Fire and Rain

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Sleep was impossible. She had slept little last night, and if the sounds Luke made as he paced from bedroom to living room to kitchen and back again were any indication, he had slept no better than she had.

  Trying not to think, trembling as the aftermath of her burning dream rippled through her, Carla lay and listened to the sounds in the ranch house. The upper story was quiet, which meant that Luke had already showered and gone downstairs. The smell of coffee permeated the house, which meant that someone – probably Luke – had made coffee. The back door into the kitchen snapped shut, and then she heard male voices. The words were not distinguishable, but she knew that Ten had arrived and was ribbing Luke about something.

  The door to the dining room had a distinctive squeak. Carla heard it many times in the next hour as she turned restlessly in bed, first to one side and then the other, back to front to side to back, but never comfortable for long. She told herself that the smell of ham and eggs and hot cereal was making her too hungry to sleep, but she knew better. She was straining to hear Luke's voice, wondering if he were any less withdrawn this morning than he had been last night, when he had stood up abruptly and left the table.

  Carla still couldn't believe her small joke about cowboys and drawls had offended Luke. He had laughed harder than she had. Then he had looked at her with an intensity that had made her weak. Before she could reach out to him, before she could do so much as blink, he had stood up and walked out of the room.

  Oh, Luke, don't you see how good we could be together? I can talk to you better than I can to anyone, even Cash. I can laugh and listen and you can do the same with me. We don't even have to be in the same room to enjoy being together. Just sitting and reading in the same house with you is better than going out with men I don't care about.

  Don't turn away from me, Luke. Let me show you that I'm more like Mariah MacKenzie than I am like your mother.

  The words ran over and over through Carla's mind in a litany of pain.

  "Stop it, Carla McQueen," she finally told herself aloud. "Just stop it. You can't make someone love you, and if you aren't old enough to know it, you should be!"

  The hissed ferocity of her own words joined the unhappy thoughts that were turning in Carla's mind. She had come here to exorcise Luke so that she would be able to get on with her life, to date and fall in love like other girls.

  But cutting Luke from her heart and mind had proven to be impossible. Each shared moment of laughter, each smile, each conversation, each gentle silence, each day she spent close to Luke embedded him more deeply in her soul. Last night it had taken a frightening amount of self-control not to run after him. She didn't know if she had the strength to hold back her emotions any longer, yet she couldn't bear a repetition of what had happened three years ago, when she had declared her love and had been told she wasn't old enough to know how to love a man.

  Schoolgirl.

  Slowly Carla realized that it had been many minutes since she had heard anyone moving around the house. The hands must have finished breakfast and gone about their work. She turned to the table next to her bed. The small travel clock told her that Cash was still several hours away from the Rocking M. Even worse, she had nothing to do to make the time pass faster. She had been packed and ready to go to September Canyon for three days. All she needed was her brother's arrival.

  With a sound of impatience Carla pushed off the bed covers and got up. She paced the room aimlessly for a few minutes before she paused in front of the dresser. She ran her fingers caressingly over the wood's finely polished surface. After a moment, her hand went to the small carved ebony box that traveled with her everywhere. Smooth, graceful, elegant in its curving lines, the box had been a gift from Luke on her sixteenth birthday. Though he had said nothing, she suspected he had made it for her, just as he had made Cash a miniature display cabinet for gold nuggets.

  Carla used the box to hold her most valued possession. Not jewelry, but a simple shard of pottery, another gift from Luke. She had been fourteen and recently orphaned when he had given the odd gift to her. She had never forgotten that moment or the tawny depths of his eyes or his deep, gentle voice trying to reach past her terrible loss and give her what comfort he could.

  I found this in September Canyon and thought of you. You can look at this bit of clay and know that a long time ago a woman shaped a pot, decorated it, fed her family from it, maybe even passed it on to her children or her children's children. One day the pot broke and another pot was made and another family was fed until that pot broke and another was made in a cycle as old as life. It's hard, but it isn't cruel. It's simply the way life is. Whatever is made is eventually unmade and then remade again.

