Though, to get there she must overcome the human tendency to judge a person by their first encounter, which she does well with West. At the beginning of the novel, Sammy officially meets West for the first time on the trail while cooking snake over a fire (she bumped into him earlier in the book). Her first impression of him is as a young man with dark eyes and scars on his arm. She sees him as a man with a troubled past and a hard life ahead of him, not someone to stick around. After securing a ride with West and his posse, Peety and Cay, Sammy rides with West and Andy rides the horse named Princesa. As the story progresses, Sammy begins to feel more and more of a love for West, which she tries to hide as she is a boy right now. Later in the novel, the group comes along a group of French travelers near a fort, whom they share a meal with. As Sammy goes to sleep that night, she notices that West is nowhere to be seen, so she decides to go for a late night walk. Sammy is on her walk when