“How does he do that?” Ginny asked. “Mike trains cutting and reining horses. I don’t remember him ever letting someone else show his training horses except for the owners in the amateur classes.”
“Chris is demanding. He shows them what he expects and demands their best for our clients. It is working out.”
The first Friday evening after the parade, Sharon was obviously upset when she stepped into the hot bubbling water of the spa for their soak.
“Hey, what’s up with you?” Ginny asked.
“It’s Todd, our son,” Sharon explained. “He is really upset about Becky and Ali. He and Becky are very close friends. That all started when the Howards brought Ali to our place two months before the big Scottsdale Show his first year of showing.
“How old is Todd now?” Ginny asked.
“He’s fourteen, almost a year older than Becky. They met when she was eight and he was nine. At first he thought she was just a pretty, stuck-up little snot. Then she beat the pants off him with his favorite video game,” Sharon chuckled. “You know how it is, if you want a man’s respect you just have to beat them at their own game.”
“Yeah, I remember me and my little Arabian gelding could outride Mike on his favorite cutting horse back in the day,” Ginny laughed.
“Becky insisted on being at every show Ali entered. She and Todd spent a lot of time together. Becky stayed with us over part of Christmas break, spring break and summer vacations from school. They were inseparable. He is also very fond of Prince Ali. This situation is hard on him. I’m doing my best to keep his spirits up. The longer this goes on the more difficult it becomes. He wants to be here, not 1400 miles away.”
“What are you telling him?” Ginny asked.
“The truth. Becky needs this time for her brain to heal from being bruised. With Ali, everyone in the country is looking for him. We will find him!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Calvin crawled out of bed Sunday morning at seven. He fiddled around in the kitchen brewing up a pot of coffee. When the coffee was done, he poured himself a cup and walked out on the porch. He liked having his first cup of coffee outside.
He leaned on the porch rail for a while looking out over the hills that surrounded the cabin. The morning light was soft on the green of the grasses and the bright colors of the wildflowers in bloom. It was quiet. He could hear the birds as they started their day. A slight breeze stirred the leaves in the trees around the cabin. After a while he backed up and sat down in his chair.
As he sat down, he felt the pouch he’d stuffed into his jeans pocket the day before. Almost forgot about that. He pulled it out. The leather pouch made a small lump in his hand, but was surprisingly heavy for its size. He wondered what the value of the gold flakes inside really was.
He and Danny went through eighty dollars of the two hundred Nixon paid them for the horse so they didn’t have much left for anything. After all the hard work and the risk, he was depressed. He’d seen sketches of them on TV. He was anxious. He knew the police were looking for them. He’d have to figure this out.
Danny joined him with his own coffee a few minutes later. “What’re we goin’ to do now?” he asked.
“I thought I’d take the gold to that coin shop in Escondido in the morning,” Calvin answered. “I know they buy gold. Maybe they can tell us what this stuff is worth.”
“Well we can’t eat it like it is.”
Bill’s Coin Shop opened Monday morning precisely at nine a.m. Through the windshield of their truck, Calvin and Danny saw a hand turning the sign from “Closed” to “Open”. They’d been waiting nearly an hour. They sipped convenience store coffee with stale donuts to kill the time.
They climbed out of the truck and walked into the shop, looking at the displays of coins in the show cases.
“May I help you?” asked the young lady behind the counter.
“Yeah, we got some gold we’d like to sell.” Calvin answered, pulling the leather pouch out of the pocket of his jeans and placing it on the counter.
“Let’s see what you have,” she said as she reached for the pouch. She untied the leather thong, opened the pouch and poured a small amount of the contents into a small round tray she’d brought to the counter. The small flakes shined golden in the light.
“I’d better go get Bill. He’s the expert on this stuff,” she said after examining the contents of the tray. She turned and walked through a doorway into the back of the shop while Calvin and Danny waited anxiously.
A few minutes later, the young lady returned followed by a spectacled older gentleman with thinning white hair.
“Fellas, what can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly when he reached the counter.
“We did a job for a guy and he was short o’ cash so he finished payin’ us off with this gold. We have bills to pay so we need the cash. Can you tell us what this stuff is worth and will you buy it from us?” Calvin answered.
Danny was busy looking at the coins in the display cases across the store from the counter.
“Well, let’s take this one step at a time,” answered the old man. “First we need to weigh it and see how much is there. Gold, you know, is sold by weight and then by purity. Do you know if this was assayed?” he asked. “That tells us how pure it is.”
“The guy said he’d found it prospectin’ and hadn’t got it…what you called it? … Assayed? … yet.”
“Okay, let’s see how much you have here,” the old gentleman said as he poured the remainder from the pouch into the little tray. He took the tray over to a digital scale and weighed it. He was surprised at how much it weighed. He looked carefully at the little flakes in the tray, spreading them around with a small metal probe. He didn’t find rock dust or gravel in the tray. It was surprisingly clean.
He turned and brought the tray back to the counter. “How much did this guy owe you anyway?” he asked.
“Coupla hundred bucks,” Calvin said. “Why? Is there that much gold there?”
