The Last Wish Blues
by Lubrican

Author's Comment: This
story idea was sent to me by a reader who termed himself
"appreciative". He didn't want any credit, other than that. I get a lot
of good ideas from readers. That's one of the reasons I'm
"appreciative" of them. 
             
Bob 
             ===========================================

Chapter One

Brenda Jean Ronson was your
garden variety sixteen year old girl in all ways except one. She was of
average height, about 64 inches tall, and had average looks, though she
didn't consider herself to look 'average'. Her skin looked flat to her
eyes ... pale and listless. She thought her nose was crooked, though no
one else did. She thought her breasts were huge and obvious, though her
bras were all sized 34. She absolutely refused to wear a swim suit,
because the nipples on those breasts were too well defined, and stuck
out, making her feel like everyone was staring at them. She thought her
voice sounded nasal, even if the drama teacher asked her to try out for
every female lead in every musical. She had a group of ten or fifteen
girlfriends, who never said anything bad about her, either to her face,
or behind her back. She wasn't aware that, if you have even two or
three friends like that, you're very lucky. 
             
Brenda Jean Ronson got high "B"s in all her classes, and though boys
asked her out on dates frequently, she turned them all down. That was
because of the thing that Brenda Jean knew about herself that made her
anything BUT average. 
             
Brenda Jean Ronson had cancer. 
             
It had been found when she was thirteen, during a medical workup that
was sought because she sometimes got dizzy for no apparent reason. Her
parents, Dave and Linda, had assumed there was some nutritional
deficiency that would be found, corrected, and the light of their life
would grow up to be a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead
of her. 
             
The prognosis had been anything but that. 
             
The tumor that was found, and which was pressing against something in
her brain that sometimes affected her balance, was inoperable. 
             
There had been radiation treatments, while she was fourteen, and then
chemo therapy while she was fifteen. She had lost her hair, and her
skin had taken on a pasty appearance. She felt like she was a hundred
years old at the end of a series of chemo, when she had to miss school
and recuperate in bed as the poisons the doctors had pumped into her
slowly leached out of her system. Cat scans showed that no progress had
been made. If anything, the tumor had grown a bit. 
             
It was no life for a sweet young girl, who never did anything in her
life to hurt another human being. 
             
The latest round of treatment had pretty much shot the wad of all the
doctors, who were trying to kill the tumor in Brenda Jean Ronson's
head, without killing her too. The waiting period had been endured, and
the results from the latest MRI were in hand.  

             ===========================================

"I'm sorry," said Doctor MacNiel, a professionally sad look on his face. "We've done everything we can. I'm afraid your daughter's outlook is not good." 
             
Linda Ronson wept quietly. She'd done a lot of that over the last two
years. Brenda was off playing with kids in the cancer ward, who looked
like her, with bald heads and pasty features, but who were ten years
younger. Those kids loved her, and she loved reading to them, or
singing songs with them, but it almost killed her parents to see her
with them. 
             
"So what now?" asked Dave. Dave, Brenda's dad, tried to be strong for
all of them. 
             
Doctor MacNiel frowned. This was the part he hated most about his job,
but he gave it to them straight. 
             
"This is very hard to predict, but we estimate, based on the rate of
growth, that she has four or five months, at the most, before the tumor
incapacitates her. From there, we don't know. She could live another
six months after that, or maybe even longer, but she won't be able to
do much. The tumor is going to start affecting motor function soon, and
she'll lose control of intentional movement. It will affect her memory
too, probably. The symptoms will be similar to Alzheimer’s. I
would recommend hospice care be started before she can't recognize
anyone any more." He looked uncomfortable. "I shouldn't say this, but,
in my opinion, the care she'll get ... at the end ... will be of higher
quality if the staff gets to know her before she ... can't respond." 
             
Dave, for the last two years, had been like a rock. He'd believed that
modern medicine would give his little girl her life back, and he'd
never flagged in that belief, despite the somber warnings of the
oncologists. It was all that had kept him going, really. Now, as that
was taken away from him, he crumbled, trying to sit, and missing the
chair ... ending up on the floor sobbing. 
             
The doctor helped him up, and into the chair. He was fighting tears of
his own as he saw the man fall apart. 
             
"I'll ... I'll just give you a little time," said MacNiel softly.
"We'll keep Brenda busy for half an hour or so." 

             ===========================================

One would have thought the
medical process was over ... that they'd be sent home to watch their
daughter die. But there was more that could be offered. They were
assigned to a grief counselor, who made an appointment with the parents
when they had calmed down enough to be able to speak without bursting
into tears every five minutes. She was calm, almost cheery, and it
seemed almost horrifying that she could be that way. Her name was Sally. 
             
"I know the last thing you want to see is a smiling face," said Sally,
smiling. "But we have one more thing to do for Brenda, and It will take
all the help you can give me to do it." 
             
"What are you talking about?" snapped Linda. "She's going to die!
Doctor MacNiel said so." 
             
"Yes," agreed Sally, no longer smiling. "But we can try to make what's
left of her life as enjoyable as possible, and we can prepare her ...
and you ... for the end." She looked serious now. "Most people don't
get a chance to prepare for the end of their life. It can make a big
difference in the quality of those last few weeks." 
             
"What do we do?" asked Dave. "How does all this work?" 
             
"Well, most of it will just be talking about things, at first. There
are all kinds of issues to work through, both for you and for her. I
know you don't feel this way right now, but there will come a time when
all of you just want it to end. You'll feel like her life isn't worth
living, and you may even want to end it prematurely. That's just
honesty, and you all need to confront that so you don't feel guilty
about it." She looked less severe. "And, there are some programs
available to give her the opportunity to do something fun and exciting,
before she's too sick to do that kind of thing any more. It can give
her happy memories at a time when unhappy things are being endured." 

             ===========================================

Brenda took it pretty well,
herself. She took it better than her parents, which isn't so hard to
understand. They'd been around long enough to be able to envision her
possible future, while, for her, High School, and cancer, of course,
had seemed like her whole life. She had a lot of support. There was
another girl who had about the same life expectancy, and they planned
their funerals together, like they were planning a sleepover or
something, choosing the music they liked, and telling their parents
what kind of casket to get, and how they wanted to be dressed. 
             
Sally took them through the grieving process, in an attempt to get the
ugly phases of grief out of their systems, so that her last months
could be as free of negative emotions as possible. It worked too, and
all of them accepted that, fair or not, life was short, and some lives
were shorter than others. There came a time when Brenda said she wasn't
mad any more, and just wanted to enjoy the time she had left. 
             
That was when Sally talked about the Foundation. It was a philanthropic
organization that tried to grant last wishes to kids like Brenda. If
she had a dream ... something she'd always wanted to do, but couldn't,
for whatever reason, and if they could make it happen, they would.
Donations and the investment of those donations had let the Foundation
grant wishes of some two thousand young people, before they died. And
Brenda was eligible for the program. 
             
"Is there anything you've always wanted to do, but never got the
chance?" asked Sally. 
             
"What kind of thing?" asked Brenda. There were hundreds of things she'd
thought about doing, but hadn't had the time or opportunity to do. 
             
"Well, we took one boy sky-diving, for instance," said Sally. "Several
kids have wanted to meet a particular movie star. Sometimes they want
to go on a trip somewhere, or see a particular place. Things like that." 
             
What popped into Brenda's mind was a picture she had seen the night
before. She had been leafing through the family picture album. Her
parents couldn't do that - couldn't deal with it yet - but she enjoyed
remembering the happy times, most of which were documented in the album. 
             
In one photo, she was sitting on a horse, her smile wide, wearing a
cowboy hat that was too big and was sitting on top of her ears. 
             
It was from a trip the family had taken the summer after she'd had
radiation treatments. They had gone to a place in New Mexico that was
half tourist trap, and hosted family reunions or just families that
wanted to be in the mountains for a while. It wasn't really a resort,
but there was a place you could rent go carts, and a video game arcade.
What Brenda had wanted to do was take a trail ride. That's when that
picture was taken. 
             
But, it had been something of a letdown for her. The ride was only
forty-five minutes long, and she sat on a horse that was more
interested in stopping to crop grass than actually go anywhere. It
hadn't seemed like she was actually riding a live animal, except that
her horse farted a lot. It had been a big disappointment for her. She
had expected to canter, and gallop and feel the wind in her face. Her
horse never went for more than ten steps without stopping, no matter
how hard she kicked its ribs. 
             
"I want to go on a real trail ride." she said suddenly. "A trail ride
on a horse that will run. I want it to last a whole day, or maybe even
go out overnight, and ride where nobody else goes, instead of a trail
that a thousand people have ridden along. I want to eat cowboy food at
a campfire, and see mountains up close." She looked at Sally nervously.
"Could I do something like that?" 
             
"I'm not so sure that riding horses would be such a good idea for a
girl who gets dizzy sometimes," said her mother. 
             
"They could tie me on or something. Oh, please, Mom? That would be so
much fun. And to see the mountains up close, and drink from a spring
and herd a cow or something. I'd love to do that." 
             
Sally held up her hand. 
             
"Tell you what. I'll drop that in the lap of some very talented people
at the Foundation. They make amazing things happen. There are all kinds
of companies and people tied into the Foundation. If it's possible to
do that safely, they'll find a way. In the mean time, if you think of
anything else, just let me know. You still have a month or two, so you
don't have to rush it." 
             
Brenda Jean Ronson went home that night with visions of Black Beauty in
her mind, with her sitting on top, hair flying in the wind, whooping
and hollering as cattle scattered before her. Her dream would have
curdled the milk of any cowboy who happened to tune into it, but it was
harmless enough as a dream. 

             ===========================================

Brad Collins, whose
nickname was "Wishbringer", was good at his job. He worked for the Last
Wish Foundation, and the challenge of making things happen made him
eager to come to work every day. Most of the things he made happen were
things that a lot of people might want to do, but only the select few
would ever actually be involved in. People would do things for the
Foundation that they wouldn't do for the average Joe. 
             
He looked at his latest assignment. Trail ride, multiple days, campout,
campfire food. Should be do-able. He knew that the average places that
were in the trail ride business weren't going to be able to handle a
request like this. What he needed was a Dude ranch. He hit the internet. 
             
Hmmmm. Lots and lots and LOTS of entries. It was going to take a while
to sift through them, pick four or five, and then get on the phone and
work his magic. His stomach growled, and he got up to go to the vending
machine. On his way, he saw the entrance to Sherry's cubicle, and
instantly remembered the picture he had spent many moments staring
at... It was a photograph of a young blond woman, in a bikini, sitting
on a horse, wearing a cowboy hat. To be honest, it was the bikini that
caught his eye the first time he saw it. She was a babe. He was single.
He never asked Sherry who it was. That way he could dream, which is why
he looked at it so often. Sherry was leaned back in her chair, feet up
on the desk, talking on the phone. He stopped, and admired the
photograph again. 
             
When she hung up, he pointed at it and said "Tell me about that
picture." 
             
Sherry grinned. "That's my sister, Tammy. And yes, she's married." 
             
"No," said Brad. "I mean where was it taken?" 
             
"Oh!" She looked at the picture. "She went to this dude ranch, and the
picture was taken there. She and her husband, Tom, went. Why?" 
             
"I'm doing research," said Brad. "What's her number?" 
             
"You're going to call her?" Sherry asked, surprised. 
             
"Yeah. Maybe she can give me some pointers on what to look for, for
this case I have." 
             
Sherry wrote down her sister's number on a post-it note and handed it
to Brad. 
             
"She told me she got to build a barbed wire fence. Can you imagine
that? She said she had a blast!" 
             
Brad took one more look at the blond in the picture. 
             
"I have to ask. What's the bikini all about?" 
             
Sherry laughed. "Tom bought it for her before they went. He dared her
to wear it. Actually, they had a bet. He bet she wouldn't wear it, and
she bet she would. It's kind of skimpy, huh?" 
             
"Looks mighty good on her as far as I'm concerned," said Brad. 
             
"I guess all the cowboys thought so too," said Sherry. "She wants to go
back again, but he won't let her. He says it's too expensive, but she
says he had blisters for weeks afterwards, and was jealous of the way
the men looked at her." 
             
"They have a pool there?" asked Brad, still staring at the bumps on the
tips of the bikini bra in the photograph. 
             
Sherry laughed again. "No. That's the really funny part. I guess Tom
thought the place was some kind of resort or something. I guess they
did have a hot tub, or something like that, but the only place you
could swim was where they water cattle. Can you IMAGINE that?" 

             ===========================================

When Brad called Tammy, and
explained that he worked with Sherry, and wanted to ask some questions
about the dude ranch she had visited, she was happy to talk about it
with him. 
             
After she described her experience in glowing terms, she asked how he
found out she'd been there. 
             
"I saw your picture on Sherry's desk." 
             
There was a long pause. "You mean the one in the bikini?" 
             
"That's the one," he replied. 
             
"Ooooo, I'll kill that girl," said the voice on the phone, though she
didn't actually sound angry. "She didn't tell me she was going to put
it in a public place!" 
             
"It's a good picture," said Brad. "I'm just surprised that a place like
you just described would ... um ... cater to a request like that." 
             
"Oh, it's not what you think. It's a real working ranch, but they try
to make the guests feel like they're part of the whole thing, and they
like to have fun too. They have dances and all kinds of things." 
             
"You think they could put something together for one of our clients?" 
             
Tammy was fully aware of what her sister did for a living. She got
excited immediately. "It would be PERFECT!" she squealed. "The woman
who runs the place is just a doll. I know she'd be excited about doing
something like that. I don't know why I didn't think of that before!" 
             
"You know anybody up there?" he asked. 
             
"Sure, hang on a minute." He heard the phone being put down, and a
couple of minutes later she came back. 
             
"It's called the Lazy N working guest ranch, according to the brochure
I have, and the person to talk to is named Dannie." She read off a
number. 
             
"Can you FAX me that brochure?" asked Brad. 
             
"Sure. I can scan it into the computer and you'll have it in ten
minutes." 
             
Seven minutes later, Brad was reading over the FAX he had just
received. He picked up the phone and punched numbers. 
             
He never made it to the vending machine.
 
             ===========================================

Bob Nivens woke before
dawn, like he usually did. His first thoughts were of Dannie and Kyle,
like they usually were. He felt pain, which was also routine. Ranger,
his horse, snuffled in the dark, which wasn't unusual at all. Ranger
seemed to know when he was awake and asleep. They were a good
partnership, all things considered. The horse, like its rider, had an
independent streak, and liked life outside of the barn a lot more than
it did inside. 
             
Bob felt the absence of his other traveling companion, who usually
slept curled up against Bob, but was likely out hunting now. That
companion was a mongrel dog. She had turned up on the ranch one night
in a blizzard, shaking like a leaf, dumped on the highway when she was
only a couple of months old. Another dog Bob had had at the time had
whined at the door, hearing the puppy outside, and Bob had gone out to
see what was bothering her. He hadn't thought the puppy would survive,
but Dannie had filled an empty two liter soda bottle with hot water and
wrapped a towel around it. Then the puppy and the bottle had gone into
an old ten gallon aquarium put near the wood stove. Kyle had sat beside
the tank, talking to the puppy, which finally stopped whining and lay
still. In the morning it was still alive, and it took milk, and then
little pieces of Spam, and finally regular canned dog food. Kyle had
loved it, even if the five-year-old had been a little tough on a
spindly puppy. One time Bob had tried to get the dog to come to him,
saying "C'mere, dammit!" Kyle had called it "Dammit" after that, and
the name had stuck. It had kept on living, too, surviving when other
dogs on the ranch didn't. The guests liked the dog, because she was
friendly and happy, almost as if she knew she had beat the odds, and
was living on borrowed time. The guests always laughed when the dog was
called by name, and came, wagging her happy tail. 
             
It was that dog, more than likely, that had saved Bob's sanity, when an
avalanche took out a quarter mile stretch of the road, and the SUV
along with it that had contained his wife and child. The mangled heap
of twisted metal had been found half a mile from the road the next
spring. They'd never had a chance. Dammit had known something was
wrong, and she sat at Bob's feet day in and day out, leaning against
his leg if he was still, and following behind him if he was moving. She
never left his side while he sat, and drank, and raged at the universe
that had taken the light of his life. Both lights. 
             
The Lazy N had suffered for a while, along with him. He'd taken the
ranch over from his father, who lost interest when Bob's mother had
died of pneumonia. He'd survived her by only six months. The Lazy N was
what was called a Working Guest Ranch, where people paid for the
experience of working harder than they'd ever worked in their lives,
often from sunup to sundown, whether it was baling hay, riding fence,
or moving cows from one pasture to another, or to the loading point if
they were being sold. People paid well for chuck wagon dinners, and a
sleeping bag on hard, lumpy ground. The more tired they got, the wider
they smiled. They also tended to smile a lot more as the week passed,
because they knew they were going back to the comforts of the city
soon. But they'd have tales to tell. The staff of the Lazy N made sure
they got to ride, and rope, and shoot at a minimum. If there could be
saddle sores, and sunburn, and aching joints too ... so much the
better. In this business the phrase "No pain ... no gain" had a lot
more meaning than it did in sports. People loved to feel down and out,
when they knew they could go back to a vastly more comfortable life. 
             
When Dannie and Kyle had been killed, and Bob fell apart, the ranch was
saved by the foreman, whose actual name was Herman Wilkenson, but who
was known only as "Rowdy" by all on the ranch, for obvious reasons. He
had, in his early twenties, been a hard drinker, and a master of the
practical joke. He'd stopped drinking, but his practical jokes still
surfaced, though not quite as often. 
             
Rowdy was more than twice Bob's age, at fifty-six, and had lived on the
ranch his entire life. His mother had been a cook for the thirty or so
men who had worked five thousand head of cattle back then. Nobody knew
who his father was, and he moved from mascot, to helper, to full
fledged cowboy, and finally to the top kick position on the ranch,
second only to the owner. And Dannie, of course. All the men took
orders from Dannie, because all the men would do just about anything to
get one of her smiles directed their way. It was Dannie who, when
cattle prices fell, and the ranch was in real trouble, came up with the
business plan to run it as a working guest ranch, where selling cattle
was not the primary money maker. 
             
It had worked too. Providing a rich experience, where the guests
weren't coddled, and knew they wouldn't be, had put black back in the
books, and kept them there, improving the infrastructure and providing
for amenities for those who didn't want to rough it quite as much. Now,
if you didn't want to work hard, you could spend the same amount of
money to sit around in the hot tub and watch others work hard, or maybe
fish, or hunt, in season. 
             
Rowdy had argued about the whole idea at first, but Dannie had draped
her arms around his neck and brushed her lips across his grizzled
cheek, and, like a little boy, he had fallen in line. By the time
Dannie died, he was a firm believer in the business plan, and he made
it keep working, if only to honor Dannie's memory. 
             
It was also Rowdy who had sent Bob off on what he called a 'vision
quest', taken from native American lore of days gone by. 
             
"Take your horse, and your dog, and your rifle, and maybe a sleeping
bag, if you're a pansy, and go spend some time grieving for your wife
and child in the mountains," Rowdy had growled at a drunken Bob. "Come
back when you think her spirit has talked to you and told you what to
do." He'd taken the bottle away from Bob and kicked him out the front
door of the big house, where Bob lived, and Rowdy had a room. "You
ain't no good to me until you get it out of your system, so go on!" 
             
That had been two months ago. Bob had been back to the ranch for
supplies, now and then, and they stocked a couple of line shacks that
he sometimes raided, but, other than that, Bob had simply ridden the
forty thousand acres of Lazy N land, and probably six or seven thousand
acres of the adjacent National Park, looking at the land, talking to
his horse and dog ... and thinking. 
             
It had taken him that long to admit that she was really gone. She never
talked to him, though, or told him what to do. 
             
He rode up to the ranch house late one evening, when the sun was just
disappearing behind Thunder Peak, part of the mountain range that was
actually thirty miles away, but which looked like it was right in the
back yard of the house. There was a cluster of six guests on the porch,
having after-dinner cocktails, and they looked at him curiously. 
             
What they were staring at was a man who topped six feet, with a two
month growth of beard, and who needed a haircut. He was wearing a
sheepskin jacket, and battered felt cowboy hat of indeterminate color
and, strapped around his waist was an actual gun belt, with an actual
pistol in it. He sat the horse he was riding like he was born there,
swaying negligently in the saddle as the horse quickened its steps,
knowing there was a bucket of oats for it soon. A dog, made up of bits
of fur that were five or six different colors of brown and tan trotted
along beside the horse, her tongue lolling out of his mouth. Both the
man and the dog looked dangerous somehow. 
             
Three of the guests were women. All were married, and were with their
husbands. They had come out west to have an adventure, and the Lazy N
had exceeded their hopes. There had been a careful mixture of attention
to their needs, and of leaving them alone. They had to fix their own
drinks after dinner, for example, but the bar was fully stocked. All
three women felt something tickle them inside as the man slowly rode
up, more or less ignoring the group on the porch, as if they weren't
there. 
             
Their conversation had stopped when the rider came into view. This
group had had their adventure, riding out on the range and being taught
how little they knew about hard work. This was their last night in the
big house that was a mixture of bed and breakfast, and working ranch
house. Tomorrow they would go back to the real world, and none of the
six were actually happy about that. They hadn't seen this man, though,
while they were there. To the men, he looked dangerous, and the hair on
the back of their necks stiffened. To the women he looked dangerous
too, but in a different way, that made their hearts beat faster, and
made their hands go to touch their hair. 
             
"Evening," said the rider. 
             
"Hi," said one of the men uncomfortably. "Can we help you?" 
             
This ... offer, if that's the right term ... was born of the thing that
made the Lazy N a place that people wanted to come back to, even though
it was expensive. The staff made you feel like you were actually part
of the operation, and the 'ownership' a guest felt at the end of a stay
made them pine to come back again. Most did not, and the memory of the
adventure they'd had in the wild west was all they had to reflect on in
following years. A few did come back, most of them every couple of
years, if they could swing it. 
             
"Nope," said the rider. 
             
He swung down from his horse, and the six people listened to that
unique creak that only a leather and wood saddle can create when it's
stressed. The man stood, bowlegged, almost like the ground felt strange
to him. The dog sat down and looked around. She barked once, and the
man looked down at her. 
             
The man spoke, as if to a friend. "OK, if you're going to be that way,
go on and find something to eat." 
             
The dog bounded off toward the back of the house, and the man took
overstuffed saddle bags off the horse, hanging them on the hitching
post. Then, without a word, he turned and walked toward the barn. The
horse tossed his head, turned, and followed the rider, like he was on a
leash, even though the reins were draped across his neck. 
             
"What do you make of that?" asked Frank Brown, one of the men on the
porch. 
             
"Beats me," said Hank Downing. "Maybe he's looking for work." 
             
"I've got some work he could do," said Mary Brown, sighing. She looked
startled as her two female companions giggled and began to give her a
hard time. Her husband did too. They were all kidding her when Donna,
the cook, came out onto the porch. 
             
"You all need anything before I close the kitchen?" 
             
"No, we're fine," said Frank. "A man just rode up, though. He went to
the barn with his horse. Had a dog with him too. Haven't seen him
around here." 
             
"Big black horse?" asked Donna, perking up. "Dog that looks like she'd
just disappear if she was in the woods?" 
             
"That would be the ones," said Frank. "You know him?" 
             
Donna didn't answer the question. "You say he took the horse to the
barn?" 
             
"Well ... yes ... I suppose so," said Mary. "The horse actually just
followed him. He told the dog to go get something to eat and it took
off that way." She pointed. "Is there a problem? Is he dangerous? He
looked dangerous. Should we call somebody?" 
             
Donna almost laughed. "No, he's not dangerous. "I have to go. He'll
want something to eat." 
             
"Wait!" Mary looked anxious. "Who IS he?" 
             
Donna looked at the woman. She saw the same thing that she saw in the
eyes of other women who visited the ranch and met Bob. His life was
private, though, and these people didn't need to know his troubles. 
             
"He owns the ranch," said Donna. 
             
"You're kidding!" said Mary. 
             
"No, Ma'am," said Donna. "He's been out on an ... inspection trip. Been
gone quite a while now. I have to go. It's been nice having you here.
Have a safe trip back home." 
             
She whirled and, with a lot more energy than she'd displayed when she
sauntered onto the porch, hurried back into the house.
 
             ===========================================

Bob was halfway through a
chicken fried steak dinner, with Donna hovering around him, when Rowdy
appeared to wander into the kitchen. Bob looked up. Rowdy didn't wander
anywhere. Donna must have tipped him off. 
             
"Well," drawled Rowdy. "Look what the cat drug in." 
             
"Nice seeing you, too, Rowdy," said Bob. He itched. The snowmelt made
it too cold to take a bath up where he'd been riding, and his
infrequent whore's baths, with a piece of rag, dipped in that cold
water, hadn't really done much to clean him. He was looking forward to
a hot bath. 
             
"You back for more than a snack and to pinch some girl's bottom?" 
             
Rowdy's face clouded up as he realized he'd spoken without thinking. 
             
"Sorry, Boss," he said. 
             
Bob waved a hand, chewing, and concentrated on the taste that flooded
his mouth, instead of on the image that came to mind because of Rowdy's
thoughtless comment. She was gone. He'd thought about following her -
had taken his pistol for exactly that possibility - but hadn't used it.
Two reasons were that the dog and horse were with him, and he coldn't
abandon either of them, up in the mountains, like that. Life had to go
on. His, anyway. He had no idea how he'd manage that, but getting back
to work would be a start. 
             
"Things OK?" he asked between bites. 
             
"Well," said Rowdy, uncomfortably. He felt foolish for his stupid
remark. He loved this man like a brother, even though he'd never admit
it out loud, and the last thing he wanted to do was prod an unhealed
wound. "The place didn't fall apart without you, but I imagine the boys
will be glad you're back." 
             
"You been riding them hard ... as usual?" Bob took another bite. 
             
"I am hurt!" said Rowdy, his voice casual. "All I do is try to keep
things running, and then you come along behind my back and spoil them
... paying for their health care, and giving them bonuses. It's bad
enough that you give them pay on top of their room and board." 
             
"We still in the black?" asked Bob, ignoring the barb. 
             
Rowdy sighed. "While you were out gallivanting around, your net worth
went up another two hundred thousand. Price of cattle is up sharply,
and we're booked solid for the next year and a half." 
             
"Maybe I should go out for another two months," commented Bob. 
             
"We need you here," said Donna. Both men looked at her and she blushed.
"Well ... we do!" 
             
"It's nice to know somebody missed me," said Bob. He eyed the cook.
"Kind of interesting that you had a chicken fried steak dinner all
ready to go when I got back." 
             
"She's had one ready to go every night for the last month," snorted
Rowdy. "And every night, when you didn't show up, one of the boys has
come up here and eaten it." He grinned. "I 'spect the boys wouldn't
mind if you went back out for a while, at that." 
             
"Yeah, well ... I think I got it out of my system." Bob leaned back in
the chair. "As much as I ever will, I guess." 
             
"There's nothing wrong with missing her," said Donna, twisting a hand
towel in her hands. "We all miss her, Bob." 
             
"Yeah." Bob didn't add that nobody could miss her as much as he did. 
             
"So you're back? For good?" Rowdy sounded relieved. 
             
"Yeah, I guess I'm back," said Bob. He looked over a the liquor
cabinet, and then away again. "Right now, though, it's a bath and bed
for me." 
             
"Crystal's going to want to see you," commented Rowdy. "She's been
pulling her hair out." 
             
"I thought you said we were booked solid for a year and a half," said
Bob. Crystal had taken over as booking clerk and hostess after the
avalanche. 
             
"We are, but she's all worried that she doesn't have every "t"
crossed." Rowdy grinned. "And the Johnsons are scheduled in two weeks." 
             
Rufus Johnson, his wife Kaye, and their three teenage girls were well
known at the Lazy N. Kaye was shameless, walking around in next to
nothing, and her daughters took after her, wearing tank tops with
spaghetti straps on horse rides, their unfettered breasts bouncing for
all the men to ogle at. The girls tried their best to find a way into
the bunkhouse too. In that, they also copied their mother. Rufus didn't
seem to mind at all that his whole family was trying their best to get
real live cowboy seed in each and every one of their bellies. He came
for the fishing, and often disappeared into the wild for most of the
week they spent at the ranch every year. It hadn't been so bad when the
girls were in their early teens, but now the oldest would be nineteen
or so, the youngest three years younger. All three easy on the eyes,
and the men, who were under strict orders not to fraternize with the
guests, could only be expected to resist so much. Kaye, for that
matter, had seemed intent on sampling Bob in the past. He groaned at
the thought that Dannie wouldn't be there to run interference this time. 
             
"We need to hire some gigolos to take care of that family," said Bob,
only half joking. 
             
"This ain't Nevada," grinned Rowdy. "Even if it was, we'd probably have
to pay overtime anyway. Those are the horniest wimmen I ever seen in my
whole life." 
             
Donna sniffed, and Rowdy grinned at her. When she had arrived at the
ranch, seeking work, she had been a too-plump nineteen year old girl,
with bad skin and limp dried out hair. She'd been running from
somebody, or something, but had never talked about it. Four years of
clean living and hard work had cleared up her skin, and even though she
was the best cook in four counties, she'd lost weight, instead of
gaining it. When a storm had driven a tree branch through her bedroom
window, in the big house, and rain had soaked everything, she'd calmly
moved into the bunk house with the men. They didn't complain, and she'd
never moved back into the house. Bob didn't ask any questions, but he
doubted seriously that she was sleeping alone these days. 
             
"Tell her to pick some of the older men to ride herd on them," said
Bob. "The older men will have more control." 
             
"OK, but I warn you, she's been crying about you being gone so long and
she aims to see you when you get back." 
             
"Tomorrow," said Bob. "Tell her tomorrow morning

Chapter Two

Bob was soaking in the
Jacuzzi when Crystal opened the door and walked in like she belonged
there. She went to the stero and pushed pause. Blue Oyster Cult
suddenly went silent. 
             
"I TOLD Rowdy I needed to see you as soon as you got back!" she said,
almost stamping one foot. She had a clipboard in the crook of one arm. 
             
"I'm taking a bath, here, Crystal," Bob commented dryly. 
             
"I can see that," she said. "I'm not blind." 
             
Crystal was twenty-five, the same age as Dannie, but the two women
looked completely different. While Dannie had been a slim brunette,
Crystal’s body was lush, and her head of wild, lush blond
hair went with the body. Crystal had been a guest, about three or four
years back, and she and her husband had come to the ranch in a last
ditch effort to patch up an ailing marriage. She had a five year old
boy. Bob had seen right away that the husband - he couldn't even
remember the guy's name now - had been an alcoholic. He'd been rough on
the staff, rough on the horses, and rough on Crystal. Before they left,
Bob offered her a job as a maid, in case things didn't work out. She'd
showed up with the boy two weeks later, one eye vividly blackened, and
had been at the ranch ever since. She was a woman driven to succeed as
a single mother, and had a quick mind that was wasted as a maid. Dannie
had drafted and trained her to take over the books of the operation,
freeing Dannie from that responsibility, and had later made her a more
or less official assistant for bookings. She had been a natural pick to
take over when Dannie was gone. 
             
Phillip, her son, was an honorary horse hostler, since he had a way
with the big animals. At nine, he was going through a growth spurt, and
was the king of the stable. Crystal probably knew he was back because
Phillip had been in the stable, and had taken charge of rubbing Ranger
down and putting him away. He'd also told Bob that supper was probably
waiting. 
             
"I know you're not blind, Crystal," said Bob. "And I'm naked, here.
Don't you think that's a little inappropriate?" 
             
"Do you see me trying to get a peek of your precious manhood?" she
growled. 
             
"No, but it's still inappropriate," he said, smiling for the first time
in months. 
             
"What's inappropriate is for you to go off like that, without a care in
the world for the rest of us, who miss her just as much as you do!" 
             
She bit her lip, and apologized instantly. 
             
"I'm sorry, Bob. I shouldn't have said that. It's just been so hectic
around here." 
             
"I never did anything with the bookings anyway," said Bob, relaxing.
"And you're just as good at handling things as Dannie was." 
             
She slumped. "Thank you. But I never knew how much Dannie did with
things. I just helped out, and this is really different ... doing it
all myself, I mean." 
             
"You need me to hire you an assistant?" he asked. He reached for the
soap. 
             
"No, you don't have to do that. If I can just get your attention now
and then ... you know ... to ask questions, and see what you think
about things ... I think it would be OK then." 
             
"OK," he agreed. "Put the Johnsons with Dusty and Billy. Don't give
them three hands, or there'll be one for each girl. Those two will
behave themselves. Put Kaye on a tractor, cutting the first season's
hay. That will keep her out of everybody's hair except Frank, who'll
have to supervise her. He's probably too old for her tastes. Rufus will
take care of himself, like he always does." 
             
Crystal looked surprised. "I wasn't worried about them! As far as I'm
concerned, those tarts can all go home with bellies that will swell up.
It would serve them right. But I've got a situation here that I've
never run up against, and I'm going to need advice on that." 
             
"What kind of situation?" he asked, soaping his chest and arms. 
             
"Have you ever heard of the "Last Wish Foundation"? 
             
"Can't say as I have," he said. "I'm going to stand up in a minute
here, to wash the rest of me," he warned. 
             
She ignored the warning. 
             
"They work with people who are going to die, sick people, and such, and
make one of their dreams come true before that happens. I got a call
from them, and they want to send a cancer patient out here to live the
life of a cowgirl for a week before she's too sick to stay out of bed." 
             
"Cowgirl?" Bob stood up. He'd warned her. 
             
Crystal stared, blushed and then turned to look at the sink. 
             
"Yes, she's sixteen, or maybe seventeen, I can't remember. She's got a
brain tumor and they can't do anything about it. It sounds like she
wants to do what you've basically been doing for the last two months.
You know, live off the land, camp out, look for strays ... that kind of
thing." 
             
"We can't send somebody out with her for a whole week," said Bob,
frowning. "That would cost a bundle." 
             
"Price, apparently, is no object," said Crystal, her eyes darting
sideways, and then back to the sink. 
             
"But she's sick!" objected Bob. "She can't take the rigors of the trail
... not for a week." 
             
"That's the problem. They say that as long as we can get her here in
the two weeks, she'll be fine. They want us to squeeze her in, and we
don't have any openings." 
             
"I'll call them in the morning," said Bob. "I can't see this being a
good idea." 
             
She stood there, shifting from foot to foot. 
             
"Is that all?" 
             
"I guess so," she said. 
             
"Then you can leave ... right?" He smiled, standing in front of her
with a soapy, naked body. 
             
"You've been out by yourself for two months," she said. "Don't you at
least want to talk to a real live person?" 
             
"I thought you hated men," he said. 
             
"I do, but not ALL men," she said, as if it made perfect sense. "You're
different. You're a nice man." 
             
"I'm a nice, naked man, Crystal," he reminded her. 
             
"I'm not talking about THAT!" she said, turning to put her back to him.
"I don't think about you that way. I couldn't do that to Dannie anyway." 
             
"Well, thanks for that," he said. His voice was neutral. 
             
She turned to face him, her eyes blazing. "You're a good man, Bob, a
DECENT man, probably the most decent man I know, and you deserve to
have happiness in your life. You deserve a good woman, and I know I'm
not that woman. I'm not ready for that, and neither are you anyway. But
some day the hurt will lessen enough that you CAN be happy again, Bob,
and I just want you to ... to ..." She slumped. "You helped me when I
needed it. I just want you to be ready to help yourself when the time
comes. That's all." 
             
Bob stared at her. He didn't know what to say. 
             
"I know that sounds like some kind of come-on," she said, her voice
intense. "But it's not. I like you, but not that way ... not the way
that sounded. I've moved on, and I know what that feels like. The
memories never go away completely, but life CAN be good again. I just
want you to understand that. We ALL miss Dannie, but you can't make
that the center of your life. I'm babbling, and I can't say what I mean
..." 
             
"Thank you," Bob said. It was amazing to him that this woman could be
so heartfelt about a man who was just her boss. Then again, the whole
ranch was like a big family in many ways. People came and went, but not
often. Most people, once they settled in, liked the life, despite the
long, hard hours. "I'll try to remember that." 
             
"If you don't, I'll remind you," she said, turning away again. "Dannie
had good taste in men, and I'll be hanged if I see that going to waste." 
             
"Yes, Ma'am," Bob said, a tired smile coming to his face. 
             
"All right then," said the woman, straightening her shoulders. She
looked over one shoulder, boldly staring right at him. "And next time,
I expect you to be decent when you call me in for a conference." 
             
She grinned and left before he could manage a reply.
 
             ===========================================

The next morning Bob called
the Foundation, and explained that his operation probably wasn't going
to be appropriate for a cancer-ridden young girl. He expected that to
be the end of it, but within an hour there was a phone call for him. 
             
"Mr. Nivens? Brad Jeffers, here. You don't know me, but I'm the one who
wanted to book a trip to the ranch for one of out clients. I'm with the
Last Wish Foundation. I got the message you gave our receptionist, and
wanted to talk to you a little more about this. I'd really like for you
to reconsider." 
             
