin says, “You’d have to see how they chase them. If a horse dies in a gather, it’s one less horse to feed.” He walks faster.
I jog to keep up. “So you’re the thief. Are you doing all this alone?”
“I am not a thief. Thieves steal things. I let them go,” says Justin. He turns to me. “And I’m not doing it alone anymore.”
“Have I been recruited?”
“Do you want to go back?”
* * *
We head up the hill to the mustang pasture. The crickets are loud tonight. But not as loud as Goliath. He whinnies and snorts as we approach him in the dark. All the horses are restless and moving.
“Wait here. Just for a minute,” he says.
“What for?”
I watch in the moonlight as Justin gets inside the fence with the horses, hands over an apple to Goliath, waits for him to chew it, and then bridles him. Goliath barely nickers.
I ask, “How did you do that?”
“We’ve been practicing,” says Justin. “We’ve had some good progress.”
Justin takes Goliath out of the pasture and over to a big rock. He ties a strap underneath Goliath’s chest. “You’ll hold on to this with one hand and the reins with the other. Come on. You’re going to need a step up.”
“You want me to ride Goliath?” I ask. “Without a saddle? Are you kidding?”
Goliath leans his head down to me, looking for more apples. He seems as gentle as Smokey. If I didn’t know him better, I might believe it.
Justin laughs. “It’s just in that arena he’s hot now. On the trail he’s solid.”
“You’ve had him on the trail?” Justin never stops surprising me. It’s both endearing and super disturbing. Mostly disturbing.
“It’s not like I can ride the stable horses down below. Darius and Kaya will bust me for sure if I get into the pasture right where they can see me. And Goliath is a gladiator on the mountain. He loves it.”
I look at Goliath. His huge gray body is lit up like the moon itself. It will be a glorious death.
I step onto the big rock, and Goliath doesn’t move away. I reach a leg over and climb on. He whinnies but stays put. I hold my breath, waiting for the worst. But he stays quiet. He feels double the size of Smokey. And without the saddle to separate us, it’s like we’re fitted together. I am sitting on Goliath in the moonlight. I breathe out. I feel like someone should make a statue of me right now. “Who are you going to ride?”
Justin reaches back in his bag and pulls another apple out of his pocket and gives it to Goliath. Then he steps on the stump and swings up behind me. He puts his arm on mine. I flinch. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We’re both harmless.”
Goliath is moving around but not bucking. “It’s impossible. What did you do to him? He tried to throw you over the fence last time you rode him bareback.”
“I’m persuasive. It helps that he likes you, too.”
He covers my hand and puts it on the strap he has wrapped around Goliath’s chest. “Don’t put your hand under that rope. If something bad happens, it’s better to fall off than lose your hand.”
“Is he going to be okay with two of us?”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
We start off walking. Goliath is well padded. I hold the rope and mane, and Justin holds the reins. It’s not bad. Justin wedges me still with his back and his arms, which makes me feel safe and vulnerable at the same time. We start moving. Goliath is amazingly smooth. For a few seconds I’m thinking about Goliath and not Justin. Up until Justin reaches across my shoulder with his chin. “You have a very secure seat.”
“Excuse me?” I say.
“I mean, you don’t move around a lot on the horse. It makes this easier.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
We don’t talk for a while after that. I can feel Justin breathing on my shirt. I concentrate on staying in the center of the horse and not fainting like a goat. I worry that we’re too heavy for Goliath. I worry that we’ll get caught. I worry that I really like having Justin wrapped around me.
After we get off the plateau we walk up switchbacks, and then we get up onto a wide ridge that takes us up over the mountain. The full moon gives off a soft gray light. When we come to the edge of the ridge a big dark valley sweeps below on the other side.
We’re high, but not Empire State Building high. And in that valley, straight below us, are a sad little mobile home and some makeshift corrals. There’s a single lit window inside the mobile home and a light up on a pole above it. I can see a truck. A BLM truck. I can faintly hear horses whinnying. Maybe it’s just the wind. Or the sound of my heart pounding a hole in my shirt. I had no idea they were so close to us. No wonder Officer Hanks thinks it’s our fault his horses are being released. And then there’s the fact that it is our fault.
“They trapped them yesterday. They have so many in Rock Springs, sometimes it takes a week to get permission to bring a new group in.”
“Justin, I thought we were going to check on them.”
“We are chec
king on them. Then we’re fixing a few things.”
“I’m not ready for this.”