“What you have here is over two ounces. At today’s gold price, if it’s real gold and depending on how pure it is, that could be several thousand dollars’ worth.”
Calvin’ heart jumped in his chest. “Several thousand dollars!!?”
Danny heard that from across the room and scurried back to the counter to join Calvin.
“Well, before you get too excited, let me test it to be sure it is real gold,” the old man said. “By the way, I’m Bill, the owner of this shop. I’ve been in the precious metal business for over fifty years now. This is just a simple test I’ll do, but it involves some pretty nasty chemicals and a tiny bit of your gold. It won’t hurt it if it’s real gold.”
He pulled on a pair of disposable gloves from under the counter and grabbed a bottle of liquid. He bent over for a better view of the shelf below the counter and located a small glass Petri dish. Then he found a pair of tweezers. He plucked a small sample of the gold from the tray and placed it carefully in the Petri dish. He unscrewed the cap from the bottle of liquid and squeezed out a single drop onto the sample. Nothing happened. He turned the sample over and looked at the bottom side. He noted a very slight discoloration there.
“Well, it’s real gold.” He announced. “And this little sample looks to be fairly pure.”
“Exactly what does that mean for us?” asked Calvin.
“Gold is generally mixed with other minerals or metals when you find it. The only way to get pure gold is to refine it. That requires specialized equipment and someone that knows how to use it. But that’s how raw gold is sold, as I said, by weight and by purity.”
“When I get raw gold, I usually send it to a refinery that has an assayer. The assayer does a number of tests to establish how pure the gold is, that is, what other metals are mixed with it and how much other metal is included. He can establish the weight of the gold and give a true value based on the price of gold that day. Then the gold goes off for refining and gets turned into jewelry or bullion.”
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��How long does that take?” asked Danny.
“I can get that done for you in a couple of weeks.” Bill said.
“Oh, man, we can’t wait that long! We got bills to pay.” Calvin pleaded. “What could ya do for us today?”
Bill took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wiped his glasses on the tail of his shirt and put them back on, running his fingers through his thinning hair.
“Without an assayer’s report, I can’t tell you what the gold value in this tray is. The one little sample we just tested looks good, but there’s no guarantee all the rest of it is the same.” Bill leaned on the counter and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “So, if I make you an offer, it will be a gamble on my part.”
Calvin was restless. Danny was thinking about the “several thousand dollars” Bill mentioned earlier, and he was busy spending it in his head.
“Since this is a gamble, I’m going to offer you eighteen hundred in cash, right now. And I’ll take the risk someone didn’t salt this sample and I just tested the only real piece of gold in it.” Bill looked through piercing blue eyes at Calvin as he spoke.
“Up to you now. Take it or leave it!”
Calvin and Danny expected to make two hundred dollars on the gold in that little pouch. When Bill said it might be worth as much as several thousand, their heart rates sped up and they got excited. This offer slowed their heart rates considerably, but it was still more than they expected.
“We’ll take it,” said Calvin emphatically as he slammed his palm down onto the counter. Danny stood there nodding his head in agreement.
“Okay, then,” Bill said. “I’ll go get your money. Be right back,” as he disappeared through the doorway into the back of the shop.
Ten minutes later, the Hix brothers turned out of the driveway in front of Bill’s Coin Shop and headed toward home with eighteen crisp hundred dollar bills on the seat between them. They began whooping and hollering. It was going to be one fantastic birthday party! Now both of them were spending the money in their heads. For the moment they forgot they were Wanted Men.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The longer he stayed in the makeshift corral on the mountain the more depressed Ali became. He missed his world, his people and especially Becky. He wasn’t eating or sleeping well. He froze at night and shivered during the day. The last thing he remembered after the parade was Becky flying headfirst into the wall of a building and rolling into a heap, not moving. He had no memory of being shoved into a trailer but he did remember parts of the trip into the mountains. His first attempts at questioning Max were met with monosyllable answers that told him next to nothing. His future looked so bleak he wondered how he would ever survive it. Sadness enveloped him like a dark cloak.
Max watched him from the far side of their corral for the first day and a half. Finally he spoke. “Hey, Sunny Boy, you don’t look so good. You have no hair so you must be freezing. You got no hair in your ears either and the gnats up here will drive you crazy. Where in the heck did you come from anyway?”
“Wish I knew the answer to that myself. I have to get home. I have to know how Becky is!” Ali told him.
“Who’s this Becky?” Max questioned.
“She’s my very best friend. She just rode me in our first parade. We went back to our trailer to go home. She was in the trailer changing her clothes when two guys came up to me. One stuck me with a needle. That really hurt! Didn’t know what they were up to. Becky came out of the trailer and told them to leave me alone. One of the guys pushed her. She hit her head and fell. She didn’t move. That’s about the last thing I remember before waking up in a strange trailer on the way to this place.”
Max snorted. “Well, Sonny Boy, this ain’t no palace, but it’s home and the old man is kind to me.”
“I got that impression, but I miss Becky!” Ali almost whispered. Then raw anger struck him. “Sure wish I could get my teeth and my feet on the guy who pushed her. I’d make him wish he hadn’t!”
