For our final meal at the Yellow River, West catches a fat turkey, and Cay plucks it. Then we all sit around the fire while our vaquero puts Cay and West to work pounding cornmeal and water into dough.
“Making tortillas is ancient craft,” Peety says solemnly. “Roll, then pat”—he demonstrates—“and he aquí.” He holds up a flat circle of dough.
Andy and I are back to sitting with our legs together and not burping out loud, though I think I’ll wear trousers for the rest of my life, even if I don’t have to dress like a boy. I can run, tumble, and jump onto a horse in them with no problem at all.
“So if you knew the whole time, why’d you make that wager on the Little Blue?” I ask no one in particular, remembering how close Andy and I came to an unshucking.
Cay waggles his eyebrows. “Why do you think?”
“He didn’t know until you fell in,” West says with a wry smile, picking a piece of gravel off his dough and flicking it at Cay. “Fool’s gold is made for people like him.”
“Well, at least I knew before Peety.” Cay casts a glance to the vaquero.
“Sorry, hombre, I knew since the first night. I grew up with sisters, remember? Andita tried to button her jacket the wrong way. Sometimes, women’s clothes have buttons on left, but men always wear them on the right.” With a hand sticky with dough, he gestures to the silver fasteners running down his jacket, then looks up at us. “You’re not very good chicos.”
“And you told me you were starting to see face hairs on me,” Andy grumbles.
Cay pinches off a piece of his dough and pops it in his mouth. “Ain’t that something. Turns out West and Peety are the real perverts in this bunch.”
West chucks a piece of dough at his cousin. “We didn’t see a thing.”
“That we haven’t seen before,” Cay smoothly adds.
Peety tries not to grin. West shakes his head. “Why don’t we just make these tortillas before we have another broken hand gang.”
Andy snorts, but we both let it go. We did win the fishing bet, though I’m beginning to suspect that was more than just luck.
“Traveling with a wanted criminal won’t be easy,” I say, with an eye toward Cay. “There may be more trackers, more lawmen, delaying our journey even longer—”
Cay cuts me off. “This is the frontier. Criminals are a dime a dozen. I’d say, if you weren’t traveling with one, something’s wrong with you.”
“We got some good-looking criminals on our side, eh, West?” says Peety, though he’s looking at Andy.
West trots out a dimple. “We coulda done a lot worse.”
“All right, lover boys.” Cay groans. “Let’s have a contest to see who can make the most. One, two, three, go.”
Dough starts flying.
“Takes many years of experience to do right,” says Peety, eyebrows flexed as he plies his next piece.
“I think you just stuck your thumb through yours,” I comment.
“Speed it up, blondie,” says Andy. “This ain’t pat-a-cake. And you, the one named after a direction. Don’t you know shapes? That ain’t a circle, that’s a square.”
Before someone throws dough at us, Andy and I fall back onto a stack of horse blankets laughing. We gaze at the horizon, a sweeping canvas of color and texture. The sun drops like a magic ball into a hat, leaving behind a trail of glitter in the blushing sky. It takes my breath away.
“The socks are back in the drawer again,” says Andy.
“Isaac and Tommy?”
“No. The remuda.” She smiles at me.
Yuanfen, the fate that brings family together. My Snake weaknesses get the better of me, and my eyes grow misty. I never knew there were so many socks in my drawer.
But maybe you did, Father.
The trail’s cold now, but I don’t lose hope of seeing the man in the red suspenders one day. Even if Mr. Trask and I never meet again, I will still open that conservatory for you, Father, for us, with or without Mother’s bracelet. After all, I flew off a waterfall. And the view at the top was so wide, and the outlook so handsome.