Excerpts From Bone Necklace
“Jack wedged the Hawken’s worn maple stock between his shoulder and his cheek, aiming at the mountain lion’s chest. He felt the rifle’s cold trigger against his finger, but he didn’t pull. The cat was such a beautiful thing, so sleek and daring and dangerous.
Jack had loved mountain lions ever since the day he saw one sitting on top of a giant saguaro cactus. For all their beauty, all the elegance in their movements, all the heat in their fiery eyes, cats sometimes made spectacularly bad decisions. Jack, whose life had been one bad decision after another, understood the astonishment, the bewilderment, the futile regret of that cat on top of the cactus, almost as if they were kin.”
— Bone Necklace: Chapter 1
“Running Bird pried small stones away from the tender frogs of their feet and curried their bony withers with a dried corncob, drawing comfort from their soft nickers. He looked around to see which ones had fallen behind that day, unable to keep up with the brutal pace of the march. Even the strongest animals were beginning to fail, with cracked hooves and swollen legs and festering saddle sores. Black Hoof’s rose gold filly was among the fittest in the bunch, but she still wouldn’t let anyone else ride her. Running Bird loved her for that.”
— Bone Necklace: Chapter 23
“The problem was a rattlesnake, almost invisible among the white pebbles with its oyster-colored skin, holding its rattle erect and shaking it hard and fast. It seemed astonishing that a plan upon which so much depended could unravel so quickly because of one tightly coiled rattlesnake, and not a very big one.”
— Bone Necklace: Chapter 29
“Rescuers combed through the smoking wreckage with rakes and shovels, searching for Sally’s corpse, but it was a futile task. If she was inside that house when the conflagration went up, her remains would never be identified. The fire had burned too blistering hot, reducing every shingle, every beam, every stick of furniture to cinders. Door hinges, jewelry, silverware, even pots and pans had been melted. Window glass had liquefied and cooled in iridescent pools beneath the ash. Two stone chimneys were all that remained, facing each other like forgotten sentinels.”
— Bone Necklace: Chapter 1
“He ran to catch a horse, slicing his bare feet on broken ice and prickly pear. Stupidly, he’d let Confetti Cloud graze overnight rather than tethering his war horse close to camp. The Nez Perce horses had gotten wise to the sounds of battle and were already terrified, snorting and bucking and tossing their heads.”
— Bone Necklace: Chapter 32