“Well that ain’t likely to happen!” Max snorted. “You might try standing under the shelter with me when the winds come up. You’ll freeze your fanny off out there in the open. I’ll share the space with you.”
Ali and Max continued their conversation while Carl Nixon sat in his chair reading and staring at Ali every few paragraphs.
Carl thought long and hard about his new horse. He knew “Buddy” was not a two hundred dollar pack horse. He wasn’t a four hundred dollar horse at all. He wondered what the story was. Did someone steal the horse? How did he end up with those two rascals who brought him here? Why did the horse try to attack one of them? He wondered if he shouldn’t check in with the Sheriff’s Office in Little Rock and see if someone was looking for his newest horse. Then he would stare at Ali and admire him again, pushing those thoughts out of his mind.
By the third day on the mountain, Carl Nixon noticed Ali’s coat was dusty and there were tangles in his mane and tail. He got his ancient truck out, poured gas into the tank from a red five-gallon can and drove down the mountain to the feed store in Little Rock where he bought hay for the horses. He searched around and found two body brushes and a mane and tail comb. He purchased them and a sack of grain and drove back up the mountain.
Carl took the brushes into the corral and brushed Ali down top to bottom. He stood back admiring his work. “You sure are a pretty one,” he told Ali. He stroked the silken neck and found the itchy place on Ali’s withers. He gave it a good long scratch. Ali dropped his head and closed his eyes. It felt good. Then Carl patted him on the shoulder and walked over to do the same for Max. When he finished grooming both horses, he gave each of them a measure of grain. He left the corral re-latching the gate behind him.
Carl picked up his book, settled back into his chair, planted his feet on the bucket and tried to read for the rest of the afternoon. He glanced up every few pages just to look at Ali. Thoughts nagged at him. He remembered how anxious those two guys were to get rid of him. His suspicion the horse was stolen didn’t explain the horse’s reaction to Danny, so maybe that was the reason they were so eager to sell him. He kept pushing those thoughts out of his mind every time he stopped to admire Ali.
One day rolled into the next. Carl fed the horses each morning and gave them fresh spring water. He brought out the new brushes and worked each of them over in turn. Max seemed to benefit most because he hadn’t seen much brushing in years. Ali nibbled on the hay and grain, drank some of the water and spent the balance of the day at the north end of the corral looking away from this place.
Ali could see an occasional vehicle drive on one of the dirt roads down on the plateau. Vehicles always threw up a rooster-tail of dust in their wake. There wasn’t much to see down there but barren, arid desert. He could hear some kind of highway below, mostly because of large trucks using their jake-brakes to slow down for a traffic signal a few miles to the west. With the lack of buildings or foliage in the area, sound traveled for miles.
Rabbits and squirrels were the only living creatures he saw regularly besides Carl, Max and a myriad of birds of all shapes and sizes. Two of the bolder rabbits crept into the corral to steal bits of hay and grain dropped by the horses. They high-tailed it out of the corral if either of the horses moved at all. The squirrels were braver. They only scooted out of the corral if one of the horses moved in their direction.
Nights were awful for Ali, although he did finally accept Max’s invitation to share the shelter when the winds came up. Several more times that week he heard the snarl of a large animal. It made him shiver. The she lion was hunting and snarled loudly when she missed the mark and her dinner got away. She stepped on something sharp a week or more before and cut the pad on the bottom of her left front foot. It wasn’t life threatening but it did slow her down a little. She was missing more meals than she was eating.
She had a belly full of kittens and needed the nourishment. During the day she settled herself on a large granite boulder in the sun. She lic
ked her sore paw to keep it clean. It was healing but would take another week or two and her kittens were growing fast.
She already selected the den where she would give birth. It was beneath the boulder she used to sun herself. Instinctively she knew they would be born soon. She spent more time hunting now while she tried to build herself up to the level she knew she would need to nurse a growing litter. Missing meals because of a sore paw made her nervous, hungry and angry.
Ali heard the grunting cough of the she bear Calvin and Danny saw on the way to this valley. She was coming out of her long winter sleep hungry. She had two cubs born in February to nurse. Bears are omnivores and will eat anything. This particular black bear had been out of her den for about two weeks getting her metabolism working again after hibernation. She ate shoots of trees and shrubs, nuts, or carrion she could find. She was an opportunistic eater.
On occasion, Ali also heard the haunting chorus of coyote packs as they brought down their prey. They sounded vaguely dog like, but there were so many voices in the choir he wasn’t sure what to make of them.
Nights were cold. Ali wasn’t used to that. He was always inside at night. His stall was secure, warm and dry. This place was surrounded by scary sounds and he was out in the open, subject to freezing temperatures. He never slept at night, always listening to the night sounds. Ali wasn’t cowardly, but he was uneasy about what he didn’t know or understand.
The monotony also bothered Ali. He was used to doing things every day. He’d be ridden on trails or in the arena for practice. He was bathed several times a week. There were always people around and lots of other horses. Here his only companions were Max, Carl Nixon and a few rabbits and squirrels. Carl just stared at him much of the time and Max kept to himself and ignored him for the most part. Ali never got out of the corral.
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