  The shard nestled into Carla's palm like an angular shadow. The black finish of the pottery was set off by white lines. The geometries looked random now, but the whole pot would have revealed patterns that were only hinted at in the shard.

  And that, too, was what Luke had told Carla. Then he had held her while she wept and finally accepted that her parents were gone and would never come back again.

  For a moment, echoes of past tears ached in Carla's throat. Very carefully she replaced the shard in its velvet-lined nest. Looking back, she knew it had begun then, the years of incoherent longings that had condensed into puppy love, first love, a girl's stumbling progress toward womanhood; it had begun with the ancient pot shard and culminated in an emotion that was as much a part of Carla as breath itself.

  As the truth sank into Carla, she measured the depth of the mistake she had made in coming back to the Rocking M; there was no schoolgirl infatuation to be exorcised by a summer's proximity to the everyday reality of Luke MacKenzie. She loved Luke with a woman's timeless, unbounded love. She could more easily sever her right hand from her wrist than she could cut Luke from her soul.

  With trembling fingers Carla set the small box back onto the dresser. Just as she turned away, the downstairs telephone rang. She grabbed her robe and raced out of the bedroom.

  "Hello?"

  "Caught you sleeping, didn't I?" Cash asked.

  "Nope. I've become a card-carrying member of the Dawn Brigade since I came to the Rocking M."

  Cash laughed. "Well, go back to bed, little sister. I won't be out to pick you up until late afternoon."

  "Why?"

  "The Jeep is on strike."

  "What happened?"

  "Who knows?"

  "You needn't sound so cheerful about it."

  "Sorry, sis. I'll do my best to get out there by four o'clock."

  "But it will be too late to go to September Canyon by then and rain showers are predicted tonight and if we aren't on the other side of Picture Wash before it fills it may be days before we can cross!"

  "I'm sorry, Carla. Look, maybe I can borrow a truck and—"

  "No," she interrupted, feeling guilty for jumping on Cash for something that was beyond his control. "It's all right. I've just been looking forward to seeing September Canyon after all these years of hearing about it."

  "Why don't you get Luke to drive you over? He needs a few days off."

  The thought of having Luke to herself within the cliff-rimmed silence of the canyon was enough to make Carla's pulse ragged. Yet in the next instant her heartbeat settled to normal, because she knew Luke would refuse to go with her. She had asked him several times to take her to September Canyon; each time he had said no, it was too far to go for just an hour or two of looking around.

  "Luke is pretty busy," Carla said neutrally. "If nothing else works out, I'll just drive on ahead. Luke has told me that the canyon isn't hard to find, it's just remote. You can catch up with me when you get your malevolent Jeep straightened out."

  There was a silence during which Carla sensed her brother's reluctance to agree to her going to September Canyon without him.

  "Promise you won't try rock climbing alone?" he asked at last.

  "Of course not. I won't sleep in dry washes during a thunderstorm, either," she added sardonic
ally.

  "And if you find any ruins, you won't poke around in them unless someone else is with you?"

  "Cash—" she began.

  "Promise me, Carla. From what I've heard, some of the floors in those ruins are damned risky."

  She sighed. "Cash, I'm twenty-one. I won't do anything foolish, but I won't be hamstrung, either. I've wanted to see September Canyon for seven years. I've worked for weeks and weeks with only a handful of days off in order to save up time. I'm going camping with or without you. If that upsets you, I'm sorry. You'll simply have to trust me."

  "What if the Jeep can't be fixed or the rains come and you're stranded in the canyon for a week?"

  "I have enough supplies for me for two weeks, remember? I'm carrying your food, too."

  "What if it snows?"

  "In August?" Carla laughed. "C'mon, big brother, you can do better than that. At this time of year I'm far more likely to get sunstroke than frostbite and you know it."

  Unwillingly, Cash chuckled. "All right, all right. Let me put it this way, sis. My head knows you're old enough and smart enough to take care of yourself. My gut keeps telling me to protect you."