Bob sighed, and repeated his concern that a sick young girl probably
wouldn't do well on a working ranch. 
             
"Mr. Nivens," said Brad, "I've been over your brochure, and talked to
one of your former customers. She's convinced that this would work, and
she's familiar with the kinds of clients we have. We think the girl, in
this case, could handle it. All she really wants is an extended trail
ride, with maybe a little light work thrown in. 
             
"You've seen our brochure?" asked Bob. "Who's the customer?" 
             
"Her name is Tammy Hodgkins. She's the sister of one of the women I
work with at the Foundation." 
             
Bob remembered Tammy, who had come to the ranch on a free trip she'd
won in a radio station giveaway that Dannie had thought might generate
some business. She'd brought her husband with her. She was about five
feet-one, and nobody had thought she'd be able to hack it. She'd proved
them all wrong, while her big, bad husband had turned out to be a
mamma's boy. If Tammy knew something about this girl, and thought she
could do something at the ranch, there was a fair chance she was right. 
             
Bob wasn't sure he was doing the right thing, but he said: "I think a
week is a little long. Maybe we could put together a three day ride.
All she'd have to be able to do is stay on a horse, for the most part." 
             
"Thank you so much! said Brad. We'd like to book this as quickly as
possible, while she's still healthy." 
             
"Well, that's one of the problems we have," said Bob. "We're booked
solid for the next whole year. All my regular guides are tied up." 
             
"Isn't there anybody who could take her out riding?" asked Brad.
"That's primarily what she wants to do. She wants a long ride, over
something other than just a walking path." 
             
"That won't be a problem," said Bob. "We don't have anything
approaching a walking path on the whole place." With more misgivings,
he went on. "I guess I could take her myself. I've just gotten back
from an inspection trip, and I know a couple of places I could take her
to see things the average guest doesn't get to see." 
             
"That would be PERFECT!" Brad's voice came excitedly over the phone. "I
can't tell you how much we appreciate this, Mr. Nivens. This is going
to mean so much to Brenda, before ..." His sudden stop reminded Bob
that this would likely be the last time this girl got to do anything
with a horse ... or anything else, for that matter. 
             
"Give us a call and tell us when she'll be arriving," said Bob. "Will
anybody be coming with her?" 
             
"I don't think she has any special needs at this point. Her parents
will probably come, of course, but they didn't say anything about going
out with her. I'll check on that." said Dave. "I hope that's all right." 
             
"I have no idea where we'll put them," said Bob. 
             
"Maybe a hotel in town?" asked Brad. "We can take care of making the
reservations and all that." 
             
"I wouldn't count on that," said Bob. "The fact is that 'town', as you
put it, is about forty miles away, and I wouldn't ask my worst enemy to
stay in the motel there. We'll come up with something." 
             
========================================

After he hung up, Bob
stared at the phone. He had no experience with teenagers, other than
having been one ten or fifteen years back. And his upbringing wasn't
anything like that of other kids his age. His aging father had been a
cattleman, who would never have gone into the guest business, even to
save the ranch. The idea of having a bunch of greenhorns traipsing
around the ranch, who didn't know one end of a cow from the other,
would have horrified him. Bob had grown up working the ranch. His only
girlfriend had been Dannie, and she'd told him, when they were juniors
in high school that she was going to marry him. 
             
He shied away from thinking about her. 
             
Instead, he began making a list of things that a teenage girl, her body
wracked with cancer, might be able to do without it killing her. On a
working ranch, the list of things to be done was endless, and that
meant that the options for a guest to get involved were endless too. 
             
Within an hour he had a list of things that would keep the girl - and
him - busy for three days. She could pick and choose what she wanted to
do when she got to the ranch. 
             
Then he remembered to find Crystal , and tell her the girl's "dream"
was on again. 
             
========================================

When the family arrived,
and was met by Crystal, a group of seven guests and two hands were
preparing to ride off to move a group of cattle to a higher location.
The dust and noise of their departure set the stage for the meeting. 
             
Bob sat across a coffee table in the library, from the girl and her
parents. The girl looked completely normal, to Bob's eyes, just like
any other teenager. While she was pale, she didn't look infirm, and her
eyes were already shining as she sat, somehow looking eager. She had
very big, and very blue eyes under her blond bangs. 
             
"I've put together a list of things you might be able to do," said Bob,
trying not to sound like he didn't think she could do much. He handed
the list to the girl, who took it and scanned it. 
             
"I don't care what I do, as long as I get to ride a horse a lot," she
said. She launched into the story of her complaint with the trail ride
she had been on in New Mexico. 
             
"The horses we have here aren't like that," said Bob, when she
finished. "They're all working horses, even the breeding mares. They
respond to a rider based on how that rider acts. Horses are pretty
savvy, and they can tell when someone doesn't know what they're doing.
Sometimes they act up a bit with inexperienced riders." 
             
"We don't want her getting bucked off or anything," said Linda,
worriedly. 
             
"I don't think that will happen," said Bob. Not by the time we actually
take off. You both are welcome to come along," he added. "Do you like
camping?" 
             
"Me?" said Linda, her eyes, also blue, quite wide. "On a horse?" 
             
Dave broke in smoothly. "Camping's not really our style. Brenda got a
taste of it in Girl Scouts, and loves it, though. We'll be fine here.
We just don't want her getting hurt." 
             
"I'll pick the right horse for her," said Bob. "It may look strange to
you all, but we'll actually let the horse pick her. If it's the right
horse, I'll know it. I'll also know if it's the wrong one." 
             
They looked doubtful, but went on to answer Bob's questions about what
kind of "camping" Brenda had in mind. That word meant different things
to different people. Bob was relieved to find that Brenda expected
nothing more than to be able to stay dry, eat, and sleep warmly. She
had camped with her girl scout troop, before she got sick, and he felt
much better about roughing it, more or less, when she was able to talk
intelligently about first aid, sanitation, litter control and other
things that make a difference when you are separated from civilized
society. 
             
Finally Bob was satisfied that he had a working plan on what to do with
the girl. The things she was asking for would run easily into three
days. The Ronsons said they'd taken two weeks of vacation. They were
planning on hitting some scenic spots on the way back home, and
spending time with Brenda on their last vacation together. 
             
"We'll play it by ear, then," said Bob. "We'll have a two-way radio
with us. Where we're going, cell phones don't work, but we'll check in
each night to let you know everything's OK. Our first stop is a good
six hours ride, so we'll start in the morning. That gives you all a
chance to look around, have dinner with everyone, and get a good
night's sleep." 
             
He smiled for the first time since they met him. 
             
"I don't know how she did it, but Crystal found a room. You'll all
three have to stay there tonight, but while we're gone it won't be so
crowded." 

             ===========================================

How Crystal had "found" the
room for the Ronson family, she hadn't told Bob. He might not have
approved. She did it by talking to the hands who were taking care of a
group of five men and three women who were on a corporate "team
building" trip. The oddball numbers had resulted in one of the men and
one of the women having single rooms. Dusty, one of the hands setting
up challenges for the "team" to conquer together, grinned and said that
Diane, the Vice President of Marketing, and Roger, the Vice President
of offshore development, had been making moon eyes at each other ever
since they'd arrived. Both were married, but no spouses had been
brought along on the trip. Crystal got the group together and described
Brenda's predicament, asking if there were any volunteers who would
make the sacrifice of rooming together for the rest of the trip. Diane
said she could stand it, "just for the sake of the poor girl" of
course, and Roger said he could sacrifice his privacy too. Nobody was
fooled, but nobody seemed to care either. 
             
At present, Diane and Roger had finished moving their things into one
room. It was an hour before supper, which was held, family style, in
the big dining room of the ranch house. Diane remarked on how sweaty
she'd gotten carrying all two of her suitcases to the new room, and how
she just HAD to have a shower before dinner. Roger allowed as how he,
too, probably smelled like a horse. 
             
They ended up in the shower together, and almost didn't make supper at
all. Only the knowledge that they would have all night together - not
to mention they'd be missed, and somebody might come looking for them -
made them stop what they were doing, to get dressed to go eat. 
             
========================================

The next morning, after
breakfast, Bob met the Ronsons at the corral. There were a dozen horses
milling around, or standing placidly. Two had come over to see Bob,
Ranger being one of them. 
             
When Brenda came up, her eyes fastened on the stallion. 
             
"Ooooo, I like that one," she sighed pointing at Ranger. 
             
"That one's not for you," said Bob. "Mostly because he's the one I'll
be riding. He's also a stallion, and he can be ornery sometimes." 
             
"Well, how do I pick one?" the girl asked. 
             
"Like I said, horses are smart. Let's you and me step into the corral
and see what happens." 
             
Her parents watched anxiously as he slipped the wire off the top of the
gate post and took their daughter amongst the big animals. The horses
seemed to drift away from the two as they walked, making room, and Bob
took her to the center of the enclosure. He told her to stand still,
while he stepped back. She looked a little nervous, but he talked to
her in a soothing voice. 
             
"Just stand there and think about riding," he said. "Close your eyes if
it will help." 
             
Ranger butted his shoulder from behind, and Bob reached out to stroke
the big black. Nothing happened for two full minutes, and Bob told the
girl to be patient, and to concentrate on how she'd feel if she was
riding. 
             
Two horses began to drift toward her. One reached its neck out and
snuffed, almost in the girl's ear. She had closed her eyes and jumped.
The horse drew its head back quickly and backed up, its eyes rolling.
The other horse, a roan mare, seemed not to be paying any attention to
the girl, but stepped closer and closer, until its head was within
reach. It dropped its head, like it wanted to graze, though there was
nothing to eat on the bare ground. It shook its head and stomped a hind
foot twice. 
             
"She wants you to put your hand on her neck," said Bob softly. 
             
Brenda had kept her eyes open after being startled by the first horse,
and she'd been staring at the roan. Tentatively she reached and stroked
the neck, just beside the mane. The mane quivered. The horse tossed its
head, pushing its neck into Brenda's hand. 
             
"Don't be scared," said Bob quietly. "Talk to her." 
             
"You're beautiful," said Brenda, reaching to stroke again. 
             
The horse turned its head to face the girl, and Brenda stroked its nose. 
             
"Your nose is so soft!" sighed Brenda. "You're just so beautiful!" 
             
The mare nosed the girl, making her step back with the force of it,
even though it wasn't violent. 
             
"I think you've found yourself a horse," said Bob. 
             
"What's his name?" asked the girl. 
             
"HER name is Buttercup," said Bob. 
             
"Buttercup?" asked Brenda, turning to look at Bob. "What kind of name
is that for a cowboy horse?" 
             
"It's a name that fits her," said Bob. "She's a sweetheart, but she's
got just a little wildness in her, like the flower." 
             
"Will she let me ride her?" asked Brenda. "I mean if she's wild and
all?" 
             
"You'll have to convince her who's boss. She's a 'jinker', which means
she'll dance around when you first get on her. I'll teach you how to
stay in the saddle, and you'll have to talk her into behaving." 
             
Brenda reached with both hands to stroke either side of Buttercup's
face. 
             
"I can't believe a horse as beautiful as you would give me any trouble
at all," she said to the horse. "You be a good horse, and I'll be a
good rider, and we'll get along just fine." 
             
Bob nodded, and walked back to the gate. "Bring her over here," he
called out. 
             
Brenda reached for the halter, and gave it a tug. The horse stepped out
and followed her calmly. 
             
========================================

Three hours later they were
on the trail. Dave and Linda had almost had heart attacks when they
watched their daughter get up on a horse that immediately jumped it's
hind legs a foot off the air. Bob had mounted her first, though, and
showed Brenda what to do, and she copied him perfectly. She spoke to
the horse, which jumped once more, and then settled down. They
nervously waved goodbye as their daughter rode off, in the company of a
man who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. She wasn't
riding off into the sunset - the sun was high at that point - but they
still had a slight feeling of dread. No one would ever get the chance
to see her ride off like that again. That feeling of dread, though, was
something they were acquainted with, if not used to. She was dying, and
they all knew that. Knowing, though, didn't make it any easier. 
             
"I hope she has a good time," Linda sighed. 
             
"She's already having a good time," said Dave, resisting the urge to
wipe his eyes. "What are we going to do for the next few days?" 
             
"Worry," said Linda. 
             
"Besides that," prodded Dave. "We're alone for the first time in a long
time." The innuendo in his voice was impossible to miss. 
             
"We've been alone every time she had to stay in the hospital," said
Linda. "We're going to be alone for the rest of our lives." A tear
dripped down her cheek. 
             
"OK," said Dave, heavily, "We'll find something else to do. You want to
ride a horse?" 
             
"The things scare me half to death," said Linda, still watching the
receding figures as they rode out of sight around a barn. "They always
have." 
             
"Well, then, it's time you learned how not to be scared any more."

Chapter Three

For Brenda, the feeing of
suddenly being "alone", out in the wilderness, as she thought of it,
also brought a mixture of other feelings. Bob was there, of course, but
he was riding ahead of her, and not talking. He'd said they had to
cover ten miles before they'd reach a suitable camping spot, and at
this pace, that would take hours and hours. She was impatient to see
something ... get somewhere ... BE a camper. At the same time, the
gentle swaying of the horse was comforting, and the absence of all
sound, save the clopping of eight hooves, made her feel like she was
already a thousand miles from civilization. At least Buttercup didn't
seem to be interested in stopping all the time. She walked more quickly
than the horse in the picture back home, too. 
             
Suddenly, Bob was right beside her. She hadn't seen him do anything ...
hadn't heard him give any command to his horse, but he was suddenly
there, close enough to reach out and touch. His horse, and hers, nodded
at each other and rubbed noses as they walked. 
             
"Running a horse is very different than walking," said Bob. "Your legs
have to get involved, flexing at the knees, so you can moderate the
weight of your butt on the saddle. Otherwise it will beat you to death.
Have you ever cantered or galloped before?" 
             
Brenda looked at him with wide eyes. "I guess not," she said. "I just
thought you sat there while the horse did whatever he does." 
             
"Hold on to the saddle horn with both hands," said Bob. He made a
clucking sound, and his horse jumped forward, moving into a trot.
Buttercup followed instantly. 
             
Without warning, Brenda was suddenly bouncing around like she was in an
earthquake. She had automatically reached for the horn, at his comment,
and gripped it frantically as she felt like she was being tossed three
feet into the air. One foot came out of the stirrup, and she wailed,
knowing she was going to fall. 
             
"Whoa," said Bob, and both horses slowed to a walk again. They had only
gone thirty feet. 
             
He looked at her, without smiling. 
             
"See what I mean?" 
             
"Ow," she said, leaning to rub at her bottom. 
             
He explained what she had to do with her knees and thighs, and they
tried it again. She thought she would be beaten to death, at first, but
seeing him watching her made her ... a little angry, maybe ... and she
concentrated on her legs. It took another thirty seconds or so before
she found the rhythm, and her violent jounces settled into rapid bumps.
She was still hitting the saddle hard, and her butt hurt. She realized
in an instant that, if they kept this up, she wouldn't be able to ride
more than a mile or two before it would hurt too much to sit. 
             
He slowed them to a walk again. 
             
"Now, a gallop is completely different," he said conversationally.
"You'll learn to use your abdominal muscles then. It's a different
rhythm. Even though the horse is going faster, you're body's reaction
to the movement will be slower. We'll only go a short way, and this
time, I want you to NOT hold on to the horn. You'll find your arms help
with balance. Don't pull at the reins, though. Buttercup stops on a
dime, and if you aren't ready, you'll fly right over her head. When
you're ready to stop, just lean back and tug them enough to let her
feel it. DON'T jerk them!" 
             
This time he asked her if she was ready and, when she nodded nervously,
he gave a "Heayah" kind of sound. Buttercup launched ahead like a
rocket, and by the time Brenda had let out the breath she had been
unconsciously holding, and took another, she felt like she was flying. 
             
This rhythm she caught onto instantly, leaning forward a bit, and
flexing her knees. The horse's back seemed to rise and fall almost
gently, and she had no trouble keeping her butt on the saddle. She felt
her gut tighten and loosen, as her upper body seemed to stay at the
same place, relative to the ground, while the horse, and her lower
body, dropped and rose in a measured beat. 
             
This ... was glorious. 
             
She heard a high pitched scream, and realized it was her own voice that
had made it ... a scream of delight as the ground flashed by beneath
her. She looked ahead, and then to her left, where Bob was flying
beside her on his big, black horse. He was grinning, and she realized
her lips were stretched wide in the same way. 
             
It seemed to go on forever ... and yet all too soon he yelled at her to
lean back. "GENTLY!" he called. 
             
Feeling like she was glued to the horse, she leaned back and tugged
gently on the reins. Buttercup dropped into a canter immediately, and
suddenly she was bouncing all over the place again. 
             
"WHOA!" she called, and tugged harder. 
             
Only the fact that she wrapped her arms around Buttercup's neck, and
the saddle horn, digging painfully into her gut, stopped her from
flying forward as Buttercup skidded to a halt. The horse tossed her
head, and looked backwards, as if to say "What?" 
             
Bob had gone on ahead, and turned his horse to come back. 
             
"You OK?" he asked. 
             
She sat up, panting. "This is a lot harder than I thought it would be." 
             
"Takes years to get really good at it," said Bob. 
             
"I don't have years. I'm going to have to learn a lot faster than
that," she said grimly. Then she smiled. "I like galloping."  
             
He smiled. "Everybody likes galloping. It's hard on the horse if you do
it too long, though. They can keep a canter going all day long." 
             
"Of course they can," sighed Brenda. "The one thing I can't do, a horse
can do forever." 
             
"You'll get the hang of it," said Bob. That's how to cover a lot of
ground." He looked at her. "That IS what you want to do ... right?" 
             
He was giving her a chance to back out of this, and she knew it. She
was stubborn, though. "I'll get the hang of it," she said firmly. 
             
He kept them at a canter. It took another half hour, and her butt was
so sore that she wasn't at all sure she'd be able to do this, when,
suddenly, the bouncing just stopped. She looked around in confusion,
but the horse was still moving along at a trot. Her head was still
moving up and down, but it wasn't the jarring bump that it had been for
what seemed like hours. To her chagrin, as soon as she recognized that,
the bumping started again. It took her another ten minutes to get the
rhythm back in a way that she could recognize how to do it consistently. 
             
"You need to stop?" called Bob. He'd been riding ahead of her, picking
the path, while Buttercup just followed the stallion. 
             
"Yes," she called out, "but not yet. I just figured out how to do this
without killing myself." 
             
She watched as the big man turned in his saddle, his rhythm unbroken,
and watched her for half a minute while his horse went on ahead without
any direction that she could see. She watched in amazement as Ranger
dodged to one side to avoid a boulder, and Bob's body compensated for
the movement he couldn't possibly have seen coming. When Buttercup did
the same thing, she was just as amazed to feel her own body sway in the
saddle, leaning automatically so she kept her place. 
             
"You're a quick learner!" he called back, grinning. 
             
"My butt's killing me!" she yelled back. 
             
"We could stop for a snack," he yelled. 
             
"Just a little farther," she shouted, leaning forward just a tad and
feeling how that took the strain off her legs. 
             
He led them on for ten more minutes, and pulled up beside a copse of
trees. He dismounted with a fluid grace she tried to emulate, but
failed miserably at. Her legs felt like they were made of rubber, and
her butt cheeks felt like they were on fire. Even the insides of her
thighs felt raw. She hobbled, walking bowlegged, to lead Buttercup next
to Ranger. 
             
"I have something for the pain," said Bob, dropping Ranger's reins to
the ground. "Let her reins hang loose like that," he instructed the
girl. 
             
He got into his saddle bags and pulled out a mason jar that had a
thick, pasty brown substance in it. 
             
"Bob's patented saddle-sore solver," he said, holding it up to her. 
             
"What do I do with it?" she asked, skeptically. "It looks like it would
taste nasty." 
             
"It WOULD taste nasty, if you were foolish enough to eat it." He
grinned. "Smear it on your butt and inner thighs. Rub it in pretty
well. In about sixty seconds you won't be able to feel a thing." 
             
She stared at him. "I don't suppose I put it on the outside of my
clothes ..." 
             
He grinned again. "Of course not. Rub it into the skin. It's an old
Indian remedy that deadens the nerves. One of my hands makes it up for
me. When it wears off you'll think you're going to die, but I have
enough to last two or three days, and by then you should be toned up
enough that the pain won't be there any more." 
             
"And where, exactly, am I supposed to do this?" she asked archly. 
             
He pointed to the copse of trees. "Go in there. I won't watch." 
             
She looked at the paste, in the jar, in her hand. 
             
"How much longer before we get to our first camping spot?" she asked. 
             
He looked at the sun. "Well, it's about ten now, and I figure we'll be
there around two this afternoon. That will give us plenty of time to
set up camp and do any exploring you want to do before supper. Once
supper is fixed and eaten, I imagine you'll be wanting to sleep." 
             
Brenda looked at her watch. It was eleven minutes after ten. She looked
at his wrist, and saw it was bare. 
             
"Four more hours?" she asked, pain in her voice. 
             
"With several breaks," he said easily. "Go put that stuff on. You'll
feel much better. I promise." 
             
========================================

Brenda stood in the middle
of the trees. There was thick brush all around her, and she couldn't
see anything, but she still felt nervous about dropping her pants. Her
inner thighs were still burning fiercely, though, and that drove her to
unbuckle her belt, unzip her jeans, and push them down. She realized
she'd have to push her panties down too, to get to her buttocks, and
looked around nervously again. She opened the jar and sniffed, jerking
her head back instantly. The stuff smelled awful! She could just barely
get her fingers far enough into the neck of the jar to scoop out some
paste. 
             
She tried it on ibe inner thigh first. It felt cool, and before she'd
even gotten to her other leg she could feel the soothing relief, as the
pain just vanished. When she finished with her other thigh, it felt so
much better that she ignored her nervousness and pushed her panties
down quickly. She felt stupid rubbing her own bottom, but as the ache
disappeared she got over that too. She pulled her clothing back up and
took a few steps, bending this way and that, astonished that she could
feel nothing but the coolness, penetrating to her sore muscles. She
decided it felt a little like what the dentist did. Reaching back she
ran her fingers over her butt lightly, and couldn't feel them at all.
It was just numb. 
             
When she pushed back out of the brush, to see Bob sitting on his horse,
she grinned. 
             
"That stuff is amazing!" she said. 
             
"I know," he said smiling. "You ready to try it again?" 
             
As she had dismounted her horse, the only thing she could think about
was how hard it was going to be to get back up in the saddle. Now,
though, with the pain gone, Buttercup didn't look quite so tall as she
had before. Lifting a foot to the stirrup, Brenda sighed at the fact
that it didn't hurt at all, and pulled herself up into the saddle. It
didn't feel as foreign to her as it had before, and she smiled brightly. 
             
"Yes!" she said happily. 
             
For the first twenty yards, she bounced, and then got back into the
rhythm of the canter. For the first time she was able to look around,
at the country they were riding through. 
             
========================================

They stopped three more
times, to let her get down and stretch her legs. She had to apply the
salve again, the second time they stopped. This time he walked around a
big boulder while she slid her jeans and panties down. She looked, to
make sure he wasn't watching her, but didn't feel the nervousness she
had before. When she called out that she was decent again, and he
sauntered around the boulder with a weed sticking out of his mouth, she
looked at him closely, for the first time. 
             
That he was tall, she remembered. She hadn't realized how brown his
skin was, and that his face was covered with tiny lines that made him
look older than his body suggested. She saw sliver tips at the ends of
the hair in front of his ears, and realized that, if he got a haircut,
those ends would not show. The rest of his hair was a uniform dark
brown. He had the kind of crinkles around his mouth that suggested he
smiled a lot. Of all the adult males she knew, and who were about his
age, he was the thinnest. He looked muscular, somehow, but was thin.
She decided that it was the way he moved that made him look muscular.
He walked like he was weightless, and could jump six feet straight up
in the air if he wanted to. She guessed he was in his late thirties. 
             
Brenda cocked her head as he sent her an inquiring look. She knew
instinctively that he wanted to know if the salve was still working. 
             
"Good stuff," she said. 
             
"That's good," he answered. "You hungry?" 
             
They ate sandwiches from his saddle bags. They were mashed flat, but
she didn't care. This ham and cheese was the best she'd ever tasted, as
far as she was concerned. 
             
At the third stop he had her climb a tall rock spire with him. It used
different muscles, and she felt weak as she struggled to follow his
effortless climbing. He showed her where to put her hands and feet when
it got steep, and moved beside her. 
             
"Aren't we supposed to use ropes and stuff?" she asked nervously at one
spot where it was ten feet straight up. 
             
"This is pretty easy," he assured her. "There are lots of niches to put
your fingers and toes. Besides, we're almost there." 
             
She crawled along a sloping ledge that went around a bulge, and saw
that it opened up to a flat area that was ten or fifteen feet across.
When she stood up, she had to take a step to counter the force of the
wind that whipped her hair and shirt, plastering it against her body. 
             
She felt like she could see for a thousand miles. The country they were
riding through was littered with large boulders, many bigger than the
horses themselves. For the last few miles she had been unable to see
more than a hundred yards in any direction before her vision was
blocked by what she had thought were hills. Now, from up here, she
could clearly see that the wind had blown slops of soil up against huge
chunks of rock, over the years, and plants had taken hold in that soil. 
             
"Wow," she gasped, staring out at where they had just ridden. 
             
"That's our back trail," he said, standing beside her and pointing.
"You can see the path through the rocks from here." 
             
She could, too. It was an obvious line that meandered between boulders.
Down there she had just thought he was going around them, always
heading up, more or less, but from here she could see that he had taken
the only real route to get where they were. Any other path would have
taken them to a dead end, and they'd have had to turn around and
retrace their steps. 
             
"The ranch is over there," he said, pointing. He stood behind her and
laid his triceps on her shoulder so she could see right down his arm to
his pointing finger. 
             
There was a haze in the air, but she stared, finally seeing a dark
smudge that looked like the roofs of several buildings. Looking further
she could see a line that looked wrong, somehow, and realized it was
the highway that went by the ranch. As she watched, there was a glint
of bright light on that line as the sun glanced off the windshield of a
car she couldn't even see. 
             
"It's so beautiful," she sighed. 
             
"View's like this are what keep me here," he said, almost in her ear. 
             
She shivered, and realized it was his breath in her ear that had caused
it. She was suddenly intensely aware that there was very light contact
between his front and her back. He felt very close to her in that
second. Instead of stepping away, though, she almost stepped back into
him. She felt very alone way up here, where no one could see them. Her
parents were at that dark smudge he was pointing at, but even if they
were outside waving like maniacs, she wouldn't be able to see them.
Having him so close to her made her feel better, somehow. 
             
His arm was withdrawn, and returned. There was a pair of binoculars in
his hand. She took them and held them up to her eyes, trying to find
the ranch. He wasn't touching her, but she could still feel his
closeness, behind her. She finally found the dark smudge she'd been
looking at, as it sprang into view. It was still so far away that she
coldn't make out any people, but the buildings were those she was
familiar with. 
             
She turned, handing him the binoculars, and looked behind them. The
mountain looked like she could jump from where she was to its slope, it
was so close. It kept going up and she saw where the trees stopped
suddenly, and gray rock reigned supreme. There was white at the tips of
the rocks above that. 
             
"Where are we going?" she asked, reaching her hand to keep in contact
with him. She felt dizzy, but it wasn't the tumor kind of dizzy. It was
the dizziness of being so small in such a huge place. "We're not going
clear up there, are we?" 
             
"No," he said. "We'll stay in the tree line. We're going to start
north, along the mountainside, over there." He pointed to their right.
"There's a spring about a mile over that way. It comes out of the
rocks, but is fed from up above. There's a good place to camp there."
His arm kept moving to the right. "Then, the next day, we'll work the
side of the slope, going on over to Bear Rock. We'll keep going in a
big circle, coming back down to where the grass is. I run some cattle
over there, where there's good grass and water. Eventually it will
bring us back to the ranch." 
             
"It looks different over there," said Brenda. 
             
"Geologically it's completely different than where we are now," he
agreed. The vegetation will depend on the altitude we're at, but we'll
see a lot of the same stuff. 
             
"This is so cool!" she said earnestly. 
             
Brenda shivered again, this time from the cold. The wind never let up.
He saw it and took her back the way they'd come. 
             
Going down was much more difficult than climbing up had been. He was
below her, this time, and sometimes he placed her feet so that she was
in the right places to come down easily. Twice he grasped her around
the waist and lifted her down. She felt like she weighed only ten
pounds in his hands. 
             
She felt a moment of terror when they got back to where they'd left the
horses, and they were gone. 
             
Bob whistled, and both animals trotted around a boulder and came up to
nuzzle at their riders. 
             
"I was afraid they'd run away," she gasped, having to take a step to
compensate for the strength of Buttercup's nose-nudge. 
             
"They won't run away," he said. "They're greedy. They know I have
apples in the saddle bags. They don't want to wait until we camp.
They're reminding us that they came, when called, and would like to be
treated because of it." He addressed the big stallion. "But you're not
going to get an apple right now, are you sweetie?" he said, as if he
was talking to a little child. The horse tossed his head and whickered. 
             
For the next twenty minutes they climbed steeply, having to go in
single file. Neither horse seemed to labor, but they stayed at a walk.
Then the trail turned and became a three foot wide flat area, with
steepness above them, and sharp drops below them. Had Brenda seen this
part first, might have decided not to go on. Now, though, she felt
completely safe, perched on her strong, and sure-footed mare's back.
She could see better, because when she looked down-slope, she was
looking at the tops of trees. When the trail went back down she felt a
pang of loss as they descended into the trees, and she couldn't see
very far any more. 
             
They hit a down slope that had the horses moving at a trot when, almost
without warning they rode into an open area that was thick with grass.
She saw a circle of rocks, with the obvious remnants of a campfire in
it, and was looking at that when Bob's horse went to the left and
stopped. Buttercup was still trotting, and, without thinking, Brenda
yanked on the reins and yelled "Whoa!" 
             
An instant later she saw Buttercup's head ... upside down ... as she
flew forward in an imperfect somersault. The world whirled crazily as
the reins were torn from her grip. She felt her toes touch the ground
and twisted, instinctively to keep from landing flat on her face as her
body continued its forward momentum. She felt her hip hit the ground
hard and a cry burst from her lips as her arm hit the ground and
skidded in the tall grass. The breath in her lungs exploded through her
mouth as her side hit the ground and she flopped onto her back. She
rolled one more time before coming to rest on her back, still unable to
draw a breath into paralyzed lungs. 
             
She saw thick, white, puffy clouds as she tried to assess if, and how
badly she was hurt. Bob's face appeared, hovering over hers, as she
fought to make her diaphragm take in air. She tried to sit up, and
Bob's hands came to her shoulders. 
             
"Don't move," he said calmly. His eyes didn't look as calm as his voice
sounded, she observed. 
             
Something in her chest released, and she took in a deep, rasping
breath. Air had never felt as good in her whole life as it did right
then. 
             
"I'm going to check for broken bones," said Bob, again calmly. "Tell me
if anything hurts." 
             
His fingers went to her left arm, lifting it gently and moving along it
to her shoulder. Then he did her right arm. She lay there gasping for
breath as she felt his fingers run over her ribs. She felt his fingers
brush the outer parts of her breasts in the process and she lifted her
head to look at his hands. She was watching them slide down to her
legs, to examine them, when she realized something didn't feel right. 
             
Her scalp was cold. 
             
He had left her hands free, and she lifted them to feel her bald pate.
Her wig had come loose during the fall, and was gone. 
             
"My wig!" she gasped, trying to crane her neck to see if she could see
it anywhere. 
             
"Lie still!" he ordered. "I told you not to move!" 
             
"My wig!" she said again. 
             
"It's over there," Bob tossed his head. "Now lie still. Don't move your
head any more!" 
             
When he'd finished going over her legs, he started having her move
things, just a little, at first. She had no trouble with her arms and
legs. He had her turn her head, gently, from side to side. 
             
"Any pain in your neck?" he asked. "Anything at all?" 
             
"No," she moaned. She felt like she'd ... fallen off a horse. 
             
"I think you're a very lucky girl," he sighed, finally. "Let's try
sitting you up." 
             
He let her pull with her arms, telling her that if she felt any pain
anywhere to lie back down. She felt pain everywhere, but it wasn't the
kind of pain he was talking about, and she sat, to lean back on her
hands. His fingers went to her bald head, flowing over it gently, and
she winced. 
             
"I don't feel any soft spots," he said. 
             
"You weren't supposed to see me without my hair," she said, realizing
he though he'd hurt her. 
             
"You think you're the first bald-headed woman I've ever seen?" he asked. 
             
She felt a tiny thrill at being characterized as a "woman", but ignored
it in her shame. 
             
"How many bald women have you seen?" she asked. 
             
"OK, so you're the first," he admitted. "It's not so bad." 
             
"It's horrible," she moaned. 
             
"Look at me," he said. 
             
She lifted her face and realized there were tears in her eyes when he
looked all wavery. 
             
"I think it's kind of sexy," he said softly. 
             
"Liar," she snapped. She didn't like pity. She got way more pity than
anything else. It had been that way for over a year. 
             
"I'm not lying," he said firmly. "It's a different look, I'll admit,
but it makes your facial features stand out. You have really beautiful
eyes. I never noticed that before," he lied. The first thing he had
noticed were those big, blue eyes. 
             
She blinked and looked into his eyes. She didn't see pity there ... not
like the others, when they saw her like this. He seemed sincere. 
             
"Really?" she whined. 
             
"Feels pretty good too," he said, continuing to run his fingers over
her scalp. "I don't think I've ever felt anything that smooth." 
             
"Really?" she repeated. 
             
"Really," he said. "You sure nothing hurts? That was quite a tumble you
took." 
             
"I think I yanked the reins," she said, feeling foolish. 
             
"Yup," he said. He could have said "I told you so," but he didn't. 
             
"You want to try standing up?" 
             
"OK." 
             
He pulled her up and she felt a little dizzy. She leaned against him,
her arms going around him for support. She had a fleeting feeling of
warmth as his hands slid across her back to hold her. She could feel
his warm breath on her scalp too. Nobody had ever breathed on her bald
head before, and if felt strange, but nice, somehow. 
             
"I'm OK," she said, stepping away from him. She looked around for the
wig, and saw it a few feet away. It looked foreign, lying there on the
lush green grass ... something dead and synthetic, surrounded by life. 
             
She went to it and bent to retrieve it, feeling things stretch and
complain in her ribs. It was just sore, though, and not a sharp,
dangerous pain, so she ignored it. She held the wig in her hands,
trying to figure out what to do now. She wanted to put it back on, but
that felt stupid somehow. She thought about going without it, but
couldn't stand the thought of that either. Finally she pulled it back
onto her scalp. Her head was warmer immediately. 
             
Bob didn't say anything as she got herself back in order. She looked
like she was moving all right, and he didn't think anything was
seriously hurt. He'd keep an eye on her for a while, but things looked
a lot better than they had a few minutes ago. If she'd have been hurt
badly, he'd have had to get the chopper in here to take her out, and
that would have been difficult. There was no place within half a mile
for the chopper to land. 
             
"Thank you," said Brenda, suddenly. 
             
"All I did was check you over," he said. 
             
"I mean for what you said about my hair." 
             
"Oh." He grinned. "No problem. I probably shouldn't have said it looked
sexy, huh? You're almost young enough to be my daughter." 
             
"Nobody ever told me I looked sexy before," she said. "Not even when I
still had my real hair." 
             
"Boys your age have no brain," said Bob, easily. "And men wouldn't say
that to you because they'd be afraid of being arrested for molesting
you." 
             
"You did," she said, wondering again if he'd been telling the truth, or
just trying to make her feel better. 
             
"Nobody around here to arrest me." He grinned again. "And you DO look
sexy. All I did was tell the truth." He sobered. "I'd appreciate it,
though, if you didn't tell your Pappa I said that. He might not see the
humor in it." 
             
"He won't even look at me when I'm not wearing my wig," she said. "My
parents feel sorry for me." 
             
"That's not so strange," he said. 
             
"I know," she agreed. "I know everybody means well, but they get so
morose and sad. It's just something that happened. There's nothing
anybody can do about it. It's not anybody's fault. It's just there. I
wish they'd just ignore it and get on with things." 
             
"Your parents love you," said Bob. "They're sad because they know that
some day you won't be here any more." 
             
"I know that too," said Brenda. "But I'm not dead yet, and everybody
treats me like I am. I've got several months left to live, and I want
to LIVE those months, not worry about what will happen later. It's hard
to feel alive when everybody treats you like you're dead ... or almost
dead." 
             
"Well, since you're not dead, you can fix supper," announced Bob.
"How's that?" 
             
"I'm a terrible cook," she said. 
             
"You have no idea what a terrible cook is like," said Bob. "You'll find
out ... the first time I cook for us." 
             
