17
“How much farther is it?” I ask. We’ve been hiking up this mountain behind the mansion for a while. It’s a little mountain, compared to any of the ones Halli and I hiked in the Alps, but it still takes time to climb.
And now I really wish I were wearing her hiking boots instead of these slippery, pointy cowgirl ones.
“If you wanted to go faster,” Jake says, “we could have taken the horses.”
“Yeah, well, maybe next time.”
I’m pretty sure Red is happy we didn’t. I noticed he didn’t come into the stable with me. And when I came back out on foot, he seemed pretty eager to follow Jake and me into the forest to see what adventure we were up to next.
But Jake hasn’t thrown him a stick once, and this isn’t one of those leisurely strolls like we had along the beach, and then through the wo
