88--for about four miles," Bram told Vala. "You'll see a sign for Brenden's to the right. We'll turn off there."
She nodded and got into her small rental car, packed with camping gear. As she pulled onto the highway after his truck, she tried not to think about what was to come after the pancakes and sausages at Brenden's. As the time crept closer to actually mounting a horse, she became more and more nervous.
Before they went to bed last night, she'd picked Davis's brain for all the tips he could remember about riding and horses and discovered there was more to it than she'd imagined. You even had to get on the animal from a certain side.
"You mean to tell me the horse will know the difference if I try to mount him from his right side instead of his left?" she'd asked. "Who made up these rules anyway?"
"They told us at summer camp that in the olden days the knights used to carry their swords on their left side so it was easier for them to throw their right leg over the saddle first. I guess it just sort of became a tradition to train horses that way."
"I'm never going to remember all this stuff," she muttered.
"Don't sweat it, Mom," he'd advised finally. "Just remember that you and not the horse is in charge and you'll be okay."
I shouldn't have any trouble with that, she thought now. I'm a human and humans are smarter than horses.
All she had to do was get into the saddle without mishap and then her horse would follow the one ahead of him. Or so Davis had assured her. She ought to be able to manage that. In fact, she had to or she'd give herself away and Bram might well back out of the trip altogether. For Davis's sake, that mustn't happen.
All of this was for Davis's sake. It really didn't make any difference that the idea of following the old map into the mountains had much more appeal to her ever since Bram had offered to guide them. Why shouldn't it? He was not only a camping expert but also someone she'd known in the past. Not a friend, exactly, but not a stranger either.
Who knows, maybe they'd be friends by the time the trip was over. She found herself humming "Getting To Know You" and stopped abruptly. Getting to know Bram was not the reason she was on this journey.
Though the sun wasn't up, to her right she could see the dark silhouette of Superstition Mountain against the lightening sky. On the flat land to the left, a lone saguaro cactus thrust up two giant arms as though welcoming her back to the country where she'd been born.
Vala knew that Phoenix was a green oasis in the midst of dry country but she hadn't clearly remembered how desert-like the surroundings actually were. Not sand dune desert but arid country where little grew except cacti and small trees like the palo verde that could make do without much water. She'd grown accustomed to the greenery of the east coast but somehow this starkness seemed right to her, giving her a strange feeling she'd come home.
Could this feeling have anything to do with seeing Bram Hunter again?
Vala shook her head in denial. She'd already made one mistake in choosing a man; she had no intention of making another. Not that Bram had given her any reason to believe he wanted to be chosen! In fact, she'd gotten the impression he didn't think much of her.
He'd made it very clear that in his opinion the map was a fake and he'd blamed her for encouraging her son to believe in a treasure. She was well aware Bram was guiding them only because he'd taken a liking to Davis and had come to the conclusion that nothing he said would prevent her from bringing her son into the Superstitions with or without a guide.
I wouldn't want it any other way, she told herself firmly. Since Bram's not interested in me, I can relax and not worry about being more or less alone with him for the next week.
In any case, the presence of a nine-year-old was a powerful deterrent to romance, even if this particular one, once he fell asleep, couldn't easily be roused by anything less than a twenty-gun salute. Besides, she didn't want a romance. Not now, and not with Bram Hunter.
The sun was up by the time they reached Brenden's Bronco Corral--something