Nora Roberts - Black Hills

“You did? What is it?”

He held out the box, shifting his feet when she pulled the lid off. “It’s kind of stupid. It’s not very good,” he said, as she stared at the small cougar he’d carved out of hickory. “I couldn’t get the face right or-”

He broke off, stunned, embarrassed, when she threw her arms around him. “It’s beautiful! I’ll always keep it. Wait!” Spinning around, she dashed into the house.

“That’s a good gift, Cooper.” Jenna studied him. “The cougar’s hers now, she won’t have it any other way. So you’ve put part of yourself into her symbol.”

Lil bolted out of the house, skidded to a stop in front of Coop. “This is my best thing-before the cougar. You take it. It’s an old coin,” she said, as she offered it. “We found it last spring when we were digging a new garden. It’s old, and somebody must’ve dropped it out of their pocket a long time ago. It’s all worn so you can hardly see.”

Cooper took the silver disk, so worn the outline of the woman stamped on it could hardly be seen. “It’s cool.”

“It’s for good luck. It’s a… what’s the word, Mom?”

“A talisman,” Jenna supplied.

“A talisman,” Lil repeated. “For good luck.”

“We’ve got to get on.” Sam gave Cooper’s shoulder a pat. “It’s a long drive to Rapid City.”

“Safe trip, Mr. New York.”

“I’ll write,” Lil called out. “But you have to write back.”

“I will.” Clutching the coin, Coop got into the car. He watched out the back, as long as he could, watched the island in front of the old house shrink and fade.

He didn’t cry. He was nearly twelve years old, after all. But he held the old silver coin all the way to Rapid City.

THE BLACK HILLS

June 1997

Lil walked her horse through the morning mists along the trail. They moved through high grass, crossed the sparkling waters of a narrow stream where tangled vines of poison ivy lurked before starting the upward climb. The air smelled of the pine and the water and the grass while the light shimmered with the delicacy of dawn.

Birds called and chattered. She heard the burry song of the mountain bluebird, the hoarse chee of a pine siskin in flight, the irritable warning of the pinyon jay.

It seemed the forest came to life around her, stirred by the streams and slants of misty light sliding through the canopy of trees.

There was nowhere in the world she’d rather be.

She spotted tracks, usually deer or elk, and noted them on the tape recorder in her jacket pocket. Earlier she’d found buffalo tracks, and of course, numerous signs of her father’s herd.

But so far in this three-day jaunt she’d given herself, she’d yet to track the cat.

She’d heard its call the night before. Its scream had ripped through the darkness, through the stars and the moonlight.

I’m here.

She studied the brush as the sturdy mare climbed, listened to the birdcalls that danced through the sheltering pine. A red squirrel burst out of a thicket of chokecherry, darted across the ground and up the trunk of a pine, and looking up, up, she spotted a hawk circle on his morning rounds.

This, as much as the majestic views from the clifftops, as much as the towering falls tumbling down canyons, was why, she believed, the Black Hills were sacred ground.

If you felt no magic here, to her mind, you would find it nowhere.

It was enough to be here, to have this time, to scout, to study. She’d be in the classroom soon, a college freshman (God!), away from everything she knew. And though she was hungry to learn, nothing could replace the sights, the sounds, the smells of home.

She’d seen cougar from time to time over the years. Not the same one, she thought. Very unlikely the same cougar she and Coop had spotted that summer eight years ago. She’d seen him camouflaged in the branches of a tree, leaping up a rock face, and once, while riding herd with her father, she’d spotted one through her field glasses as he took down a young elk.

In all of her life she’d never seen anything more powerful, more real.

She made note of the vegetation as well. The starry forget-me-nots, the delicate Rocky Mountain iris, the sunlight of yellow sweet clover. It was, after all, part of the environment, a link of the food chain. The rabbit, deer, elk ate the grasses, leaves, berries, and buds-and the gray wolf and her cats ate the rabbits, deer, and elk.

The red squirrel might end up lunch for the circling hawk.

The trail leveled off, and opened into grassland, already lush and green and spearing with wildflowers. A small herd of buffalo grazed there, so she added the bull, the four cows, and the two calves to her tally.

One of the calves dipped and shoved, and came up again with his head draped with flowers and grass. Grinning, she paused to pull out her camera, take a few pictures to add to her files.

She could title the calf Party Animal.

Maybe she’d send it, and copies of some of the shots she’d taken on the trail, to Coop. He’d said he might be coming out this summer, but he hadn’t answered the letter she’d sent three weeks before.

Then again, he wasn’t as reliable about letters and e-mails as she was. Especially since he was dating that coed he’d met at college.

CeeCee, Lil thought with a roll of her eye. Stupid name. She knew Coop was sleeping with her. He hadn’t said so, in fact had been pretty damn careful not to. But Lil wasn’t stupid. Just like she was sure-or nearly sure-he’d slept with that girl he’d talked about in high school.

Zoe.

Jeez, what happened to regular names?

It seemed to her that guys thought about sex all the time. Then again, she admitted, shifting in the saddle, she’d been thinking about it a lot lately.

Probably because she’d never had it.

She just wasn’t interested in boys-not the ones she knew, anyway. Maybe in college next fall…

It wasn’t as if she wanted to be a virgin, but she didn’t see the point in getting sweaty if she didn’t really like the guy-and if he didn’t heat her up on top of the like, then it was just a kind of exercise, wasn’t it?

Just something to be crossed off the life-experience list.

She wanted, she thought she wanted, more than that.

She shrugged it off, put her camera away, took out her canteen to drink. She’d probably be too busy studying and working in college for sex. Besides, her priority now was the summer, documenting her trails, the habitats, working on her models, her papers. And talking her father into culling out a few acres for the wildlife refuge she hoped to build one day.

The Chance Wildlife Refuge. She liked the name, not only because it was hers, but because the animals would have a chance there. And people would have a chance to see them, study them, care about them.

One day, she thought. But she had so much to learn first-and to learn, she had to leave what she loved best.

She hoped Coop came, even for a few weeks, before she had to leave for college. He’d come back, like her cougar. Not every summer, but often enough. Two weeks the year after his first visit, then the whole wonderful summer the year after, when his parents divorced.

A couple of weeks here, a month or so there, and they’d always just picked up where they left off. Even if he did spend time talking about the girls back home. But now it had been two whole years.

He just had to come this summer.

With a little sigh, she capped her canteen.

It happened fast.

Lil felt the mare quiver, start to shy. Even as she tightened her grip on the reins, the cat leaped out of the high grass. Like a blur-speed, muscle, silent death-he took down the calf with the flower headdress. The small herd scattered, the mother bugling. Lil fought to control the mare as the bull charged the cat.