A Wolf in the Desert

by BJ James

  Even if the shadow had been perceived as fissure, it would have been judged small, dwarfed as it was by the massiveness of the mesa. But it was far from small, and widened at its base to a cavelike opening. When he clambered with her over fallen rocks, and led her through it, Patience expected a cave, and discovered instead a tunnel. Traversing the narrow passage and stepping out on the other side, she found they had come to a small shaded canyon enclosed and protected by its bastion of red rock. Scattered over the floor of the canyon were trees, a glade of aspen, juniper, pinyon pine, and Douglas fir, and tall grasses standing like a small, still sea. Through the center flowed a winding ribbon of water, less than a river, but more than a trickle.

  “How did this happen?” Patience asked as she gazed in awe.

  “Millions of years ago water flowing over cracks in the top of the mesa found stratums of sandstone among harder elements. It began to dig a crevice, continuing through the yielding stone to shales of finer, harder mudstone and siltstones. Captured, it formed seeps and more springs. Their rare, precious moisture fostered the growth of plants that are the hanging gardens unique to canyon country. Eventually roots of the gardens penetrated where water could not, cracking the stone, allowing another outlet. And the process began again. Over time it was repeated time and again, with water digging deeper and deeper into the body of the sandstone.

  “At the same time, by the same process, another trickle ate away at the base of the mesa, pushing farther and farther along its path, finding other crevices, digging caverns and carving caves. Eventually the trickle above became torrents, speeding ever downward. At the base of the mesa, seas gathered, rising and receding, then rising and receding again. In time, the two met, the center of the mesa caved into the caverns.” A gallant and graceful sweep of his hand offered the canyon for her pleasure. “And this stronghold was formed.”

  “No one has found it in all these years,” she mused. Remembering the salty, sweat-dried sheen that gleamed over his muscular shoulders and chest, and the distended veins in his arms, instinct told her the boulders at the mouth of the tunnel once guarded this tiny paradise from the rest of the world, until Indian rolled them away. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. I was looking for shelter for the night, sometimes detritus as you saw at the entrance of the tunnel means a cave or small burrow. With a stone as fulcrum, and the limb of a tree as lever, I moved them away and found this.”

  “How long has it been hidden away? Are we the first to see it?”

  “Only the first in a long, long while. Look.” Indian directed her attention to a cluster of markings and shapes etched into a wall. “Petroglyphs,” he explained. “Figures scratched and carved into the desert varnish. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago, those who came before us left this record of their passing. These records in stone can be found in many parts of Arizona. Most of their meaning is lost, yet by them we know a people passed this way and stayed awhile.”

  Indian pointed higher to a series of indentations scooped from the sandstone and leading mysteriously upward. “Footholds,” he explained. “A stairway to their homes.” A crumble of stones clung to a ledge high on the canyon wall. There was little surviving conformation, yet the ruin was still too orderly to be anything but man-made. “Their band was small, but they built well, with an eye for defense. No enemy could reach them from above, nor approach from the ground any way but singly by the footholds.”

  “Who were they?” Patience was fascinated. “Why did they leave?”

  “My guess is they were Sinagua. A name that means ‘without water,’ but it didn’t hold true for this band. Not while they were here. There are other cliff dwellings in other places, abandoned as these were. We don’t know where the people came from, why they left, nor where they went. We’re left with only the evidence of their passing. Preserved as they are by the dry air, without scientific testing we can only guess how long these might have been here.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t stay.” She spoke in whispers out of reverence for an ancient people who had lived, loved, and died, and then abandoned this hidden place.

  “Are you thinking of spirits, O’Hara? Ghost from the past?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Frightened?” He lifted a questioning brow, but did not mock.

  “This isn’t a fearful place. It seems...” She looked to Indian, at a loss for words.

  “Peaceful?” he supplied.

  “Exactly,” she concurred. “Too peaceful to intrude.”