“Okay,” he says. “Do you want to go back? I’ll take you back. I’m serious.”
I look down at the corral and see the faint outline of the horses moving inside. “No.”
“I’m going to go down there and let some horses go home. And I could sure use someone to hold on to Goliath and be my lookout. You can see everything from here. All you have to do is whistle if you see anything. Sound carries like it’s in a microphone in this valley. But if I get caught, you go home without me. You haven’t done anything but whistle.”
He’s off the horse and in the dark before I have time to explain I don’t know how to whistle, not loud anyway. I sit there in the dark with hulking Goliath wondering what to do and about all the things that could go wrong. Goliath could just decide he’s had it and take off. And it makes me so nervous I have to go to the bathroom.
The worst part about that is I have to get off the horse to go. And believe me, if this was anything less than a five-star emergency, I would not get off. “Goliath, can you help me out here? Just don’t freak out. I will also try not to freak out.”
The second bad part is I have to keep a lookout. Right there on the ledge I find a spot that I can hold on to Goliath with one hand while I hang on to weeds and lean backward with the other. Whatever I’m holding on to makes my hand sting.
When I’m done, I stand by some big rocks to get out of the wind. Goliath hangs his head toward mine, looking me over. “What?” I ask. “You do this in front of me all the time.”
I decide to practice my whistle. Nothing. I mean, nothing. I try to whistle in earnest. Air, but no sound.
Just as I realize how pointless I am, Justin’s shadow appears in the moonlight moving toward the corral. The horses whinny. He has zero ground cover. He walks right up to the gate of the BLM corral. Officer Hanks could come out of the mobile home and catch him any second. And I can’t whistle. This is bad.
I turn to Goliath. “We have to go down there.”
I stand on a big boulder, then scramble onto Goliath. It’s a miracle, but I get on. We start down the steep hill. I slide all over. Even at a walk, I nearly come off. I grab the reins, the mane, and the strap to keep on. I listen for sirens or gunshots but hear nothing except the sound of Goliath’s enormous steady feet.
We come off the hill. We’re within a block of the house. More whinnying from the pens. I carefully slide off and walk toward the back of the pens. Justin is nowhere in sight.
I walk past a sturdy tree and hear a hissing sound that I really hope isn’t a snake. A hand grabs me from the side. It’s a good thing I went to the bathroom already.
“What are you doing here?”
I stare into Justin’s angry face. I whisper, “I can’t whistle.”
“You shouldn’t be down here.”
“Neither should you.”
I walk with Goliath for camouflage toward the pens. The horses nicker. We get all the way to a gate. It has a big, fat padlock.
The horses in the pens come toward us. The white mare is in front. She walks unevenly, dropping forward more carefully on the left side. She has dark markings on her legs, hip, and face. Her left front leg is soaked. Even in the dark I know what that is.
I draw in a loud breath.
Justin grabs my mouth.
I get it. I shut up.
The white mare whinnies shrilly at Goliath. Goliath whinnies back in a baritone. Then other horses join in. Too much whinnying.
A light goes on in the mobile unit. A small one in the back. The bathroom. I hear something crash to the ground. A man curses. We’re dead.
Justin throws his hand into his backpack and yanks out clippers. He cuts through the padlock in two tries, but the horses go nuts. We yank the gate open together, and the horses flood out behind the white mare. They run for the canyon. Dust fills my nose and throat.
There’s a loud banging and shouting in the mobile unit. Justin grabs on to Goliath and swings himself up. He reaches for me, and I nearly pull him off. Goliath is prancing all over. Justin hangs off to one side and yanks me off the ground. I nearly fly right over the top of Goliath, but I stop myself and swing around. I glue myself to Justin’s back. Two strides and we’re cantering. Goliath follows the other horses’ dust into the canyon.
As we head into the trees we hear three angry gunshots explode in the air.
* * *
We head up. Way up. I keep my mouth shut. If I open it, I might scream.
We reach the top of the ridge. Justin turns his head to me. “Hold on.”
I squeeze my arms even tighter around his rib cage, afraid I’m going to cave in his internal organs. He takes one of my hands and puts it on the strap I was holding before. He leans forward and boots Goliath. We’re on a flat spot on the ridge, so I don’t immediately go off. But oh my freaking gosh there must be rockets inside this mustang.
