“an excerpt from “Sacred Rock”

 “Shawn and Lauren set off early the next day riding horseback for miles in unbroken silence through Wilson Draw to make their own discoveries.  The gentle autumn breeze bending the dry grass and the steady clap of their horses’ hooves upon the pebble trail echo through the canyon walls.

Juniper trees fill every draw with their sweet musky smell. Shawn points over his shoulder to a scrawny coyote trailing at a distance behind Lauren.  He pulls his rifle from the scabbard.

Lauren wiggles in her saddle before urging her horse to a gentle trot, “Don’t shoot!”  A startling racket bursts from the tall sagebrush. One lone Magpie erupts in a frenzy of black and white, clucks and caws, sending Shawn’s white and copper horse from his sleepy walk into a saddle-slapping, nostril-flaring, tail-farting launch that only horses are good at. Lauren laughs at her brother’s near loss of his seat from the secure old ‘Hamley’ saddle. ”