  “They were a peaceful people, good farmers who knew how to live off the land, harvesting the natural plants and animals at their disposal. If they followed the pattern of other Sinagua, this was their haven for a century or better. I don’t think their spirits will mind if we make it ours for a time.”

  “I still don’t understand, why did you choose this place of all places to look for shelter?”

  “By chance, no more than that.”

  “Indian, master tracker.” She laughed, and for the first time there was a teasing lilt in her voice.

  “Only of natural elements, spirits and ghosts elude me.” He smiled and it took her breath away. “How about a swim?”

  “In that?” She looked at the stream that flowed through the grove of aspen. That it was larger than the seep by the camp, didn’t mean it was a river. “Only midget ducks could swim here.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Let me show you.” He lifted the brow again, and smiled, causing a flood of strange, unsettling reactions within her. “Master tracker at work.” He tapped his chest in a playful gesture totally at odds with the man he’d been till now. “First we go to the stream where only midget ducks can swim.”

  “That would be a logical move, even for one who isn’t the master tracker,” Patience observed wryly.

  “Ah, but we don’t stop there, we follow the trail.”

  “Let me guess,” she interjected. “The trail of the water.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  Suddenly he reached out to cup the side of her face in his palm, a thumb stroked the vein at her temple. “I like you like this, whimsical, a little zany.”

  “I’m suspecting you’re Heckle and Jeckle.” She wondered if he could feel the swiftness of her hurrying heart, and hear the huskiness in her teasing retort.

  “You mean Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “I mean Heckle and Jeckle.”

  “Should I ask who they are?”

  “Why not?” Her grin was a dare, as the natural curving of her lips brushed his palm.

  “All right.” Indian wanted to kiss her, to taste the delight of her laughing mouth. “I’m asking.”

  “Heckle and Jeckle are television and movie cartoon characters. Two crows to be specific, and as old as Methuselah.”

  “Before my time. Contrary to what you might think, Methuselah isn’t one of my contemporaries.” His shrug was becoming a familiar gesture. “We didn’t have television or movies on the reservation when I was a kid.”

  This was the first specific mention of his heritage or his past. Patience wanted more, but dared not push. “Before mine, too. Some people are old movie buffs, but Tynan, my youngest brother, is an old cartoon buff.”

  Finding he was hungry for more of her life and history, Indian put aside his stirring needs to walk with her by the stream. “Youngest brother? Youngest of how many?”

  “Three.”

  “Any sisters?”

  “One.”

  “Older than you? Younger?”

  “Older.”

  “Have we reversed roles here? One word answers are my prerogative as the inscrutable red man.”

  Patience slanted him a mischievous glance. “Bothersome, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Gary Cooper, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re the Indian, not the cowboy, remember.” She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow.

  “You noticed.” />
  “I had a clue or two.” She hoped he would say more, tell her more. Instead he leapt agilely onto a ledge and turned to assist her.

  “We have a short climb ahead, but I think you’ll find it well worth the effort.” Over his shoulder he advised, “Some of the rock is unstable, step where I step, test your position before you shift your weight.”

  Following the succinct instruction, they climbed single file and in silence. Patience concentrated on the broad, strong back, the lithe sure step as Indian moved again as if he were born of such country, as if he were part of it. Her concentration was so complete, she gave the changing terrain only cursory attention. Quite without her realizing it, they were on level ground, and the still hush of the canyon was broken by the whispering rush of falling water.

  Indian stopped short and turned, folding her into his arms as she bumped into him. “O’Hara?”

  She wondered how he could stop and turn without her knowledge when she watched him so intently. In the security of his embrace, she understood how taxing the precarious climb had been, how footsore she was, and how tired. “Time to rest before going on?”

  “Time to rest.” His indulgent chuckle was a rumble deep in his throat. “But we aren’t going on.” Keeping one arm around her, he swung away, offering a magnificent panorama with a sweep of the other. “Look. See what wonderful secrets my country keeps.”

