9
SLEEP DOES NOT COME EASY TO ME, BUT BEFORE I know it, I awake to the sound of male laughter and the tantalizing smell of bacon. Scrambling to sit up, I try to make sense of where I am. West’s brown eyes pin me like a bug from where he sits two yards away near the fire, chewing a fingernail. I stretch my eyes back down the trail. If the deputy’s still after us, he hasn’t caught up yet.
At least the wind has died, leaving behind a morning crisp as a water chestnut.
“It’s gonna be a good day,” says Cay, wiping tears of laughter from his face. He gestures in front of him, then rests his hand on the top of his head. “Bacon in the pan and a Mexican fried egg.”
Twenty paces away, Peety helps Andy off the ground, cursing loud enough for me to hear his Spanish. The great gray mare stands beside them.
“What happened?” I ask, my alarm raising the pitch of my voice to girlish levels.
“Our wrangler’s introducing your friend to the remuda,” says Cay.
I yank on my boots. “The remuda?”
“What we call our horses. That gray one he just fell off is Peety’s Andalusian, Lupe, and she’s the easy one.”
West stops biting his nail and flicks his finger to the sky. “He ain’t hurt.”
Sure enough, Andy brushes off her trousers and says something to Peety. His curses stop abruptly. Andy marches back to us, arms swinging high. Peety takes a moment to rub Lupe’s forehead, then trots after Andy.
I breathe out a sigh of relief, though a moment later a new worry starts up where the old one left off. How would Andy know how to ride a horse? I never considered the matter before now.
Cay pinches a slice of bacon from the frying pan and devours it whole. “He’s a good coosie even if his caboose don’t stay on his cayuse.”
My nose wrinkles. “What does that mean?”
With his mouth full, Cay answers, “A coosie is who cooks for you, a cayuse is the animal that carries you, and a caboose is what you should never wave over a stinging nettle.” He peers into the frying pan and glances up at West. “Wrestle for the last piece?”
“Sammy didn’t get one.”
West keeps his gaze trained on a spot around my nose. My first reaction is to demur. I’ve been taught to never take the last piece for myself, which Chinese people consider very impolite. But to these cowboys, such a gesture would probably go unappreciated. They would simply assume I wasn’t hungry, which isn’t the case at all.
Why stand on principle when it’ll just give people the wrong idea?
I take the bacon, stuffing the whole strip into my mouth just like a boy might do. It is wondrously good.
As Andy and Peety draw near, I hear Andy say, “He understands Spanish, so don’t think you can fool Him with that cussing.”
Peety stomps around our fire. “Chico pretend he know how to ride horse,” Peety tells us, waving his hands at Andy.
“Well, it was a long time ago,” Andy shoots back, brushing off her sleeves.
“Estas loco. How are you going to ride Princesa?”
“Ain’t I gonna ride her double with Sammy?”
Peety glares at her. “Princesa only takes one rider, and you are bigger than Chinito. Sammy, you ride with West and Francesca today.”
By Francesca, I guess he means West’s sorrel. It’s a tough call as to who’s the most disappointed—Andy, me, or West. The deal was for us to ride Princesa together, but if we protest, the boys might get suspicious. Andy picks her face up the quickest. “Fine,” she says gruffly.
“You ever rode a horse?” West asks me.
I stop picking at the hem of my shirt and raise my chin.
“I know how to ride,” I say coolly. I don’t mention that my only steed was our compliant mule, Tsing Tsing, back in New York who only had two speeds: slow, and slower.
West tucks his lower lip under his top, like he drew the shortest straw. He busies himself tacking his sorrel alongside Cay and Peety. I kneel beside Andy, who is rearranging the items in her saddlebag. “You okay?”
“He’s a stubborn man, that Peety,” she grumbles. “I ain’t got no business riding that frisky she-devil by myself.”
I cluck my tongue in sympathy, remembering well how fiercely I gripped Father’s hand the first time I sat upon our gentle Tsing Tsing. “You want me to ask if I can ride Princesa and you go with West?” I ask a bit too eagerly.
“’S okay,” she says darkly. “They might change their minds about taking us if we fuss too much. You got more waist than me, tie a shirt ’round your middle to even things out.”
I do it while Andy knits her fingers together, casting glances at the sky. Yellow clouds, backlit by the coming sun, trek over the horizon like cat prints.
“You’re sixteen, which means you were born in 1832, right?” I ask.
She stops praying. “I guess, though don’t ask me the day, ’cause I don’t know. Why?”
“That’s the Year of the Dragon, the most powerful of the twelve animals on the Chinese calendar.”
“Most powerful?” She slits her eyes at me.
I nod.
“What animal are you?”
“Snake.”
A wry smile touches her lips. “You don’t say?”
“Each sign has its strengths and weaknesses,” I say under my breath.
She tilts back her head, causing her hat to fall forward. “Tell me the bad news first.”
“Dragons are sharp-tongued, stubborn, and overconfident—”
She cuts me off. “Move on to the good stuff.”
“They’re also creative and independent. And when they put their minds to something, they always succeed, which is why they’re so powerful. Mother was a Dragon. She made Father speak only English to her so she could learn the language. Took her three months.”
“I already figured you’s mama was bright as a sunbeam,” says Andy. “But she ever try riding a horse?”
“If Princesa starts fussing at you, just remember dragons eat horses for dinner.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Doesn’t strike me as Christian to be a dragon. The ones in the Bible were always up to no good. Now go do your business while I say my last prayers.”
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