Dead Bandits Can't Talk by Cindy Davis

Author:Cindy Davis [Davis, Cindy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Western
Publisher: L&L Dreamspell
Published: 2010-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

I smelled LT’s village before I saw it. They were smoking some kind of meat. Smelled like turkey. I saw a streak of white smoke, leaning sideways. The wind was blowing it right toward me. I pictured the big rack holding long strips of meat over a small campfire. No flames, just a lot of smoke. My stomach growled.

I ducked my head under the uplifted arms of a saguaro and reined Sage between some sharp smelling pinon pines. A corral of ponies sat off to the left. LTs little mustang trotted to the fence and whinnied at Sage.

LT ran from his grandmother’s hogan. Back in the spring, I stayed a night in the hogan. It was great. So different from my house, low to the ground and round topped. There were twelve hogans in the village. Mostly they lay in a circle around a clearing where they gathered for celebrations and things. Sort of like our Town Common. A big difference between LT’s village and our town was that the women ran most things. And it went pretty smoothly. I couldn’t imagine that happening in our town, what with Mrs. Everley and Mrs. Dawson being the way they were. LT’s grandmother came out of their hogan wrapping a deerskin cape around her shoulders. It was beautiful, with beads and blue stitching around the neck.

“Hello,” I said. “That’s a beautiful cape.”

LT pointed to the stitching. “The design is for good luck.” LT said, “Grandmother’s grandmother made it many years ago.”

LT’s grandmother was named Alberta, but he said I should just call her “Grandmother.” That was okay with me because the only grandmother I had lived in Boston and I’d only met her twice, once when I was two and once just before we left Missouri to come here. I liked Grandmother. She was small like LT. She wore her black hair in a braid wrapped around her head, and fastened with a clip made from sheep’s bone. She had chubby cheeks and a broad smile.

Grandmother stoked the huge campfire in the clearing with a long stick. The flames jumped up and started licking at the wild turkey roasting over it. The smell made my stomach rumble again.

“Can you come to the hideout?” I asked LT.

“Yes.”

I waved good-bye to Grandmother and waited for LT to fasten reins onto his pony’s halter. He never used a bridle or a saddle. We galloped back to Matt’s place with Rags barking behind us.

What a surprise we had when we saw Matt waiting by the side of the road. We didn’t talk much until we got inside the lake hideout. It was chilly in there and we lit a small campfire. Rags lay in the middle of the blanket, but we shoved him over so we could sit too. I told the story about Joe and the sheriff to LT.

“I can’t believe Old Vulture Eyes was stealing,” Matt said. “He’s mean and grouchy, but that’s different than stealing from your boss. I would never do that to Emma.

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