They set about unpacking the camping gear, and taking care of the
horses. As soon as the saddle bags were on the ground, both horses were
nosing at them, looking for the apples they knew were in there. Bob
took two out, cut them up, and showed her how to safely feed the chunks
to Buttercup. The horse seemed very appreciative, whickering and nosing
her. She slid her hands down the long nose, to the soft skin at the end. 
             
"There's something that feels as smooth as my head," she commented. 
             
Bob looked over at her. "Naw, it's completely different. Yours is
smooth and hard. Hers is smooth and mushy. It's not the same." 
             
Brenda hid a smile of satisfaction as she realized he was just talking
... saying what he actually thought, and not what he figured he was
SUPPOSED to say to a girl ... in her condition. 
             
He was the first adult she could remember who just treated her like
another human being.

Chapter Four.

She heard the water before
she saw it, bubbling up from a crack in gray rock, and burbling on
downward, through a trough in that rock that it had cut over hundred,
maybe thousands of years. 
             
She filled her canteen, which had been almost emptied during the day's
ride. He had packed freeze-dried rations, and she had to make another
trip to the spring to get enough water for everything. He built the
fire, but stood back to let her heat things up. That's really all it
was - heating things up - but she still felt proud when she laid it all
out on a horse blanket. 
             
"Dinner is served," she said formally. 
             
They ate in silence, but it was a comfortable silence. Hot food was
different than cold sandwiches, and she was ravenous. He brought out a
mashed loaf of white bread, and she used three pieces to soak up all
the juice left from the plate she'd eaten on. 
             
When the dishes were cleaned and stacked to one side, he stood up. He
went to his saddle bags and pulled out a gun belt, strapping it on. 
             
"What's that for?" she asked, nervously. 
             
"Want to show you something," he said. He pulled the pistol out of the
holster and examined it. It looked huge to Brenda ... deadly in a flat,
dead way. "This is just a precaution." he said. "She should be gone, by
now, but you never know." 
             
"She?" Brenda was confused. "Who?" 
             
"There's a cave not far from here. A bear uses it in the winter, but
it's late enough that she and her cubs should be gone by now ... out
getting fat again. I want to show you what's in the cave." 
             
"Bear?!" moaned Brenda. "There are BEARS out here!?" 
             
"Of course there are bears out here," said Bob, calmly. "And mountain
lions, and elk ... all sorts of things live up here." 
             
"I did NOT come on this trip to be eaten by a bear!" said Brenda,
looking around fearfully. 
             
"She's not that hungry," said Bob, smiling. "I doubt you'll even get to
see her. We make too much noise. Besides, she'd smell Ranger long
before we got close enough to see her." 
             
"Bears eat horses!" yelped Brenda. 
             
"Not horses like Ranger," said Bob. "Almost nothing will take on a
stallion, unless it's starving, or wounded and enraged." 
             
"What about Buttercup?" asked Brenda, still looking fearful. 
             
"Oh, I suppose she'd make a try for Buttercup, under the right
circumstances," said Bob even though he knew that was highly unlikely.
He couldn't resist needling a green horn. "But don't worry. Buttercup
would just run away. No bear could catch her after a hundred yards or
so." 
             
"What if I fell off again while Buttercup was running away?" moaned the
girl. 
             
"Well, that's what this is for," said Bob, patting his holster. 
             
Then he gave her a full course on what to do if she was afoot, and
encountered a bear. He did it just because he'd teased her ... to make
her feel better ... not because he thought they'd see a bear. He could
show her half a dozen bears, if he wanted to, but that was a little
more than he'd planned for this girl's trip. 
             
========================================

Bob showed Brenda how to
make a torch by collecting drips of sap from pine trees, and smearing
them onto the end of a short, dry branch. It took a while, but finally
he was satisfied with the thickness of the coating. They left the
horses in the glen, and she followed him as he strode off into the
trees, heading upward. They had to climb some rocks, but then a black
hole appeared in the face of rock before them. Bob had her stand back,
and edged closer to the hole, sniffing the air. He seemed satisfied,
but told her to stay there while he lit the torch with a lighter. Once
it was burning, he disappeared into the hole. He was back almost
immediately, telling her to come on. 
             
She smelled something odd ... musty, yet sharp ... mixed with the smoke
of the torch, making her nose scrunch up. She followed Bob closely and
found herself in a smallish domed cavity that she could stand up in,
but Bob had to stoop for. The torch flickered weakly, and it seemed
very dark. He pointed, and stepped behind her so that the light came
from over her shoulder. 
             
She saw colors first - red and yellow - then the drawings. They were of
stick-like figures, and she saw instantly that they told a story. One
figure lay, bent and broken, as red flowed from it, while others, with
spears, stood against what was obviously a bear. It had been drawn in
exquisite detail, in some black substance that made tiny lines. Those
lines had been used to create the bear, even to protruding fangs from
the open mouth, and to long, sharp claws on the tips of the paws. To
the right was another drawing. In this one the bear was lying down, red
flowing from it, and the stick figures danced around it. The "dead"
stick figure had been placed on a pile of sticks, and something red and
yellow - obviously flames - shot from around it. 
             
"Who were they?" she whispered. 
             
"Nobody knows," answered Bob. "I have a native American friend, who
showed me this place when I was young. He says they're older than his
people." 
             
"How did you find this?" she asked. 
             
"I slept here one night, when I was much younger." 
             
"You slept in a bear den?" she gasped. 
             
"They only use it in the winter time, to hibernate," said Bob easily.
"During the summer they're out doing what bears do." 
             
The torch began flickering more wildly. Bob led her out and the slight
wind outside the cave blew it out. She noticed he took it with him when
they left, and asked him why he was doing that. 
             
"If I leave it there, some poor bear will find it some day. It would
make her nervous. Our scent will be long gone before winter, but this
will smell like fire for years." He took it all the way back to the
campsite, and dropped it in the fire pit. 
             
========================================

Bob had brought mountain
tents. Each rolled into a bundle that was only ten inches long, and
maybe five inches in diameter. He'd left the poles behind, and went
into the woods to make poles from the branches of trees. As he set the
first one up, Brenda saw that, basically, it was about enough nylon to
cover a person and keep the rain off. There wasn't enough room in it to
put anything but herself. Brenda was still thinking about bears ... and
mountain lions. 
             
"We're going to sleep ... alone?" she asked. 
             
Bob looked at her. "Don't tempt me," he said. 
             
Brenda blushed. "I didn't mean THAT!" She looked around. "It's just
that there are bears ... and things." 
             
"Nothing's going to bother us up here. I just spent two months camping
alone up in these mountains. The only time I saw any wildlife was when
I tried to. Even way up here ... things ... stay shy of humans. We
don't have a very good reputation with the original inhabitants." 
             
"OK," she said, her voice tiny. "If you're sure." 
             
"Besides," he said offhandedly. "How would I explain to your parents
that I bedded down with their only sexy daughter, while I was supposed
to be showing her nature and taking good care of her?" 
             
"I told you I didn't mean THAT," she said, frowning. 
             
"And I told you, you look sexy," said Bob. "If you think I'm going to
sleep in one of those," he pointed at the tiny tent, "with you crushed
up next to me ... and try to forget that you're sexy ... well ... let's
just say that's unlikely in the extreme." 
             
Brenda, though she was young, and despite the travails she had been
through with her illness, knew a compliment when she heard one. She
hadn't been paid any compliments like that before, and it brought a
strange rush of warmth to her belly as this grown up man acknowledged
her attractiveness. She did, in fact, feel attractive, at that moment. 
             
She hadn't felt attractive for a long, long time. 
             
"Besides," said Bob, off-handedly, "Ranger will be here. He'll warn us
of any trouble long before it gets here." 
             
========================================

By the time the tents were
set up, and the fire had been built up for what Bob called "the evening
confab", Brenda looked at her watch and found it was only a little past
six in the evening. 
             
"So what do we do now?" she asked. 
             
"We sit around and jaw," said Bob. "That's what the evening confab is
all about. We talk to each other about all sorts of things and tell
each other things ... mostly lies, of course." 
             
"Lies?" she asked. 
             
"They're much more interesting than the truth," he said. "Most folks
live pretty boring lives, and stories about that would just put us to
sleep." 
             
"I don't know any lies," said Brenda. 
             
"Make some up," said Bob. "You'll get the hang of it." 
             
To her amazement, that's exactly what they did for the first two hours.
They settled in, their feet almost touching, upwind of the fire -
though the wind seemed to change regularly - and Bob told her stories
that just HAD to be lies. They were stories about the ranch, mostly,
and about the time he'd spent as a Marine. They were wildly
entertaining, and she struggled to think up some crazy thing that she
wished she'd done when she was younger. The best thing she could come
up with was a story about how, when she was only ten, she'd saved an
old woman from a burning building. It was true, in the sense that she'd
seen the smoke coming from the roof, and banged on the door. The old
lady had come to the door, angry at being disturbed, but when Brenda
had taken her to the yard and she'd seen the smoke for herself, it had
gotten pretty exciting. The fire department had come and firemen went
up on the roof and cut a hole in it and squirted water everywhere. That
was pretty much it. The poor woman had been so distraught at the damage
to her home that she'd forgotten all about Brenda. In the end, Brenda
went home and told her parents what had happened. Only the smell of
smoke on her clothes had convinced them she was telling the truth. 
             
Now, though, she spun the tale with leaping flames, and Brenda dragging
the woman out, unconscious, and then saving her cat too! The Mayor had
given her a medal, and her picture was in the paper. Bob was
appropriately appreciative of her bravery, and said no bear would stand
a chance against her if she set her mind to taming it. 
             
He told ten stories to every one of hers, though. He said that was OK,
seeing as how she was so young that she hadn't had time to kick up her
heels much. Eventually the wild talk wound down. 
             
"Tell me about your boyfriend," said Bob. 
             
"There's nothing to tell. Boys don't ask bald girls out for dates." She
looked uncomfortable. "Well, they do, but they don't know the girl is
bald, so she doesn't accept them." 
             
"You haven't always been bald," he commented. 
             
"Yeah, but I was too young to date then. When I got old enough to date,
I was too sick from chemo, or radiation treatments." 
             
"That's too bad," he commiserated with her. 
             
"Yeah," she sighed. 
             
"Do you feel it?" he asked. "What's in your head, I mean." 
             
She turned to stare at him. Nobody had ever asked her that before. Most
people tried not to talk about her disease at all, much less ask her
what it felt like. 
             
"Not really," she said. "At least I don't think so. Sometimes I get
headaches, or dizzy or something, but I can't ... you know ... FEEL the
tumor or anything." 
             
It was quiet for a while. 
             
Brenda looked over at him, curious, now that she had thought of him as
a ... man. 
             
"What about you? Don't you have a girlfriend?" 
             
She saw the shadow stain his face, and knew she'd made a horrible
mistake. Then she saw him shake it off. 
             
"I was married. She and our little boy were killed in an avalanche nine
months ago." 
             
"Ohhh!" moaned Brenda. "I'm sorry ... I didn't know." 
             
"Not your fault," said Bob. "I'm going to have to talk about it again,
I suspect." 
             
"You don't have to talk about it to me," said Brenda, feeling like
she'd broken something precious. 
             
"Dannie and Kyle are part of my past now," said Bob heavily. "I'll
never forget them, of course, but that's the past. I spent the last two
months riding these mountains, trying to deal with it. But I can't ride
the mountains forever. I'll just have to learn how to move on." 
             
"I'm so sorry," she said. 
             
"I'm kind of glad you came along, in one way," he said. "I didn't think
much of the idea when I first heard it. I guess I thought you'd be a
sickly little girl, who I'd have to coddle and all that. I was sure
wrong about that, though. You've kept my mind off things right nicely
until ..." 
             
"Until now," said Brenda miserably. 
             
"Like I said," Bob sighed. "Others will ask about it too, sooner or
later." 
             
He poked the fire with a stick, and then looked up at her. 
             
"Like I said, I'm glad you came along. I hope you're having a good
time. I think this is a good thing you're doing." He grinned. "How's
your butt?" 
             
Brenda jerked as she realized she hadn't paid any attention to her
aches and pains for quite a while now. She rolled and prodded her
behind. It was sore. 
             
"It hurts," she said. 
             
"Tomorrow morning, use some more of that stuff on it," he said. "In
another day or two you'll be fine." 
             
"All this will be over in two more days," she said. "I AM having fun. I
wish it didn't have to end." 
             
"You just keep having fun as long as you can," said Bob. He felt
foolish for reminding her that she was dying. "We probably ought to
turn in now," he said. 
             
"It's still light out," she objected. 
             
"We got a long ride tomorrow, and more climbing. You need your rest." 
             
He got up and went to the saddle bags. He lifted them and took a rope
from them, which he tied around both sets. Throwing a rope over a
branch, he hauled them up next to the limb. 
             
"What are you doing that for?" she asked. 
             
"Never mind," he said. "It's just an old habit." He didn't tell her
that the smell of food in the bags might draw the attention of bears,
who could smell it literally miles away. He didn't particularly want
any visitors this night, and if there were any, he wanted their
attention up in the tree limbs, and not on the ground. 
             
========================================

Brenda Jean Ronson crawled
into her sleeping bag fully clothed. She had been camping before, with
her Girl Scout Troop. She'd only been twelve, and they'd only gone
camping three times, but those camping trips had fueled her imagination
and she'd loved them. Then they found the tumor, and things like that
stopped. Almost everything had stopped. Everyone started treating her
like an invalid, even though she felt fine. She wiggled into the bag
that had been way too big for her when she was twelve, but wasn't any
more. 
             
She thought back to those times when she had shared a big tent with
seven or eight other girls, and the adults who went with them. Now she
was alone. The bag seemed much smaller, and not nearly as warm and
comfortable as she remembered. Of course she knew that she'd grown a
lot since the last time she crawled into this bag, but she felt very
alone somehow. She heard Bob moving around, dousing the fire they'd sat
beside for so long, and getting into his own tent. His footsteps, and
the little noises he made were comforting. Still, she felt very alone. 
             
She couldn't help but see the mental image of herself, inside the tiny
tent, on top of the tall mountain, with wild animals all around her,
and she had a hard time falling asleep. The wig scratched her scalp,
and she took it off, shoving it up and out of the bag, which she had
pulled over her head. That was a little better, but she wished she'd
brought a pillow. Her clothes felt heavy and tight around her body, and
her shirt was bunched up. She wiggled uncomfortably, pulling to get her
clothing smooth. 
             
She was almost asleep, when she heard a horse whicker and then
snuffling sounds. Something was outside her tent, and whatever it was,
was sniffing and breathing loudly enough for her to hear. At first she
thought it was one of the horses, but then they both whickered again,
and she could tell they were some distance away. Her eyes opened wide
inside the sleeping bag, but, of course, it was pitch black. Lifting
her head, she tried to hear better. She could hear whatever it was
moving around outside. It brushed up against the nylon of the tent, and
she heard sniffing noises again. She took in a breath and held it as
panic seized her body. 
             
She pulled down the bag, pushing her head out, so she could hear
better, and it was, at that instant, that she heard the nylon of the
door of her tent swish, and something licked the top of her bald head. 
             
Brenda Jean Ronson let out all her breath in a terrified screech of
panic as she came to the conclusion that she was about to be eaten by a
bear. She'd taken a big breath, and her scream was long and primal. She
followed it with another hastily snatched breath, which she pushed out
past tortured vocal chords, extending the scream until she realized
there was another sound, competing with her. 
             
It was barking. 
             
A dog was barking excitedly right outside her tent. 
             
She felt, more than saw the tent flaps moving, and Bob's voice was
suddenly there, asking her what was wrong. She craned her neck and
realized she could actually see something. It was mostly his
silhouette, black, against a starlit sky that was brighter than she
would have believed. 
             
"S-s-something's out there!" she wailed. "It tried to eat my head!" 
             
"It's just my dog," he said, reaching to touch the bald head she had
been talking about. He stroked it. "She probably followed us up here." 
             
"I n-n-never saw any dog!" she moaned. 
             
"She was out chasing rabbits or something when we left," he said. "She
must have realized I'd gone back out and tracked us." There was another
shadow at his side, moving rapidly, and Brenda calmed enough to hear
the dog panting as it danced excitedly beside its master. 
             
"It was just a dog?" she whined. 
             
"Just a little mutt who was curious about who was with me, I guess," he
said, still stroking her smooth head. 
             
"He licked me," she sniffed. 
             
"Bad dog, Dammit," said Bob. The dog barked happily. "You OK, now?" he
asked Brenda. 
             
"I'm scared," she admitted. "I thought it was a bear." 
             
"Nope, just Dammit." 
             
"Dammit?" 
             
"That's her name," said Bob, finally taking his hand away from her head. 
             
"You named your dog Dammit?" Brenda sounded confused. 
             
"I did, in fact, name my dog Dammit," he said. "I'm sorry she scared
you. Like I said, she was probably just curious about who else was here
with me." 
             
She knew she'd never get to sleep. She wanted to get back up ... sit by
the fire again ... be near another human being. She pushed the button
on her watch that lit up the dial and saw it was only nine. She usually
stayed up until ten or eleven, back home. "Can we stay up a little
while?" she asked. 
             
"You really need your rest," he said. 
             
"I know, but I can't sleep, and I'm all wound up because of your dog.
Can't we just stay up a little while longer. I can think up another
lie." she said hopefully. 
             
Bob sighed. He thought about their itinerary, as he had planned it. He
was going to show her the falls, and some other geological high points,
but, in reality, this trip was for her. It didn't matter whether they
covered ten miles the next day, or only six. They could stop as often,
or for whatever reason she wanted to, for that matter. The itinerary
could be flexed. 
             
"Sure," he said. "Let me get dressed and I'll get the fire going again." 
             
========================================

When she crawled out of her
tent, her head felt cold, so she searched for the wig she'd shoved up
and out of the bag. She couldn't find it in the dark.  
             
"Did you bring a flashlight?" she called to Bob, who was putting
together another fire. 
             
"Too heavy," he grunted. "Batteries weigh too much to pack on a trip." 
             
"I can't find my wig," she called. 
             
"You don't need it," he said. 
             
"My head is cold," she complained. 
             
Bob lit the kindling, and small flames began to lick up into the
tinder. It was amazing to Brenda how bright it looked, even though the
flames were tiny. She could almost feel her pupils contracting as she
looked at the bright flickering light. 
             
There was growling nearby, and the sound of something flapping in the
wind. She looked to see a very ordinary dog, shaking her wig violently
in its jaws, as if it were an animal it was trying to kill. 
             
"Dammit!" yelled Bob, who had also looked at the dog. 
             
The dog scampered to him instantly, carrying the trophy it had found,
and dropped it at his feet proudly. 
             
"That's not a rabbit, Dammit!" growled Bob. 
             
Dammit wagged her tail happily. She sat down, tail still wagging. 
             
"What am I going to do with you," he asked, reaching down to pick up
the bedraggled wig with one hand, and scratch the dog's ears with the
other. He stood up and looked at the wig. There was dirt and twigs all
over it. He shook it, and the dog jumped from a sit to try to grab it
from him, as if she thought he was playing a game. 
             
"Sit, Dammit!" he ordered. The dog sat. 
             
Brenda walked over to the fire, which was burning higher now. Bob held
out the wig, which now looked like some dead animal. 
             
"Sorry," he said.  
             
Brenda took the thing and examined it. There was no way she was going
to put it back on her head now. She'd have to brush it and clean it
first. 
             
"Like I said," said Bob, "You really don't need it out here. I've got a
cap you can wear. It'll keep your head warm." He stared at her. "You
slept in your clothes, didn't you?" 
             
"Uh huh," she said, dropping the hand with the wig in it to her side.
Dammit immediately jumped, snatched it from her hand, and began shaking
it violently again. 
             
By the time Bob recovered the wig again, it was in even worse shape. He
put it inside his jacket, at which point the dog lost interest
completely, and began sniffing all around the campsite. Bob went back
to his tent, and returned with a thin, dark cap, made of some soft
material. He put it on Brenda's head. It had side flaps on it, and
strings that hung down. 
             
"That came with my sleeping bag," he said, leaving the strings
dangling. "If you keep your head warm while you're sleeping, the rest
of you will stay warm too. You shouldn't sleep in your clothes. It cuts
off circulation and makes you colder." 
             
Brenda, who felt warmer already, even though the cap was only cloth,
stared at the bulge under his jacket. 
             
"So what am I supposed to sleep in?" she asked. 
             
"You sleep naked," he said. 
             
"What? That's silly!" she blurted. 
             
"You lose about seventy percent of your body heat through your head,"
explained Bob. "Most people sleep with their head outside their
sleeping bag, and that's why they get cold. Wearing a cap like that, or
a stocking cap, or whatever, will keep you warm. Meanwhile, your body
can breathe and your blood flows better when you're not dressed. It's
science." 
             
"Oh," said Brenda. "It just seems counter-intuitive." 
             
"If you're trying to impress me with fifty-cent words, you succeeded."
Bob grinned. 
             
"I'm sorry I'm acting like such a child," said Brenda. 
             
"You're not acting like a child," said Bob, sitting down beside the
fire, and gesturing for her to take her previous place. "You're acting
like a greenhorn. That's completely different." He grinned again. 
             
"I feel like a child," she said. 
             
"You're obviously not a child," said Bob, and his gaze went down and
then back up her body. His meaning was clear, even if unspoken. 
             
Brenda felt a little thrill as her femininity was acknowledged. She
hadn't had much time to be a young woman. She'd been too busy being a
cancer patient. She was a little surprised that she didn't feel
offended that his eyes raked over her body. Something suddenly occurred
to her. 
             
"So do you sleep naked?" 
             
"Sure," he said. 
             
"And when your dog licked my head and you came to save me ... you were
naked?" 
             
There was a pause. "I guess I was," he admitted. 
             
Brenda thought about that for a minute. She had been lying there, with
a naked man only inches away, and she hadn't even known it. And he had
even touched her head! Brenda hadn't been around a lot of males, and
almost none in anything near an intimate setting. This was a whole new
concept for her. She had the same chemistry as other girls her age ...
but it had never been ... turned on, so to speak. She didn't quite
understand the thrill that she felt when she thought about Bob, naked,
at the door of her tent. He had said she looked sexy, too. 
             
"Do you really think I look sexy?" she asked. "Or were you just trying
to make me feel better?" 
             
"Probably a little of both," he said, telling her the truth. 
             
"I don't want pity," she said firmly. 
             
"I don't pity you," said Bob. "I probably have some feelings of pity
for your parents, because they're going to lose you, and I know how
that feels." He looked grim. "But I don't pity you. You're going to a
better place, where there is no pain or anguish. There for a while, I
thought about wanting to do that myself." 
             
"You thought about suicide?" she gasped. 
             
"Sure. Most people do at one time or another in their lives." 
             
"But you decided not to do it." Brenda sounded relieved, somehow. 
             
"It'll be my time, one of these days," said Bob. "Until then, I just
have to try to go on and do what I can to make this old world livable." 
             
"I'm glad you didn't do that," said the girl. "I couldn't be here if
you'd have done that." She looked startled, and then added: "I know
that sounds selfish, but I'm having a good time." 
             
Bob laughed. "You rode your butt raw, you thought you were being eaten
by a bear, my worthless mutt killed your wig ... and you're having a
good time? You, my little filly, are a cheap date." 
             
"Well," she said, her voice defensive. "This is the first date I've
ever been on! You have to give me a little time to learn how to do all
this." 
             
She started giggling, and snorted through her nose. Dammit ran over to
her and began wagging her tail, sticking his nose out. 
             
"What's so funny?" asked Bob. 
             
"I'm on my first date, and the man I'm with just told me I should be
sleeping naked." She started laughing harder, until she rolled on the
ground. Dammit climbed over her, trying to lick her face as she covered
it with her hands and laughed through them. The dog settled for licking
her naked scalp again. She kicked her feet and, between laughs, gave
out little screams. It was obvious she wasn't scared, though. 
             
"Come here, Dammit!" ordered Bob. The dog gave up and ran to sit by
Bob, who scratched her ears again. She rolled over an raised one leg,
begging for a belly rub. Bob gave her what she wanted, mostly because
she'd lie there forever if he kept scratching. 
             
Brenda's laughter tapered off, only to expose the fact that now, she
had the hiccups. 
             
Bob stared at her. She really was a nice looking girl. For a sixteen
year old, her breasts were pretty big, in his opinion, and her slim
waist swelled out to fill her jeans in the hips. He couldn't tell what
her legs looked like, but Bob had always been a tit man anyway. Her
baldness gave her an exotic look, and he hadn't been kidding when he
said she looked sexy. Her eyes looked huge, almost like those Japanese
cartoon drawings he'd seen. He was also impressed that she was taking
her whole situation as well as she was. He'd expected a sickly, sad,
morose little girl. But she was vibrant, and healthy, and fun to be
around. For now anyway. He hadn't spent any time with a teenager since
he was one himself, and she wasn't at all what he expected. 
             
She reminded him of Dannie, in some ways. That bothered him, somehow,
but he couldn't deny it. She had the same upbeat attitude, and ready
smile. Her stature was about the same, though Dannie's breasts had been
smaller. He looked up, wondering if she was watching him now. He'd
never felt any connection between them, since she died. All he felt was
loss. Now, he hoped she was watching. Even if his thoughts towards this
girl were less than pristine. To be compared favorably to Dannie, in
his opinion, was a compliment of the highest magnitude. 
             
"Tell me another lie," said the girl, hiccupping. 
             
Bob launched into a story about how, when he was herding cattle one
time, from one of the high pastures to a lower elevation, he'd gotten
hot and decided to cool off in a stream. He'd taken his clothes off,
and he went into great detail about how rocky the bank was, and how
tender his feet were. He described how he tiptoed, leaning this way and
that, into the water, only to see Dammit taking off with his pants,
dragging them through the dirt and brush. He'd tried to chase the dog,
but couldn't run because his feet were so tender. Taking time to put on
his boots, he then started chasing the dog through the cattle. The dog
refused to obey his commands, thinking they were playing a game. Bob
put a moan in his voice as he described how he ran around a bunch of
brush, only to find that a group of guests, including three women, had
been brought out to meet him, and help him drive the cattle to their
new pasture. 
             
"There I was, dressed only in boots, covered with dirt and mud from
being wet and falling down on the ground, with these three women
staring at me like I was from another planet." 
             
Brenda, who had been laughing the whole time, managed to ask him what
happened next. 
             
"Rowdy was with them - he's my foreman, you know - and I swear, all he
said was "Folks, I'd like to introduce you to Bob Nivens, the owner of
the ranch. As soon as he gets his clothes back on, he's going to teach
you how to herd cattle." 
             
Brenda rolled on the ground again, laughing, and Dammit returned to try
to lick her face, her tail wagging furiously. 
             
"You know," said Bob, "You're being paid a compliment there. Dammit
doesn't take a shine like that to most folks. She was abandoned as a
puppy, and she's pretty reserved around people she doesn't know." 
             
Brenda grabbed the dog's head, and her hands rolled both ears in
circles. The dog's tail kept wagging, though it slowed. 
             
"And she doesn't let anybody but me touch her ears," said Bob, staring
at the two of them. 
             
"She's letting me touch her ears," said Brenda. She put her face up by
the dog's nose and addressed the dog. "I'm sorry I called you 'he' a
little while ago. I've never been around a dog before. You're a good
doggie." 
             
Dammit's tongue lapped Brenda's nose twice, and then the dog just stood
there, tail wagging. 
             
"I'll be damned," said Bob

Chapter Five

An hour later, Bob suggested they give trying to get some sleep another
try. 
             
"Ohhhh, I guess so," moaned Brenda. "Can Dammit sleep with me?" she
asked. Dammit had spent the majority of time sitting or lying beside
Brenda's legs while she tried to think up lies, and Bob told her
stories that were true, but which she thought were lies. 
             
"That dog sleeps wherever she wants to," said Bob. "You can invite her,
but don't get your hopes up." 
             
Brenda stood up and stretched. Her muscles felt sore, but it was a good
kind of sore. She went to the opening of her tent and called the dog,
which ran happily to her and sat down, tail wagging. She looked back at
Bob. 
             
"I can't get undressed in that tiny thing," she said, pointing at the
tent. "Promise you won't watch me?" 
             
"I could help you," said Bob, twirling imaginary moustaches. 
             
"You're awful!" laughed the teenager. "Just don't watch me. You've
already seen more of my skin than most men." She snatched off the cap
he'd given her and bent over to point her bald pate at him. 
             
"Yes, Ma'am," said Bob, his voice in an exaggerated groan. "I am the
worst of the whole lot. The only reason they sent me with you was so
that you wouldn't mind leaving this poor earth." 
             
She stood back up, and looked at him, her gaze level. 
             
"You know, you talk to me differently than anybody else. Nobody else
would make a joke about me dying." 
             
"I'm sorry," he said, sounding sorry. "I didn't mean to cause you pain." 
             
"No, that's not what I meant," she said. "I know I'm going to die.
Everybody else knows it too, but they all tiptoe around it like they
can wish it away or something. But you're different. I like that." 
             
She walked over to him and leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the
cheek. 
             
"Thank you," she said, dropping back to her heels. 
             
Bob stared at her. She really was pretty amazing, regardless of her
age. The maturity with which she accepted the inevitable was admirable. 
             
"My pleasure," he said softly. "Especially if it gets me more kisses."
He grinned. "I don't get many kisses from sexy young girls." 
             
"That's just because you're the worst of the whole lot." She stuck her
tongue out at him. "And you're ugly ... and you smell bad ... and you
scare the girls by talking about bears." She put her hands on her hips
as he assumed a wounded look. "I can think of more if you want. I'm
just trying to help." 
             
Bob turned to his dog, who was sitting, her head swiveling back and
forth between the speakers. 
             
"I'm going to bed now, Dammit. This shy little filly won't let me watch
her get naked, so you watch for me, OK, girl? You can tell me all about
it in the morning." 
             
Ignoring Brenda, who tried to dredge up an outraged look, but managed
only a grin, he crawled into his tent.
             
             ===========================================

Brenda shivered as she
dropped her shirt, and bent to step out of her
jeans. Dressed only in bra and panties, she realized that he hadn't put
out the fire. It had burned low, but the glow still lit up the side of
her orange tent. She wondered if he was peeking at her. 
             
"Should I put the fire out?" she called to his tent. 
             
His muffled reply told her his head was already inside his sleeping bag. 
             
"No, it'll be OK. We'll be up in three or four hours anyway." 
             
Feeling somehow unsatisfied - that he wasn't peeking - she unhooked her
bra and skinned her panties down. Then, shivering, she crawled into her
tent and arranged herself in her sleeping bag. She whispered to Dammit,
who nosed through the opening of the tent. She held the top of the bag
open, and the dog crawled in with her, turning around, her sharp claws
treading on Brenda's stomach. Then the dog flopped down alongside
Brenda's side, and laid her head on Brenda's shoulder. Brenda tugged
the cap back on her head, and felt warmer immediately. Dammit gave a
long sigh and licked Brenda's shoulder once. 
             
Within minutes, everyone in the camp was asleep.
             
             ===========================================

Bob got up around five, but
didn't wake the girl. They had time to do
what she wanted, even if that was sleep. The trip was planned for three
days, but if it extended, that was fine. He was sure her parents
wouldn't mind. As soon as he was out of his tent, he saw Dammit wiggle
through the flaps of the girl's tent and trot over to nose at him. 
             
"Morning, traitor," Bob whispered softly. Dammit wagged her tail. 
             
He walked into the woods to empty his bladder, and then took a walk
around, to see what had changed since he was last in this area. It had
been on his mourning tour, so he didn't expect to find anything of
interest. He didn't, but he enjoyed his walk, stretching his muscles.
He hadn't shaved, and the girl's offhand comment about him smelling was
probably true. He could deal with that later in the day, when it was
warmer. 
             
He found bear sign. It was relatively fresh, only three or four days
old. He cast about, and found three sets of prints, one larger, and two
small sets. He estimated the she-bear weighed a couple of hundred
pounds. The cubs were very young. Knowing they'd made it through the
winter made him feel good. He didn't begrudge her this mountain. Unlike
a lot of ranchers, Bob felt like there was still room for all of them.
The bears rarely bothered his herd, and stayed shy of people. They
didn't hurt anything, and he didn't want to hurt them. Wolves were a
different proposition, but there weren't many on his property. Since
being reintroduced into the wild, they'd spread beyond the borders of
the national park that had brought them back. He was keeping an eye on
them. He'd heard some stories from other ranchers. Wolves did more
damage to cattle than bears. They did damage to bears too, for that
matter. Many a cub had been taken by a pack of wolves, while the mother
bellowed and snarled, unable to protect more than one cub at a time. So
far, he'd only seen sign of two or three wolves on his property. He
hoped it stayed that way. It would bear watching. 
             
He approached the campsite silently, as he always moved. He was
startled to see Brenda, standing outside her tent. She must have just
awakened, because she was bent over, her back to him, shimmying into a
pair of panties. He stopped, staring. Part of his mind wandered, as he
watched her do the same thing as he had seen Dannie do countless times.
As she pulled at the waistband, she wiggled her hips in a way only
women could wiggle, as if she were lowering her pussy and hips into
them, rather than pulling them up. She ran her thumbs around the waist,
settling it where she wanted it, and then bent to pick up a bra. Her
clothing was neatly piled at her feet. 
             
Dammit, who had sat down, when her master stopped, barked. It was a
"Why are we standing here?" kind of bark. 
             
Brenda turned, startled, and Bob saw her teenaged breasts, capped with
rosy pink nipples. Her eyes went wide, and her hands came up to cover
each breast. Turned at the waist like that, with not a hair showing on
her body, her hands drew attention to her nakedness in a way that sent
a streak of almost pain through Bob's balls. 
             
"Sorry," he said, turning around to face away from her. "I didn't know
you'd be up." 
             
Brenda scrambled to get her clothes on. She was so discombobulated by
the situation that she dropped her bra and pulled on her fresh shirt
without it. She climbed into her clean jeans. Had Bob been watching,
he'd have seen that little hip wiggle he'd seen before. It would have
made him harder than he already was. Right now he realized he was glad
he'd turned around, because he was mostly hard. He was almost shocked
by the eroticism of what he'd just seen, and its effect on him. 
             
"I'm really sorry," he said to the trees he was facing. 
             
"It's ... OK ..." she panted, buttoning the jeans. They fit tightly
enough that she didn't need a belt. She stood there, barefoot, looking
at his back. "You can turn around now." 
             
Bob, trying to lighten the mood, tried a joke. "You made me promise I
wouldn't watch while you got UN-dressed. You didn't say anything about
when you were getting dressed again." 
             
Brenda didn't quite know how to feel. At least twenty doctors had seen
her naked. She'd always felt a little strange, as they poked and
prodded, taking blood samples, and CAT scans, and everything else they
did. Half of it didn't have anything to do with her head. They were
always testing things to see if the cancer had spread from there. But
they didn't act like they noticed her nakedness. The doctors were
always aloof and distant. She was always just a patient to them. Having
this man see her naked was different somehow. She realized she was
flushed, and excited, and tried to examine that reaction. She didn't
feel embarrassed, exactly. It was something different than that. 
             
She remembered his eyes, when she had realized he was there, and turned
to see them. They had looked different, somehow bigger, as if he were
seeing something amazing to him. But she was just a girl. He'd been
married. He'd seen a real woman naked ... lots of times. Why had he
looked at her like that? Her mind flickered to his comment that she was
"sexy." She'd wanted to believe that, but it was impossible. She was a
skinny bald girl, with two or three months to live, if she was lucky.
Everybody had told her that when she started going downhill, it would
happen fast. She'd get very, very sick, and then die. It would only
take a week or two. 
             
Yet, he had looked at her like she WAS a woman ... maybe even a sexy
woman. 
             
He still hadn't turned around. 
             
"It's OK, really," she said. She sat down to pull on socks and tennis
shoes. 
             
He finally turned. He was walking funny, and his hands were hovering
over his groin, like he was the naked one, and he was hiding himself
from her. 
             
"I'll just get breakfast back down here," he said, going to the rope
that the saddle bags were suspended from. 
             
It was when he reached for the rope that she saw the bulge he had been
hiding. She may have been inexperienced, but she wasn't stupid. She
knew what an erect penis looked like. She and her friends had surfed
the net plenty of times, giggling and clicking on pictures that they
squealed over. Most of those pictures were fakes, of course. No man
could have a penis that big. It would stick out all the time, even when
it wasn't hard. They had checked out plenty of men, peeking at the
front of their pants, and hadn't seen bulges like that. It had been
fun, but it wasn't real. They all knew that. 
             
But HERE was a bulge, and she knew what that bulge meant. It meant she
WAS sexy ... beyond all doubt. He had reacted to her, and had been
embarrassed about it. 
             
By fate, perhaps, the sun chose that exact moment to break into view,
and brilliant sunbeams flitted through the trees around them to dapple
the ground with spots of bright yellow light. Brenda felt like she
might explode with joy, and that if she did, the pieces of her body
would be like those bright yellow splotches of sunlight, glowing with
happiness. He might be embarrassed about what had happened, but she now
knew that a man DID find her attractive ... desirable. It was like a
new sun had come up in her life. It was a new day in Brenda Jean
Ronson's life, and she wanted to open up her arms to welcome it.
             