  "Give your gut a rest. Your head did a find job of teaching me how to camp in wild places."

  "Won't you be afraid to be alone?"

  "Would you?" she asked quickly.

  Cash sighed. There was silence for a moment before he said softly, "Okay. I'll catch up with you as soon as I can."

  "Thanks, Cash."

  "For what?" he muttered. "You would have gone anyway, whether I liked it or not."

  "Yes, but thanks for trusting me anyway."

  "You're a big girl, Carla. It just takes a little getting used to. Give yourself a hug for me."

  "You, too."

  Smiling, Carla hung up the phone. The smile faded as she acknowledged to herself the real reason she was going on to September Canyon alone; she was afraid if she stayed at the ranch house one more night, she would say something she would spend the rest of her life regretting.

  Something like I love you, Luke.

  Thirty minutes later Carla had washed, dressed, eaten breakfast and was looking for a good place to leave her note explaining what had happened to Cash's perverse Jeep. Finally she taped the note to the kitchen faucet, knowing that the first thing Luke did at the end of a day was to wash up for dinner.

  *

  "I'm coming, damn it!" Luke muttered to the imperiously ringing phone.

  Luke told himself that he had come back to the ranch house early to see if Carla had made coffee before she and Cash left, but he knew it was a lie. He was coming in to see Carla before she left – and he was too late, or the damned phone wouldn't be ringing. The kitchen's screen door slammed behind Luke as he strode angrily across the room toward the phone, which had been ringing relentlessly. Fourteen times, by last count.

  The lack of savory odors and edible tidbits struck Luke forcefully as he reached for the phone. Without Carla, the kitchen was about as welcoming as the corral trough on a winter morning.

  Get used to it, cowboy, he advised himself. And not for the few days she's camping. A few weeks from now the bet ends.

  Angrily Luke picked up the receiver and snarled, "What!"

  Cash whistled softly. "Who bucked you off into the manure pile?"

  "Cash? What the hell are you doing near a phone?" Luke demanded. "You and Carla are supposed to be hammering down stakes in September Canyon about now."

  "Tell it to my psychotic Jeep."

  "Hell," sighed Luke. "How far did you get?"

  "Boulder."

  "Told you to trade that damned Jeep for a dog and shoot the dog, didn't I?"

  "Many times."

  Luke laughed shortly. "I'll bet Carla's happy. You've given her a perfect excuse to take off for the brightlights."

  "I did?"

  "Sure. She's going to see you," Luke said, feeling disappointed that Carla had gone to the city after all.

  "She is?"

  "Of course she is. She hasn't admitted it to anyone, but I know she's dying to get her hair fixed or her nails done or shop for makeup or whatever it is that women do in big cities."

  "We must have a bad connection," Cash said dryly. "Would it help if I banged the receiver on the table?"

  "What in hell are you talking about?"

  "Funny, I was going to ask you the same question. Let's start all over again. You remember Carla, my kid sister, the one who's been cooking for you and that bunch of starving cowboys since June?"

  Luke made a rough sound, but before he could get a word in, Cash kept on going, answering his own question.

  "I thought you might. Now Carla – my kid sister, remember? – has been saving up days off so she can go camping in September Canyon. You with me so far?"

  "Cash, what the hell—"

  "Good," Cash interrupted. "You're still with me. Now hang on tight, cowboy, this is where you got bucked off last time. I am in Boulder. Carla is not. She's not coming here, either. She's on her way to September Canyon."

  "Alone?"

  "Yes."

  "For the love of God, why did you let her do a damn fool thing like that!"

  "Yo, Luke!" Cash said loudly. "I think you've been bucked off into the fresh stuff again. Carla, my kid sister – you do remember her, don't you?"

  Luke swore.

  "Yeah, I thought you did," Cash continued. "Well, she's twenty-one. Even if I were at the ranch – which I'm not, remember? – I wouldn't have stopped Carla. She may be my kid sister, but she's not a kid anymore. She's old enough to do what she wants."

  Luke started to speak, but Cash wasn't finished talking yet.

