Chapter 1

      Soaked by the freezing rain, I leaned far out from atop the muddy cut bank over the storm-swollen river. My head was bare, my ponytail swinging drenched and matted.

      I scanned the water roiling below me for any sign of Jasper. Logs, branches, a drowned jackrabbit twirling round and round in the current. The cold rain blurred my vision. Then I saw it: Jasper’s black cowboy hat.

      I watched as it whirled twice around an eddy, following the jackrabbit carcass, catching for a few seconds on a half-submerged juniper branch. Then, whoosh! It hit the rapids. White water grabbed the hat and sucked it under, spit it back up a few yards downstream, then swallowed it again.

      Gone.

      The cattle bellowed behind me, the cows comforting their calves after the swim across the river. My paint horse, Rowdy, stood beside me at the water’s edge, blowing dirty river water from his nostrils and shivering. The cold rain pelted down on us.

      I held my breath. The cattle had made it across. Rowdy and I had waded and swum and scrambled onto the bank. I’d watched Jasper’s horse, Tigger, pull herself ashore downstream of the rapids, but my friend and his dog were gone.

      This was all my fault. I brought us up into the mountains, into the storm: now, the worst may have happened. How could I live with myself?

      You’re probably wondering how two twelve-year-old ranch kids had gotten themselves into such a predicament. Right?

      Here’s how it started:

      It was early October; the pastures brown and dry and streams barely trickling in their gravel beds. The low autumn sun warmed up the days but nights had a wintry bite.

      My best friend, Jasper, from the next ranch over, and I were on our horses, vaccinating calves in the corral by the house.

      Jasper’s big old blind dog, Willie, lay in the shade near the corral, dozing. I could hear him snore and saw all four of his paws twitch in rabbit-chasing dreams.

      The calves we were tending were bummers who’d lost their mothers or been rejected by them. Having lost my own ma, I was a sucker for an orphan, so Jasper and I had bottle-raised them. We kept them down here at the ranch when the rest of the herd was driven up to the mountain pastures last spring.

      Jasper and I were giving the bummers their second round of shots. They were like our own little herd, and we were responsible for them. I liked the feeling.

      The