             ===========================================

It may have been Bob's
embarrassment over getting a stiff prick in
front of a teenage girl. Or maybe he kept thinking about what she
looked like, standing there in panties, her hands covering her nipples.
For whatever reason, he burned breakfast. Not that it mattered to him.
He ate whatever he cooked on the trail, good or not. 
             
Brenda's reaction, though, was decidedly different. 
             
"How can you EAT that?" she gasped, after one bite. He was shoveling
food into his mouth with the efficiency of a man on the trail, wanting
to get done with the necessities, and be on his horse. 
             
"What's wrong with it?" he asked, taking time to actually taste, and
answer his own question. Male pride kept him from voicing how badly it
tasted, though. 
             
"I'm surprised you're alive if you eat like this all the time," she
said, putting her plate down. 
             
"Nobody's forcing it down your throat," muttered Bob. 
             
"I know who's fixing lunch," she said firmly. "And it's not you!" 
             
"I've done very well on my own cooking for the last month or so," he
said, sounding injured. 
             
Brenda walked straight to him, and started feeling his arms. She moved
on to his ribs and he jumped back. He was still mostly hard, and her
touch felt intimate somehow. 
             
"What are you doing?" he asked. 
             
"I'm trying to figure out what you have under those clothes. It's
surely not flesh." She giggled as he tried to get away from a mere girl
and went after him, her fingers grabbing for where his love handles
should be ... but weren't. "If you've been eating THAT kind of cooking,
you're stuffing your clothes with rags or something. There's no WAY
eating that stuff could make muscle." 
             
Bob got a grip on her wrists, and proved that there WAS muscle in his
arms. 
             
"Behave!" he ordered. 
             
"Says the man who sneaks up on poor innocent girls and watches them as
they get dressed." She stuck out her tongue at him again. 
             
"Yeah, go ahead," he growled. "Stick your tongue out." He fell, by
habit, into something he'd said before, but to his much older wife,
when she did that. "I wouldn't want that thing in my mouth either!" 
             
He realized with a start, how inappropriate that kind of thing was, and
let go of her. She hadn't even noticed his sexual innuendo. She was
still laughing at how uncomfortable she had made him feel. Then she
felt a twinge of conscience at needling him, and stepped back. He was
poised for flight, an unconscious reaction to the situation on his
part. He wasn't used to dealing with situations like this, and was very
uncomfortable. There was an awkward moment of silence. It was broken
when both, at the same time, said "I'm sorry." 
             
Bob felt a surge of affection for this slip of a girl, who had only
months to live. It made him uncomfortable. Affection, along with the
fact that he couldn't get the image of her slim body, standing there
almost naked, out of his mind made him feel like a pervert of some
kind. He turned away as he realized his prick was getting harder,
rather than softer, and busied himself with getting things packed. 
             
Brenda watched him for a moment, her brain agile, despite the tumor
that was pressing against parts of it. She recognized, on an
unconscious level, that she bothered him, and associated it with what
had happened. Thinking about her body "bothering" a man was something
new and interesting ... a subject she had never really spent any time
reflecting on before. 
             
Every woman arrives at a time in her life when she realizes she has
power of a sexual nature. She sees, usually in a man's eyes, something
that tells her on a basic level that she can control a man, at least to
some extent, based on that sexual aspect she has just discovered in
herself. 
             
That epiphany usually results in one of two reactions. One is that she
doesn't understand that power and it scares her. It's a little like
holding raw energy in one's hands that feels dangerous. Some women back
away from that power and refuse to embrace it or use it. It becomes
something "other women" use ... but not her ... at least not right
then. The other routine reaction is that she sees it as a new toy,
exciting and interesting ... something to be played with ... something
for fun and amazement or amusement. 
             
In neither case does the woman fully understand what's going on. If she
embraces the new power, it will take years, usually, to turn that into
a force that will affect her life in only positive ways. If she pushes
it away, it will be years before she realizes, if she ever does, that
she has turned her back on something that COULD have affected her life
in positive ways. 
             
With Brenda Jean Ronson, though, who measured life in weeks, instead of
years, the reaction was different. She had a way of examining things
much more deeply than other girls her age. Life was short, from her
perspective ... VERY short ... and each new thing she discovered had to
be examined closely, to see if it was worth incorporating into the
short time she had left to explore things with. 
             
Brenda found this new thing ... this power over a man, however innocent
... somewhat intoxicating. 
             
There was another aspect of this epiphany that is worth mentioning,
when it came to Brenda. Brenda was a "good girl" ... a "moral girl."
She had been raised to be modest and polite. She knew she was smart,
and that she had talents which were important. She also knew that
humility was just as important. She had seen other girls "working their
sex" to get what they wanted from boys, or even teachers. She had
always been somewhat disgusted when those girls flaunted their sexual
power. She was completely aware of the way advertisers capitalized on
feminine sexuality, and every woman's desire to be found sexually
attractive. She was also aware that most women would never reach the
pinnacle that those advertising models made it to, with their
professional hairstylists and makeup artists. It was all a lie, really
... a fantasy drilled into every television viewer's brain, that all
women should look and act like that. Rather than reaching for that
impossible dream, she concentrated on being the kind of girl people
would miss when she was gone. To her, being a good girl had a high
priority. She wanted people to remember her for the positive things in
her life. 
             
But, when you have only months to live, priorities have a way of
shifting. You look at the life you have left a little differently than
the rest of humanity, which just assumes there will be countless days
ahead to explore the world and reach for that which pleases you. 
             
In that moment of epiphany, where the impossible dream looked almost
real in Bob's eyes ... her priorities underwent a subtle shift. 
             
It wasn't anything blatant, and she wasn't actually aware of the change
in her behavior. The first thing that happened was that when she
realized she had dressed without a bra, she just decided to stay that
way. She had never gone anywhere in her life without wearing a bra, at
least not that she could remember. Her body had developed early, and
her mother had put her in bras since she was eleven. As they mounted
and rode away from the campsite, she was intensely and intimately aware
of the difference in feeling, as her shirt moved and scraped across her
sensitive nipples, which had never been stroked before. It made her
feel giddy ... naughty, almost, as her unfettered breasts bobbed and
bounced beneath her shirt. Within a mile she was flushed and panting,
just from the unexpected, and unintended sensations her nipples spread
through her body. 
             
The world looked different, somehow ... brighter, with more vivid
colors, even though the only colors she saw were in the pallet of
greens and browns. The air smelled fresher, somehow, and the smell of
horse, and leather caressed her nose in a way foreign to the average
city girl. 
             
She felt excited about life. 
             
It was in perhaps another hour, as they sometimes walked, sometimes
cantered, and twice broke into a full run across meadows, that she felt
something else new.  It was the pressure of the saddle between
her legs, where she sometimes hit the saddle with a thump. In one
sense, it wasn't new, because it felt like something very much akin to
what she sometimes felt when she washed between her legs a little too
long in the shower. She had always stopped, mostly because her mother
had firmly taught her, as a young girl, not to wash there too long. Her
mother didn't explain why this particular part of her body should be
clean, but not TOO clean. It was just something she learned. And, when
those delicious feelings began to assert themselves, she just assumed
she had washed too long ... and stopped. She didn't know it, but the
poisons and radiation her body was bombarded with, had spared her, in
large degree, of the overwhelming surge of hormones that assailed most
girls her age. She had never actually been ... horny ... in her whole
life. 
             
The scraping of her shirt, combined with where the saddle repeatedly
smacked her pussy, to say nothing of the hormones that, since her chemo
and radiation therapies had been abandoned, now coursed through her
veins ... changed that. 
             
Two hours into their second day of riding in the mountains of the Lazy
N, Brenda Jean Ronson was horny. 
             
She didn't understand the feelings that coursed through her body. All
she knew was that it felt wonderful. At times, she thought it must be
some strange effect of her tumor. That worried her a little. She knew
to expect changes as her body surrendered to the thing that was killing
her slowly. But it felt so good that she couldn't help but luxuriate in
those feelings. If this was dying, maybe dying wouldn't be so bad after
all. 
             
Her eyes strayed more and more often to Bob, loping along on that
magnificent black horse, looking like he weighed ten pounds, instead of
almost two hundred. The way he swayed, to avoid a low hanging branch,
or leaned forward as his horse scrambled up a rocky incline, made him
look like he and the horse were really one creature, almost like the
fabled centaurs of myth. 
             
When they stopped to stretch their legs, and snack on freeze-dried
fruit, she felt nervous and full of energy. She babbled, knowing she
was babbling, but his calm acceptance of her bombardment of questions -
about him, the ranch, the horses, even Dammit - and the way he
patiently answered those questions, made her babble seem completely
acceptable. He was an adult ... old enough to be her much older brother
... but he paid attention to her, and she just felt fabulous. 
             
Bob, for his part, noticed her flushed appearance and motor-mouth. But,
like her, he assumed it was some facet of her disease. He didn't feel
pity, exactly. She was too vibrant and cute to feel sorry for. Her
questions were good ones, usually, and he enjoyed telling her things. 
             
Along the way he showed her places that gave her an education in
geology. There was a place where half the mountainside had collapsed,
taking trees with it. The scar was probably thousands of years old, but
was still easily visible as a wide swath of bare rock and rubble, with
trees all around it. There were places where they could see five
different kinds of rocks in the same place, rocks that had been created
in completely different mixtures of natural elements, but which lay
side by side, thrown there, together, by unimaginable forces at some
distant time in the past. There were huge boulders that had been split
cleanly in half by some incredible force. They rode between such halves
of rock. 
             
You cannot spend an extended time in the mountains, without thinking of
how they were made. The upheaval and violence of their creation is
clear, and reminds one that nothing alive could have survived being in
the middle of that creation when it happened. Yet, that awful, violent
beginning has led, for the most part, to incredible beauty and peace,
with life teeming all over it. The most violent of beginnings led to
the most serene and beautiful of places to be. 
             
These things had affected Bob for years, and now they affected Brenda
too. She had never felt so alive in her life, and she gave Bob most of
the credit. 
             
To say she developed a crush on him is unfair to her. She didn't have
any starry-eyed dreams about him. He was just a person who had unlocked
something in her that was wonderful, even if she couldn't put her
finger on just what that was. As a result, she felt drawn to him in
ways that most teenagers would think of as "love," but which to her was
more like how she felt about family, or a treasured friend.
             
             ===========================================

They continued down slope
in the afternoon, and now they leaned back in
the saddle a little more. It took the pressure off of Brenda's inflamed
clitty, and allowed her to resume a more or less normal breathing
pattern. On the other hand, as the horses set their front hooves, going
down, it jolted the riders, and her breasts bobbed in higher arcs,
scraping her nipples until she felt the need to squeeze them sometimes.
She did that unconsciously. Her attention was on the beauty all around
her. 
             
Though the descent was gradual, they came down fifteen hundred feet in
three hours. It got warmer as they descended, and it was only natural
for Brenda to undo a couple of buttons at her neck, to let the breeze
of their passage fan her hot chest and aching nipples. She also pulled
off the sleeping cap, which had been keeping her head warm, and stuffed
it into a rear pocket of her jeans. 
             
Again, she heard the sound before she saw what caused it. It was a dull
roar of sorts; a deep hissing sound that almost brought to mind the
deep, rasping breath of a dragon or some such beast. It was steady,
though, without the pauses that breathing would generate. Buttercup
tossed her head and whuffled, speeding up a bit, until she was right on
Ranger's tail. The big horse turned his head to look backward, and
Bob's head swiveled too. 
             
"She smells the water," said Bob. He looked at her horse's face like
she was a human being, and spoke to her the same way. "You thirsty,
girl?" 
             
Buttercup answered with a whinny, and head-butted Ranger's right
hindquarter, as if to say "Move over, brute, and let a lady through." 
             
Bob laughed and told Brenda to drop her reins. She did, and was amazed
at how empty her hands felt, even though all she'd been doing was
holding them. She hadn't had to give her horse any directions. It had
followed Ranger for miles. But she had grown accustomed to feeling the
leather in her fingers. Suddenly it was hard to ride, as Buttercup
kicked into a canter. The easy rhythm she had learned fled, and her
butt bounced as Brenda grabbed for the saddle horn. That leaned her
forward and suddenly, her pussy was bouncing directly at the base of
the horn. The swell of the horn forced her knees apart, which only
increased the pressure. It was like a two hundred pound leather hammer,
thumping her clitty. Had she stood in the stirrups, she would have
eased both the bouncing and the pounding, but, instead, like a
greenhorn, she bounced. 
             
That the horse only went fifty or sixty yards is probably why she
stayed in the saddle as something exploded in her groin that she had
never felt before in her life. That something had origins in heat, that
expanded like a ball of fire into her abdomen, streaking up to her
nipples. If she hadn't been clinging to the horn with both hands, she
would have squeezed those nipples instinctively. 
             
She was overwhelmed by a combination of dizziness, her body flopping in
the saddle, a sudden inability to breathe, and ecstasy of a kind she'd
never experienced before. Buttercup trotted around a boulder and
Brenda's eyes took in the thirty-foot waterfall that was suddenly loud.
There was a haze of white mist where the water thundered into a pool
that appeared to be boiling, at least at that point. Buttercup came to
a jarring stop and dropped her head to drink. Brenda teetered, her legs
betraying her by trying now to stand up, which only tipped her forward
even more. 
             
The saddle horn stopped her from sliding down Buttercup's neck into the
water. It dug into that spot that was still full of joyous heat and
ecstasy, and that was making her so weak she just wilted, lying down
across the horn, leaning automatically to mitigate the force of that
horn digging into her belly. She felt herself sliding to her right and,
in a burst of energy, tried to dismount, instead of falling off. Her
hands, still on the horn, caught her with a force that jerked her
shoulder joints hard. Her right foot caught in the stirrup, and her
left one flailed, trying to find a place to land. She could feel her
hands slipping ... could sense the meeting of land and water beneath
her ... and knew she was going to fall gracelessly into the pool. 
             
Then, out of nowhere, strong arms cradled her at her knees and
shoulders. 
             
"AACK!" she grunted as her hands slipped free and she fell a few
inches, only to end up in Bob's arms, her right foot still tangled in
the stirrup. 
             
"Let's get your foot loose first," came his deep voice in her ear. She
was suddenly aware that his right hand, in catching her, had cupped her
right breast. She was still tense ... still "ready" to fall to the
ground, and concentrating on her foot was difficult. When she WAS able
to think about that foot, she tried to kick it, but the stirrup
wouldn't cooperate. Her foot had turned sideways in it, and it was
stuck. She kept thinking about how good it felt to have his hand on her
breast, putting pressure on her tingling nipple, and she couldn't
concentrate on her foot. 
             
Bob didn't know quite what to do. His arms were full of wriggling
teenage girl. He was acutely aware of her breast in his hand. He hadn't
meant to grab her there ... it had just happened that way. And all her
kicking did was move that breast around in his hand. He couldn't lift
her back up into the saddle, and he couldn't let her down. He wanted to
laugh at the fact that his brain recognized that she smelled good as
her smooth bald head rubbed against his face while she kicked. 
             
Her foot finally came free and she went limp, panting. He tried to set
her down, but her knees were rubbery, and she turned into him to put
her arms around him for support. His big hands pressed to her back,
now, and stroked up and down. 
             
"You're fine now," he said. 
             
"Easy for you to say," came her voice, muffled from being pressed into
his chest. 
             
"What happened?" he asked. "You were doing so well." 
             
"I don't know." She was breathing more regularly now, and looked up at
his face. "All of a sudden I ... like ... forgot how to ride or
something ... and then this amazing feeling came over me and I was
bouncing around and she stopped and I sort of fell off." 
             
"You OK now?" 
             
"I think so," she said, feeling strength come back into her legs. She
felt unaccountably happy, for having just made such a fool of herself.
"I actually feel wonderful!" She pulled away from him a little, testing
her knees. Her shirt drifted away from her chest, and Bob was suddenly
staring at bare cleavage, the inner slopes of her breasts showing
almost to their crowns. 
             
Damn! She was so cute! He felt the telltale flow of blood into his
groin, and stepped away from her in self defense. 
             
"You need to shave," she said, lifting fingers to her bald scalp, where
his two day growth had scratched her. "And you still need a bath, too,"
she added, wrinkling her nose. 
             
"Well, this is where I take them, sometimes," he said. "It's cold as
the dickens, but the bottom is sandy and smooth." 
             
She turned to look at the pool. "You're kidding!" She turned back to
look at him. "Aren't you?" Her voice strained a bit to overcome the
noise made by the waterfall. 
             
"Not a bit," he said. "That water is just a hair over forty degrees,
and it'll turn you blue, but, on a hot day, it sure feels good to get
clean." 
             
Brenda had a sudden image in her head of the two of them, standing in
cold water ... naked. She was startled by the thought. She didn't think
about standing around naked in front of a man. She leaned over and put
her fingertips in the water. 
             
"Brrrrr," she said, shaking her fingers off. "No way, Jose!" 
             
"Suit yourself," he said easily. "You can climb the rocks by the falls
while I clean up. The view up there is astonishing." 
             
Bob went to his saddle bags and dug into them to bring out a clean
shirt and pants. Ranger was drinking, while Buttercup had drifted away
to crop at the tender green shoots that grew in the clearing.
             
             ===========================================

Brenda climbed. The rock
here, though sharply sloped, was rough, and
presented plenty of hand and footholds. She turned once, to look back
down, and saw Bob's naked upper body, standing in the pool. He was
washing his arms and chest. His hands dipped to his groin and she
looked away ... back up. He was naked again. Within the space of just a
day, she had been around a naked man twice. She realized her nipples
were still tingling ... or maybe tingling again. She was breathing hard
now, from the climb, but already she was even with the tops of the
trees, and she'd only gone a third of the way up. She'd already passed
the place where water gushed from a crack in the rock, and was above
that now. The sun felt hot on her shoulders, and she felt herself
beginning to sweat

Chapter Six

Bob was dressed and lying
in the sun, trying to get warm after his icy bath, when Brenda got back
from her climb. She looked a little bedraggled, with dirt smeared on
her face. She wasn't really in shape for a serious climb, and slumped a
bit, looking tired. Dammit scampered over to get her ears scratched,
and Brenda squatted to do just that. 
             
Bob made a production of sniffing the air, and then pinching his nose
closed. "Now it's you who needs a bath," he commented. 
             
"Are you going to climb while I do that?" she asked. The climb had been
glorious, and she'd loved every second of it, even though it made her
hot, sweaty and tired. The water looked inviting, rather than cold, now. 
             
"No way, Jose," he said, smiling. 
             
"Well, I certainly can't take a bath with you sitting here," she said. 
             
She stood up and Dammit sat down to lean against her leg. 
             
"It's still as cold as it was," he said, covering his eyes with his
arm. "I won't watch," he added. 
             
"I thought I was sexy," she pouted, uncharacteristically. 
             
"You are," he said, his eyes still covered. 
             
"So if I'm so sexy and all that, you'll probably try to peek." 
             
"Probably," he said. 
             
She stood there, uncertainly, her shirt sticking to her sweaty skin.
The mist felt cool and inviting. Her climb had included more components
than just the physical hauling of her body up and down the rock face.
She'd thought a lot too. While she didn't recognize the fact that she'd
had an orgasm in those last few wild seconds of the morning ride, she
DID recognize that she thought about Bob in a way that was different
than she'd ever thought about another man. 
             
He had seen her naked ... or almost naked. But that wasn't the thing
uppermost in her mind. What she continued to go back to was the thing
that was even more important to her. Part of the nakedness he had seen
was her head. While Brenda had pretty well come to grips with the fact
that people would pity her, despite how she hated that, she could live
with that part. She had never been able, though, to be comfortable with
people seeing her baldness. People couldn't control the almost shiver
of distaste when they saw a bald girl. It made her disease ... visible
... in a way that made them uncomfortable. She went to great lengths to
ensure that nobody but her doctors saw her without a wig on. Even at
home she kept one on her head. 
             
But Bob hadn't shivered, or pulled back. He hadn't averted his eyes.
And somehow, she knew that he was being truthful when he said he found
it a little sexy ... that he found HER to be sexy looking. While she
climbed, she had experienced again, the rush of joy she'd felt when he
hadn't treated her any different without the wig. The feeling of
gratitude she felt toward this man, whom she had known only a few days,
was almost physical. 
             
As he lay before her on the grass, looking like he was relaxed and
almost asleep, she knew that, if she really did take off her clothes
and get into the water, he probably WOULD peek at her. Only a day or
two in the past, had she contemplated this, she would have been
scandalized ... would have thought of him as a pervert. But now ... 
             
She didn't so much "make a decision" as she just acted. 
             
"You promise you won't peek while I'm getting in?" she yelled. 
             
"Will it make you feel better if I do promise?" he countered. 
             
"Yes." 
             
"OK, I promise." 
             
Still, she turned her back to him to remove her shirt. She felt naughty
again as she felt the fabric slid over her shoulders where a bra strap
had always been, but wasn't right now. She wondered if she should push
both her jeans and panties down at the same time, and then felt foolish
for even thinking about that. She bent, and peeked herself, between her
left arm and her body. He was still lying there, his arm firmly over
his eyes. 
             
She was surprised to feel a little miffed that he wasn't peeking. 
             
But then, the thought that he MIGHT be peeking drove her to run to the
water. It was a serious mistake. Her toe caught a rock and she pitched
headlong into the icy pool. 
             
The first thing she had to think about was just breathing. The water
was so cold that it paralyzed her whole body. The shock was like being
hit by a truck. 
             
========================================

Bob had tried hard not to
peek, but lost that battle easily. He saw her push her pants down, and
his eyes fixed on her smooth, slim back, where it came around to where
he could barely see one hanging breast. When he saw her head start to
look at him, he lowered his arm again, and raised it only in time to
see her pitch headlong into the water. 
             
He knew very well how cold that water was, and what it would do to her. 
             
When he sat up, all that was visible amid swirling water was a pair of
apple shaped buttocks, so white that they stood out starkly against the
background of greens and browns behind them. 
             
He bounced up convulsively, and got his boots wet as the buttocks in
the water slowly listed to the right and she rolled. Big bubbles were
coming from about where her head would be, and he knew that all the
breath in her lungs was being explosively expelled from the shock of
the cold water. He was reaching for her left arm when her bald head
broke the surface, her eyes and mouth wide open. Things seemed to go
into slow motion for a few seconds, as he saw clear water drain from
her mouth, and her eyes blink twice. 
             
Then things speeded up as she took in a gasp of air and, unfortunately,
a little water that was still in her mouth. He pulled at her rigid
body, which was frozen as if in full rigor mortis, and it collapsed
into a loose bag of bones as she started coughing and gasping. He heard
the staccato tapping of teeth, even over the sound of the falls, and
saw goose bumps pop out on her shoulders and arms. 
             
Her body came unfrozen and she scrambled to stand, still coughing
forcefully, as he dragged her to the grassy bank. Lacking anything
else, he bent to pick up her shirt and began running it over her body
to get the water off of her, dragging her into the sunlit portion of
the glen around the pool. 
             
She hugged her body with her arms and trembled, standing there
miserably, as he knelt to run the now damp shirt over her legs and
buttocks. He noticed, in one part of his brain, how there was no hair
anywhere on her body ... anywhere. 
             
His intent was to stand and get her something dry to put on, but when
he did, she all but attacked him, pressing her body to his, her arms
going around him as she searched for the nearest source of heat. His
hands went to her back automatically, her damp shirt still in one of
them. He dropped it and stroked with his rough palms, fast and hard,
creating friction that would help warm her. 
             
Her coughing slowly tapered off and she tried to burrow into his chest.
His hands came perilously close to those apple cheeked buttocks, but
with a will he kept them off of that portion of her body. 
             
"I t-t-t-tripped," she stuttered, her lower jaw jumping up and down
rapidly as she shivered. 
             
"We need to get you into dry clothes," he said. She held on tightly,
instinct insisting that letting go of him would take away the warmth of
his body. He had been lying in the sun, and the front of his shirt was
warm. She felt something else warm on her calf, and looked down to see
Dammit licking water droplets off her skin. Her tail was wagging, and
Brenda wanted to laugh, but was shivering too hard at the moment. 
             
Bob held her for another half minute, and then repeated that she needed
to get dry clothing on, and she finally let go. She didn't move,
though, her arms trying to cover everything at once, so he went to her
saddle bags and opened them. He pulled out jeans first, by chance, and
turned to toss them to her. She was wiggling into them, her still damp
legs making it difficult, and her breasts bobbing as if they had a life
of their own, when he turned around with another shirt. As she tugged
and jumped around, he couldn't help but watch as her breasts wobbled
beautifully in the sunlight. Bob felt his traitorous prick begin to
stiffen again, and he went behind her to hold the shirt open so she
could slide her arms into the sleeves. 
             
The difference, to Brenda, was astonishing. She went from being
completely frozen, one second, to being caressed by warm clothing the
next, and it was so wonderful that she moaned with the happiness of it
all. She fumbled with the buttons of the shirt, her fingers still
stiff, and turned to him. 
             
"M-m-m-my f-f-fingers w-w-won't work," she stammered. 
             
Bob pulled the shirt over her breasts, and buttoned it. His fingers,
moving between her naked breasts, made him even stiffer and he wanted
to groan. She hadn't been able to button her jeans either. He had to
move around behind her to do that, and he felt her suck in her belly as
he pulled the cloth together. As soon as he was finished, she moved her
legs around, almost marching in place, as she tried to get her
circulation going again. 
             
"Wow," she groaned. "That didn't w-w-work out well at all!" 
             
At least her teeth were only chattering part time, now. 
             
"You're not supposed to just jump in," said Bob from behind her. 
             
She turned to him, feeling suddenly shy and nervous. This time he had
seen her completely naked. 
             
"I told you ... I tripped." 
             
"You're not supposed to do that either." He grinned. 
             
"Well, I'm not all hot and sweaty any more, that's for sure," she said,
taking his jibe cheerfully. She decided to give him some back. "Thanks
for saving me, even if you peeked while doing it." 
             
He laughed. "You just made me promise I wouldn't peek while you were
getting in. You didn't say anything about when you were getting out." 
             
"You're just a nasty old pervert," she said, sticking her tongue out at
him. 
             
"I don't blame you," he said, grinning. "I wouldn't want ..." 
             
"I know, I know," she cut him off. "See! That proves how much of a
pervert you are! All you think about is ..." She tapered off, not
knowing what to say. She'd almost said "sex", but that seemed so
foreign to her that it sounded wrong. "Sex" was something she had no
experience with, even if she'd heard the things that all young women
hear, from friends, on the internet and things like that. 
             
"Stuff!" she blurted, just to finish her sentence. 
             
He frowned. "I'm sorry," he said, unsure as to how upset she was. He
HAD seen her in a very intimate way ... twice now. He didn't want her
to think he thought about her that way. 
             
He didn't want to think about her that way, for that matter. He looked
up, as if Dannie's spectral face would be there, frowning at him.
Instead, his imagination saw her face ... sticking her tongue out at
him. 
             
It almost unnerved him, and he turned around to go fiddle with his
saddle bags. 
             
Brenda stood there, staring at him. Their conversation, despite the
embarrassment of the whole situation, had been light and happy, and
then he had frowned and turned away. She felt suddenly guilty for
calling him a pervert. He had helped her, and she had repaid him with
an insult. 
             
"I don't really think you're a pervert," she yelled. 
             
"If you only knew," he said under his breath. He turned around. "You
ready to go on?" 
             
========================================

The quiet seemed almost
deafening, once they rode away from the falls. The steady sound of the
crashing water had become a normal part of nature, while they were
there, and the lack of that sound now sounded alien, somehow. Brenda
could hear birds chirping, and limbs rubbing against each other as the
breeze tickled the tops of the trees. She could hear the creak of
leather in the saddles, and even the panting of Dammit as she trotted
along beside Bob and Ranger. 
             
When she spoke, her normal voice sounded like a shout to her own ears. 
             
"What are you going to show me today?" she called up to him. 
             
He looked over his shoulder. "Don't know for sure. Maybe nothing." 
             
"What does that mean?" she complained. 
             
"Don't know if we'll see anything," he said, maddeningly. "You'll just
have to wait and see." 
             
Brenda sank into a tiny pout. She didn't understand what he had said.
She was warm again, finally. She took stock of her body, and, again,
felt her nipples scraping across the shirt she was wearing. 
             
The horses hit a flat spot, and Bob made a clicking noise with is
mouth. Both horses jumped into a trot, and Brenda made unconscious
adjustments to the rhythm of the horse under her. She suddenly felt
pleasure between her thighs, where her crotch was hitting the saddle in
a measured beat. 
             
Now that she wasn't unprepared, she recognized the feelings of pleasure
as the same thing she had felt before. It was delicious, and the ball
of warmth in her belly was welcome this time. She began, almost
unconsciously, to experiment with how she held her body, and had just
found the perfect position to maximize the almost electric sensations
as her pussy impacted the saddle, when the horses slowed to a walk
again. She sighed, discontented, as the feelings went away, until she
leaned forward, and felt them again. 
             
Now, for the first time, she recognized what she was feeling as
something vaguely sexual. It wasn't as intense as it had been, but by
shifting in the saddle ... just so ... she found that it rubbed the
spot that the saddle had been bouncing against so deliciously. She felt
heat suffuse her cheeks as she realized what she was doing, but it felt
so good that she kept doing it. Her belly got tight, and she began to
wiggle in the saddle, to accentuate the feeling. The thought flitted
through her mind that she was masturbating. She'd heard of that, of
course. Some of her friends claimed to do that. But she'd never given
in to the temptation to try it. She'd heard other things about
masturbation too ... that it wasn't good for you ... that it could
cause bad things to happen. She told herself this couldn't be
masturbation. She wasn't touching herself. It was just the saddle,
making her feel good, somehow. 
             
When, fifteen minutes later, they trotted again, her reservations about
doing something decidedly naughty, flew to the winds as the bouncing
came back. This time she could feel it building, deep in her belly, and
when the waves of ecstasy washed over her, she was, more or less, ready
for them. 
             
"Ohhhhhhhhh," she groaned, as an orgasm wracked her young body. 
             
Bob looked over his shoulder. It sounded like she was in pain. 
             
"Whoa, boy," he said softly, and Ranger slowed to a walk. 
             
"Ohhhhh don't stop," she moaned. "Not yet!" 
             
It was too late, though. Buttercup had slowed automatically, when the
lead horse did, and came to a stop. She lowered her head automatically
to crop at the grass there, and Brenda leaned forward, her hands on the
saddle horn, to press her pussy against the base of the horn. 
             
"What's wrong," asked Bob, concerned. She looked faint and flushed, and
her eyes were closed. 
             
Now Brenda was truly embarrassed. Whether she wanted to call it
masturbation or not, she realized she had just done something sexual,
and she felt like the whole world must know it. 
             
"I'm sorry," she moaned. 
             
"Are you in pain?" he asked. "I forgot to have you use the paste
again." He turned his horse to face hers. "You need to take a break?" 
             
The last thing Brenda wanted to do now was get off her horse. She
suddenly wanted to be riding again, with him facing away from her, so
he wouldn't see her shame. 
             
"No ... it's OK," she said. "I just felt faint for a minute." 
             
"I don't want you falling off your horse again," he said, concerned. 
             
"It's nothing like that," she said automatically, wishing he'd just
ride on. "I'm OK, really." 
             
He rode up to her, his concern showing in his eyes. 
             
"If you need to stop ... to rest ... I'll understand. We're out here to
have a good time, not get you hurt." 
             
She looked away, feeling her face flame. "I can't explain it," she said
shortly. "But I'm fine. I just got some weird feelings ... that's all." 
             
"Weird feelings," he said. He saw her blush then, for what it was. He
had been afraid she was running a fever when he first saw the crimson
stain on her cheeks. It hit him like a ton of bricks. It happened quite
frequently, actually. Women who hadn't ridden much, or even those who
had, but not in the protracted way that they rode on the ranch, got ...
excited. His ranch hands had laughed about it ... keeping count in a
friendly competition as to how many orgasms the women they tended had,
without a man ever touching them. Now this young girl had joined their
ranks. He remembered the long, drawn out moan he'd heard, and felt his
own face get hot as she sat, uncomfortably, in front of him. 
             
"OK," he said, trying to sound like he wasn't interested any more. He
wheeled his horse around and continued on his way. 
             
========================================

Both riders were in
torment, in a way, as they went the last four miles of the day's ride. 
             
For Brenda, the ability to sit just so, and feel that wonderful
massage, made her think she had suddenly become a sex fiend. She had to
concentrate to keep herself from doing it all the time, now that she'd
discovered it. And, because she sat differently than she had before,
the saddle rubbed her raw in different places. Several times she almost
asked to stop ... to get out the salve and apply it. But she remembered
how deadened it made her skin feel, and there was a part of her that
she didn't want to deaden. 
             
Bob's torment was of a different kind. The vision of the juncture of
her legs, as he'd dried her after her fall into the pool, kept popping
into his head. Her pussy lips, completely bare, had been pale, almost
white, and thin, and tightly closed. The split between the lips had
seemed all the more visible to him, because the shadow between them,
where they dipped inward, made the lips seem more prominent. Now he
knew those lips were rubbing the saddle on the horse behind his. He
felt every jolt of his own horse's movement, and he envisioned those
lips as flushed and thick, now, like Dannie's had been. Even before she
had Kyle, her pussy lips had been full and red, especially when she was
aroused, which had been a lot. She loved riding for some of the same
reasons other women loved it. He had spent countless hours staring at
those luscious lips, as she urged him to continue lapping at them, and
then pulled them apart to expose her clit, to have it sucked. 
             
He knew he shouldn't think of Brenda like that ... laid out on a bed
... legs open in invitation ... her pussy lips shiny with the liquor of
her arousal. He couldn't help but turn around to look at her, and her
movements only confirmed that she was, indeed, rocking in her saddle,
eyes closed, her lower lip grasped gently between pearly white teeth.
Those eyes opened suddenly, and he almost fell off his horse trying to
turn back around before she saw him staring at her. 
             
Her sexuality penetrated his hastily erected mental barriers easily,
and he realized he was stiff as a board in his jeans. 
             
"Ohhh man!" he groaned to himself. In the nine months since she'd died,
he hadn't had the urge to do anything at all about the infrequent
erections that came over him, usually for no good reason. Now his balls
hurt suddenly, and he knew he'd have to do something about it that
night. 
             
When Ranger walked around a rock outcrop he recognized, he felt almost
giddy with relief. He hoped that what he planned here would distract
him from these dangerous thoughts. 
             
========================================

Brenda was having serious
second thoughts about not asking him to stop so she could use the
analgesic salve. She had had two more orgasms, and she was in serious
pain now from rubbing too much. When Bob stopped suddenly, and swung
down, she felt relief wash over her. Stiffly she dismounted, walking a
little bowlegged as her jeans scraped tender flesh. 
             
"Thank you for stopping," she said softly. 
             
He turned to look at her. The look on his face was guilty, but she
misunderstood it to mean he felt badly about making her ride too long. 
             
"I was just about to ask you to take a break," she added, to make him
feel better. 
             
"We might get to see something pretty neat," he said, turning to his
saddle bags. He pulled out a pair of binoculars. "We'll have to climb
twenty or thirty feet, though." 
             
Brenda didn't know if climbing would hurt or not. Right now, she didn't
want to get back on her horse until tomorrow, if possible though, so
she was willing to try anything else. 
             
This climb was different. They went up a crack in the rock, stepping
into it at the bottom of a "V" shape. He showed her how to put her back
against one side, and walk up the other, then move her upper torso with
her arms, stiff behind her. It was strenuous, but she only had to do
that for ten feet, and it took her mind off the pain. He was there
before her, standing on a narrow ledge, and leaned down to pull her up
beside him. She looked down into the V, and felt a moment of panic. Ten
feet looked more like thirty from where she was. 
             
"Hold on to my belt in the back," he instructed her. She did, and he
started leading her along the ledge, which went upward and around the
face of the rock. Suddenly, they were standing on a shelf of rock,
about three feet wide, with a rock face on her right that went straight
up as far as she could see, and wide open space on her left. She hugged
the rock face with her back as she turned to look at the emptiness. She
was looking across a valley at the side of another mountain, about a
mile away. The whole valley was spread out before her. The sun was
behind them, low in the sky, and it illuminated the opposite
mountainside like a spotlight. Parts of the valley were in the shadow
of the rock face she was leaning against, and it was so black there
that it looked like a thousand feet of emptiness, going down into the
depths of the Earth. 
             
"Wow," she said, in awe. 
             
Bob had brought the binoculars, and lifted them to his eyes, and began
scanning the opposite mountain side. She saw he was looking just below
the tree line, and wondered what he was looking for. He took so long
that she leaned forward, to peek over the edge of the ledge they were
standing on. It went straight down into darkness, and she leaned back,
panting, fear eating at her guts. 
             
"Ahhh," said Bob, the binoculars no longer moving back and forth. "I
hoped she'd be there." 
             
