Excerpt from Twenty Chickens for a Saddle by Robyn Scott, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

After dinner, gazing into the lamplight shadows, I tried to follow the conversation. Then I wondered where the scorpion had got to, and whether it was alone, and the voices receded as I conjured deadly creatures beneath every shadow. Soon, I was as far away as Lulu and Damien, who slept on the sofa beside me. 80111 i-x 001 Even a discussion about Dad's uncertain new career, I only just managed to follow.

Dad had never enjoyed being a doctor, and he'd come to Botswana to stop, once and for all, being one.

"What you going to do?" I'd nagged, repeatedly, as we packed up in New Zealand.

"Who knows, Robbie. Farm something, maybe. Start a business. I'll cross that dry riverbed when I come to it. . . ."

Then, I'd been obsessed by the possibilities and uncertainties. Now, they were nothing to what might lie beneath the furniture, let alone beyond. By midnight, when we traipsed outside, under the airplane wings, to see the stars, my head was swirling with a menagerie of perils. Of the conversation, all I remembered was Grandpa: he and his flight, plight, fright stories the only equal match for the absorbing wonders of his world.




"Bloody terrible what happened to old Meyer. Did ya hear about that?"

"Who's Meyer?" asked Dad.

"Ya dunno who Meyer is?" Grandpa raised his palms dramatically. "Ya bloody out of touch, Keith. The famous flying doctor . . . the man was a living legend. . . . Maids to ministers, every Motswana loved Meyer."

But just months earlier, as we were packing up our house, and Dad was happily closing his practice in Auckland, Dr. Meyer had died. Botswana had been shaken. "Bloody incredible, Keith. In the papers, on the radio. National mourning for the poor old bugger."

On the day Meyer died, a thick blanket of winter mist had shrouded Tonota village.

"He was crazy to try and land," said Grandpa, shaking his head. "Dunno what got into him."

I'd tried to imagine clouds that could make Grandpa think a landing crazy.

That morning, when Grandpa had collected us in Johannesburg, he'd used orange hay- bale twine to secure the door. Having blithely dismissed questions about the daylight streaming through a gap between the door and the fuselage, he'd climbed into the front and announced calmly that the little plane was overloaded. Just so we didn't worry if we came rather close to the end of the runway before takeoff.

I couldn't imagine such clouds. I could barely imagine there ever being any clouds at all in the brilliant blue sky we'd arrived in that afternoon.

Nor did clouds seem any more possible as we stood outside that night and stared up at the brilliant sky. Nothing lay between us and the vast sparkling dome, and above the bush, the stars, like the sun before them, shone impossibly bold and bright.

Excerpted from Twenty Chickens for a Saddle (chapter 1, pages 1-14) by Robyn Scott. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Robyn Scott, 2008.