And Condors Danced by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Read Free Book Online Page B

everyday things—and be able to learn all kinds of secrets from them, was so terribly exciting. Exciting in some ways like being invisible would be exciting. Except that with being invisible you’d be able to see and hear everything because no one would know you were there. And with observing you could be right there, and people would be trying to hide all the most interesting secrets from you, just like always, and you’d be able to read all the answers from simple ordinary objects—like from a dirty fingernail, or a bit of blotting paper, or an old felt hat.
    “Look,” Matt said suddenly, “there’s my house. Did you know you could see our place from here?”
    They were on the ridge trail by now, high up on the side of the mountain, and below them was Grizzly Flats. Dan Kelly, Mart’s grandfather, had always dry-farmed wheat and barley in the high valley, when he wasn’t off tramping around in the wilderness prospecting for gold. According to Aunt M., who’d been a friend of the Kellys’ for years, he’d never found any gold and he’d not had much more luck with his farming. But he’d gone right on trying and he and his wife, Maggie, had raised their big family right there in the little house on the Flats. After their own children grew up and went away, Dan and Maggie were alone for a while, but then one of their daughters died and left a little motherless boy. So Matt had come to live with the Kellys, just about the time that Carly came to live with her own family at the ranch house.
    Looking out over the Flats, Matt and Carly rested the donkeys and watched while far down below Maggie came out of the back door carrying a bucket and crossed the yard to the pigsty. After she went back into the house they went on up the steep, winding path toward the ridge.
    By the time they finally reached the top, the donkeys were sweaty and winded again from the long climb. Matt and Barney had fallen behind, so Carly dismounted while she waited for them to catch up. Her legs felt a little bit stiff and achy, and very sticky. Reaching under her dress, she tugged at her underthings where they were stuck to her legs by donkey sweat. Then she shook first one leg and then the other and swished her skirt around to create a cooling breeze. Rosemary watched with a thoughtful expression on her pretty donkey face, and then she lowered her head and shook herself violently.
    Carly scratched the shaggy, sweaty neck. “Poor Rosemary,” she whispered into the long gray ear. “You’re hot and tired too. Aren’t you?” Rosemary turned and rested her chin on Carly’s shoulder and puffed warm hay-scented breath across her face. “Okay,” Carly told her. “We’ll rest for a while.”
    “Let’s have lunch here while the donkeys rest a little,” she said as Barney plodded up alongside.
    “Lunch,” Matt said. “I thought we were going to eat at the spring. We got to have water. You can’t eat much of Grandpa’s jerky without something to drink.”
    “We’ll have two lunches,” Carly said. “We’ll eat my lunch here and yours at the spring. All right?”
    Matt shrugged.
    It was nice on the crest. The wind was from the west and cooler, carrying a trace of ocean freshness, and the whole world seemed to be stretched out before them. Far below, in the center of the valley, sunlight glinted on the water that flowed down from Carlton Spring, while farther away to the south the rocky summit of the Mupu Hills rose up to meet the bright sky. Matt and Carly sat under a scraggly oak and sucked oranges and nibbled on cookies while the donkeys grazed around them, and Carly told Matt all about the Hound of the Baskervilles.
    She’d just gotten to the scariest part when Tiger came circling back from his latest attempt to catch a jackrabbit and crashed through some bushes right behind them. They both jumped and Matt dropped the orange he was eating and then they began to laugh, because funny little old Tiger was such a long way from being a