"Who?" asked Brenda breathlessly. 
             
He handed her the binoculars, and showed her how to focus them. Then he
pointed. 
             
"See that gray rock, up high, that's got pink rock on both sides?" 
             
"Yeah ... it looks a little like an exclamation point," she said. 
             
"OK, focus on that, and go down slowly, until you're in the trees.
You'll see Spruce firs first. Keep going down until you see the green
change, just where the Douglas firs take over. A little lower, you'll
see the green change again, to the darker Junipers. There's a big patch
of raspberries, that have much lighter green. Look around in the
raspberries for something black." 
             
She did as he said, finding the gray rock, and then dropping her field
of view. She saw the colors change, like he said they would, though the
trees looked almost the same to her. The lower Junipers were easy to
spot, and then she saw the lighter green of the raspberry bushes. 
             
"What am I looking for?" she asked, letting the binoculars go from side
to side. 
             
He was taking breath to answer her when she saw the bear. 
             
It was black, and there were two cubs with her. She held her breath,
and then let it out in a long sigh. 
             
"It's a bear!" she sighed. "And it has babies!" 
             
"She's teaching them to harvest the first raspberries," he said, his
voice near her ear. "You've been in her den." 
             
"She's that bear?" Brenda watched as the cubs ignored their mother, who
continued to scrape branches into her mouth with her paw. 
             
"Well, this is her range," said Bob softly. "There are two up here,
that I know about, but the other one ranges South of here. This valley,
and the one we rode through when we left her den are hers." 
             
"Where's the daddy bear?" asked the girl, breathlessly. 
             
"He's probably down lower. She won't have anything to do with him while
she has cubs around her. He might hurt them." 
             
"Why?" she whined. "He's their daddy!" 
             
"Bears are bears," he said, unable to explain it.  
             
"That's sad," said the girl. 
             
"I was hoping she'd be over there, so you could see her," said Bob. 
             
"The cubs are eating grass!" said Brenda. 
             
"In the Spring, that's what they eat," said Bob. "Leaves, grass, bark.
In summer time they'll move on to berries and small animals. They'll
eventually get down to the lake, and take fish from where the streams
flow into it. This fall they'll eat acorns and such, as they move back
up toward the den. She had the cubs two winters ago, though, so I doubt
she'll let them stay with her next winter. They'll be on their own by
then, and she'll probably be pregnant again. I hope so, anyway." 
             
"You WANT bears on your ranch?" asked Brenda, still watching the family
of bears intently. 
             
"There's room for them, and they don't bother us," he said simply.
"Time to go. We need to make the cabin by sundown." 
             
"Cabin?" she asked. 
             
"It's a line shack, really, at the upper reaches of the high meadows.
We have to drop another thousand feet to get there. I thought you might
be ready for a real bed by this time." 
             
"Down?" asked Brenda, dropping the binoculars. Down meant that her
pussy would be hitting the saddle horn again. She didn't know how much
more of that she could take. She made a very practical decision. "I
need to put on some more of that saddle sore stuff." 
             
========================================

They had to climb back
down, which was a bit harder than getting up. When they came to the
last ten feet, Bob went first, and then just stood at the bottom of the
wedge and had her step down onto his raised hands. She walked her hands
down the rock face as he lowered her. The bottom of her shirt hung
loosely, and Bob was thankful for the darkness in the wedge. He was
quite sure he could have seen all the way to her breasts. She ended up
sitting on his shoulders, her pussy pressed to the back of his throat,
and both of them were intimately aware of that fact, though nothing was
said. He knelt and she was able to climb off of him. 
             
Once they were back to the horses, and an unhappy Dammit, who hadn't
been able to follow them up to the ledge, Brenda got out the paste.
There was no bunch of bushes, or anything like that for her to hide
behind, so Bob simply turned his back as she pushed down her jeans.
Seeing herself with no panties on looked odd to her, but that thought
fled as soon as she smeared the paste along her inner thighs, and over
her pussy lips. The soothing numbness replaced the feel of her fingers,
stimulating her where the saddle had rubbed, and she sighed in relief. 
             
"That's better," she almost moaned. 
             
"You decent yet?" asked Bob. 
             
"NO!" she yipped. She pulled up her jeans, feeling foolish, somehow,
for yelling like that. She sighed again as she buttoned her jeans.
"Though I guess it wouldn't matter. You've seen me more naked than my
parents have ... at least lately." 
             
"Yeah," sighed Bob. 
             
When she swung up into the saddle, Brenda knew she had made the right
decision. Her whole crotch area was numb, and it felt like it had when
she'd first started the trip. She was able to look around, and pay
attention to the country they were riding through. They went down
steeply and quickly, and it was easy to feel the air getting warmer.
The forest smelled different to ... a more earthy smell, with the musky
odor of decaying leaves. The trees began to thin out, and the same
Juniper bushes she had seen in the binoculars began to appear, along
with other low bushes. 
             
They rode between two big boulders, and suddenly there was a field of
grass in front of them, with trees on both sides. She saw what looked
like a tiny wooden shack off in the distance, with what looked like a
cloud of some kind hovering near it. 
             
"What's that?" she asked, pointing. 
             
"That, my little filly, is our hotel for the night. It has all the
amenities. We can cook a real meal, and sleep on soft beds ... at least
softer than last night. It even has a hot tub." 
             
"You're not supposed to tell me lies until we're sitting by the fire,"
she laughed. 
             
"I'm not lying. There's some hot springs next to the cabin. See the
mist? The last water we had to bathe in was ice cold. You have to ease
into this water because it's over a hundred degrees." 
             
"Oh," said Brenda. Even though she'd taken a "bath" only hours before,
the thought of soaking in hot water appealed to her

Chapter SevenBrenda looked around the
small cabin curiously. They had taken care of the horses, and he was
starting a fire in a small pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room.
There were two beds, on opposite sides of the room. The wall opposite
the door was lined with shelves, that were stocked with canned goods,
cooking utensils and plastic containers for things like flour, sugar,
salt and the like. The bedding had been rolled up, tied, and suspended
from the ceiling when they got there. Bob had told her that was to keep
rodents from using it as a nest. 
             
Cans of beef stew were opened and put to warm on the top of the stove.
Bob whipped up dough for biscuits, that he put on a griddle, also on
top of the stove. There were little packets of butter with the KFC logo
on them, in a plastic container. They ate with gusto as the sun went
down. 
             
"You're not such a bad cook when it's out of a can," Brenda teased him. 
             
"Pretty hard to screw up beef stew," said Bob, mopping up the remaining
sauce in his bowl with a crumbly biscuit. 
             
"You did make the biscuits, though," said the girl, as if she was
reflecting. "They're not bad either." 
             
"You're too kind," he said dryly. "You look like you're feeling better." 
             
The memory of why she had looked feverish made her ... look feverish
again as she blushed, and her eyes went a little out of focus. The
tumult in her mind, that having orgasms had caused, came back.
Thankfully, the memories didn't cause that warm spot to grow in her
belly again. She was holding her mostly-eaten bowl of stew in one hand,
and almost unconsciously, she brushed the fingers of her free hand
against the crotch of her jeans, in an attempt to make sure that the
analgesic salve was still working. 
             
It was. 
             
Her eyes cleared as she realized what she was doing, and focused on
Bob's eyes, open wide ... staring at her hand. 
             
"Ohhhh," she moaned in embarrassment. "I ... the horses ..." she
stammered, trying to explain. "I mean when I was riding ..." Tears
suddenly filled her eyes as the embarrassment overwhelmed her. She held
the bowl helplessly and streaks of wet appeared on her cheeks. 
             
Bob recognized her horror. He didn't know quite what to do either. He
opted, like many men, for trying to "fix" it. 
             
"Hey," he said softly. "It's nothing new. It happens to women all the
time." 
             
"Not to meeee," she moaned. Then his comment penetrated. "Really?" she
asked hopefully. Maybe she wasn't as perverted as she thought. 
             
"All the time," said Bob, uncomfortably. Now that he had spoken about
it, he wished he hadn't. "It's almost inevitable, I guess. I mean what
with the saddle rubbing ..." Now he was the one who turned red. 
             
"I couldn't help it," she moaned. "It just happened." 
             
"It's OK," said Bob, for lack of anything else to say. 
             
"Does it happen to men too?" she asked hopefully, wiping at her
tear-streaked cheeks. 
             
"Well ... no, I guess not." said Bob. 
             
"Why not?" she asked. She wanted ALL humans to have the same ...
problem. "I mean it rubs against them too." 
             
This was getting worse and worse, as far as Bob was concerned. Here he
was, alone in a cabin with a girl he was attracted to ... had seen
naked ... close up naked, in fact ... and they were talking about sex.
Well ... almost, anyway. 
             
"I guess it's different," he said. "I mean, I guess men don't feel the
same thing." 
             
"Oh." She sounded disappointed. "The salve helped," she added. 
             
"Oh," he said. "I guess that's good." 
             
"You have no idea," she sighed. "I was afraid the last part of the ride
today would kill me." 
             
Bob knew Dannie, and lots of other women, enjoyed riding horses, for
the very reason that Brenda was talking about. He had never talked to a
woman about it, though. It wasn't the kind of thing that came up in
conversation between men and women ... at least in his experience. 
             
"It was that bad?" he asked. He was curious, despite his reluctance to
be in the discussion. 
             
"It was horrible!" she said. She blinked. "Well, not horrible, exactly.
I didn't understand what was happening at first. Then, when I did, it
was kind of nice, but then I couldn't stop it from happening. Nothing
like that ever happened to me before." 
             
"You're kidding," he said. "You're what ... sixteen?" 
             
She looked at him archly. "That doesn't mean I've done anything." 
             
He held up a hand. "That's not what I meant." She kept still, and he
felt obligated, somehow, to say more. "What I meant was that most girls
your age have ... I mean they know enough ... you know ..." He stopped,
before he could dig himself any deeper. "Haven't you had boyfriends?"
he asked frantically. 
             
"Ricky Thompson kissed me when I was thirteen," she said. "Since then
I've been too busy with the doctors to pay attention to boys. I thought
I already told you that." 
             
"Wow," said Bob. Somehow he had assumed that all sixteen year old girls
were ... experienced. He wouldn't have been able to define what he
meant by "experienced" if he'd have tried, but his overall impression
was that a girl her age would know an orgasm when it happened. He was
mildly astonished that he had obviously been wrong. In a strange way,
that made the conversation less threatening. He wasn't talking to a
savvy, experience young woman, who knew what she was doing on that
horse. He was talking to a girl who was as confused about things as he
was. It made him feel better. 
             
"I'm sorry I didn't know," he said truthfully. "If I'd have known,
maybe I could have helped." 
             
She looked at him oddly. "I don’t think I needed any help.
Buttercup seemed to be doing just fine." 
             
He flushed again. "I didn't mean THAT kind of help!" He tried to think
of something to say, but couldn't. "Doesn't it make you uncomfortable
to talk about this?" 
             
Brenda thought about that for a minute. While she had been horribly
embarrassed, in the beginning, to admit what had happened, his reaction
to that admission hadn't been what she expected. She had expected him
to disapprove, and call her a bad girl. Didn't all adults think that
any kind of sexual behavior in a teenager was horrible? But he had only
tried to make her feel better. Again, he treated her like an equal,
rather than an adult, interacting with a youth. She realized she liked
that very much. 
             
"Not with you, I guess," she said finally. "You're different than most
adults. You don't talk to me like I'm a kid. My parents would never
even think about talking about sex with me." 
             
"Well, it sure makes me uncomfortable," he said. 
             
"Oh," she said. She sounded sad. "I'll stop, then." 
             
"You don't have to stop," he said, feeling like he had cut her off at
the knees. "It just seems strange, talking to a sixteen year old girl
about ... things like this." 
             
"You said I looked sexy," she said, maddeningly. 
             
"Yes," he admitted. 
             
"So doesn't that mean you were thinking about sex then?" 
             
He looked at her helplessly. She was so direct. People just didn't
discuss sex so directly. 
             
"I'm not supposed to think about sex when I look at you," he said. 
             
She looked at him craftily. "You didn't answer the question." 
             
"What would your father think about me answering that question, if he
were here?" Bob countered. 
             
"My father isn't here," she pointed out calmly. 
             
"Look," he said, frustrated. "What difference does it make, anyway?" 
             
"You mean because I'm going to die," she said. 
             
"NO! That's NOT what I meant," he said almost angrily. "You're you, and
I'm me. I'm ten years older than you. I'm not supposed to think about
sex and you at the same time, and you're not supposed to be asking
these kinds of questions." 
             
This was what Brenda was more used to. Adults who shifted the subject
... made rules ... shut kids out. She was disappointed in him. 
             
"Back in the bear den," she reminded him. "You flirted with me ... kind
of. And some other times too." 
             
He wanted to close his eyes. He wished she'd go away. "OK, I'll admit I
was flirting with you a little. I flirt with some of the guests,
sometimes." 
             
"Why?" she asked. 
             
"I don't know. It makes them feel good, I guess." 
             
"How could you possibly know how it makes them feel?" she asked. 
             
She obviously wasn't going away. But her tone was serious, and Bob
heard that. He was reminded that this girl was doing some of the last
learning ... exploration ... living ... that she was going to get to
do. She was acting more like a woman, and less like a scatterbrained
girl. He felt calmer. If she wanted to talk serious ... he could talk
serious. 
             
"I guess I don't," he said. "People flirt. It's fun ... isn't it?
Doesn't it make people feel good?" 
             
"It made me feel good," she admitted. "But later ... when you saw me
naked, and you got ..." She stopped. He didn't understand that she was
referring to the bulge in his pants. "Anyway, when I was on Buttercup
... and those feelings started happening, and I felt really good, but I
thought I wasn't supposed to ... that it's wrong." 
             
"Some people say it's wrong," Bob admitted. "I don't think so.
Especially now, in your situation." 
             
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked. 
             
He frowned at her. He remembered he was trying to talk to her like she
was an adult. 
             
"You don't have a lot of time left," he said. "I don't think
experiencing ... things ... while you still can, I mean ... I just
don't think it's a bad thing." He realized he had been too vague, and
went on. "OK, I don't have a daughter, but if I did, I'd want her to
wait to ... do things like that." She started to say something, but he
cut her off. "That's not because it's a bad thing to do. It's because
it starts something that turns into something else ... something even
adults have a hard time controlling. A young person shouldn't get into
that situation, because they start wanting to do thing they aren't
ready for yet ... emotionally, I mean." 
             
"Like sex," she said. 
             
"Yes, like sex. Masturbation leads to sex - at least I think so - and I
wouldn't want my daughter to start having sex at your age. So I'd tell
her not to do that." He frowned. "But with you, the situation is
different. You're not going to get to grow older, and experience things
slower. So that's why I don't think I'd tell you the same thing. Does
that make any sense?" 
             
She was staring at him, a strange look on her face. Her ears had heard
his words, which in his mind were about masturbation, but her mind had
gone beyond them. She hadn't though about "having sex", just like she
hadn't thought about "masturbation" in any serious manner. His
argument, if taken a little further, suggested that ... having sex ...
was something she might never get to do, and therefore ... 
             
"Brenda?" His voice broke her out of her reverie. 
             
"I'm thinking," she said, wanting to go back to this whole idea about
experiencing ... things ... while she still could. 
             
She looked at Bob. He had called her sexy. He had meant it. She knew
that because he had ... reacted. He had flirted with her, and despite
what he claimed about flirting just to make women feel better, she
somehow knew that a man wouldn't flirt with a woman he didn't find
attractive. She'd never felt the urge to flirt with any male ... except
him. She liked getting that response from him. As she thought back on
it, she decided she liked that he had seen her naked. His behavior then
... both times ... had made her feel very good too. In fact, she felt
the urge to flirt with him now. 
             
"You said we could go to the hot springs," she said. 
             
Bob was thrown by her sudden shift in topic. 
             
"Yes." 
             
"I want to do that." 
             
"OK," he said. "I'll show you where to get in and out, and then come
back up here to get the beds ready." 
             
"No," she said. "I want you to stay there. We can both soak together." 
             
Bob felt his nuts tighten. 
             
"I don't think that would be a good idea," he said. 
             
"Why?" she asked, again, maddeningly. 
             
"Didn't we just talk about this?" he asked, exasperated. 
             
"No, you told me what you'd tell your daughter. I'm not your daughter.
Didn't you just say that it was all right for me to experience things
before it's too late?" 
             
"I wasn't talking about getting in a hot tub naked with a man," he said
dryly. 
             
"This is supposed to be my last wish," she said. 
             
"That's not fair, Brenda," he groaned. 
             
"Why not?" she asked. "I'm not going to rape you or anything. I just
want to feel all warm and still be able to talk to you. I like talking
to you." 
             
"I'm not worried about you raping me," he said. "But I'm a man, and, as
you already pointed out, I DO find you attractive. That bothers me." 
             
"It doesn't bother me," she said serenely. "Why should it bother you?" 
             
"If you'd have gotten to go on a few dates, you'd understand," he said
miserably. 
             
"You're afraid you'll get an erection," she stated. 
             
He stared at her. 
             
"OK," he admitted. "Yes. I'm afraid I'll get an erection." 
             
"You had one before ... when you saw me naked." She didn't smile. 
             
"You weren't supposed to see that," he groaned. 
             
"I did, and I wasn't upset then," she replied. 
             
"You're the strangest girl I think I ever met," he said. 
             
"No I'm not. I'm just the only girl you ever met who knew she was going
to die soon." 
             
========================================

In the end, he negotiated
with her, and she agreed that they'd go to the hot springs dressed in
their underwear. She dug a bra and panty out of her saddle bags and, to
his astonishment, took her clothing off in front of him to put them on. 
             
"What are you doing?" he gasped, as she dropped her jeans. She had
already shrugged off her shirt while he wasn't looking. 
             
"I'm putting on my bra and panties," she said patiently. "You said
that's what you wanted ... right?" She pulled her panties on, unaware
that she was wiggling into them the same way she had when he'd seen her
do this before, and unaware that her breasts were jiggling around like
there were chipmunks inside them, trying to find a way out. She was
also unaware he was already stiff. "Besides, you already saw me naked
twice." 
             
"It isn't the same thing," he moaned. 
             
She picked up the bra and put it on. "I'm ready," she said, standing
there. 
             
"OK, wait outside," he said. 
             
"Why?" she asked. "I'm going to walk down there with you, and I'll see
you then, won't I?" 
             
Bob felt the urge to scream, but suppressed it. No wonder people hated
dealing with teenagers. Arguing wasn't going to do any good, though, so
he took off his shirt and sat on the bunk to kick off his boots. 
             
Brenda watched with interest as his bare chest came into view. She'd
seen hundreds of males bare-chested, at the swimming pool, but this was
somehow different. Maybe it was the undressing part that made it seem
so much more intimate. She didn't know. She smiled as he turned away
from her to lower his jeans. He dropped them on the bunk and his hands
went to his groin. 
             
"You go ahead," he said over his shoulder, his face red. "I'll follow
you." 
             
"I've heard that men like to be behind a woman and watch her walk,"
said Brenda grinning. She couldn't believe how powerful she felt at
that moment. She knew she should be terrified, but she wasn't. He was
acting like a little boy, and she felt older than him, somehow. 
             
"You're going to get yourself in hot water," he warned. 
             
She laughed. "I certainly hope so! Isn't that what a hot spring is all
about?" 
             
Bob threw up his hands in defeat. He'd just get it over with. His prick
was tenting out his briefs obscenely, but she'd asked for it, and he
was getting mad enough at this whole ridiculous situation to strike
back. He turned to face her. 
             
Her eyes went immediately to the front of his shorts. 
             
"Oh my," she said softly. 
             
"You're not supposed to stare at it," he growled. "It isn't polite." 
             
"Don't even try it," she said back. "Men stare at women's boobs all the
time." 
             
"Then you can stare at my boobs," he grunted. "Let's go." 
             
========================================

The walk to the springs
wasn't far, because the cabin had been intentionally placed close to
them. Brenda smelled sulpher as they approached, but it wasn't strong.
She heard the burble of water. 
             
"It sounds like it's boiling," she said. 
             
Bob, relieved to think of something other than the half naked
woman/girl beside him, told her how the water bubbled up from a crack
in the ground, and sometimes looked like it was boiling, but wasn't
that hot. 
             
"You have to get in pretty slowly, or it will be very uncomfortable,"
he said. 
             
"Hold on to me, so I don't trip, this time," she said, joking. She was
surprised to feel him take her hand. It felt hard and rough in hers. 
             
The pool wasn't as large as she'd expected. It was perhaps six feet
across, and more or less kidney shaped, with the water bubbling up at
one end. It overflowed across a four or five foot shelf of rock that
looked white, yellow and pink in the setting sun, and then dumped into
another smaller pool. There were four or five more pools further down.
She started to step in and his hand pulled her back. 
             
"This isn't the one for us," he said. "It's a little cooler further
down." 
             
They walked, barefoot, across the rock shelf, and Brenda felt the sharp
crystalline nature of the colored stone. Chemicals in the water leached
out and adhered to the rock. He warned her to be careful, because the
rock was sharp. He took her to the third pool in the series, and she
saw why immediately. The rock there had worn away in an odd manner,
leaving shelves, almost like seats, a couple of feet under the water.
They were perfect for sitting on, with deeper water in the middle,
where one's feet could float. 
             
"The water saps your strength," he warned. "don't get off the shelf and
try to swim." 
             
She dipped a toe in the water. She'd always liked her showers hot, and
the temperature was, to her mind, perfect. She stepped down, feeling
the delicious heat rise to her knees. Bob got in more slowly. By the
time he was standing on a shelf, she was already sitting and leaning
back with her eyes closed. 
             
"Ohhhh this is just perfect," she sighed. 
             
========================================

They didn't talk for ten
minutes. Both half floated in the water, thinking about things in
general. Brenda opened her eyes and looked to see Bob looking at her.
His eyes darted away, and again, she felt the power of being a woman. 
             
"Tell me about naming your horse 'Ranger'," she said. Then she changed
the subject. "Where's Dammit, anyway?" 
             
"She's out finding supper, I imagine," said Bob. "You might notice I
didn't pack any dog food." 
             
"Oh, sure. OK, now tell me about why Ranger is Ranger." 
             
Brenda reached behind her and unhooked her bra. She watched it float
away from her chest, collected it into a sodden mass, and reached
behind her to lay it on the rock behind her. 
             
"What are you doing?" asked Bob, nervously. 
             
"It's uncomfortable," she said. "Tell me about Ranger." 
             
Bob was about halfway through describing how, when the colt was born,
he was reading Lord of the Rings, and his favorite characters were the
rangers. 
             
About then Brenda brought her panties up out of the water, squeezed
them as dry as possible, and added them to the bra. 
             
"I thought we agreed to do this in our underwear," he said. 
             
"We agreed to come here in our underwear," she said. "You didn't say
anything about what would happen when we were in the pool. Now ... Go
on." 
             
Bob could see her breasts through the water. It wasn't completely dark
yet. Her nipples seemed to waver and move as the water above them
lapped around her upper chest. 
             
"Well, he was coal black, and he had spirit, even as a colt, and he
just looked like a horse a ranger would ride. So I named him Ranger." 
             
"That's cool," she said, playing in the water with her hands. "Where's
the soap?" 
             
Bob blinked. In the uproar about all this, he'd completely forgotten
about soap and towels. 
             
"In the cabin," he said meekly. "With the towels." 
             
"Oh, I see," said Brenda, as if it made perfect sense. "Where, in the
cabin?" she asked. 
             
"On the shelf, beside the Dutch oven," he said automatically. 
             
"Be right back," she said. 
             
With a surge of water that washed over Bob and splashed in his face,
she heaved herself up and jumped up to the rim of the pool. Her
buttocks flashed at him as she took off running toward the cabin. He
heard her yelp once, when she stepped on something sharp, but she never
broke stride. 
             
Her return was more sedate ... and much slower. She walked carefully
across the thick grass, the towels held in one hand, and the soap in
the other. She used neither of them to cover her body. She made it even
worse when she stopped right above him. 
             
"Where should I put these?" she asked innocently. 
             
Bob tore his eyes away from the tight slit that was her sex, and looked
back down, ashamed that he'd gawked like a school boy. 
             
"Someplace dry," he croaked. 
             
"OK," she said, amiably. 
             
When she got back into the water, she sat right next to him. 
             
"This is so wonderful," she moaned, waving her arms in the water. They
bumped into Bob's. 
             
"Aren't you sitting a little close?" asked Bob. 
             
"No," she said. 
             
"I think you're sitting a little close." His voice sounded raspy. 
             
"OK," she said. She didn't move away. "I saw the carving above the door
when I went to get the soap," she said softly. 
             
Bob closed his eyes. One of the ranch hands, in a moment of idle mirth,
had carved "The love nest" above the door in one inch letters. 
             
"Slim thought he was being cute," he croaked. He cleared his voice.
"That's not why I brought you here." 
             
"I know," she said, her voice casual. 
             
"Now who's flirting with who?" he asked, trying to make her think
seriously. 
             
"I'm flirting with you," she said. 
             
"Why?" he asked. He suddenly remembered her asking "why?" several
times, and felt silly. 
             
"Because it's fun. Like you said, it makes people feel good ... doesn't
it?" 
             
"I'm not sure what I'm feeling would be called 'good'," he said sternly. 
             
"I thought about what you said," she said. "About how, if things were
different, I'd grow up, and go on dates, and get ready for things." She
turned her head towards his. "But things aren't different. I'm not
going to grow up. I'll never meet a man, and fall in love with him, and
do ... things." 
             
"I'm sorry about that," he said. "Really." He turned, and her face was
right in front of his. "I wish things were different." 
             
"They're not, though," she said softly. "I never thought about that
kind of thing, until today." 
             
"I'm sorry I brought it up," he said. He was sorry too. He had the
feeling he had opened Pandora's box, and this young woman had been
enveloped by what came out. 
             
"I don't think I am," she said seriously. "This trip has been wonderful
already. I've gotten to see things I thought I'd never see, and do
things I thought I'd never do." 
             
"I'm glad about that," he said. 
             
"There are other things I never thought I'd get to do ..." she said. 
             
"Brenda," he pleaded, "Please don't do this." 
             
"Do what?" she asked. "I'm just talking." 
             
"You're not just talking," he said. "You're sitting beside me, stark
naked, hinting that you want to have sex." 
             
"I think I do want to have sex," she said. 
             
"Not with me," he said weakly. 
             
"I don't see anybody else around here I could have sex with," she said. 
             
"This isn't what you came here for," he argued. "Your parents would
kill me if they just saw us sitting here, much less if we did what
you're talking about." 
             
"My parents aren't here. I'm here. You're here. This trip is about
fulfilling my last wish. My last wish has changed a little bit. That's
all." 
             
"That's not a little bit, Brenda," he gasped. 
             
"Are you still hard?" she asked. 
             
Bob, thankful that the hot water had robbed him of his manhood, shook
his head. 
             
"Oh," she said. There was devastation in her voice ... the devastation
of a young woman who thought she was desirable, and just found out she
wasn't. 
             
It cut into Bob like a knife. 
             
"It's not what you think," said Bob impulsively. "It's the hot water." 
             
He wondered immediately if he should have just kept his mouth shut and
let her be in pain. He couldn't do this with her. It just wasn't right.
She'd be in pain, sooner or later anyway, when he refused to grant her
request. 
             
"Oh," she said, sounding relieved. 
             
He turned to face her and, again, her face was only inches from his.
The only reason he couldn't smell her breath was because the fumes from
the water had deadened his nose somewhat. He had an errant thought that
it was a good thing, since he hadn't brushed his teeth since breakfast. 
             
"I know that you think you want to ... experiment," he said. "But I
don't think you understand how involved that is." 
             
She looked puzzled. "How involved could it be? People do it all the
time." 
             
"That's not what I mean," he explained. "It's a very personal thing,
and if people try to do it without being in love ... well, it just
doesn't work very well. You could be very disappointed. There's pain
involved ... the first time. It's not all roses and honey. Sometimes
there's even some blood." He meant to convince her that it would be too
uncomfortable to contemplate. 
             
"I like you," she said. "Maybe even a lot." 
             
"And when did this happen?" he asked. "You've known me a whole two days
now, right?" 
             
"I know when I like somebody," she said, sounding injured. "You're
nice, and gentle. You tell the best lies I ever heard. You're fun to be
with and talk to. You don't treat me like I'm a poor, sad, sick little
girl. All of those things make me like you." She took a breath and went
on. "You're obviously a gentleman. I wouldn't have imagined I'd have to
beg to do something like this. I thought men were horny all the time." 
             
"We ARE horny all the time," he grunted. "That doesn't mean we should
act on it." 
             
"Not even if it's my last wish?" she whined. 
             
"You don't know what you're asking for," he insisted. 
             
"Will you at least kiss me?" She tried to put an obvious melancholy
look on her face. "Nobody besides Ricky Thompson has ever kissed me ...
not on the lips ... not like I'm a girl." 
             
"That's part of my problem," moaned Bob. "You ARE a girl. If the law
had been around today I'd have probably been arrested five or six times
just for my thoughts!" He blinked. Maybe he shouldn't have said that. 
             
"So you do think I'm sexy," she purred, pressing a naked breast into
his arm. 
             
"Of course I do," he groaned. "But you're a girl!" 
             
"That's only because I don't get to grow up and be a real woman," she
pouted. "It's not fair." 
             
"What's not fair is what you're doing to me." He pouted a little,
himself. "You want to take your breast off my arm?" he added. 
             
"No," she said. "I want you to touch them." 
             
"Brenda!" he croaked. 
             
"Well? I can't help it. I learned how to be horny today. Your stupid
horse TAUGHT me!" she said, pulling away. She sulked for a few seconds.
"Come on, Bob ... just a few kisses?" 
             
"I'm trying to explain that just a few kisses will get me going," he
said, exasperatedly. "I'll want to do more than that." 
             
"OK," she said agreeably. "Me too.

Chapter Eight

A man can take only so
much. That she was desirable, bald or not, had sunk into Bob's bones.
That she was clearly available, whether she actually knew what that
meant or not, was also undeniable. Bob had never been on the side of
being seduced ... at least he didn't think that way. In actuality,
Dannie had worked him like a saxophone, pushing his buttons until he
was a helpless wreck ... and leaving him making some of the same sounds
a sax could make. It had been one of her favorite things to do, both
before he begged her to marry him, and afterwards. That may have even
had something to do with the straw that snapped this particular camel's
back, as Brenda, whether she knew it or not, pressed one too many of
Bob's buttons. 
             
So suddenly that she gave a squeak of surprise, Bob turned, grasped her
shoulders, and pulled her across his body, pulling her face to his. To
say he kissed her, is to say firecrackers go "pop". It's just not the
same thing as hearing a firecracker go off. And this firecracker went
off right in her face. 
             
As soon as his lips pressed to his, his hands abandoned her shoulders,
and grasped her head, his rough palms scraping across her smooth scalp,
as his lips opened and he French kissed the surprised girl hungrily.
That hunger communicated itself to Brenda Jean Ronson as something she
had never even dreamed of experiencing before. She was a virgin in
almost every sense, not counting her tryst with Buttercup, earlier in
the day. She hadn't been touched. She hadn't touched herself. And she
had certainly never been kissed like this. 
             
It is a tribute to her emotional strength, that, instead of being
frightened, she entered into events as a full and willing participant.
This was everything she could have imagined. His lips were alive
against hers. His tongue, instead of feeling foreign, was received like
candy that she wanted to suck and play with. His hands on her bare
scalp were, to her, the most intimate thing she'd ever felt. Then, as
she adapted to the luscious feel of the kiss, her nipples announced
that they loved being pressed against someone else's flesh ...
especially if that someone else was this man. 
             
Her arms snaked around his neck, and she kissed him back. 
             
Bob was lost. His mind rambled as he had thoughts that flickered,
rather than resided in his brain. Her lips welcomed his. She didn't
pull back, frightened and timid. That she wanted this, too, was
obvious. It had been a long time since he'd felt flesh against his too,
and when he didn't have to keep her face pressed to his, it was just
natural for his hands to slide down, along her neck, and across her
back. 
             
They made out like teenagers on their first unchaperoned date. 
             
Bob had been telling the truth about how kisses would make him want
more. He wasn't thinking about Dannie at the moment. That would come
later, along with enough guilt to fill a dump truck, but at that
moment, he was feeling only the ability to be emotionally joined in
intimacy with someone he cared about. Sex can do that ... can overwhelm
a person's normal reservations and control mechanisms, and that's what
it did to Bob. 
             
His hands slid all over her as they kept that long kiss going. It was
really a series of kisses, with snatched breaths as their lips began to
slide and move across each other's. But she got her wish, or at least
part of it, when his hands sought her tender breasts and massaged them.
The thrills it shot through her dwarfed the tingles the ride had
produced, and she brought a hand to put on top of his, to help him rub
them. That hand directed him lower, and he didn't fight it. The water
had washed off the numbing salve, and she felt both the pain of tender
flesh, rubbed raw by the saddle, and the exquisite electric jangles of
his rough finger scraping across her newly-awakened clitty. 
             
When his finger went on to slide into her, she arched her back and
spread her legs, astonished at the mixture of pain and pleasure having
something pushed into her caused. 
             
She made sounds now ... mewling, purring, hungry sounds, as her
virginity was plundered by his invading finger. Her hymen was long gone
to tampons, and there was no discomfort, other than a filling,
stretching sensation. He kept going until the tip of his finger rimmed
her virgin cervix, and her pussy spasmed into the same feeling that she
had felt on Buttercup's back. 
             
Now her lips broke away from his, as her lips spread, her teeth showing
in a grimace of supreme joy. She welcomed this orgasm, with none of the
guilt or reluctance that her earlier ones had caused. This ... this was
the pinnacle, and she loved every second of it. 
             
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," she groaned. There was, in truth, a mixture of pain
and pleasure in that groan, and Bob's ears heard both. Using his
finger, he pulled, making her body rise in the water, until a pink,
soft nipple popped out of the water. His head dipped, and he sucked at
her sensitive bud. Her whole body went rigid as her first orgasm was
overtaken by a second, even stronger one, caused by the multiple
sensations she was drowning in. 
             
Some sanity returned to Bob as her anguished moan was wrenched from her
throat. Instinct kept his finger where it was, but he abandoned her
nipple, to let her lie on his lap. He watched her, as her body jerked,
in time with the motions of his finger, deep inside her, and her orgasm
played out through her twitching body. He realized her hand was on his,
not trying to make him take the invading digit out, but to hold him
inside her. 
             
Her eyes opened, and she got a silly smile on her face as she got
control of herself again. He started to pull his finger out of her. 
             
"No," she gasped. "Leave it there." 
             
He sat quietly, oddly satisfied, even though nothing had been done for
him. The look on her face was priceless, and the familiarity with which
her arm held him made it plain that she was very happy. He liked it
that she was happy. It made him feel like he had done something
valuable ... something right ... despite his earlier reluctance. 
             
"OK," she breathed, taking her hand away from his. 
             
He knew to withdraw slowly ... to release the pressure gently, and did
so. She sighed again as his finger left her, sliding gently across the
tiny bud he could feel at the top of her slit. 
             
She pulled herself up to kiss him again. It was a much more gentle kiss
than any of the others. He was comfortable, for the most part, with
what had happened, until her hand snaked into his jockey's and grasped
his prick. 
             
"You've had enough," he said softly. 
             
"I liked that," she breathed into his mouth. She kissed the corner of
his lip. Her hand squeezed, and moved to feel for his balls. "I've
never felt one before." 
             
"You shouldn't be feeling mine right now," he said. 
             
"I want to see it." More soft kisses. 
             
"No." 
             
"I'll tell my daddy what you did to me," she teased. 
             
"I'd rather you tell your daddy what I did to you, than tell him about
what I'm going to do to you if you keep playing with my penis." 
             
"Ooooo, now I'm scared." She giggled. Her hand kept playing. "Come on,
I just want to see it." 
             
"Remember a few minutes ago, when you said all you wanted was a kiss?"
His voice teased her. 
             
"Thank you for the kiss." She gave him another one. "That was the best
thing I ever felt in my whole life." 
             
To give Bob the credit, he tried to gross her out. 
             
"OK, tell you what. I'll let you see it, if you promise to suck it." 
             
Her eyes stared into his. She licked her lips. 
             
"OK." 
             
"Don't play with me, little girl." he said, not believing her. 
             
"There's no campfire around." she said. "You can't lie if there's no
campfire." 
             
He stared at her. He realized they were looking at each other with
moonlight, now. The sun had gone down while they ... negotiated ... and
he hadn't even noticed. 
             
He called her bluff by pushing her away and standing up on the rock
shelf. He pushed at his wet underwear, bending to step out of them, and
then stood back up. His dick was fully at rest, still warm and
comfortable. 
             
She got to her knees in front of him and pushed her face close, to peer
at it in the dim light. 
             
"I thought they were supposed to be bigger," she said, reaching for it
with two fingers. 
             
"Thanks a lot," he grinned. 
             
She reached behind it and hefted his balls, which were hanging low
because of the heat. 
             
