“Well, that’s probably true. But she needs to be brushed and her hooves…”
“Look-here comes Peter. He would probably love to do it.”
“Well, okay. Here.” I reached into my coat pocket. “Give her this.” I handed him the other half of the carrot. “And could you get my rifle and that backpack that’s tied to my saddlebag?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat playfully. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, how long do I have to wait for this breakfast?”
“We’ll just drop your royal steed at this here palace, Your Highness, Peter will help me unhitch the trailer, and then we’ll be on our way.” He smiled again, then got out of the truck and left it running so I would have heat.
I watched Peter lead Redhead to the stables and felt a pang of guilt for not taking care of her myself. I turned on the radio and let the morning sun warm my face through the windshield. I could barely hear the broadcast above the low rumble of the truck’s idling engine, so I reached to turn the volume up. “And in local news,” an announcer said, “a search and rescue team has recovered the body that had been carried downriver after it was spotted beneath the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge two days ago. New Mexico State Police agent Lou Ebert said the investigative team is not releasing any details in the case, other than to say that the body has not been identified. When contacted, the Office of the Medical Investigator in Albuquerque declined to comment.”
Suddenly, I felt too hot. The windshield had amplified the sun’s rays like a magnifying glass and I felt like I was roasting. My mouth tasted sour from the few sips of coffee I had taken and it made me feel a little queasy. I opened the door of the truck and worked my way out from under the blanket. But I had forgotten about the mug of coffee, which fell to the asphalt and bounced, coming apart, the red cap spinning away, the liquid from inside flying up as one glistening brown steaming organism in slow motion, and then disconnecting into hundreds of drops and falling down to the cold asphalt, where it immediately began to freeze.
I squatted to retrieve the cup and its lid and felt a pang as the muscles in my backside stretched. Although it hurt, it felt good to have my weight off the bruise and to stretch the muscles. And the cold air made my tummy relax. I sat on my haunches and took several deep breaths, feeling better with each one.
After I’d taken one last deep breath, I noticed a pair of brown smoke-jumper boots on my periphery. I had no idea how long Kerry Reed had been standing there. “You okay?” he asked, his hat shading my face from the now-blinding sun.
I straightened up, guardedly. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m sorry about the coffee. All of I sudden, I just felt hot.”
“You going to be all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” I turned and started to get back in the truck.
“Here, let me help.” He took my arm and held it for support. “Do you need to go home?”
“No, I’m all right.”
In the truck, he looked at me before putting the truck in gear. “If you’re not feeling well, I can take you back to the BLM, and if you want, we can go get your truck and trailer at the drop point later. I got your rifle. Your horse is all taken care of.”
“Did you get that backpack?”
He reached behind the seat, pulled up the canvas bag, and handed it to me. “It’s right here.”
As we drove, I stuck my head out the window and into the wind. I could feel the numbing cold move from my face through my chest and into my middle. After a few minutes, I was too chilled. I rolled up the window.
We drove in silence for a few minutes. Then I zipped open the top on the backpack and rummaged through its contents. “There’s no wallet or I.D. in here, no personal items at all. No way to tell who that guy was. The only things in here are a few camera accessories.”
“What kind?”
I held up the items one at a time. “This looks like some kind of lens filter. This must be a lens cleaning kit. There are two of these-extra batteries. I think that’s everything.” I swept the bottom of the bag with my hand. “No, wait. What’s this?” I held up a small flat square.
Kerry took his eyes from the road for a moment and glanced at the item in my hand. “That’s a memory card.”
“I wonder what’s on it.”
“We can find out. I bet I’ve got something that you can use to read it.”
I put everything back in the pack and zipped it up again.
“How are you feeling now?” Reed asked, looking at me.
“I’m good. But I think I need to eat something.”
“So, breakfast?” He looked at me with a hopeful grin.
“Yeah. Breakfast would be nice.”
12
“So you’re from Kansas,” Kerry said, pouring honey into the last sopapilla. He’d eaten a three-egg omelet with green chili, hash browns, bacon, and a basket of the fry bread while we exchanged reports and laid out our plans for the team effort in our section.
I’d had a healthy breakfast myself-a veggie omelet, wheat toast with orange marmalade, and cranberry juice. “Yep. Land of Oz. Where are you from?”
“Northern California.”
“Well, that explains how you became a forest ranger.”
“Yeah, I guess so. My first love was a redwood. No woman’s ever been able to take her place.” He winked.
“So you’re not married?”
He shook his head no.
“And is that where you started as a forest ranger, in California?”
“Actually, no. After I got out of the army, I went to work as a smoke jumper for the Forest Service, in Redding.” He pointed at the hash browns on my plate that I hadn’t eaten. “Are you going to eat the rest of that?”
I shoved the plate across the table at him. “Wow. That’s a dangerous job.”
“I moved on from that to a helicrew. I had good training for that in the army. Wildland firefighting only goes on for part of the year, so it was a good job while I went to school and got a degree in forestry.” He took a forkful of the spuds.
“How did you end up here?”
“There are about ten million too many people in California for me. I wanted to be someplace where I could be around beauty. Wild beauty. I really wanted to go to Alaska, but there weren’t any openings there when I applied. I also kind of liked Utah.”
“So how long have you been in the Taos region?”
“Four years. I started out in Peñasco. I’m about to get a new permanent assignment, though. How about you?”
“I’ve been working out of the Taos Field Office the whole time. Six years.”
“And how does a Kansas girl get to be a resource protection agent?” He gave me that grin of his. It was like a baby’s-irresistible. He grinned, I grinned. Automatic.
“I wanted to find a job where I could ride a horse, be outside. Kind of like you.”
“Cowgirl, huh?” He still held the forkful of potatoes in the air. “Better learn how to stay in the saddle.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “You must have decided you liked it here. You didn’t leave for Alaska or Utah in all this time.”
“This is a good place. Not too crowded. I love to watch the sun rise and set over the mountains. Do you ever take that in?”
I nodded. I couldn’t believe this guy.
“I love the light here. A lot of times, I’ll take a run at sunset. The light is unbelievable.”
“I run, too, usually on the rim of the gorge. I try to run at sunset in the winter. You can see the light play out all across the mesa and down the Taos Valley and back up to the tops of the mountains.”
His eyes looked right into mine. Neither of us looked away. “Really?”
“Yes.”
Kerry Reed put his fork down and pushed the plate to the side, the hash browns still uneaten. He drew one hand up and rubbed his eyebrow as if he were puzzling over something, his eyes still locked with mine. “I knew I liked you the moment I saw you coming up over the rise on that big paint. I said to myself, ‘Kerry, now here’s a woman as good as a redwood.’ ” He broke into a big smile.