Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,50
us to the questions we just can’t answer. So why don’t you tell me what you were doing when he found you? How he found you? Unless it’s some kind of shifter secret?”
“As for how, basilisks are very rare. I think I told you that his school friend Lance Jackson, and his dad, are part of the Midwest Guardians. They heard about me when I began rescuing horses, some of whom were shifters. Word travels fast in shifter circles. When Alejo first arrived, I took him with me to rescue some horses from a bad situation, and then another rescue that I heard about when we reached the west coast.”
“How did you get into rescuing horses?”
“That was my goal after I failed to find you, to rescue Gravas’s horses. They were a lot easier to find. They had been sold to a circus to pay off Gravas’s debts. Since I didn’t have two cents to rub together, I worked to take on the ones that wanted to leave. Some of them adapted to the circus life. The food was good, the people as well, and running in a steady circle was easier than the rodeo life, especially on the older ones. Look,” he indicated the outside, where a sun shaft slanted down. “We can probably head up the trail now.”
The stone was already beginning to cool off. Godiva began to hoist herself up—but fell back with a grunt. “Stench-weasels! My head is ready for the walk, but my joints seem to have decided on a mass protest.”
“Hand up?” he asked.
She was going to refuse out of habit—she hated letting anyone see signs of age—but somehow, with him, it didn’t matter so much. She was what she was, there wasn’t much point in trying to hide it, especially with her cane somewhere a thousand feet below.
He pulled her to her feet, then let her hand go as he tested the muddy ground with its pools and puddles. “Careful,” he said. “It’s slippery.”
Sandals were not the best footwear for muddy trails. Rigo set a slow pace—but after the second time Godiva’s sandal slid in liquid mud, he offered her his hand again.
She let out a sigh of relief as she grabbed on. His fingers tightened to a reassuring grip on hers, and with his aid they made faster progress.
He kept on talking in that low, easy voice. “So there I was at last, with a string of horses but nowhere to take them. Then I remembered my land deed.”
Godiva liked their hands linked. She knew she liked it, but she wasn’t ready to talk about liking it. That’s it, I’ve reverted to eighteen years old—with wrinkles, she thought as she gazed around at the canyon. It was even more spectacularly beautiful, its colors intensified by that scouring rain. The dust was gone, the air clear and clean. But already gusts of heat blasted down as the sun tipped past midday and began its slide to the west.
She shifted her gaze to Rigo. “Land deed? You had a land deed? And you forgot about it?”
“Here’s the funny thing about land,” he said. “The whole idea of owning it is all in the head.” He tapped his forehead. “That was something my Maya grandfather taught me, that the idea of such finite creatures as us owning land is pretty funny. But there’s enough of my other ancestors to understanding wanting a piece of property that is yours, where you and yours can stay safe and unwanted invaders can be kept out.”
“Right,” she said. “No one in my family ever had any land that I know of, but I loved it when I paid off my place and got a paper saying I owned it outright. Anyway, go on.”
“How it came about was years back, before I hit rock bottom with Gravas. During the Depression. I was riding with a good outfit then. We’d been booked in Eastern Colorado. A lot of silver miners used to come down to spend their earnings. I’d sit in on poker games just for something to do while I chugged my nightly dose. I wasn’t a bad player, actually pretty good—until the liquor took hold. I was winning one night when this hombre ran out of cash, so he threw a land deed into the pot to up the ante. Turned out he went around buying up bankrupt properties for bottom dollar, and had a sheaf of deeds. I won the pot, and the land deed.”
He paused, looking down