  My country. His words were possessive, proud, and the secrets he shared were truly wonderful. Patience was without voice. She simply accepted the pleasure of his embrace as part of the enchantment of what could only be paradise. They stood at the edge of the topmost ledge of another mesa. She’d begun to feel as if she were wrapped in a marvelously intricate Chinese puzzle.

  “A mesa within a canyon, within a mesa, within a canyon.” She was transfixed by the land in front of her.

  “It boggles the mind what time and water and a bit of wind can create.” Indian stroked her hair and looked with her at streams that tumbled down a steep slope, twisting, mingling, only to rush apart, finally cascading over mantles of rock to join again. The pool at the base of the falls was a perfect mirror, giving back twofold the richness of clusters of trees and shrubs, and walls of red rock rising tall against the backdrop of a sky as blue as Callie’s eyes.

  “I haven’t seen so much water in days, weeks, a month.”

  “For this day, it’s yours, Patience. Every drop of it.”

  She almost moaned aloud, thinking of a long soak and the luxury of scrubbing her hair with no thought to conserving limited supplies of water. Indian had never once insisted she be sparing, but innate caution dictated she must. But the pool, a perfect circle carved by the falls, seemed like a tiny, shimmering sea. “A bath. A real bath.”

  “I would have wagered that would be your first thought.” He tugged at her braid and smiled. “I’ll make myself scarce for a while. I set some snares earlier, if we’re lucky, our dinner is there.”

  “Dinner?” Patience was surprised at his casual assumption they would be in the canyon that long. “You intend to stay for dinner?”

  “I intended to stay the night, unless you object.”

  “Won’t it cause trouble if we aren’t in camp by nightfall?”

  “Not so long as we’re where we’re expected to be by morning. I sleep apart like this more often than not. They’re accustomed to it.”

  “What if they come looking for you because I’m with you?”

  “Let them.”

  “But...”

  “Shh.” He stopped her with the slant of a finger over her lips. “They couldn’t find the canyon if they searched for the next ten years. I’m going now to cover our tracks and hide the entrance. You have all the time and water you could wish for. So make the most of it, it may be some time before the odds are so favorable again.” With a little bow he backed away. “I leave you to do the things a woman misses most in the desert.” Another smile flashed over his face. “Enjoy.”

  He didn’t ask her if she could swim. It didn’t occur to him that he should. It was unthinkable that a woman as confident and able could not. It wasn’t worry on that score that had him stopping and turning back before he dropped off the side of the ledge. “One more thing. I made camp just beyond the clump of ponderosas past the pool.” The ponderosa shouldn’t be appearing, not yet, but the canyon within a canyon had a climate all its own. Plants not normally endemic to the locale thrived in comfortable profusion in this enchanted place. “There’s a packet of fresh clothing lying by the pit for the camp fire.”

  Before she could ask him what clothing, from where, he disappeared over the rim. When she was alone, totally alone, with not even a bird in the sky, or buzzing insect for company, she regarded the pool with delicious longing. Then, shedding first her hat, and next her boots, she began to discard the remainder of her clothing one sweat-soaked garment at a time. As she tossed away a lacy scrap of bra and the wisp that was her panties, she tugged the Indian’s thong from her braid and worked her fiery hair free of the confining weave. With no worry that her keeper hadn’t gone to the floor of the canyon as he said, she stole a moment to bask in the sun. And no matter that its rays were strong and unrelenting, the feel of it was marvelous, penetrating deep into her bones, sending warmth to do battle with a coldness that never seemed to leave her.

  Eager as she was to feel the water wash over her, she delayed, savoring the delight of her anticipation. When she could stand to wait no more, and took those steps that would bring her to the edge of the pool, she was surprised to find a thick towel folded and waiting on a flat stone at the water’s edge. On it was a small flask of shampoo, and a bar of fine, milled French soap.