"These are hanging down longer than your penis. Is it supposed to be
that way?" 
             
"The heat made them that way. When they cool off they'll pull up
against my body," he said. "You really haven't flirted a lot, have
you?" His smile was a little strained. 
             
She went back to his penis and held it with two fingers on each hand,
to make it point at her face. 
             
"You'll have to teach me how to suck it," she said, her nose almost
touching it. 
             
"I was kidding," he said. "You don't have to do that." 
             
She looked up at him. 
             
"Teach me," she ordered. 
             
"Brenda ..." 
             
"Teach me, Bob." Her voice was firm. "You made me feel good. I want to
make you feel good too." 
             
"I already feel good," he said. 
             
"Then I want to make you feel better." 
             
He marveled at her stubborn streak. For such a soft, pliant girl, she
could be as hard as rock when it came to getting her way. He'd let
things go this far. In for a penny ... in for a pound. She was
obviously no scared little girl. 
             
"There's some loose skin that covers the tip. You'll have to push that
back to uncover the head." 
             
He felt her fingers putting pressure on him, and her sigh as the glans
was uncovered. 
             
"Cool!" she said, sounding impressed. 
             
"Now, just suck the tip into your mouth, like it was a Popsicle or
something," he said. 
             
He'd been out of the water long enough that he could feel the heat of
her mouth. It was wonderful. He felt his balls pulling back up, from
where his ball sack had stretched in the hot water. He'd also been out
of the water long enough that his prick began to behave like a prick. 
             
She pulled off. 
             
"It feels so different than anything else," she observed. "I like this." 
             
She went back to sucking and he felt the blood rushing into his cock.
It was going to get hard, and that was dangerous. 
             
"OK, that's enough," he said, breathing deeply. 
             
She pulled off again and kissed the tip. 
             
"Hey, it's getting bigger!" she said. 
             
"I know. That's why it's enough." 
             
"No. I want to see it all hard." 
             
"No." 
             
"Yes!" 
             
She punctuated her comment by sucking him back in. When he tried to
grab her head and pull her off, her hands went to his buttocks and she
dug her nails in, pulling herself against his loins. He had grown
enough that it sent the tip of his prick to her gag reflex. She pulled
back enough to cough, her mouth still full of his prick, and shook her
head, to break his grip. When she did, the sensation in his penis was
exquisite, and he groaned, knowing he was lost. He dropped his hands to
his sides. 
             
She sucked as she dragged her lips along his mostly hard prick, making
a slurping sound as she pulled off. 
             
"Are you going to be a good boy now?" she asked. She went right back
onto him, sucking hard. 
             
"You keep doing that, you're going to get a mouthful of something you
might not like," he warned. 
             
She pulled off again. 
             
"Will it taste bad?" 
             
"I have no idea," he said. Dannie had never tasted his spunk. She'd
always demanded he deposit it in her pussy. She'd suck him to within a
hair of ejaculation, and then throw herself down, spreading her pussy
lips. "I want it here," she'd always said. 
             
Thinking of that finally brought Dannie to his conscious thoughts. He
looked up, almost as if he expected to see her, frowning down at him. 
             
"Oh baby," he moaned, talking to his dead wife. 
             
Brenda didn't know that, of course, and his moan was music to her ears.
She learned how to suck and play with her tongue at the same time, and
she liked that even better. She didn't know what to think about what
he'd warned her about. She knew that some girls claimed to have done
what she was doing. That's why she'd decided to do it herself. They
talked about letting a boy cum in their mouths too, like it was some
special treat for the man. No one had ever said what it tasted like.
But everything she had done with this man, so far, had been more
wonderful than she would have hoped for, and she didn't want to stop. 
             
It was the volume of his spend that she wasn't prepared for. She heard
his warning groan, and her heart leapt with anticipation. When the
thing in her mouth started spurting, though, she didn't know what to do
with the copious discharge. It all happened so quickly that, by the
time his third spurt had filled her mouth, she had to pull off of it,
drooling thick streams of slippery stuff. His fourth and fifth spurts,
therefore, hit her right in the face as she held him where he was with
her own hand. She started to choke as she realized she had to take a
breath, and swallowed what was still in her mouth instinctively, to
clear her airway. Letting go of the thing that still drooled a silvery
substance in the moonlight, she brought her hands to her eyes to wipe
them clear. The taste registered with her brain, at that point, and she
cocked her head, frozen, just trying to decide whether the slightly
acrid taste was OK or not. She tasted salt, then, mixed with a hint of
sweet. None of it was overpowering, though, and she decided it wasn't
so bad. 
             
"Wow," she summed it all up in one panted word. 
             
The warm water was right there, and it just seemed natural to lower
herself into it to clean up. She came back up, sputtering. 
             
"It's kind of messy," she observed. "But I like that too." 
             
Bob, feeling the first of much guilt to come, sank back down in the
water too. 
             
"We're done," he said heavily. 
             
Brenda heard the pain in his voice. She didn't understand why it was
there. He hadn't done anything she hadn't wanted him to. She was
gloriously happy, at the moment. But she heard the pain, and didn't
want to cause him pain. 
             
"OK," she said softly. "Thank you." 
             
========================================

After what they'd done,
there was no point in putting on wet underwear, just to walk to the
cabin. Both were quiet, walking side by side. The night air was cool,
and the warmth of the water fled. It was replaced by the warmth of the
pot-bellied stove in the cabin, though. In the light of the lantern he
lit, she looked at his hanging penis. It was longer than when she'd
first seen it, but soft again. She felt the heat in her belly again. 
             
"What are we doing tomorrow?" she asked, trying to make conversation. 
             
He looked at her, his eyes unfocused, for a second. Then they cleared.
"We're going to round up any strays we can find, and head them
downhill, toward the herd." 
             
There was a scratching noise at the door, and a short bark. Brenda went
to the door and opened it, to let Dammit in. She was wagging her tail,
and ran first to Bob, and then back to Brenda. She couldn't seem to
make up her mind who she wanted to pet her first. When she came over to
Brenda, she licked her bare leg. She giggled. 
             
Bob, still thinking about what had happened, and his dead wife, opened
his sleeping bag and climbed in. He didn't look at the naked girl
across the room. He wondered if he'd be able to sleep. There was no
lightning strike ... no moaning wind ... no sign from his lost love of
how she felt about all this. 
             
Brenda looked at him, and could tell he was troubled by what had
happened. He had tried hard not to give her what she wanted. She
understood that. But the optimism of callow youth, and the joy she had
experienced made her feel like nothing remotely wrong had taken place.
She didn't want him to feel bad, when she felt so good. 
             
"You didn't do anything wrong," she said. "You made me very happy." 
             
"Go to bed," he mumbled. 
             
"I just wanted you to know that nothing happened that made me feel bad.
I loved all of it." She thought that should perk him up, but he didn't
answer. 
             
========================================

Bob eventually drifted off
to sleep. He woke later, in the dark. She must have turned off the
lantern. His thoughts went back to Dannie. She was gone ... but part of
her stayed with him. He tried to think of how she would have reacted to
what had happened if she were there. 
             
That was silly. 
             
If she'd have been there ... nothing would have happened. 
             
He heard the cot across the room squeaking. It slowly penetrated to his
conscious thought that there was a rhythm to that squeaking. He lifted
his head, but it was too dark to see. It was her soft moan that made
him realize she was masturbating. He was astonished. The girl had no
shame! Then again, as far as she knew, he was asleep. He had to admit
that. She was a hot one. That was for sure. Whatever had been awakened
in her the day before was unbridled. She wanted to gallop. And he was
the stallion she wanted to gallop with. 
             
He tried to think about what he would feel like if he had weeks to
live. What would he do if he were in her shoes? Would he sit in a
corner and beat off continuously? He couldn't comprehend what it must
be like for her. To know the end was near. To have to decide what to do
with every minute of her waking time ... to maximize whatever
experiences she had left to live out. According to her, she hadn't had
an orgasm before yesterday. He could believe that. She had been wild
with the wildness of going through something new and exciting. Her
excitement had bled into him. He knew that. He and Dannie had been
insatiable, in the beginning. They had stopped doing almost anything to
tumble into bed, straining against each other. 
             
No ... if anything ... the girl masturbating across the room was
completely normal. She was just having fun being alive. 
             
He realized, in that moment, how much time he had wasted, feeling sorry
for himself. He didn't feel any less guilty, but the urge to crawl in a
hole and waste away was gone, quite suddenly, from within him. He had
life to live ... many more years than the poor thing across the room.
He wouldn't waste any more of that time in self pity. 
             
Sleep claimed him again, and this time he didn't waken until dawn. 
             
========================================

Bob's attitude the next
morning wasn't so withdrawn. He still felt like he had taken advantage
of Brenda, though he was quite aware she was, in reality, the aggressor
in what had happened. When he woke, and looked over at her, he was a
little relieved that she was still asleep, her face reposed, and one
naked arm flung above her head on the cot. 
             
He tried to be quiet as he relit the fire in the stove, and rustled up
breakfast. His frequent looks at her were eventually rewarded with her
big, blue eyes, open and staring at him. The look on her face was
impossible to evaluate. 
             
"Morning," he said with a smile. It was possible she had changed her
mind, but he was going to try to make the best of it. 
             
Her answering smile made his heart melt. 
             
"I was afraid you'd be mad at me," she said. 
             
"I'm not mad at you," he said gently. 
             
"You still miss your wife," she said. "I could tell that last night ...
but I couldn't help myself. I'm sorry if I ... trespassed on her
memory." 
             
Bob couldn't help but be amazed at her. She was so girlish, in the
main, but she had the capacity to think very much like an adult, who
had a lot more life experience than a girl her age should have. 
             
"I was thinking about her ... part of the time," he admitted. "There
were other times I wasn't." He threw another stick on the fire.
"Actually, I think that's why I felt so bad." 
             
Brenda was conflicted at that point. The thought that she could make
this man think of something other than his loss made her feel very
good. At the same time, the thought that she could drive his wife's
memory away made her feel like a thief. 
             
"I wasn't trying to make you forget her," she offered. 
             
"I know," he said. 
             
"I had a really good time," she said, unsure of how to proceed. 
             
"I did too," he said. "Even though it was completely inappropriate." 
             
"I don't think I care about 'appropriate' as much as I used to," she
said. "I need to pee." 
             
Bob almost laughed as she voiced something under circumstances that
most adults would have called 'inappropriate'. 
             
"We don't have an outhouse up here," he said. "We just dig a cat hole
if it's needed." 
             
"Cat hole?" she sounded puzzled. 
             
"Don't ask me," he said. "I tried to call it a latrine, after I got out
of the Marines, but everybody else calls them cat holes." 
             
"In the Girl Scouts, we called them pit toilets," she said. 
             
"Then you need to dig a pit toilet," he said, smiling. 
             
"I'm naked," she said, from inside her bag. 
             
"I'm very aware of that." He grinned. 
             
"You won't be mad at me if I get up ... naked?" 
             
He grinned again. He was grinning so much this morning that his face
felt tight. 
             
"I won't be mad. I might react, but I won't be mad." 
             
She apparently took him at his word, because she bounced out of her bag
and stood, almost striking a pose in all her naked glory. 
             
"Am I really sexy?" she asked, teenaged hope in her voice. 
             
"Girl, you have no idea," he sighed, staring at her hairless pussy.
"You're very lucky that you're still technically a virgin." 
             
"We'll talk about that later," she said, dancing because of the
pressure in her bladder. "Where should I dig the cathole?" 
             
"If all you're going to do is pee, you don't have to worry about it.
Just squat and go," he smiled. 
             
"Out there ... naked ... in front of everybody?" she asked. 
             
"There's only the bears to watch, and I don't think they care all that
much," he chuckled. 
             
She stuck out her tongue at him and danced outside on naked feet. He
realized he should probably have warned her about the dew. It would be
wet and cold. 
             
She came back, much calmer than when she left. She got her saddlebags,
but didn't seem to be in a hurry to cover her nakedness. 
             
"This feels really weird," she said. "Standing here with you ogling me." 
             
"Would you rather I ignored you?" he asked. He'd reconstituted some
eggs and added them to the pouched bacon from the stores. It wouldn't
be fresh, but it would be hot. 
             
"No," she said immediately. "I had fun last night." 
             
"Me too," he said simply. 
             
"Will you ever do that with me again?" she asked, with typical teenaged
insecurity. 
             
"I want to, but I'm still not sure it's a good idea," he replied. 
             
"Why?" 
             
"It's complicated," he said. "You're young, and think you want one
thing, but you may change your mind in the middle of it." 
             
"You'd stop if I asked you to, wouldn't you?" she asked. 
             
"Yes," he said. "But I wouldn't like it." He didn't like the way that
sounded. "What I mean is it would be hard. I'd want to do it all." 
             
"I do too, if it's anything like last night was." She seemed completely
comfortable standing there naked. She looked delicious too. 
             
"That's not something you can undo, once it's done," he said. 
             
"Well, Duh," she said, putting one hand on her hip. 
             
"I wanted to give you time to decide whether or not it's really the
right thing for you." He turned to face her, ignoring her charms. "Most
girls want to give that to someone closer to their own age." 
             
"I'm not interested in any boys my age," she said. She walked over to
him, to stand right in front of him. His eyes dipped to her breasts.
Her nipples were stiff. "I have today, and however long it's going to
take us to get back tomorrow to ... to feel all these new things. After
that, I'll never see you again." 
             
His heart jerked. 
             
"That's part of the problem," he said. "I don't just go out and do this
with any old woman who comes along. I'm already emotionally attached to
you." 
             
She cocked her head. "Most men don't talk about their emotions, like
that." 
             
"I've been in a lot of pain, lately," he sighed. "I can't help but
think you'll bring me more." 
             
She frowned. "I don't want to do that," she said. "But ... I can't help
who I am ... what's going to happen." 
             
"It's kind of a problem ... huh?" He sighed. 
             
"But you want to?" she asked. 
             
He wanted to reach for her ... to take her into his arms. He was stiff
as a board just from being around her like this, though, and he knew
that he'd be swept away again if he did what he wanted to do. With
effort, he kept his hands at his sides. 
             
"Yes," he said. 
             
"Except that you don't want to," she added. 
             
"I guess that's true too," he admitted. 
             
She turned around, and went to her saddle bags. She got clothing out,
but he noticed she left bra and panties off when she got dressed. He
made sure he wasn't watching as she wiggled into her jeans

Chapter Nine

She acted like breakfast was fine, but didn't eat a lot. She had better
taste than accepting powdered eggs and bacon with so many preservatives
in it that it would last a year on the shelf in a vacuum sealed foil
pouch. 
             
He explained what their goal was for the day. It was inevitable that
cattle drifted, while they were on a pasture, and when they were moved
to another pasture, it was inevitable that a few would be left behind.
Steers were no big deal, though they got a little wild sometimes,
living on their own. Cows with calves, or that had calves while they
were loose, were the biggest problem. They tended to hide from
predators, and man was sometimes considered a predator, as far as they
were concerned. If they had calves, they also tried to protect them,
from any kind of beast, whether it went on two or four legs. 
             
He explained that the horses knew what to do, and all she really had to
do was stay in the saddle, but that might not be as easy as she
thought. The horses would cut, jump and dash to herd the cattle, and,
until the cows gave up and decided to go along, that could take a
while. He likened it to when Buttercup stopped so suddenly at the
waterfall, and Brenda fell off. 
             
"I was ... um ... distracted that time," she said, with a grin. "I'll
try not to be distracted this time." Her eyes sparkled. "It would
probably be better if you made sure I'm not distracted ... before we go
..." 
             
He just stared at her. 
             
Her cheeks turned pink. "Well," she almost whined. "I slept really good
last night, because I wasn't ... distracted." 
             
"I heard what you were doing over there. You did it a long time," he
said bluntly. 
             
She flushed brighter. 
             
"That was just because I was still all excited from what we did. Once I
... once I was satisfied, I slept really good." She stuck her chin out.
"I would have stayed in the pool a lot longer than you let me." 
             
"If I satisfy you right now," he said softly, "it might be
uncomfortable to ride for a while." 
             
The look in her eye told him everything, even before she spoke. "This
is my last wish trip. I'd like to herd some cattle before it's over,
but I think I want this other thing even more. Do we really HAVE to go
on today?" Her head tilted again, and her blue eyes gazed into his
brown ones. "I mean ... if it was uncomfortable ... couldn't we just
rest here for a while?" 
             
"It's a day and a half ride to get back to the ranch," he said. "Two
long days if we find more than five or ten strays." His eyes dropped
involuntarily to the front of her shirt. "But we don't absolutely have
to gather strays." 
             
Her hand went to his cheek, to scrape along the stubble there. 
             
"You're so good to me," she said softly. "I feel like kissing you," she
went on, the back of her fingers sliding along his jaw. 
             
"You want me to shave?" he asked. 
             
"No," she said. "I just don't know how to start." 
             
His hands, unable to remain still, went to her waist, and he pulled her
gently against him. Her breasts felt soft against his chest as she
tilted her face up, her eyes open wide. 
             
He kissed the corner of her mouth first, very gently, and then slid his
lips along her cheek to nibble at her earlobe. She shivered and her
arms went around him. 
             
"Ohhhh, I want this so much," she moaned. 
             
"You're sure?" he whispered in her ear. 
             
"Make me feel like you did last night," she gasped. 
             
Within sixty seconds she was naked again, her clothes lying in a pile
on the floor, and his shirt was off, his belt unbuckled. She dropped to
a squat, trying to pull his jeans down, and they slid over his
jockey's, leaving bulging white cloth in front of her face. Her hands
smoothed over that cloth as her palms slid to let her fingertips grasp
the waistband. Bob felt foolish with his jeans around his ankles, his
boots still on, but when she pulled his shorts down, and his rampant
prick bounced up into the air, her reaction blew all that away. 
             
"It's so beautiful," she cooed, her hand going to it to slick the
foreskin back off the glans. She kissed the tip. "Should I suck it
again?" she asked, looking up at him. 
             
"No," he gasped. "I'm about to lose it already." 
             
She let go of him like he was a hot pan, and stood up. Then, not
knowing what to do, she went to her cot and lay down on it. She looked
awkward, trying to assume some pose that would tease him, but not
knowing how. It gave him time to kick off his boots, and pull the legs
of his jeans off each foot, as he balanced on the other. The look in
her eyes ... her flushed face ... her heaving breasts, all told him she
was excited about this ... eager. His prick felt so hard he thought he
could pound a nail with it. 
             
As he walked toward her, she spread her legs. Her right leg went off
the cot, and her heel dropped to the floor. The other knee hit the
wall, and she brought that foot up toward her naked pussy. He knew that
he couldn't just stick it in her, though that's exactly what he ached
to do now. Instead, he lowered his face to her flat belly and licked
her belly button. 
             
"That tickles," she panted. 
             
"Does this?" he asked. 
             
He pushed his face lower and licked her tightly closed slit. The firm
lips resisted, but were no match for his tongue, which split them open
as her hips gave a convulsive jerk upward. 
             
"Ohhhhhhhh," she moaned. Her right leg flailed a little, trying to help
her hips lurch upwards into his face, but not being long enough to work
well, with her heel on the floor. To compensate, he crawled onto the
cot, hearing it creak with his weight, and slid his hands under her
butt. 
             
Now he could glue her to his mouth. He knew his whiskers were
scratching her, but there wasn't anything he could do about that except
make her concentrate on something else. He used his nose to find her
clitty, while his tongue penetrated her tight sheath as far as he could
reach. 
             
"UHHHHHH," she grunted, her hands coming to his hair. 
             
He felt, smelled, and tasted her moisture as her pussy flooded,
preparing for what it knew was coming, whether she did or not. He moved
his lips upward, finding her nubbin and sucking at it. Then he tortured
it with the tip of his tongue while she began jerking under him. He
alternated between sucking and flicking until her gasps got a rhythm to
them that announced she was fast approaching an orgasm. He let that
wash over her and, when he thought the time was right, moved up to suck
at each nipple while she caught her breath. 
             
"You should be on top, the first time," he said. 
             
"I don't know what to do," she panted. 
             
"I'll help you," he promised. 
             
She got up, her knees rubbery, while he lay down on his back. Then she
collapsed on top of him, her lips kissing his neck and chin. His prick
was held prisoner by the weight of her belly on it. 
             
She knew enough to push with her arms, and sit up. He talked her into a
squat, and held his prick, pointing it straight up as she lowered her
pussy toward it. She missed, and it rubbed up over her clitty as she
sat on his balls. 
             
"Slowly," he warned. "Don't just sit down on it." 
             
She moaned in frustration, her breath already moving in and out in a
pant, as she repositioned herself to try again. He felt the tip notch
into her as warmth covered it. 
             
"Now ... easy does it," he murmured. 
             
He was surprised to feel her sink down two inches, the tip sliding into
her with amazingly little resistance. Then her pussy lips reached the
wider portion of his shaft, and she hissed. 
             
"It stings," she moaned. 
             
"You're being stretched," he whispered. 
             
"I feel so full," she said, looking down at where they were joined.
"There's so much left!" 
             
"Just take it easy," he warned. 
             
"My legs hurt," she whined. They were tense from keeping her up, off
the thing prodding her virgin tunnel. 
             
"Lie down on me," he said. She leaned forward and he caught her weight
as another inch slipped into her and she groaned. 
             
As soon as she was lying fully on top of him, he pulled her upward,
removing some of his cock from her stressed pussy. 
             
"Don't take it out," she whined. 
             
"I'm not. Just lie there and play with it a little," he said. 
             
She pushed with her arms, getting most of what she'd lost back into her
and hummed. Her face was tense, but not quite in a grimace. 
             
"I told you it would hurt," he chided. 
             
"It doesn't hurt ... exactly," she said, moving forward and then back
again. "I just feel so full." 
             
"Arch your back," he instructed her. 
             
She didn't know what he meant, and just tried to sit back up. He
stopped her. "Stick your breasts out at me," he said. 
             
She got it then and her belly sagged as she used her back muscles to
push her breasts at his face. Her eyes opened wide as her clitty came
into full contact with his prick. Her hips began to jerk faster, in
tiny forward and backward movements. 
             
"Ohhhhhh," she sighed. "That feels goooood." 
             
Since her nipples were within reach, he leaned his head forward and
sucked one in, biting it gently. The reaction was automatic. She
scooted backward, and took almost all of him into her. He felt her
taut, white butt cheeks caress his balls. 
             
"Ohhhh Bob," she sighed, scooting back forward. "This is better." 
             
She began sliding in earnest, then, and her head drooped to stare at
his face. 
             
"We're making love," she gasped. 
             
"Yes, we are," he panted. 
             
"I like this, Bob," she moaned. "I like this a lot." 
             
"I'm glad, baby," he grunted. "Just do whatever feels good." 
             
She slid back, and her mouth opened wide as she finally got all of him
inside her. 
             
"That feels good," she gasped. She slid back forward, almost pulling
off of him completely. "But that feels good too." She scooted all the
way on him and groaned. "Suck my titties again," she gasped. 
             
Bob leaned up and alternated, sucking one, and rolling the other
between his thumb and forefinger. 
             
"Oh yeah," she gasped, moving faster. "It's going to happen, Bob!" she
squealed. 
             
"Ride 'em, cowgirl," he grinned. "Time to gallop." 
             
She did, too, sitting mostly up as her hips kept driving him into her.
In this position, she didn't come off him at all, but was still able to
rub her overjoyed clit against the base of his prick. 
             
"Oh yeah!" she yipped. "Oh yeah ... oh yeah ... oh YEAH!" 
             
Even if she hadn't said anything, Bob would have known she was there.
Her pussy rippled and spasmed, all around his prick, and her abdominal
muscles went into a spasm too as she lost the rhythm and just wiggled,
impaled on his shaft. He squeezed and mauled her tender nipples as she
rode the crest of an orgasm that made her hold her breath with its
intensity. Her head went back and she looked like she was screaming at
the moon, though she made no sound at all other than a drawn out
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH." 
             
She froze for a couple of seconds and he just cupped her breasts,
holding her up, as, one by one, tense muscles loosened and she began to
sag slowly downward. She ended up on his chest, gasping for air, the
side of her face pressed against him like she was trying to hear his
heartbeat. 
             
Bob had only had sex with one other woman in his life, and when she
deflowered herself on him, he had been so excited that he couldn't even
remember it all afterwards. This was different. He was older now, more
mature, and more capable of controlling the feelings inside him. Half
of him wanted nothing more than to roll her over and skewer her until
he blasted her full of spunk. But the other half had just watched her
do something beautiful ... something most men never get to really pay
attention to while it's happening. He was astonished, on one level,
because it hadn't gone anything like he'd anticipated it would. He had
expected pain and tears ... a look on her face that suggested betrayal.
Instead, he got what Dannie had given him, so many times ... a woman
getting something that she would always love, and always want more of. 
             
He stroked her back, while she got her breath. 
             
"You're still hard," she mumbled, her cheek moving against his chest. 
             
"Uh huh," he agreed. 
             
"Didn't you ... you know ... squirt? Like last night?" 
             
He smiled. The mature lover in his arms still had some sixteen year old
girl left in her as she grappled with what words to use. 
             
"No. I was having too much fun watching you." He stroked her back some
more. "Besides, you could get pregnant." 
             
She shook with laughter and sat up, sighing as he was driven deep into
her again. "I'll probably never have another period," she said, without
a trace of self pity. "But it won't be because of this." She wiggled
slowly on him, experimenting with what it felt like to sit further and
further up while her body weight drove him ever deeper. "The chemo
screwed up my cycle royally. I haven't had a regular period for months." 
             
"Congratulations?" he said, not knowing whether that was good or bad. 
             
She ignored him. "Can I go again?" 
             
"Your wish is my command," he said. 
             
"Can you be on top this time?" she asked. 
             
"Sure," he said. "I'm kind of heavy, though." 
             
"I want to try it like that," she said, ignoring his warning. She
wiggled some more. "But I don't want to get off either." 
             
"You can't have it both ways," he grinned. 
             
She tried to get her feet back beside his hips, but that didn't work.
Then she tried to slide down his thighs, but she couldn't pull off of
him that way either because it drove him deep inside her. 
             
"Oooo, owww," she complained as her pussy lips were stretched even more. 
             
She went back up and he nipped at her nipples as they hung over his
face while she finally found a way to slide off of him. 
             
"Ooooooo, I feel so empty," she complained. 
             
"I can solve that problem," he huffed. 
             
She scrambled off of him, to stand beside him as he sat up, his prick
sticking out obscenely in his lap. It was shiny with her fluids. He
stood up, and stopped as she said "Wait!" 
             
He watched as she took her mattress and laid it out on the floor,
between the cot and stove. Then she went to get his and laid it on top
of hers. She covered it with her sleeping bag. 
             
"More room," she panted. 
             
When she flopped down this time, and her thighs parted for him, she
drew her knees up and let them fall outward, opening herself for him in
complete surrender. He stared at her pussy lips. Their tight, white
lines were gone, replaced by engorged, fleshy lips that gaped open
slightly. Now they were pink, going to light purple. 
             
He sank down between her thighs, and her hands went to his shoulders.
She raised her head to watch as, with one hand, he positioned his ram
between those engorged lips. As he slid in, her head dropped and she
groaned. 
             
"Oh yessssss," she hissed. 
             
Though he went in slowly, he didn't stop until he couldn't go any
further. She felt completely different this way. He could feel the
pressure of her pussy as it was shoved and stretched. She was tight,
and hot, and there was a squelching sound as fluid inside her was
displaced to sputter out around his prick. 
             
As soon as he was all the way in, he pulled back out. Before she could
voice her objection, though, he slid back in, and got another sigh of
happiness. 
             
"This ... is just ... as good," she panted. 
             
He couldn't tell exactly how things speeded up. He hadn't intended to
pound her, but that's what he ended up doing. He kept his weight off of
her as much as possible, and that let him watch as, almost suddenly,
her breasts began to bob up and down as his pubic bone impacted hers
with each thrust. He heard the noises that told him she was having an
orgasm, but he was suddenly light headed as his balls announced they'd
had enough. He wasn't sure if she was done or not, but it didn't
matter. He couldn't keep going. With a long groan, he buried himself in
her, and his prick belched streams of his spunk deep into her. She was
so tight, it had nowhere to go, but deeper inside. When he sagged down
onto her, her womb was awash with his spend. 
             
Both of them were gasping for air now, and there was no talk. The first
thing she said, was with her lips, as her head burrowed under his chin
to get to his lips. Her kisses were long, and sweet, and told him she
was very happy.
             
             ===========================================

Knowing that she'd be sore,
Bob also knew that riding would probably be
as good as anything for it, since it would keep her muscles moving. So
he badgered her into getting up and getting dressed, and then badgered
her into loading up the horses and riding away from the line shack in
which she lost her virginity. He expected her to turn around and look
at the place as they left, and didn't know quite what to think when she
didn't. 
             
He walked them for an hour, and asked her how she felt. 
             
"Horny," she said, grinning. 
             
"You've got to be kidding me," he said. 
             
"Nope." She looked around. "Where are all these stray cattle you
dragged me off to look at?" 
             
"I didn't drag you anywhere," he said, trying to sound sulky. "You
WANTED to take a trip on a working ranch. This is a working ranch. This
is what we do on a ranch." 
             
She giggled. "I did get to ride. It was fabulous. I could get into this
cowgirl stuff if it's like that." 
             
He shot her a look and she kicked Buttercup's flanks with her heels.
Buttercup took off like a shot and he was pleased to see her leaning
forward to compensate. Then he had to laugh when, after twenty or
thirty feet, she pulled back on the reins and stopped her horse,
standing up in the stirrups. 
             
"Owww" she yelled. 
             
"I tried to warn you," he called out, walking Ranger towards her. 
             
About then, Dammit ran in from ahead of them, and to their left. She
sat and barked twice. 
             
"Looks like she found something," said Bob, walking up beside Brenda.
She sat back down, gingerly. "Keep your weight on your knees and it
will help." He looked down at the dog. "Where are they, girl?" 
             
Dammit took off like a shot and Bob cantered after her. He resisted the
urge to look and see what Brenda was doing. She'd asked for this, even
after he warned her, and now she was going to have to deal with it.
             
             ===========================================

It was two cows that Dammit
had found. They raised their heads as Bob
rode into their sight, and shuffled away from him nervously. He sat,
straight in the saddle and walked his horse on the side opposite of
where he wanted them to go. Brenda watched as they turned and one
started following the other at a slow trot. She followed Bob, who let
them trot for a little while, and then slowly fell back. The cows
stopped, and looked over their shoulders at him. He walked Ranger
forward, and they began to walk away from him. 
             
Inside ten minutes, Bob had placed Brenda on their right flank, while
he took the left. They walked the horses forward and the cows went
right where they wanted them to go. 
             
"This isn't so hard," she yelled at him. 
             
"It's only two, and they've decided to cooperate," he called back.
"They don't all act like this." 
             
Three hours later, they'd collected six more head, including a cow with
a calf and two steers. The steers were balky, always wanting to go this
way or that, instead of following the cows, who seemed pretty happy
with just walking in a straight line. Brenda learned how to hang on for
dear life as Buttercup cut off a wandering steer, and herded it back to
the group. She didn't have to do anything. The horse saw when a cow was
wandering off, and took off to deal with things without any direction.
Dammit seemed to know what to do too. When one steer charged Bob's
horse, the dog leapt in and started snapping at the steer's rear
hooves, barking loudly. The steer lost interest in Bob and, with
rolling eyes, ran back to the safety of the small herd. 
             
By noon they reached a small pond. When the cattle migrated towards it,
Bob let them go. He dismounted on a small hill where he could see them. 
             
"Jerky for lunch," he said, holding up black strips of what looked like
broken plastic to Brenda. 
             
"We have more freeze-dried stuff," she complained, easing herself down
to the ground, and trying not to let him know how sore she was between
her legs. She hadn't been tempted to rub for a long time now. She felt
sticky and pulled at her jeans. His juice had run out of her while they
rode, and there was a sticky mess in her crotch. She didn't mind the
pain, because she could still remember the joy he had given her. But
the sticky mess was too much. 
             
"Can't start a fire. It would spook the beeves," he said. 
             
"I need to take a bath," she sighed. 
             
"You'll have to share the water with cows," he commented. 
             
She looked to see one cow in the water, up to her udder. 
             
"They won't hurt me or anything ... will they?" she asked. 
             
"Naw," he drawled. "If you're serious, just go around to the other side
of the pond." 
             
She walked, instead of riding. Dammit came with her, which made her
feel lots better, somehow. Bob stayed on Ranger, and munched beef jerky. 
             
While she got undressed, she watched to see if Bob was looking at her.
She felt a tingle in her belly when he did. The water felt wonderful,
even if it was brown and murky. She cleaned between her legs gently,
and realized that the pain wasn't as bad as when the saddle was
bouncing against her. It occurred to her that the salve might help, but
she hadn't brought it with her. Then, when she got out of the water,
and looked at the crotch of her jeans, she decided she couldn't put
them back on anyway. They were her last clean pair, but the ones she'd
worn the day before weren't that bad. She went back in to wash out his
semen. She decided she'd just lay them over the rump of her horse, and
they'd dry in no time. 
             
It felt silly to walk toward him in only her tennis shoes and a shirt,
so she only put on the shoes. The cows had ignored her, and she felt
much better. 
             
"Ma'am," said Bob, tipping his hat. "I wish more lovely young things
would take a stroll like that around here." 
             
"You made a mess in my jeans," she said darkly. 
             
"Well, you'd better put something on. You'll get sunburned if you stay
like that, and how would I explain that to your parents?" He grinned. 
             
"I have to put some of your miracle salve on me," she said, sticking
her tongue out at him. 
             
"I changed my mind," he said. 
             
"About what?" she asked, going to her horse. 
             
"About having your tongue in my mouth. I decided it's not bad." 
             
She tried not to, but had to laugh. 
             
"Is it true that men only think about one thing?" she asked. "That's
what my Aunt Sophie says." 
             
"It is when there are sweet young things, such as yourself, walking
around naked as a jaybird," he said seriously. 
             
She got out the jar of salve and managed to get her fingers far enough
into it to get them smeared with brown goo. She stood, her feet
shoulder's width apart and looked up at him. 
             
"I suppose you're going to watch me touch myself." She tried to make it
sound like she was disgusted. 
             
"Ma'am," he said, his voice smooth and buttery. "I'd be more than happy
to assist you in your predicament." 
             
"I just bet you would," she giggled. "It wouldn't do you any good,
though. As much as I want to do that again, it's not going to be for a
while." 
             
"Just don't use too much," he said, grinning. "I don't want you numbed
up all day long." 
             
"Men!" she snorted. 
             
"You started this," he reminded her. 
             
The salve worked perfectly. She was careful not to get any of it up
inside her, because that wasn't where it hurt. It was her pussy lips
that hurt, where they had been cruelly stretched. It wasn't until they
went numb that she realized she also needed some on the inside of her
thighs, where the saddle had rubbed. When she was finished, she leaned
over to wipe her hands on the grass. Then, still seeing a little brown
on her fingertips, she stroked and squeezed each nipple. 
             
"It hurts there too?" He laughed. 
             
"No, it feels too good there," she said archly. "My shirt rubs them and
then I get all horny." 
             
"I'm here for you," he said gallantly. 
             
"You're why I hurt so much," she snorted. 
             
"As I said, I believe this was all your idea." His head lifted. "Time
to go. They're starting to wander again." 
             
She wiggled into yesterday's jeans, and put her shirt back on. Getting
up into the saddle wasn't the chore she thought it would be, and when
she eased herself down, she was delighted not to feel the same amount
of pain she'd felt when they got there. He walked his horse over next
to hers, and pulled one wet leg of her washed jeans under a strap, so
they couldn't fall off. Then he took her hat off, pulled her toward him
for a long kiss, and put her hat back on before riding off. 
             
She couldn't believe the feeling in her belly as he left her. Even with
everything else numb, his kiss got her going

Chapter Ten

They had fourteen head when
Bob changed direction and began herding the cattle on a new vector.
Brenda was tired, by now. She was amazed at how tiring it was just to
ride a horse all day ... at least when you had to stay in the saddle as
the horse jumped this way and that, breaking into a trot without
warning and stopping suddenly. 
             
Still, she'd had a good time, and it was the kind of tired she didn't
mind. She felt like she'd actually done something worthwhile that day.
The fun part was watching the young steers, who played at facing down
the horse, pawing the ground and snorting, daring the horse to come any
closer. She decided they were all teddy bears, because the horse always
called their bluff, and they always skittered around and ran away when
that happened. They looked so fierce in their spraddle-legged stance,
head lowered, as if they had horns. The next second they were dashing
away in panic, kicking up their rear heels, sometimes bawling, as if
for their mother. The horses paid them no mind whatsoever, as long as
they went where they were supposed to go. 
             
All the movement in the saddle had helped loosen her up, instead of
making her sore. In work like this, your butt didn't hit the saddle,
over and over again, in the same place. The pain she'd felt earlier was
still mostly absent, though there was a generalized ache about her
lower body. 
             