  "You got that, Luke? Carla's only a girl in our memories, and that's not fair to her or to us. Now, are you still with me or are you sitting on your butt in a pile of road apples wondering what hit you?"

  There was silence while Luke absorbed his friend's message. "You're a fool, Cash McQueen," he said softly.

  "No. I'm a gambler, which is a different thing entirely. Even so, I'd prefer not to have Carla spending too much time alone in the kind of country she's headed for."

  "How long do you think it will take you to get your damned Jeep fixed?" Luke asked tightly.

  "I'm having a part flown in from L.A. Soon as that comes I'll be up and running."

  "Cash, damn it—"

  "Have a nice trip, Luke."

  For a long minute Luke stared at the dead phone. Then he slammed the receiver into the cradle and went looking for his ramrod.

  ~ 12 ~

  Carla's small pickup truck bounced and slithered through one of the countless small washes that crossed the ragged dirt road. When she came to what could have been another ranch crossroad or simply one more "shortcut" leading to nowhere in particular, she stopped the truck and checked the map. Only the dashed, meandering line of the ranch road showed. No crossroads, no spurs, nothing but the single road heading generally southeast across the national forest land where the Rocking M had leased grazing rights. The tongue of national forest ended at the edge of a long line of broken cliffs that zigzagged over the countryside for mile after mile. The line of cliffs was deeply eroded by finger canyons and a few larger canyons where water flowed year-round.

  One of those many creases in the countryside was September Canyon.

  A swift check of the compass assured Carla that she was still heading in the right general direction. Out here, that was as good as it got; road signs simply didn't exist. She got out of the pickup, stretched and assessed the weather. Scattered showers had been predicted for the Four Corners country, with a good chance of a real rain by sundown. At the moment clouds were sailing in fat armadas through the radiant sapphire sky. The clouds themselves ranged from brilliantly white to a brooding slate blue that spoke silently of coming rain.

  The high peaks off to the north were already swathed in clouds as solitary rainstorms paid court to mountaintops rarely reached by man. To the south, cloud shadows swept over
land broken by canyons and rocky ridges. Random, isolated thundershowers showed as thick columns of gray that were embedded in the earth at one end and crowned by seething white billows on the other.

  Even as Carla appreciated the splendor of rainbows glittering among the racing storm cells, she was relieved to see that none of the isolated thundershowers had ganged up and settled in anywhere for a good cry. She had driven dirt roads long enough to know that she didn't want to drive through mud if she could help it. Nor was she enthusiastic about the idea of fording washes that were hub-deep in roiling water. Fortunately it was only a few more miles to Picture Wash, and from there it was just under three miles to the mouth of September Canyon. Even if she had to walk, she would have no trouble making it before sunset.

  Smiling at the excitement she felt rising in herself at the knowledge that she was finally within reach of the canyon that had haunted her for seven years, Carla got back in her little pickup and drove down the road, trailing a modest plume of dust behind.

  *

  The dust Luke raised heading for September Canyon could in no way be called modest. A great rooster tail of grit and small pebbles boiled up in the wake of his full-size pickup truck. He drove hard and fast, but never dangerously. He knew each rut, pothole and outcropping of rock in the road. Close to the ranch house he drove between barbed wire fences marking off pastures. Farther from the house he came to the open grazing land.

  There was no gate to the open area. There was only a cattle guard made of parallel rows of pipes sunk into the road at a right angle. The pipes were spaced so that a cow would shy back from walking on them for fear of getting a hoof caught in the open spaces between the bars. The cattle guard offered no deterrent to vehicles beyond the startling noise caused by tires rattling and clattering over pipes.

  Luke occupied his mind with the condition of the road or the look of the cattle grazing nearby or the number and kind of plants growing in roadside ditches. The road needed grading. The fences could have used tightening in a few places. The cattle were sleek and serene, grazing in good forage or lying beneath scattered trees to ruminate. The roadside plants were lush with water from a recent storm that had raced by, grooming the land with a wet, lightning-spiked tongue.