Temperance Creek. Pamela Royes
of traveling and had added a few personal necessities. After all, I reasoned, most men travel light and couldn’t be expected to speculate correctly on what a woman might consider essential. A horse could carry what, a hundred pounds of gear? I was way under that. I hadn’t really been able to process how the horse was going to carry my stuff. I just knew I didn’t want to run out of tampons and had no idea what I was going to do when I did. And although Skip might be happy to head into the wilderness with only a bar of soap, I was going to need shampoo, a towel, and a washcloth.
Getting mail or using the phone was going to be a problem. I didn’t have a clue about our itinerary or how often we would pass through a community big enough to have a post office. If I couldn’t get news to friends and family, they wouldn’t be getting it to me. The evening before, when I’d called home to break the news, Mom had asked me when I would “quit traipsing about,” and Dad voiced his concern about my safety should a “medical emergency arise.” What could happen? Skip was like Tarzan, right? The Lord of the Jungle.
At the intersection of the Camp Creek turnoff, I pulled my VW over, parked, and turned it off. I was close enough now to feel afraid. I hadn’t been able to think since meeting him, hadn’t been able to sleep, thinking about the canvas tent opening to the night sky, that last kiss, the lingering smell of him—smoky and sweet. I’d alternated between feeling like I was stranded on a high ladder to feeling like a six-year-old with a roll of quarters in a penny candy shop. I wondered if he’d been thinking about me. What kind of things he’d been thinking about me.
What I knew about Skip would fit on a postcard. Sexy Summerville farm boy. Vietnam War veteran. Liked horses. And fish. In some ways, I knew more about the guy that pumped my gas.
The fire we’d kindled, inspired by the canyon’s magical setting, what name might I give that fire? Was it a single flame, easily doused . . . a campfire? Or was it a wildfire, like Annie called it, impossible to extinguish? If the embers were cold, was it too late for me to change my mind?
I started the car again, and in second gear I revved up the gravel road, the engine whining because I was too chicken to shift into third. If Skip isn’t where he said he’d be, I’ll go back to Minam, I thought. I am still behind the wheel, and for the moment, still in control. What—feeling a wave of terror wash over me—if he’s left? I topped a small hill, the road leveled out, and in the near distance, I spotted my wild man high on a cut bank and walking in my direction. Purposefully, he crossed a grassy flat, carrying what looked like a black-and-white pup under one arm. He came off the bank with long, exaggerated strides and never took his eyes from mine, never once looked where he was placing his feet. I took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled over. I set the parking brake, killed the engine, and opened the car door.
“You have a puppy,” I said, for the moment unable to meet his eyes, grateful when he placed her, licking and wriggling, in my arms. “She’s beautiful, does she have a name? Is she coming with us?”
“I call her Puss, for Puss in Boots. See her little white boots?” He lifted the border collie’s front paws, giving them a gentle shake.
“That’s a terrible name! You’re definitely not a Puss,” I told her. She craned her neck, covering my face in exuberant kisses.
“Let’s get your things,” Skip said, grabbing a cardboard box from the back seat. I set the pup down, retrieved the other box, and followed him up a short hill to his tent site. Canvas pack bags lay in various stages of disarray around a rock fire pit.
“Empty those boxes on this tarp,” he said, “and let’s have a look.”
Into one of the empty boxes he had me put two pairs of pants, two shirts, a jacket, and tennis shoes. Still to sort were my underwear, a summer dress, a pillow, towel, slippers, flashlight, flip-flops, seed beads, scraps of leather, a wildflower identification book, Indian Herbalogy of North America, my complete edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings (to be read for the third time through), drawing paper, colored pencils, and a summer nightgown.
“How many pairs of socks did you bring?” Skip asked.
“Six.”
“You only need two. One to wear, one to wash. What do you need underwear for?”
“I can’t leave my underwear!”
“Why? I don’t wear underwear.”
Between thumb and forefinger he dangled my lilac-colored nightgown by a strap, making it dance. “And what is this?” he asked.
Indignant, I replied, “A nightie.”
“You are not going to need this,” he said, peering at me invitingly from under bushy red eyebrows.
“Where’d you get the pup?” I asked, trying to hide the sense that my life was coming apart at the seams as we sorted through my possessions.
“A herder from the Cherry Creek Ranch brought her to me as I was packing up.”
“Any other surprises?”
“Well, we’re going to need a couple more horses. Then we’ll have two to ride and two to pack. I hear one of the local ranchers might have a mare he wants to sell, so we’ll start by taking a look at her.”
“You’d buy two horses just so I can go with you?” I asked, dropping the sock Puss was trying to yank from my hand.
“Unless you plan to walk?” he said.
“Well, I guess I thought we’d put some things in saddlebags . . . tie some things behind the cantle, you know,” I answered slowly. “I haven’t got that kind of money, Skip.”
“I didn’t figure you would. I have a little money stashed. Let’s go take a look.”
He started walking and didn’t look back—but reached his hand behind him, like a relay runner getting in position to receive the baton. I reached forward, placing my hand in his hand. Warm, and callused. We left camp and followed a small game trail up a dry hill through bunchgrass and prickly pear cactus into a quiet ravine sparsely shaded by thorny and gnarled trees. A barbed wire fence line stood attached in intervals to solidly built cribs of split wood nailed and filled with rocks.
“Why do they build fences that way?”
“There’s no way to drive a post into the ground here. Too damn rocky. Those cribs holding the rocks, we call rock jacks.” He dropped my hand and, following the fence to the next rock jack, bent over, then straightened. “Come up here,” he said, gesturing. “I want to show you something.” He held a one-pound red-and-white coffee can, and when he removed the lid and tilted the can in my direction, I could see there were a bunch of bills rolled up inside. He looked very happy and peaceful standing there slightly above me, wavy-haired in his blue jeans and moccasins, like a tie-dyed holy man, preparing to bless me.
“How much money is in there?” I asked.
“Should be around five thousand dollars.” He grinned. “You reckon it’s enough?” Didn’t own a vehicle, but stood holding five thousand molding dollars packed in a Folgers coffee can and stashed under a rock.
It seemed Skip’s tour of duty in Vietnam had left him leery of all government and private institutions, including banks. Skip explained that five thousand dollars was what was left after almost two years of service to his country in a war he didn’t support and couldn’t understand. A fight that had cost him two good friends, some of his hearing, and a couple of permanent molars, among other things.
Somehow, it didn’t seem like enough.
“You’re just going to leave it in the rocks?” I teased. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll come back and steal it, now I know it’s here?”
“Well, now I have no choice but to take you with me.”
He reached for my hand, and we turned, watching each other. He drew me to him and we kissed a long, searching kiss. With his arms he circled my waist, and