When another line shack came into view - this one with a small corral
beside it - she heaved a sigh of relief. She didn't have to be a
professional cowgirl to know that this was the end of the trail for
that particular day. 
             
She looked around hopefully for a pond, but didn't see one. She saw the
windmill that stood next to the corral, but didn't think much about
that. Bob rode ahead and opened the gate to the corral without even
getting off his horse, and, once again, Brenda marveled at his skill.
Then he rode wide, around their small herd, as Dammit and she kept the
herd moving toward the corral. 
             
She was worried about what to do now. The gate was small, and the
cattle were spread out, ambling along. They'd gotten more and more tame
as the day went on, or at least less likely to dash off in an attempted
escape. If they did that now, she wouldn't know what to do. 
             
To her chagrin, they marched straight for the corral, as if someone had
told them "OK, kids, this is where you're staying tonight ... hup, hup
... move on in there ... thaaaats good." Bob was suddenly there,
leaning over again and walking Ranger, the end of the gate in his hand
as he swung it closed. The cattle began milling around, and lowing, as
if they had just realized they were now captives, and were nervous
about it. Before she got to the shack and began to dismount, though,
they all had lowered heads, cropping at the grass in the corral. 
             
"You do pretty good work," said Bob, as he eased off his horse. 
             
"Thanks," she said tiredly. "This is a lot harder than I would have
thought." 
             
"What are you talking about?" He grinned. "They didn't give us much
trouble at all. All you did was sit on a horse all day." His grin
faded. "How's your ... um ..." 
             
"My butt?" she finished for him. "My butt is just fine, mister." 
             
"Well, I'm relieved to hear it," he said. "You ready for a nice cool
dip?" 
             
She perked up. "You bet I am!" she said. She looked around. "Where?" 
             
"Stock tank," he said. "I'll get the windmill going and pump us a
bathtub full." 
             
It was then she saw the big gray metal tank, maybe eight feet across
and two or three feet high. It was half in, and half out of the corral,
and cows were already standing by it, their noses poked inside, looking
for the water that wasn't in it yet. They complained when they found it
dry. Bob went to the base of the windmill and pulled a big lever. With
a screech of dry metal, the head of the windmill turned slightly and
began to slowly revolve. As it did, the lever on the pump next to Bob
began to slowly rise and fall, and clear water first dribbled, and then
poured out of the outlet as the big fan up high began to move faster. 
             
"By the time we're done with supper, it should be deep enough to cool
off in," he said, dusting off his hands. 
             
"I'm, cooking tonight," she announced firmly. 
             
"Yes Ma'am!" He grinned. 
             
========================================

She took most of the rest
of their freeze dried rations, and mixed it with cans of things she
found in the shack to make up a stew, of sorts. She found bottles of
spices and added pinches of that to the mix. She was sweating from the
heat of the stove. This line shack had bunk beds in it, a set on each
side of the stove. 
             
"It's going to be too hot to sleep in here tonight," she observed. 
             
"We're still up fairly high," he said. "It can still get nippy at
night, this time of year." 
             
"We could still sleep outside," she said. "We have sleeping bags." 
             
"On the cold, hard ground?" He bent over backwards, like his back
ached. "With bears? And wolves? All drawn to our poor cattle?" 
             
She didn't know if he was kidding or not. His face was straight and his
voice was the only thing that suggested he was teasing her. 
             
"Of course," he went on, "If we slept in the same sleeping bag ... then
I guess I could protect you from the varmints." 
             
She giggled then. "There aren't really any varmints ... are there? Tell
the truth!" 
             
"Well ..." he hedged, "just because I've never seen any around here
doesn't mean they don't exist." 
             
"The only protection I need," she said firmly, "is from you!" 
             
"Now don't be that way, little darlin'," he whined. "I was doing just
fine until you subverted me and drew me into your web, and unleashed
all sorts of dangerous passions." He stuck his lower lip out and
pouted. He looked ridiculous, and she had to laugh. 
             
"Last night I was 'your little filly', and tonight I'm your 'little
darlin'," she said. "What will I be tomorrow night?" 
             
He looked truly sad then. "Tomorrow night you'll be your parents'
daughter, and I won't get a goodnight kiss." 
             
Brenda, for the first time in a long time, felt a chill run down her
spine as she remembered what she'd be going back to. This trip really
had taken her mind off of the fact that, as soon as a month from now,
if the doctors were right, she'd be in a bed somewhere, maybe
delirious, in the ugly process of dying from cancer. 
             
"I'll give you two tonight," she said softly, almost to herself. 
             
"Hey," he said, his voice firming. "I didn't mean to bring you down.
That smells delicious," he said, changing the subject. "When's it going
to be done? I'm famished." 
             
They ate in silence, the mood still somber. Brenda felt listless ...
uninterested, suddenly, in having to go through the next few weeks. She
had been upbeat for a long time, treating each new challenge, and each
new experience as a test that she needed to pass, to make the most of
what she had left. Now, it already seemed over. This had been a dream,
and she was going to have to wake up. 
             
She didn't want to wake up. 
             
========================================

Bob was sober too, because
he could see the pain on her face. She was too young to have lines of
worry, but her eyes told the story. They were eyes that had seen too
much pain, and too much horror for a girl so young. He still felt the
pain of his own loss - would always feel that on some level - and knew
hers was just as agonizing. 
             
"Finish up," he said, noting that she had just sat there for five
minutes without eating. "We still have a half day's ride ahead of us
tomorrow, and I want you in tip-top shape when we get back." 
             
"Yeah ... right," she said. 
             
He put his bowl down and took hers from her. He pulled her up and put
his hands around her waist, pulling her to him. 
             
"Look, I know I can't change anything ... can't make it all go away. I
would, if I could, but we both know better than that. It's going to
happen." She lifted her face and there were tears in her eyes. He
stared into them and went on. "But you don't have to let it happen
before it's really here. You've got some time left. Don't let the
disease take that from you without fighting it." 
             
"I know," she said miserably. 
             
"You'd feel better if you got clean," he said, kissing her nose. 
             
"You just want to see me naked again," she said, wiping her nose with
one hand. 
             
"Guilty, as charged," he said, smiling. 
             
"Oh, all right!" she said, pushing him away. "If you're going to badger
me all night, let's get this over with!" 
             
Her fingers went to her shirt buttons and she undid them rapidly. She
pulled her shirt apart, exposing her breasts. 
             
"Is THIS what you're so anxious to see?" She thrust them out at him,
arching her back. 
             
"You're half way there," he said encouragingly. 
             
"I suppose you're going to ravish me," she said, undoing her jeans and
pushing them down. 
             
"That depends," he said. 
             
She stopped and stood up, her pants around her knees. 
             
"What do you mean?" she asked indignantly. "What on?" 
             
"As I recall, you were a mite sore, earlier in the day," he said. "I'm
not the sort of man who wants to cause my little darlin' any pain." 
             
"I'll let you know if you're causing me any pain," she said firmly. "If
you think you're going to get me all naked and horny, and then do
nothing about it ... well ... you'd better not be trifling with my
emotions!" 
             
"Trifling?" asked Bob, trying not to smile. 
             
"That's what my Aunt Sophie would call it," she said. 
             
She bent over and stepped out of her jeans, to stand up naked. 
             
"You've got an awful lot of clothes on, mister cowboy," she observed. 
             
"Who's badgering who, here?" he asked, trying to look miffed. 
             
"Get naked!" she ordered. 
             
"Oooooo," he simpered. "You're so forceful!" 
             
"If you don't get naked pretty damn quick, you're going to WISH a bear
mauled you," she threatened, stepping closer. 
             
In answer, he reached out and tweaked a nipple. Both of them jumped
back and he dodged behind the stove as she came for him. He tried to
keep the stove between them as he unbuttoned his own shirt and tossed
it on a bunk. She darted, this way and that, and, because he was
watching her breasts bounce and sway, he missed seeing the wood box and
went sprawling. She was on him instantly, tearing at his belt. He went
limp and let her have her way, lifting his hips while she dragged his
jeans down. She left them at his knees and tore at his jockeys, to
expose his erection. When it came into view, she sat back on her
haunches. 
             
"I'll always be amazed that I can do that to a man," she sighed. 
             
Bob grinned. "And I'll always be amazed that a woman will leave herself
open for this." He reached out and tweaked her nipple again. 
             
He tried to roll away from her, but his jeans got in the way and he
ended up on his hands and knees. She landed on his back, like he was a
horse and yelled "GIDDYAP!" Her hand came down to slap his right butt
cheek hard enough to leave a hand print. 
             
Then she ended up sprawling as he stood on his knees, his hand going to
his injury. 
             
"HEY!" he complained. "I'm the adult here! If anybody's going to get a
spanking, it's going to be the teenager in the room!" 
             
She shrieked and dashed for the door, making it because he was still
unable to move his jeans-restricted legs. By the time he got them off,
and went out the door after her, she was standing by the stock tank,
peering into it. There was about two feet of water in it, and she was
trying to figure out how to climb in. The lip of the tank was a little
higher than her legs were long. Bob started running and vaulted the
side of the tank, turning to land on his back. He splashed water
everywhere. 
             
Cold water. 
             
The water was a uniform 55 degrees when it came out of the pump, from
the water table a hundred or more feet down. That doesn't sound cold,
until you immerse your body in it. Cold water from the average tap is
about the same temperature. Just think of the last time the hot water
cut out on you while you were in the shower. 
             
Brenda was covered with the wave that splashed up, and over the lip of
the tank, and she froze, her mouth wide open. It wasn't as cold as the
water at the waterfall, but her body couldn't really tell the
difference. 
             
Then Bob was there, leaning against the edge of the tank, his hands
around her waist, and she felt herself lifted as if she weighed hardly
anything. She screeched as she realized he was going to throw her in
the water, and then took in a hasty breath when she realized it was
inevitable. 
             
It took care of her hot, sweaty feeling instantly. 
             
There was an impromptu wrestling match immediately. Each one tried to
spank the other, but the water kept much from happening. Quite suddenly
they were in each other's arms, flesh pressed to flesh, trading body
heat. 
             
"It's really COLD!" she said into his chest. 
             
"You'll get used to it," he said. 
             
"I don't k-k-know about that," she said, her teeth chattering. 
             
"Let me take your mind off of it," he said. 
             
He pushed her against the side of the tank, and told her to hold on
with her hands. She did so as he lifted her body, laying her out in the
water and got between her legs. She spread them for him without
thinking. His hands went to her buttocks and he lifted, until she had
to hold on to the edge of the tank to keep from sinking. Sinking into
the water, he shoved his face into her pussy and began to ... take her
mind off the water. 
             
========================================

Brenda was lost in the
delicious feelings coming from her loins. She had stopped shivering
when her first orgasm washed over her, making her body feel warm
despite the water she was half floating in. When he kept going, she
relaxed. The only muscles in her body that were tense were her hands,
keeping their grip. There was no pain ... only glorious shafts of
ecstasy that went from her pussy to all other points in her body. When
he finally stopped, and let her hips sink into the water, she realized
it didn't feel nearly as cold as it had. She could feel the obvious
difference between the air and water temperatures, but she wasn't
shivering any more. He stood up and splashed water on his face. His
prick, stiff as a board, lay at the water's surface, like it was
floating there. 
             
She let go of the edge of the tank, and flowed toward him. Now it was
her hands on his buttocks, as she sank into the water to capture his
prick in her mouth. 
             
"Mmmmmmm." She made the noise through her nose, and Bob arched his back
as the vibrations were transferred to his cock. 
             
"Still sore?" he asked. 
             
She pulled off, slurping. 
             
"Maybe a little," she said. 
             
"Want to be ravished anyway?" he asked hopefully. 
             
"Maybe a little." She smiled. 
             
"Be right back," he said. 
             
He vaulted over the side of the tank and hopped gingerly to the line
shack, disappearing inside. When he came back he had soap, towels, and
a razor. Dammit raced up beside him, coming from around behind the
shack, and barking. 
             
"No bath for you today, girl," he said to her, hopping back into the
tank. She stood on her hind legs, hopping a bit to look over the rim of
the tank. 
             
Brenda looked at him curiously. She'd thought they were going to make
love, but it looked like he had something else on his mind. She felt a
little let down. He waded to where the corral fence was against the
tank and put the towels carefully on top of the post. The razor went on
top of the towels. He kept the soap in his hands. 
             
"Now, where were we?" he asked, turning back to Brenda. 
             
"You were about to ravish me, I believe," she said, smiling. 
             
"That's what this is for," he said, holding up the soap. 
             
"What?" she asked, confused. 
             
"You're all new to this," he said gently. "The water washes away your
natural lubrication, and it would be painful without something else."
He held the soap up. "Soap ... is slippery." He grinned, as if he'd
said something monumental. "C'mere," he said. 
             
She stood as he washed her, his soapy hands sliding all over her body.
It felt wonderful, even when he did her head. That made her think of
how, when they got back to the ranch, tomorrow, she'd have to ride in
bald. 
             
"Wait," she said. She went to the edge of the tank, and, with much less
grace, floundered over it. Then, like him, she hopped to the shack on
tender feet. She came back with the wig. She was accompanied both ways
by Dammit, who barked as they went to the shack, and tried to jump up
and bite the wig as she ran back. 
             
"What's that for?" he asked. 
             
"I'm going to try to get it into some kind of shape to wear tomorrow,"
she said, holding it out and looking at it in disgust. 
             
"I thought I was ravishing you," he complained. 
             
"You will," she laughed. "But when you washed my head, I thought about
that, and I just didn't want to forget it. You have a tendency to make
me forget about things when you ravish me." 
             
She climbed back into the tank, holding the wig, to find him staring at
her, his head cocked to one side. 
             
"Let me see that thing," he said. 
             
"Ravish first ... wig later," she said. 
             
"No, let me see it now," he insisted. 
             
"You're not very romantic," she said disgustedly. 
             
"Woman, you can get me going any time, all day long. If I can't do the
same to you, then I'm no ravisher. Now give me the wig!" 
             
She threw it at him, but he caught it before it hit him. It was still
encrusted with twigs and bits of leaf, as well as dirt. He submerged
it, fiddled with it under water, and then brought it back up,
inspecting it closely. 
             
"This is hopeless," he said. 
             
"I'm not going back to the ranch bald," she said firmly. "Being bald
with you is different, but I don't want other people to see me that
way. They get all pitified." 
             
"Pitified?" he asked. "Is that a real word?" 
             
"Yes," she said with dignity. 
             
He tossed the wig away and went to her, pulling her to him. His prick
had softened some, but poked her abdomen. She reached for it without
thought, and played with it. 
             
"Look at me," he said. 
             
She looked up, her blue eyes wide at the sudden serious tone of his
voice. 
             
"You gave me something precious," he said. "Something a woman can give
only one man." 
             
He stopped, as if he were thinking hard. 
             
"I wanted to," she said. 
             
"I know that, and that's what makes it so precious. I want to give you
something too." 
             
"That's sweet," she said, kissing his chin. "But you can't give me
that." 
             
"That's not what I'm talking about," he said. "You can't wear that wig.
It will look ridiculous on you." 
             
"Not as ridiculous as a shiny bald head," she countered. 
             
"What if you weren't the only one with a shiny bald head?" he asked. 
             
"What?" She looked at him in confusion. 
             
"What if we both rode in with shiny bald heads?" he asked. 
             
Her jaw dropped. He was offering to shave his head bald for her! 
             
"That's silly!" she gasped. 
             
"No it's not," he said. "What if we were both bald as an egg. Would
that make you feel better?" 
             
Brenda didn't know what to think. She'd never thought about anything
like this. She'd met other kids who lost their hair because of
treatment, and she always felt a little better in their midst, but ... 
             
"You'd do that? For me?" She had to wipe her eyes suddenly. 
             
"That's the only thing I can think of to give you." He looked
downfallen. "I mean I know it's nowhere hear as precious as what you
gave me, but you can't wear that wig." He looked surprised as he
thought of something else. "Have you got another one? With your
parents, maybe? I could ride ahead and get that." 
             
Brenda felt a rush of warmth that was far and above just lust for this
man. He cared so much. That he'd even THINK of shaving his head bald so
she wouldn't be alone was something that made her love him a little. 
             
"No," she smiled. "I don't carry around a selection of hair. I have a
couple back home, but I didn't think I'd need them." 
             
"You don't," he said urgently. "I know you feel awkward and all, but I
like you just fine with no hair." 
             
"You'd really shave your head?" She couldn't get used to the idea "For
me?" 
             
"Yes," he said simply. "You just have to decide whether we do it before
... or after I ravish you. How would you feel about making love with a
bald, old man?" 
             
She laughed. She couldn't imagine what he'd look like without all that
hair. 
             
"Maybe you'd better ravish me twice," she said, her eyes twinkling.
"Once with, and then once without. I can always close my eyes the
second time, if you turn out all ugly or something." 
             
"I'm not joking," he said seriously. 
             
"I know," she sighed. "I can't believe you'd do that just to make me
feel a little better." She cocked her head, trying to visualize him
bald. She just couldn't do it. "You want to think about it while you
ravish me the first time?" 
             
"I can't think about anything while I'm ravishing you," he said softly.
"Except how good it feels to be ravished back." 
             
She flowed into his arms. 
             
========================================

He soaped her up again,
this time running his hand between her legs, while she laid back in the
water, again holding herself up on the rim of the tank. She watched,
her eyes half lidded, as he soaped up his prick and fed it to her
slowly. 
             
She'd been worried it would hurt, but other than a stretching
sensation, there was nothing uncomfortable. That soon passed, as her
body adjusted to being filled again. This was a whole new feeling. She
wasn't bearing down on him, and he wasn't hulking over her. He could
lean forward to nurse at her tender buds while he kept sliding his long
prick in and out of her. He held her hips with one hand, and thumbed
her clitty with the other as she moaned through an orgasm that was
completely pain free. 
             
She was coming down from the pinnacle of another one when she opened
her eyes and said: "There are cows watching us." 
             
He craned his neck to see two cows, heads hanging over the edge of the
trough. It did look like they were watching. 
             
"Well, it's not quite the same, but maybe this will help with breeding
them." 
             
He leaned forward to kiss her and groaned into her mouth as he spewed,
deep inside her. 
             
Rather than feeling tired, now, Brenda felt energized. She washed him,
playing with his limp prick. It had a whole new feel to it too, soft
like this, both in her hands and in her mouth. She stopped every minute
or so for another kiss, and felt like she would melt during each one. 
             
He sank down, getting his hair wet and coming up with his face up so it
would flow backwards. She soaped it up and he pulled back on it, to
expose the roots at the front. 
             
"You're sure?" she asked, razor in hand. 
             
"I want to do this for you," he said. 
             
It took a few minutes for her to get the hang of it. It was different
than shaving her legs, which she hadn't had to do for most of a year
now. The razor had a tendency to slip up onto the thick dark hair,
instead of biting at the roots. It went in bits so small that she
didn't notice any change until he suddenly had a receding hairline. She
looked at him critically. He leaned forward to suckle at a breast and
she batted him away. 
             
"I'll cut you if you do that now," she chided. 
             
"Hurry up, then," he said. "I want to ravish you again." 
             
It took her a whole hour, and it was getting dark by the time she was
finished. He looked like a completely different man, and she felt her
nakedness until she looked into his eyes and saw ... Bob. 
             
"Well?" he asked. 
             
She looked ... and looked. She walked around him. Then she looked some
more. She pushed a breast into his face. 
             
"Now you can ravish me again," she said softly. 
             
As he suckled at her, her hands came to his head and floated gently all
over it. 
             
"I love you," she said, her voice almost a moan. 
             
He didn't answer, and, being young, she didn't care. She was just
voicing what she felt, and had no idea that would conjure up, in him,
the last time he had heard those words from a woman ... a different
woman, who said the words hastily ... perfunctionally ... just before
she took their son, strapped him in is car seat, and headed off to go
shopping. 
             
That Brenda meant it, even if she didn't really understand the concept
of love, in the context she was saying it, came through to him clearly.
As fleeting as this feeling might be in her, she DID mean it when she
said it, and it pulled from him emotions he wasn't prepared to deal
with. He loved this girl too, in some unfathomable way. He had offered
to shave his head bald out of love for her, though he wouldn't have
called it that. But he could FEEL his response to her, and he wasn't at
all sure he was allowed to feel this way. 
             
In almost a state of panic, he pulled Brenda from the tank. They
hastily dried themselves as they went back to the shack, where he
stood, his knees trembling as she made another bed for them. 
             
This time, they coupled. It wasn't tender, though it wasn't rough
either. Both of them were filled with passions that couldn't be denied
... she because of what he had done for her ... and he, to escape the
feeling that he was cheating on his dead wife. He pounded her, Dannie's
face appearing in his head as he closed his eyes. He opened them and
focused on Brenda's bald head, and when he closed his eyes, Dannie's
head was suddenly bald. It didn't affect his body - that was on
autopilot, doing what it was designed to do. But this time, when he
groaned, and semen spurted from his prick into the receptive, warm,
clasping pussy he was in, his groan of "Ohhhhh Baby," was full of
almost pain. It was addressed to the vision in his mind, and not the
girl under him. 
             
========================================

Brenda was insatiable that
night. She clasped him, not wanting to let go. Each time she coaxed him
back into her, as she had her orgasms, her hands fluttered across his
bald pate. She professed her love for him many times, until he had
heard it enough that it didn't strike so deeply into his pain centers
any more. At some point, overcome with the mental tension of dealing
with things, he admitted to himself that what he felt for this girl in
his arms, whether it was allowed or not, was something he'd never
forget. Some of the pain he felt was for her loss ... in the future. He
hadn't cried over Dannie. He'd raged, and tears had come, but they were
tears of rage, not grief. As he held Brenda's soft body in the night,
and she slept, he cried silently, tears sliding down his cheeks in an
unending flow. 
             
He cried for both of them.

Chapter Eleven

In the morning, it was
tempting to dally in their bed. He knew that was a bad idea. He felt
rough enough already, and wasn't sure he could go through the emotional
flailing of making love to her one last time. It was better to assume
they were done ... to cherish the memories he already had, rather than
try to re-capture them. 
             
That she was willing to leave their love nest was more a function of
being sated - she'd made love with him five or six times during the
night. Her overly full bladder helped too. When she skipped outside, he
got up and got dressed quickly. He was packing their gear when she came
back. 
             
"We have to leave already?" her voice complained. 
             
"There's a time for everything," he said, not looking at her. "Now is
the time for getting on the trail. You'll be glad when we're back, and
you can enjoy the comforts of civilization again." 
             
"Maybe," she said softly. 
             
========================================

They had no trouble on the
way back. She rode over next to him about once an hour and made him
take his hat off. Each time her smile was brilliant. 
             
Bob, thinking again like a rancher, remembered the radio, which he
hadn't even turned on during the trip, and dug it out. When he called
for the base station, Crystal's response was almost instant. 
             
"Where ARE you?!" she yelled into her handset. "We've been worried
SICK!" 
             
"What are you talking about?" Bob asked, rolling his eyes at Brenda.
"We've been on a trail ride." 
             
"You didn't check IN!" she yelled. "ROWDY!....." 
             
The next voice to come out of Bob's handset was his foreman's. 
             
"Everything OK, boss?" came Rowdy's voice. Bob could hear Crystal
berating him for taking the radio away from her, in the background. Bob
grinned at Brenda. 
             
"We're just peachy keen. Got a dozen or more head of strays with us. I
figure to just bring them on home so's you can look them over." 
             
"You had that girl round up strays?" asked Rowdy, his voice an octave
higher than usual. 
             
"Sure did," said Bob into the radio. "She's a fair hand, too." 
             
"You got some mighty anxious parents hanging around here," said Rowdy.
"We sort of thought you'd check in more often than you did." His rebuke
was plain, if softly done. 
             
Brenda reached over and took the radio. Bob showed her how to key the
mike. 
             
"I'M FINE!" she yelled into the radio. 
             
Bob winced. It had to be loud back in the office. He shushed her and
she lowered her voice. 
             
"I'm fine," she repeated. "I'm almost starved, because Bob can't cook
for beans, but I'm perfectly fine." 
             
There was the sound of laughter as Rowdy keyed his mike. "OK, I'll
scout them up and tell them their baby girl is dandy. When you figure
to ride in?" 
             
Brenda shrugged and handed the radio back to Bob. 
             
"Be a couple of hours, yet, I imagine," he said. "We're not hurrying." 
             
"Well, pick up the pace a little," said Rowdy. "The Ronsons have been
trying to get me to mount up a posse to come looking for you." 
             
"We're coming in from the Northwest," said Bob. "The ground is rocky
for another mile or so and I don't want to run the beeves." 
             
"I'll send a couple of the boys out to take 'em off your hands," said
Rowdy. 
             
"That's fine," said Bob. "See you in a bit." 
             
He put the radio back in his saddle bag. Brenda was giggling. 
             
"Oooooo you're in a lot of trouble, mister," she laughed. 
             
"Not half as much trouble as I'll be in if they found out what we were
doing all those times I wasn't checking in," he said. 
             
"I won't tell," she said, smiling. 
             
"You might want to think about putting some underwear on," he said. "If
you ride in with those titties bouncing around, your Mamma is going to
have a fit." 
             
To show how much her skills had increased, Brenda got into her saddle
bags while they rode. She pulled out a bra and laid it across the
saddle in front of her. Then she took off her shirt. She threw it to
Bob, and rode on, bare-chested. 
             
"The sun feels good on my skin," she said, grinning at him. "What if I
just ride like this?" 
             
Bob felt his gut tighten. He didn't need those feelings right now. 
             
"You'll get sunburned, and it will be an all-over burn. You really want
to explainto your Daddy how that happened?" 
             
"Oh, you're no fun," she sulked. She picked up the bra and put it on. 
             
"I'll never be happy wearing one of these things again," she snorted. 
             
Bob threw her shirt back to her and she shrugged into it. 
             
========================================

"Dust," said Bob, about an
hour later. He pointed. There was a plume of hazy brown off in the
direction they were headed. Ten minutes later Luis and Rodney, two of
the ranch hands, went wide of the tiny herd and circled to come up from
behind, still at a gallop. They pulled up, and their horses were
suddenly walking beside Ranger and Buttercup. 
             
"Surprised you found that many," said Luis. "That'll make Rowdy happy." 
             
"No it won't," said Rodney. "He'll just bitch that we missed that many
on the last sweep." 
             
"Don't tell him we didn't try very hard," said Bob, grinning. 
             
"And you must be Miss Brenda Ronson," said Luis, tipping his hat. "Been
some excitement around the place, about you." 
             
Brenda beamed. "My parents worry too much about me. Bob here took very
good care of me. I had a great time." 
             
"It will never cease to amaze me," said Luis, seriously, "how folks can
do this and call it a great time." He grinned, flashing a gold tooth. 
             
"I wish it had taken longer," said Brenda. Bob was glad to see she
didn't look at him when she said it. 
             
"Boss?" said Rodney. 
             
Bob looked at him. 
             
"How come you ain't got no hair hanging down from under that hat? You
have another accident at the camp fire? Fall in or sum'pin?" 
             
Bob took off his hat. There were double gasps from the boys. Brenda
reached up and took hers off too, looking nervous. 
             
"Well, boys, you see, it was like this. I had to wrestle a bear. It
came for us the first night ... a huge old grizzly ... hungry from the
long winter. Must have stood seven or eight feet high. Scared the hair
plumb off of both of us! All I had was my Buck knife, but losing all my
hair had me riled up some, so it worked out all right." He smiled
widely. "I can't take all the credit, though. Dammit helped a bit, and
Brenda, here whacked him with a stick." 
             
He put his hat back on. Brenda closed her sagging mouth and put hers on
too. 
             
Luis cackled. "You smell smoke, Rodney? They's got to be a campfire
around here somewhere for him to tell a whopper like that." He grinned
at Bob. "Though I have to say, your lies have improved some." 
             
Rodney laughed too. "You'd better pick it up a little, boss. Her
parents are riding out to meet you, and they don't sit a horse all that
good. We'll take care of this pitiful little herd of calves you
scrounged up." 
             
========================================

They proceeded at a canter,
until they saw dust again. It wasn't as much this time, because the
horses causing that dust weren't running flat out. 
             
"Let's show them what you can do," said bob, leaning forward. "HeAH" he
yelled. 
             
Brenda leaned forward automatically, and grinned as the horses went
into a gallop. She saw her parents, perched stiffly on horses, and the
man she knew as Rowdy riding with them. They went in a large circle,
riding around the small group, still running hard as Brenda held her
hat on with one hand and yelled at the top of her lungs. Dammit ran for
all she was worth, keeping pace and barking excitedly. After a complete
circuit, they slowed to a trot, and went up to the group of gapeing
riders. Even Rowdy's mouth was hanging open as he stared at Brenda. 
             
"Nice day for a ride," said Bob. 
             
Dave and Linda Ronson's eyes were only for their daughter. 
             
"Are you all right, sweetheart?" asked Linda breathlessly. 
             
"I'm fine, Mommy," said the girl, her voice sounding younger than it
had on the trip. "I had a wonderful time." 
             
"We were so worried about you ... when you didn't check in," said the
woman, darting a look at Bob. 
             
"Ohhh Mom, I got to see so many cool things. I saw a BEAR!" 
             
Dave Ronson turned pale, and Linda gaped. 
             
"And she had two cubs with her!" said Brenda excitedly. 
             
"Binoculars," said Bob, trying to head off an explosion. "They were on
the other side of the valley from us." 
             
"Thank goodness," sighed Linda. 
             
"And we climbed a mountain and I could see forever," sighed Brenda. 
             
"You ... climbed a ... mountain?" Linda looked shocked. 
             
"One all by myself," said Brenda proudly. "While Bob was down ..." She
looked startled. She'd been about to say while Bob was down taking a
bath at the bottom of the falls. That, she decided, wasn't the best
thing to say. "While Bob was busy," she amended, lamely. 
             
"It was really just a rock spire," said Bob, feeling dread. "Plenty of
handholds and footholds." 
             
Rowdy was grinning now. "Well, at least you didn't scandalize any more
guests by chasing your dog naked through the brush?" 
             
Brenda sat up straight. "He really DID that?" she yipped. "I thought
that was a camp fire lie!" She looked over at Bob. He shrugged. 
             
"Camp fire lie?" asked Linda weakly. 
             
"It's a tradition," said Rowdy, waving his hands expansively. "We sit
around the campfire and tell tall tales. Bob's never been much of a
liar, though. 'Course his life has been fairly exciting - not humdrum
like most of us - so even when he tells the truth it's pretty
interesting." 
             
Brenda looked indignant. "All those stories you told ... they're true!" 
             
Bob grinned. "They're the only stories I know," he said. 
             
"I feel cheated," she said, in mock ferocity. She turned to her
parents, who were staring at her, almost with shock. "I want to stay
longer. He owes me some real lies!" 
             
"Honey, are you sure you're OK?" asked her father, concern on his face.
"You look ..." He frowned. "Remember how Doctor MacNiel said that, just
before ..." He looked frustrated "You'll feel really good just before
you ..." 
             
"Daddy," said Brenda, frowning. "I had a good time. I feel fine. I
don't think I'm going to fall off this horse in ten minutes and die." 
             
"We can't stay," said Linda sadly. "We have other things planned, and
then we need to get back home. We have things to do. You need to be
home when it gets worse." 
             
Brenda slumped. 
             
"OK," she said softly. "I know." 
             
Now that he had put a complete damper on her excitement, Dave tried to
get her to talk more about the trip as they walked the horses toward
the ranch. Brenda answered questions, but her excitement was gone. It
seemed like a long ride. Both of the Ronson adults had gotten to ride
horses, while she was gone, but neither was comfortable cantering, and
the way Linda was grasping the saddle horn made a gallop a bad idea
too. Neither of them was really comfortable on a horse. 
             
They were almost to the ranch, when Linda suddenly jerked her head up
and looked at her daughter. 
             
"Where's your wig?" she asked. 
             
"Dammit ate it," said Brenda. She pointed down at the dog, trotting
along beside them. 
             
"What?!" came Dave's mildly outraged gasp. 
             
"I took it off to sleep, and she found it and thought it was an animal
or something. She tried to kill it. It was too messed up to wear any
more." 
             
She rode closer to Bob and leaned over to take his hat off. 
             
"See what Bob did for me?" 
             
It might have been strange, or tense, or any number of things, but
Rowdy's howl of laughter made it into a good thing. 
             
"We try to make all out guests as comfortable as possible at the Lazy
N," said Bob, his face straight. "I just figured she'd be more
comfortable if she wasn't the only one who had to look that way." 
             
"That's so sweet," sighed Linda. She sounded just like her daughter had
when she'd said the same thing. 
             
Rowdy was still chortling. Bob threw him a look. "I'm thinking of
having everybody on the ranch do this," he said, glaring at his
foreman. "If you're ever back this way, you just let me know and I'll
make sure your daughter feels VERY comfortable." 
             
Rowdy just laughed harder. 
             
========================================

The Ronsons wasted no time
in whisking their daughter off home ... to die. Once they were back,
Bob didn't see her again until the family was ready to leave. Brenda
had her hat with her, but wasn't wearing it as she walked into the
kitchen, where Donna was feeding Bob. The cook had a smile on her face,
and seemed to be spending more time looking at Bob's bald head, than at
what she was cooking. 
             
"We're leaving now," said Brenda, looking sad. Bob could see in her
eyes that she wanted to hug him, but her parents were right behind her.
Dave looked anxious. 
             
"I'm glad you had a good time," he said, standing up. What could they
do. She'd be dead in a month, if the doctor had called it right. He
held his arms open. 
             
"I had a wonderful time," she said, tears in her eyes, as she hugged
him fiercely. "You made all my dreams come true." 
             
"I'll miss you," he said, patting her back. "You turned out to be a
pretty good cowgirl." 
             
She stood back and wiped her eyes. "Will you come to the funeral?" 
             
He ducked his head. "Sure." 
             
"Will you bring Dammit?" Her shoulders were shaking now. 
             
"I don't think they'd like that, at the funeral parlor," he said gently. 
             
"I'll tell them they HAVE to let her come," cried the girl. "It's MY
funeral!" 
             
This wasn't going well at all, and Bob just wanted it to be over. The
heaviness on his heart was beginning to feel familiar. 
             
"I'll bring her," he said. "Now, get on out of here before I bawl like
a baby." 
             
She had the presence of mind to kiss him on the cheek, instead of the
lips. "I really do love you," she whispered. Then she fled back to her
parents. They looked concerned. Linda gave Bob a tentative smile. 
             
"Thank you for everything," she said. 
             
"My pleasure, Ma'am," he said heavily. 
             
Then they were gone. 
             
Bob turned around to see Donna wiping her eyes. 
             
"It's just so sad!" she said, complaint in her voice. 
             
"It's just life, Donna," he said. "And part of life is ... death." 
             
========================================

It took two weeks until she
wasn't constantly on his mind. The next two weeks were equally rough,
when he wasn't thinking about Brenda, he was thinking about Dannie. As,
when Dannie had gone, now that Brenda was gone too, he had no sex drive
at all. When he thought about Brenda, it was her face, and bald head he
envisioned. He could conjure up the view of her pert young breasts, and
those tight pussy lips, clasped around his prick, but he didn't like
to. It was her smile he missed the most. When he wasn't missing her
smile, he was missing Dannie's. 
             
He threw himself into work at the ranch, even taking guests out. The
newness of each stranger gave him something to concentrate on, but he
wasn't his usual carefree self. That, and the half-inch long hair all
over his head made the guests a little wary of him sometimes. 
             
He kept expecting to get the notification that he was expected at a
funeral. When, six weeks after the Ronsons drove away from the ranch,
he got back from a trip to find Crystal twisting a message note in her
hands, he wasn't surprised when she told him Linda Ronson had called,
and wanted him to call her back. 
             
He wanted to put off calling her, but if he did that, he might miss the
service, so he clamped down on his feelings and dialed the number.
Crystal hovered around him, wanting to do something to help, but not
knowing what that was. Rowdy wandered in too, and Bob knew Crystal had
tipped him off. 
             
"Hello?" came the female voice on the phone. 
             
"Bob Nivens," he said into the phone. 
             
"Oh! Mr. Nivens! I'm SO glad you called back!" said Linda. She sounded
much too happy to be telling him when the funeral was. 
             
"Something has happened!" she said. 
             
"I'm sorry," said Bob, automatically. It was what he had been prepared
to say. 
             
"No! You don't understand!" said the woman. "Brenda hasn't gotten
sicker. The doctors don't understand it at all. The tumor is still
there, but it's gotten smaller!" 
             
"That's wonderful," said Bob. He didn't know quite how to feel, but he
knew what to say. 
             
"They think maybe it had something to do with her visit to your ranch." 
             
"How could that be?" he asked. 
             
"They don't KNOW," said the woman, her voice full of emotion. "But
that's the only thing that changed in her daily routine. Maybe it was
the air ... or the riding ... or SOMETHING. They can't think of any
other reason why she's gone into remission!" 
             
"She's in remission?!" gasped Bob. 
             