Everything moves past and under me. It’s terrifying. Everything I’ve been learning and doing seems to come together because it has to. I mean, it has to. Right now. I’m with Justin on Goliath riding across a mountain after rescuing the mare and her band. The idea flashes across my mind that even if I go to jail, or to the hospital, maybe tonight, this moment, is worth it.
* * *
We reach the end of the flat trail quickly. Goliath stops hard, and I nearly go off. Justin grabs me as I lean to one side. He points way out on the road to the headlights speeding toward the ranch. “He’ll be there by the time we get there. And he’ll tear the place to pieces looking for us.”
“Officer Hanks?”
Justin says. “That’s not Officer Hanks.”
“It’s the other guy?”
“It’s the other guy.”
“Oh.” I feel like I’m still flying across the ridge. “Come on. We’re almost to the pasture, right?”
“We don’t have enough time. I’m sorry I got you into this.” He lays his head on Goliath’s neck. “Sorry, boy.”
“There has to be something we can do. You can’t just quit right here,” I say, looking around.
“No. You’ve been, like, I can’t even believe how tough . . . it’s not that. I have a way that’s faster. But it’s not safe.”
“What’s your deal with safe?”
Justin points to a break in the trees. “Do you want to see it?”
In a few steps we’re at the edge of a drop-off. It’s pretty much a ski jump down the mountain from here, but if we survive, this way drops us right into the mustang pasture. It’s not a bad drop for long. But where it’s bad, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know if Goliath can handle anything that steep, but he knows. He won’t go if he can’t do it. That’s what I tell myself.
I grit my teeth and grab the strap Justin put on Goliath’s neck and wedge down my arms onto Justin’s thighs. Justin literally jumps backward when my hands go shooting forward, which is perfect. Now we’re wedged in. It’s a hundred-percent awkward.
“Wait,” says Justin.
But I kick Goliath before I can think too much.
“Stop,” yells Justin, pulling back on the reins.
I ignore him. So does Goliath. The hillside drops away beneath us.
Justin yells and lets up on the reins. I lean almost all the way back, vise-gripping Justin with my arms. He leans back on me, too. My arms feel like they’re popping out of their sockets. My hands burn. Everything goes blurry. At one point I see my boots flap like wings when we go over a log. Goliath keeps moving, and so do we, dropping down and down the side of the hill. It’s like sliding down a twelve-hundred-pound banister that’s moving side to side, up and down, and forward, with hooves.
It’s probably only a few seconds. We stay on until the end. And then there’s another log and my hands and arms pop free and we both go sidew
ays off the front and drop like a sack. I hit my head on the log. Why do I always have to hit my head?
Justin lands next to me. He has managed to hold on to Goliath by one of the reins. The other has snapped off. Goliath is going nuts, stamping and hopping. He may kick us to death as punishment. I taste blood in my mouth from biting my tongue. Justin jumps to his feet and yells, “I said wait!”
I get to my feet and shake myself off. My head is still ringing, but we take off running to the pasture. Goliath lets Justin drag him with the rein. I have a stick bobbing in my hair and rocks in my boots. I breathe in dirt. I throw the switch and rip open the gate. Justin has Goliath loose in a heartbeat, yanking off the bridle and strap and throwing them under a rock. Goliath spins and kicks up his heels as he runs from us.
We run on the deer trail. It’s narrow, steep, and full of things to trip over. Even in the shadow of the pines I feel like I can see everything. The edges of rocks. Water on leaves. Changes in the slope of the ground. My eyes are burning. I feel locked in, synced to everything around me.
As we come out of the trees I see headlights again. Under the ranch sign. Justin points, and I nod. I know. I know. I have to go faster. Ahead of us the tents are dark and silent. I hurdle rocks and weeds, puffing like a freight train. I focus on my tent. But I know it’s no good. There isn’t time.
I suddenly realize I’m going to either wake up my evil roommate when I go in or be caught outside. Once again I’ve worked myself to death only to screw it up in the end. I stop hurdling.
Justin slows and gently jogs for his private cabin. No one will see him change his shirt and put on baggy sweats and tube socks.
Think, Cassidy. Think.
I run past Justin and head straight to the outhouse. I step inside, shut the door as quietly as I can, and collapse onto the toilet.
In the privacy of this heavenly hideout I pull the twigs out of my hair and wipe the dirt off my face. I swallow the blood in my mouth. I inhale the lovely lilac chemicals of the room freshener. It’s a beautiful thing. I’m sitting on my alibi.
Thief of Happy Endings Page 17