  A gift from Indian, a man far too thoughtful and kind to play the role of a villainous biker.

  “Role?” Patience hesitated at the water’s edge. “Where did that idea come from?” Had it been in the back of her mind all along? Did it explain her obsession with knowing who and what he was?

  “Is this a masquerade, Indian?” It would resolve so many unanswered questions if it were.

  Wading at last into the warm, bright water of the pool that had once been sustenance of the ancients, she knew she must have her answer.

  “Before we leave the canyon, he will tell me his name and why he pretends.” The promise lingered in the hush of the canyon and she slipped beneath the surface of the pool, swimming with strong, competent strokes. Surfacing with an explosive, invigorated surge, she flung back her hair with purpose the soothing water couldn’t diminish.

  “Yes!” she promised. “Before we leave the canyon.”

  Seven

  She swam, basked in the kinder late-afternoon sun, and swam again. Water as delightful as liquid silk caressed her skin, sunlight refurbished her strength. Like a desert sprite, she whiled away the time. Minutes grew into an hour, then two, then slipped away, and she never knew.

  Patience was in a world apart, where there were no Blue Doggies, no Snakes, no Evas. A world where there was only she, the sun, the water, and somewhere near, Indian.

  The rapidly changing cant of the sun dappled the mirrored surface of the pool with deepening green-gold shades of aspen. Grass and shrub rustled not quite soundlessly with the secret retreat of creatures ceding prior claims. Dauntless hummingbirds came to drink, hovering indignantly, fussily chittering their displeasure with her. Laughing at their antics, she felt a twinge of guilt, yet not enough to leave the pool. It was the scent of food, borne on a drift of wood smoke that pulled her at last from the water.

  Smoke rose in a thin, transparent column from the direction Indian had pointed out as their campsite. Glancing at the angle of the sun, reckoning with surprise the passage of time, she knew he’d attended the tasks he’d set for himself. Once he had erased their trail, obscured the entrance to the canyon, and taken the catch from his snares, by a path other than the one that led past the pool, he’d returned to camp.

  And thereby lay an unexpected dilemma. Her own clothing
was soaked, scrubbed with the fragrant soap and draped over a juniper to dry. The packet of clothing Indian had provided still lay in its place by the camp fire. Unless she chose to cover herself with jeans and shirt still dripping puddles in the dust and squish her way to the fire and food, she had her hat, her boots, and a towel.

  Undecided, she stood at the water’s edge, her hair streaming down her back, the towel wrapped sarong fashion around the tops of her breasts. Looking from jeans and shirt, dark and weighted with water, to lingerie so delicate it drifted in a breeze she couldn’t detect on her damp skin, she made her choice.

  Moments later, ravenously hungry, dressed in panties, boots, a hat and a towel, she crossed the grassy expanse that led to the copse of trees and Indian’s camp. With what dignity she could muster, she forced herself to walk nonchalantly to the circle of the fire. Something like small chickens roasted over a spit. There was coffee in the dented tin pot Indian used regularly, and a can of peaches lying on the ground. Patience’s bedroll was spread over a gathering of grasses, and on it lay a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.

  “All the comforts of home,” she muttered. “But where is our host?”

  “Right behind you, Pocahontas.”

  Patience spun around as Indian stepped from shadows gathering beneath the trees. “Goodness! You startled me.”

  “Sorry.” The canteen he’d refilled in the nearby stream was forgotten as he let his gaze roam over her from hat to boots, and back again to the towel lapped securely at her breasts. “I have to admit, you startled me, too.”

  “Oh?” Patience didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Her state of undress was unintentionally provocative, but provocative nevertheless. And at the moment she profoundly wished she hadn’t left her bra behind. At the time, the thought of the lacy straps revealed above the towel seemed...what? More improper than naked breasts? She wasn’t quite sure what she thought. When desire flamed in his eyes, she wasn’t quite sure of anything.