"Yes!" There was silence. "At least they THINK so. Like I said, the
tumor is still there ... but it's gotten smaller!" 
             
"She's OK?" asked Bob, his gut tight. 
             
"She feels fine!" said the happy woman. "She wants to come back for
another visit!" 
             
"Do you think that's a good idea?" asked Bob. He had been ... almost
... prepared for Brenda to die. He wasn't prepared at all for Brenda to
live. 
             
"We have no idea," said Linda. "But it can't hurt. I mean the last
time, when I saw her, I knew something was different, but I couldn't
figure it out. She looked so happy ... and healthy. But now we know!
Maybe it was the water." She sounded doubtful. 
             
"I'll give you all the water you want," said Bob, grasping for anything
at all to say. He suddenly felt like he'd faint. 
             
"The ranch is all she'll talk about," said Linda. "She draws pictures
of that horse she rode ... and the DOG, for pity's sake! And bears, and
mountains and trees and EVERYTHING! Can't we please bring her back
there? I know you're booked for years and all that, but it would mean
so much to us." 
             
Bob felt helpless. "She's welcome any time," he heard his voice say.
"We'll make room on the schedule for her." 
             
"Oh THANK you!" said the excited woman. "We won't be able to stay the
whole time - her father and I - we've already used up all our vacation
with her treatment, and the last time, of course ... but we know she'll
be in good hands." 
             
"I guess that will be all right," said Bob, feeling dizzy. 
             
"Oh, if something happens, we can get there in just a few hours," Linda
assured him. 
             
"We'll work that all out when I see you," he said weakly. 
             
Linda told him she'd call him with a firm date, and hung up. Bob turned
to find Crystal, Donna and Rowdy all staring at him, excitement on
their faces. 
             
"She's in remission?!" gasped Crystal. 
             
"I guess so," said Bob, slumping. 
             
"Well what in the world is wrong with you?" asked Donna. "This is
WONDERFUL!" 
             
"I guess so," said Bob, trying to think. His mind was awhirl. 
             
"You gals git on out of here, now," said Rowdy gruffly. "The Boss and I
need to make plans." 
             
"I handle bookings," said Crystal, incensed. 
             
"Git!" snarled Rowdy. 
             
The two women went, complaining to the door. They were still
complaining when Rowdy slammed it. 
             
"You want to tell me what's going on?" asked the foreman. 
             
"I don't know," said Bob, helplessly. 
             
"I figured you'd be happy for that girl." said Rowdy. 
             
"I am," said Bob. He didn't sound really happy. "I mean it's really
good." He looked miserable. "I thought she was going to die." 
             
"Well the way you're acting ..." Rowdy stopped, frowning. "You're
acting like you did when ..." He looked shrewdly at his boss. 
             
"You fell for that little slip of a girl on that trip ... didn't you?" 
             
Bob had tears in his eyes. Everything he had done so carefully, to
prepare for the inevitable, was coming unraveled. He felt like he'd
been hit by a bus. When she'd left, he'd come to a kind of peace with
his dead wife. The girl who had competed for her memory was gone ...
would be gone ... and he could live with that. Now, his feelings for
the girl were bubbling up ... percolating ... roiling in his head. He
would actually SEE her again ... be able to TOUCH her again. He felt
horrible for being so happy about that. "I'm sorry," he said. He was
talking to Dannie, but Rowdy didn't know that. 
             
"What the hell are you SORRY about?" growled the old man. "I mean she's
just a kid, but she'd of got under ANYBODY's skin that spent some time
with her. I half fell in love with her myself, and I only spent a
couple hours with her." 
             
"I can't feel like that about her," moaned Bob. "It's wrong!" 
             
"OK, she's a little young. But if that thing in her head ain't killing
her no more, then she'll grow up in a couple of years. Then it won't be
so wrong any more. You can wait a couple of years, can't you?" 
             
"You don't GET it, Rowdy," wailed Bob. "I never felt like that about
any woman except DANNIE!" 
             
"She's gone, boss," said the man softly. 
             
"Get out," said Bob, his voice tense. 
             
"Come on, Boss," said Rowdy, reaching out to touch bob's shoulder.
"Just because ..." 
             
"GET OUT!" yelled Bob. 
             
"All right," said Rowdy, subdued. "We'll talk about this later." 
             
"We will NOT talk about this later," snarled Bob. 
             
Rowdy stuck his face to within an inch of Bob's, but his tone was calm.
"Don't you take that tone with me, boy. I'm your friend, and you know
that. We WILL talk about this later. You let me know, when you're
ready." He backed up. "And it should probably be before that girl shows
up again." 
             
He left, closing the door, before Bob could say anything else

Chapter Twelve

Whether Rowdy spoke to
Crystal, or whether she just took her job seriously, Bob never got the
chance to book Brenda's next visit. Crystal pre-empted him by calling
the Ronsons and setting it up herself, a week hence. She didn't tell
Bob about it until the day before it was scheduled. Nobody said much of
anything to him during that week. He was like an injured bear. 
             
"You did WHAT?!" he yelled. 
             
Crystal stood firm, her shoulders back, and her fabulous breasts thrust
at him, like they were a defense of some kind. 
             
"You SAID she was welcome any time," she reminded him. "I did my JOB,
Mr. Nivens!" 
             
Her formal response took the wind out of Bob's sails. He couldn't be
mad at her. She did, after all, just do her job. He felt panic in his
gut. He knew what Brenda would want to do when she came back. He was
quite aware that he wanted to pick up where they left off too. 
             
That was the problem. 
             
He saddled up Ranger and went for a ride. He'd been gone for maybe an
hour when he heard hoof beats behind him. It was Rowdy. 
             
The old foreman pulled up, facing him. 
             
"You need to go see Greasy Face," he said. He said nothing else. 
             
"Why?" asked Bob. He knew why, but he was being stubborn about it. 
             
"You know why," said Rowdy. "If she's still got a hold on you, then
talk to her." 
             
"You don't believe that stuff," said Bob. "He's got half the people in
this county spooked, but you're not one of them." 
             
"I don't know what to believe," said Rowdy calmly. "Go see him." 
             
Rowdy's horse reared, turned, and was off at a gallop before Bob could
say anything else. 
             
========================================

Bob rode another hour, and
thought about Greasy Face. Greasy Face was a Native American, and he
was old when Bob was a kid. Bob had been fascinated with him as he grew
up, and spent as much time with the old Indian as he could. That wasn't
much, because Greasy Face was a ranch hand at the Lazy N, and, even
though he had to be in his seventies, he did the same kind of work as
all the other ranch hands. According to Bob's dad, the Indian had
showed up on foot, one day, saying he was there for a job. He'd been as
old as Rowdy was now, even then, though nobody knew his actual age.
When Bob's dad had told him about this, he'd had a far off look in his
eyes. "He said he was SUPPOSED to work here." 
             
"What did that mean, Daddy?" asked young Bob. 
             
"Hell if I know," his father had answered. "But something told me to
give him a job. I did, and he's one of the best there is." 
             
Bob, over the years, had learned that Greasy face was from the Wind
River reservation, and member of the Forks-of-the-River Men tribe, part
of the Arapaho nation. It eventually came out that he had been a
Medicine Man of the tribe, but he said he had "retired" to make way for
a younger man to take his place. It was common knowledge, among the
cowboys on the ranch, and not a few people from other ranches, that
Greasy Face could see things about people, like when they were sick,
even before they knew it. It was also widely believed that he could
talk to the spirits. Bob had heard some tales about Greasy Face that
had made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. 
             
He'd thought about going to Greasy Face when Dannie had died. To be
honest, he was afraid to do so. On the one hand, he was afraid that the
old man couldn't do what was claimed. On the other hand ... he was
afraid that maybe he could. 
             
Both fears resurfaced as Bob rode that day. What if he COULD talk to
Dannie, through the old man? What would she say? Would she rail at him
for what he'd already done with the girl? Would she curse him? And what
if nothing happened at all. What if he got his hopes up, only to have
them dashed? He'd already been through nine months of pure agony, with
a three day respite, of sorts, while he was with Brenda. That, too, had
turned into agony, first when he was sure she'd die, and now, again,
when he found out maybe she wouldn't. 
             
He didn't know what to do. 
             
========================================

He still didn't know what
to do when the car pulled up and parked outside. 
             
When she got out, she looked the same ... and completely different. 
             
She had the same slim legs ... same gorgeous smile ... same hourglass
shape ... same bald head. She looked different in ways he couldn't
quite put his finger on. That she had on a sundress, instead of jeans
and a shirt, was obvious. That she wasn't wearing a wig, was obvious
too. She looked healthy, he decided. He hadn't noticed, before, because
he had nothing to compare it to, but now, stepping into the sun, she
looked vibrantly, gloriously healthy. Her skin didn't look so pale any
more. 
             
When she saw him, she walked sedately towards him. As she got closer he
realized she wasn't actually bald any more. Almost transparent blond
hair sprouted all over her head, mimicking the darker inch and a half
long fuzz that he sported under his hat. Bob saw her parents get out of
the car as she came up to stand in front of him. The first thing she
did was reach up and take his hat off. 
             
"Good," she breathed a long sigh. "I was afraid you'd kept it shaved. I
worked hard to grow this," she said, rubbing her head and smiling. "I
didn't want to have to shave it off to be like you." 
             
Bob noticed that just about everybody who wasn't out on a job
assignment was there to meet this family. Even Greasy Face was there,
standing beside Rowdy. Dammit ran up and sat down beside Brenda,
wagging her tail. The girl bent her knees gracefully and scratched
behind both ears. 
             
"I'm happy to see you too," she said to the dog. 
             
Bob felt like he was going to throw up. He felt like running. He
thought he might pee his pants. The feelings that flooded him were even
stronger than he'd been afraid they'd be. He felt like he was ten years
old again. 
             
She stood back up. 
             
"Hi," she said, putting his hat back on him. "Thank you for inviting me
back." 
             
"Uh ..." Bob choked. 
             
"I'm still sick," she said. "I mean the tumor is still there." She
looked over at her parents. "It got smaller, but it's still there. They
think it was something from here that did that." 
             
Bob just stared at her. He was so overwhelmed by her mere presence that
he couldn't function. 
             
"You're not very talkative, today," said the girl, cocking her head and
staring at him. 
             
"I don't ... feel too good," Bob whimpered. 
             
"Well, go get some rest or something," she said. "I want to go for
another ride." She pursed her lips and made a kissing sound. The look
of invitation in her eyes was as loud as a shout. Then, she turned, and
walked back toward her parents. Her father was taking a suitcase out of
the trunk of the car. Linda said something to Brenda as they passed
each other, and walked over to Bob. 
             
"Thank you, again," she said, as she approached Bob. "Dave and I can't
stay long, but there was something I wanted to talk to you about." 
             
Talking to Linda wasn't as terrifying as talking to Brenda, and Bob
managed to make the appropriate sounds. "What's that?" he asked. 
             
The woman looked over her shoulder. "I think she has a little crush on
you." 
             
Bob's stomach, which had just begun floating back up to where it
normally was, sank again. 
             
"You do?" 
             
"All she's wanted to do since we took her home is come back here," said
Linda, looking at Bob's strained face oddly. She tilted her head the
same way her daughter had. "She's done everything the doctors ask her
to. They keep doing all these tests on her, and she puts up with all
that just fine, but she keeps talking about the ranch, and the dog ...
and you. I think she had a very good time when she was here." The woman
looked shrewdly at the pale man in front of her. "A VERY good time." 
             
"I tried," said Bob, meaning he'd tried to resist the girl's seduction.
He had decided, in his mind, out of pure emotional self defense, that
he had been seduced. He knew that wasn't likely. Young, virginal girls
just don't go out and seduce the first cowboy they spend a day or two
with. But he had been, for the most part, helpless when she wanted to
explore the new feelings that riding had brought her. 
             
"You succeeded," said Linda. "There's one other thing," she said. 
             
Bob felt the axe coming. They had found out he had fucked their little
girl. He was sure of it. If he'd have been thinking more clearly, he'd
have realized that couldn't be it. They wouldn't have brought her back
if they knew. But he wasn't thinking clearly. He hadn't though clearly
since the second day of their ride together. 
             
"You never sent us a bill for the trip," said Linda. 
             
"I didn't?" asked Bob. He hadn't even thought about that aspect of
things. Crystal handled all the bookings and billing. 
             
"No," she said. "We're supposed to turn it in to the Foundation, and
they've been asking for it." 
             
"I'll ... um ... talk to Crystal about it," said Bob. 
             
"Thank you," said Linda. "We're going to get her settled in. Crystal
said she can stay a whole week. She didn't know what the itinerary was
going to be, but she doesn't really care. She just wants to be here.
I'm a little worried about the crush. I'd like to ask you to be gentle
with her." 
             
"Gentle?" Bob almost whispered. 
             
"You know how these crushes are. I don't want her to end up getting
hurt ... or anything. If you can, I'd appreciate it if you'd let her
down gently." 
             
"Gently," muttered Bob. 
             
"Are you all right?" asked Linda, concern in her voice. 
             
"I've ... uh ... got a lot on my mind ... that's all." He tried to get
control over himself. "Why don't you get her settled in. I didn't
actually talk to Crystal about what we're going to do while she's here.
I have something I have to take care of, and then I'll be back." 
             
He turned around and walked away. He went to the barn, but he didn't
have anything to do there. He was, in truth, just trying to separate
himself from the emotional storm that had just arrived at the ranch. It
was Brenda who had brought that storm, but her mother was wrong. It
wasn't Brenda who was in danger. It was Bob. He recognized what he had
felt instantly, as soon as she smiled at him. He was a
twenty-seven-year-old man, in love with a sixteen year old girl, who
might live to be seventeen ... and might not. 
             
Phillip, Crystal's son, came out of a stall. 
             
"You need something, boss?" he asked, his voice piping. He called Bob
"boss", like all the cowboys did. "You taking Ranger out for a ride? I
can get him ready, if you want." 
             
"No," said Bob. "I'm just thinking." 
             
"I never thought of coming to the barn, just to think," said the boy. 
             
"I guess I never did either," said Bob. "It's quiet here, I guess." 
             
The boy lit up. "Greasy Face is teaching me to met ..." He screwed up
his face as he tried to remember the word. "metiat, or something like
that," he went on. "That's thinking about stuff, except that you aren't
supposed to actually think about anything." Phillip was in just as much
awe over Greasy Face as Bob had been when he was the same age. 
             
"Meditate," said Bob. 
             
"Yeah! That's it," said Phillip happily. "It's hard! He's going to give
me another lesson today. It's his day off." 
             
"You listen to everything Greasy Face tells you," said Bob. "He's a
very smart man." 
             
"I know!" said Phillip excitedly. "He tells the best stories too!" 
             
"You go on now," said Bob. "Get your chores done so you can play." 
             
"Yes SIR, Boss," said the boy, sticking his chest out. He turned and
went for the oat bucket at a run. 
             
Bob watched him go. The interlude had helped him calm down. It had also
reminded him of Rowdy's insistence that he talk to Greasy Face, about
all this. He thought. If it was the old Indian's day off, he'd likely
be down at the bunkhouse. 
             
He turned toward the other end of the barn, beyond which the bunkhouse
lay. He had to stop and talk to his horse, who was restive. He'd
thought about taking a ride, but he left the horse there. He had to get
this done. 
             
========================================

Greasy face was sitting on
the porch of the bunkhouse, braiding a rope. Greasy Face made all his
own rope, turning up his nose at the modern stuff. Just seeing the old
man had a calming effect on Bob. He had spent countless hours, sitting
and riding with the man when he was younger. The old man's familiar
countenance, and the pure normalcy of what he was doing, gave Bob some
control back, and he took a deep breath. The old Indian looked up when
Bob's shadow crossed his feet. 
             
"heebe neneeceeb" said the wrinkled dark face. Bob knew that was
Arapaho for "Hello, boss". 
             
"heebe neiteh'ei" Bob said back, returning the greeting and calling the
man his friend. 
             
"What brings you to see an old man today?" asked Greasy Face. 
             
"Can't a man come see a friend?" 
             
"Your face is troubled. Your heart is heavy." The man went back to
braiding his rope. 
             
Bob suddenly felt silly. Asking Greasy Face what to do about Brenda
suddenly seemed frivolous, somehow. 
             
"How did you ever get the name 'Greasy Face' anyway?" asked Bob,
suddenly. He knew it was an attempt to talk about something else ...
delay the real point of his visit, but did it anyway. 
             
"My mother was a 'Forks-of-the-River Men' woman. My father was from the
'Greasy Face People'," said the old Indian. "They met at a dance, and
he corrupted her. He made me in her belly that night, and then went
back to his lands. My mother never saw him again. My people said she
should throw me in the river, because the Greasy Face People were
scoundrels." 
             
"Obviously, they didn't," commented Bob. "Throw you in, I mean." 
             
"My mother was a hard headed woman," said the old man, grinning. "She
told me no man had ever made her feel like that, before. She named me
to honor him, and to tell my people that they should mind their own
business." 
             
"I'm surprised you rose to such a high level in the tribe," said Bob. 
             
"The People don't choose a medicine man," said Greasy Face, seriously.
"The talent comes upon him, and he is what he is. Your people should
learn that." He braided for a few minutes as Bob sat down on the porch
beside him. Eventually he looked over at Bob. 
             
"Why is your heart so heavy? Do you still grieve for huhu'yookox?"
Greasy Face had called Dannie "Little willow". When she asked him why,
he said she was beautiful, and bent with the winds of turmoil and
change, instead of letting troubles break her spirit. She had planned
for Kyle to take lessons from Greasy Face, when he was old enough. 
             
"Can you really talk to the spirits?" asked Bob. 
             
"Why would you want to?" asked the old Indian. 
             
Bob thought for a minute. "When I lost her, I never thought I'd find
feeling for another woman." 
             
The old man's fingers never faltered with the rope he was making. "Man
was made to love woman," he commented. 
             
"I don't know what to do," Bob said. "I thought her spirit might tell
me." 
             
Greasy Face's hands stopped, and he looked over at Bob. 
             
"I could perform the ceremony ... but it is not necessary." 
             
"I don't understand," said Bob. 
             
"If you had been taken by the avalanche, instead of huhu'yookox, what
would you have her do?" 
             
Bob sat. He had often wished it HAD been him in the car, that day ...
alone, of course. If he could have traded his life for theirs, he would
have done it gladly. Now he tried to think past the selfishness of that
fantasy. The answer was obvious, but it seemed self serving too. He
concentrated on a vision of Dannie ... alive. What would he want for
her? The answer was still obvious, self serving or not. 
             
"I would want her to be happy," he said. 
             
"And you think she would want something different for you?" asked the
old man, his eyes pinned to Bob's. 
             
Bob swallowed. "I feel like I'm betraying her. I don't know what to
think." 
             
The old man went back to making rope, and spoke as if it were to that
rope. 
             
"She was a good woman, even if she was white." Bob knew that wasn't a
racist statement. The old man was just being blunt. "She would want her
man to be happy, just as you would want her to be happy. I don't have
to ask her about that. I already know what she would say." 
             
"You never took another wife," said Bob. He knew that part of the
reason Greasy Face had left his tribe was because his wife had died. 
             
"That's because the next woman I saw who was worth the trouble was
already taken," said the old man. He looked up and grinned. "She had
already been claimed by you." He chuckled. "You choose good women,
neneeceeb. If you decide not to take this girl-with-the-wasting
disease, let me know. It has been long since I was able to make a woman
happy." 
             
Bob was flabbergasted, both by the compliment, and by the fact that
this man somehow knew that Bob's question had involved Brenda. 
             
"How did you know?" he asked, uncomfortably. 
             
"You're eyes were different when you brought her back from the
mountains," said the man, shrugging. "I could see you had come nearer
to her." He looked back down. "And she to you. This, too, was plain.
Your spirits were entwined." He smiled. "And now she has come back. She
wants to claim you." 
             
"Her parents didn't see that," said Bob. 
             
"Why, then, did they bring her back?" asked the man. "And so soon after
her last visit?" 
             
Bob didn't want to go into why Brenda was back. She was supposed to be
dead. In the tortured recesses of his mind, her death had been
transformed into his punishment for what he'd done with her ... for
betraying Dannie with her. Now that she wasn't dead, he hadn't been
able to justify what had happened between them. He boiled it down to
the minimum he could say without the panic coming back. 
             
"Her parents only cater to her last wishes. I don't think they know how
she feels about me ... or me about her." 
             
Greasy Face's fingers were busy with the rope again. "They are blinded
by their grief. They think she is going to die, but she has much life
left in her." 
             
"She still has the cancer in her," said Bob. "It isn't as bad now, but
it's still there." 
             
"Her cei3wooo ... her spirit ... is strong, stronger than when she was
last here." The old man looked almost puzzled. "Perhaps what I am
seeing is the téí'yoonehíhi' na." 
             
"Tey-yoon..." Bob tried to pronounce the unfamiliar word." 
             
"The baby ... inside her. What I see could be the baby. I don't know
for sure." 
             
"Baby?" Bob's voice was an octave higher than normal. He blinked. 
             
"She is with child, neneeceeb. She has lain with a man." 
             
"What?!" gasped Bob. "She's pregnant?" 
             
"Did I not already say this?" Greasy face looked concerned. "Do not let
this trouble you, neneeceeb. Woman was made to lie with man. She is a
good woman. I can see that too. Do not hold it against her that she has
done what woman is made to do." 
             
Bob shot to his feet, and left at a run. 
             
========================================

When he hit the porch he
was panting like he'd run a mile. He stopped suddenly, and stood,
wild-eyed, unsure of what to do. A party of guests was having an early
lunch on the veranda, and looked at him curiously. 
             
He went inside and saw Crystal, talking to another guest. She looked
over at him, frowned, and said something to the guest before coming his
way. 
             
"What's wrong?" she asked. 
             
"I ... I ... she ... she's ..." Bob felt faint. He looked for a place
to sit down. 
             
"What?" Crystal had concern in her eyes now. 
             
"Where are they?" he gasped. 
             
"Who?" Crystal wasn't dumb, and she figured it out before he could
answer. "The Ronsons? They're up in room six. What happened?" 
             
"Where's Rowdy?" he gasped again. 
             
"Bob Nivens! Are you going to tell me what's going on?" she asked,
almost angrily. 
             
"Where's Rowdy?" he insisted. 
             
"I don't know," she said. "He said something about riding somewhere
with the chuck wagon, this morning. That would have to be the Fiskins
group. They're the only ones scheduled for the chuck wagon." 
             
Bob moaned. The Fiskins group was ten miles away. That was too far. 
             
"Bob," pleaded Crystal. "Talk to me." 
             
He darted a look around. The guest she had been talking to was standing
there, obviously waiting for her to come back and finish their
conversation. 
             
He looked at Crystal, pain in his eyes. "She's pregnant," he whispered. 
             
"Pregnant?" Crystal asked, startled. "Who?" Again, her mind caught up
with things before he could answer. "That girl? Brenda?" Her eyes were
wide open now, and her mouth hung open. 
             
"Yes," panted Bob. "Greasy Face told me so." 
             
"Greasy Face?" She looked confused. "But what does that have to do with
...?" Her eyes narrowed. "You mean you ...?" She looked even more
startled. "Last time she was here? You mean you ...?" 
             
"Yeeesss," he moaned. 
             
For once, Crystal was caught off guard. She'd thought she knew this man
pretty well, but this was something she'd never have even dreamed he
might do. Her mind was a whirl of conflicting thoughts. As a woman, who
had been through hard times, she was outraged that a man would take
advantage of a poor sick girl like that. At the same time, she'd seen
that poor sick girl, upon their return, and there hadn't been a sad
bone in her body. Crystal had been awed by the poise the young woman
had, in dealing with her situation. Thinking back on that, it was
obvious that nothing had happened that had bothered the girl. As a
woman who had been pregnant, her heart reached out to the girl now, and
as a single mother, the thought that Brenda might have to go through
what she had gone through made her want to cry. 
             
"How could you!" she yipped. 
             
"I didn't MEAN for it to happen," he moaned. "I don't even know how it
DID happen. We were at the hot springs, and ... and ..." He gave up.
"What do I do now?" he asked. 
             
"You have to tell them," she said instantly. Her eyes opened wide
again. "Did she say anything to you?" 
             
"No." said Bob, his voice more normal now. His eyes flicked to the
guest. She saw and looked over. 
             
"Stay there!" she ordered. "Don't go anywhere!" 
             
She went back to the man she'd been talking to. They spoke for two or
three minutes, and the man left. She came back to Bob. 
             
"She didn't say anything to you about being pregnant?" she asked. 
             
"No," moaned Bob. 
             
Crystal thought. "She can only be a month or so along. She might not
even know. No ... wait .... she has to have missed a period." 
             
Bob remembered their conversation on the trail. "She said something
about how the medicines screwed up her cycle," he said. "She said she
hadn't had a period for a long time." 
             
Crystal leaned back. If they had talked THAT intimately, then it wasn't
just some casual, emotional little fling. It must have meant something
to the girl. Now she thought of how the girl looked, when she had
arrived that morning. The joy on her face took on new meaning. 
             
"She's in love with you, Bob." she said. 
             
"I know," he groaned. "I'm in love with her too." 
             
"Well, then, it's a workable situation," she said promptly. 
             
"No it isn't!" he hissed. "She's only sixteen! She's got cancer! She
doesn't NEED this kind of problem!" 
             
"Didn't they say she's in remission?" asked Crystal. 
             
"Yes, but the tumor is still there," said Bob. "And she's still
sixteen." 
             
"You have to tell them, Bob," said Crystal. "If they've started
treatment again, it might kill the baby." She straightened up. "You
have a responsibility to her, Bob." 
             
He blinked. He'd been thinking selfishly again. He hadn't thought about
the baby ... his baby. 
             
Crystal took his elbow. "I'll go up and get Brenda. I'll tell her I
need to talk to her about her itinerary. You have to talk to her
parents, Bob. You have to." 
             
The first thing Bob felt was panic. Strangely, though, the thought of
what he'd go through ... admitting to her parents what he'd done ...
suffering their wrath ... calmed him a little. He'd always tried to
punish himself for Dannie's death. Now, the thought of the punishment
he would receive from Dave and Linda, seemed only fitting. 
             
He suddenly felt very calm. He would take that punishment. He deserved
it. 
             
"OK," he said suddenly. "Yes. Let's do that." 
             =
=======================================

He watched, from down the
hall, as Crystal led Brenda off, and down the stairs. It wasn't until
he was walking towards the door of the room she'd been assigned that he
realized he was about to tell two adults that the reason he knew their
daughter was pregnant was because of the vision of an old Indian man.
They'd never believe it. He would go in there, confess everything, and
they wouldn't believe it. Oh, they'd believe that he'd soiled their
virgin daughter, but they wouldn't believe she was pregnant. Not on the
say-so of a retired Medicine Man. 
             
He was standing in front of the door, wondering what to do, when Linda
Ronson pulled the door open. 
             
"... just need to find out ..." She had been talking to her husband, as
she opened the door. She stopped, startled, as she was confronted with
Bob, a foot away. 
             
"Oh!" she said. "You startled me!" When Bob didn't say anything,
curiosity came over her face. Then concern, as she saw Bob's eyes. 
             
"Is something wrong?" she asked. 
             
"Yes ... I'm afraid there is," said Bob heavily. "I need to talk to
you." 
             
"Is Brenda all right?" the woman became anxious instantly. 
             
"She's fine," said Bob, automatically. "She's talking to Crystal." 
             
"I know," said Linda. "She came here to get her ... I don't understand?" 
             
"May I come in?" asked Bob. "We need to talk."

Chapter Thirteen

He hadn't had time to plan
out what to say ... what order to say it in. Both adults looked at him
curiously. That he was worried was obvious to both of them. 
             
"There's a problem," said Bob, tentatively. 
             
"She can't stay?" asked Linda anxiously. "But she's been looking
forward to this." 
             
"No," said Bob hastily. "It's not that. I don't know where to start." 
             
He thought frantically. 
             
"There's this Indian ... one of the ranch hands ... his name is Greasy
Face." Bob paused. "He can see things." That much said, Bob floundered. 
             
"See things?" asked Linda. "See what? Did he see something about
Brenda?" 
             
"Yes," said Bob automatically. "He was a Medicine Man. I know this
sounds crazy, but ..." 
             
"What was it he saw?" asked Dave, leaning forward. 
             
"I ... let's wait a minute for that," said Bob, feeling the panic
rising. 
             
"Mr. Nivens, would you please tell me what you're here for?" asked
Linda. If something is wrong, we need to know. The doctors all say
she's in remission, but Lord knows they've been wrong about things
before. I don't know anything about Medicine Men, but we've been
looking into alternative treatments for Brenda, so we're open to just
about anything." 
             
Bob took a breath. This wasn't going well at all. "On our last ride,"
he started again. "she had another wish. I mean she added to her wish.
She wanted ..." He couldn't say it. 
             
"Did this Medicine Man do something to her?" asked Linda leaning
forward. "Is THAT why she went into remission?" 
             
"No!" said Bob hastily. "He didn't do anything to her." He took a
breath and closed his eyes. "I did." 
             
"You?" Linda looked confused. "What in the world could YOU have done?" 
             
Bob opened his eyes. "I'm in love with your daughter," he said faintly. 
             
"You're WHAT?!" squeaked Linda. 
             
"I fell in love with your daughter on that trail ride," said Bob
weakly. He went on, just to get it over with. "And she asked me to ...
she wanted me to ..." He gulped. "She said she didn't want to die a
virgin." he finished. 
             
There was stunned silence for ten seconds. Bob closed his eyes again. 
             
"You had sex with our daughter?" Dave's voice was heavy ... tight with
anger. 
             
"Yes," said Bob. 
             
Linda sat back in her chair so hard the front feet left the floor an
inch, before dropping back down with a thump on the floor. 
             
"You son of a BITCH!" Dave ended up yelling, as he stood, his fists
balled. 
             
Bob kept his hands at his sides. 
             
"You have every right to be angry," said Bob. "I know what I did was
wrong. If it's any comfort, I didn't intend for it to happen, but if
you slug me, I'll understand." 
             
"You're damn RIGHT I'll slug you, you BASTARD!" Dave yelled. His right
fist lashed out and connected solidly on Bob's undefended jaw. Bob
turned his head instinctively, to take the blow, and fell to the floor.
He didn't get up. "That's not ALL I'll do to you, you son of a bitch,"
growled Dave. 
             
"Dave!" Linda's voice came sharply. "Stop!" 
             
"I'll stop when this man is dead," snarled Dave. He stepped toward Bob. 
             
Linda stood up and grabbed her husband's arm. "STOP!" she yelled. 
             
She turned to Bob. "This explains a lot that I didn't understand," she
said slowly. She looked down at him. "But what does this have to do
with the Indian?" 
             
Bob stayed on the floor. He tried to get ready for the beating that
would follow. He was determined not to defend himself. 
             
"Greasy Face saw her when she came back, this morning. He says much
healthier than she was when she was here last ... and that she's
pregnant." 
             
He expected Dave to charge, but the man's mouth dropped open. He
wavered on knees that didn't seem to want to hold him up any more. He'd
left the chair behind, when he came for Bob, and sat heavily on the
edge of the bed, which was closer. 
             
"Pregnant?" Linda's voice sounded surreal in Bob's ears, like it was
floating in the wind. "Brenda's pregnant?" She sat back down, slowly.
"You made Brenda pregnant?" 
             
"I believe I did," admitted Bob. 
             
"But ... but ..." Dave's mouth worked. "She's just a baby!" His voice
firmed. "There's no way. She didn't say anything. She'd have said
something. We'd know! I'm not taking the word of some voodoo witch
doctor that my baby is pregnant!" 
             
"I'm sorry," said Bob. "I didn't mean for this to happen." 
             
"I should have seen it," said Linda softly. "I thought it was just a
crush, but I should have recognized the signs. She's in love with you." 
             
"I didn't mean for that to happen either," said Bob. 
             
"I'll SUE!" yelled Dave, standing up again. He took another step
towards Bob. 
             
"Shut up, David," said Linda, also standing. "Sit back down!" 
             
"But..." 
             
"Sit down!" She ignored him and began pacing the room. 
             
"We'll have to have her examined of course," she said to the room at
large. She spun to look at Bob. "Can I talk to him?" 
             
"Who?" asked Bob, confused. 
             
"This greasy person ... I want to talk to him." 
             
"Of course you can talk to him," said Bob. "But ..." 
             
"You believe him ... don't you?" asked the woman. 
             
Bob looked at her. "Yes. I do." 
             
"And you really ... I mean is it really possible? That she could be
pregnant, I mean?" 
             
Bob felt the flush grow on his cheeks. 
             
"Yes, it's very possible." 
             
Dave tensed, on the bed and Bob tried to make it sound a little less
negative. 
             
"What I mean is that, when I told her it was a bad idea ... that she
might GET pregnant ... she said she hadn't been having periods because
of the treatment. She felt like it was ... safe." 
             
Linda looked astonished. "You actually TALKED to her before ... before
you ..." 
             
"Ma'am, I tried everything I could do to talk her out of it. I promise
you that. But she ... I can't explain it ... she got to me somehow, I
guess." 
             
"Don't you go trying to blame this on my baby girl!" snarled Dave. 
             
"Oh shut up!" barked his wife. "You know very well that Brenda won't
take 'No' for an answer. When her mind is made up she does what she
wants. And if she wanted ..." She stopped, and looked at Bob. "I knew
something happened on that ride," she said. "I could see it, but I
didn't know what it meant. I thought it was that glow they say some
patients get just before they go downhill. I hadn't seen her that happy
for years! NOW I understand." 
             
She paced again, and then whirled to face Bob once more. "Not that that
means I approve of what happened!" 
             
"No Ma'am," said Bob. 
             
Dave looked like he was trying to think of what to do. It was obvious
he wanted to DO something. Men are like that, when faced with a problem. 
             
Linda had stopped, her head cocked, looking at Bob. "You said you loved
her." 
             
"Yes, Ma'am," he said. 
             
"How do you feel ... if she really is pregnant, I mean?" 
             
Bob opened his mouth. How could he possibly explain how he felt? If he
had hours, maybe. But he didn't have hours. He knew that. 
             
"Nine months ago, I lost my wife and five year old son in an
avalanche," he said. He saw something in Linda's face. It wasn't pity,
or horror. It was more like ... interest. He didn't understand that
look, but went on. "I didn't think anything like this would happen. I
didn't expect to fall in love ever again. I'm not trying to make
excuses, but I've been in so much pain ... that may have had something
to do with what happened." 
             
"Brenda told us about your wife." said Linda. "I'm sorry." 
             
She sounded genuinely sorry. 
             
"I think that's one of the reasons I let her come here in the first
place. I knew something of what you two must have been feeling. I was
having real trouble getting past my own pain. I felt like I should be
able to get past it," he said. "But ... I couldn't. I thought I could
at least do something to make her last days better ... to help you two,
maybe. But then, on the ride ... that's what I went to see Greasy Face
about ... when you got here. I didn't know how to feel, or what to do
when she didn't die. I felt like I had betrayed my wife." 
             
"What did he say?" asked the woman curiously. 
             
Bob took a deep breath. "He said Dannie would want me to be happy." 
             
"And what would make you happy?" 
             
"To have another chance at love?" he said softly. "And when he said she
was carrying a baby ... it was like a second chance at life ... not to
replace Kyle ... but ... I can't explain it." 
             
Linda stepped closer to him. "I think I know how you feel," she said.
"Somehow, they gave us our daughter back." 
             
"I know she's too young to get married," said Bob. "But, if things keep
up the way they are now, in a couple of years ...?" 
             
"You'd marry her?" asked Linda, her voice low, and full of emotion. 
             
"Yes," he said immediately. "With your permission, and if she'll have
me." 
             
"Oh, I don't think you need to worry about her having you," sighed
Linda. "Though I'll have to think a while on ... our permission." She
shook her head. "I don't see how I could have been so blind. She's
head-over-heels for you, young man." She looked startled. "How old are
you, anyway?" 
             
"I'm twenty six," he said. 
             
"This is ridiculous!" said Dave. "I wouldn't let her marry him if he
was the last man on earth!" 
             
Linda ignored him, and tilted her head at Bob again, examining him. 
             
"I'm going to be a grandmother," she said. "It's going to take me a
little while to get used to that idea." 
             
"Greasy Face could be wrong," said Bob. "But I was afraid that if they
continue treatment, it could hurt the baby. I had to tell you." 
             
Linda's eyes narrowed again as she realized he could have just kept
silent, but chose not to intentionally. For the first time since he had
turned over the apple cart, she felt ... better ... somehow. 
             
"Her treatment is finished," said Linda. "They've already done
everything modern medicine knows how to do. None of that worked.
Nothing worked ... until we brought her here. Of course, you can be
quite sure we'll have her examined when we get her back home. Now.
About this Greasy Face." 
             
Bob couldn't believe he was walking along beside the parents of the
girl he had knocked up. They were walking normally, though there was no
talk. Greasy Face was still sitting on the porch of the bunk house,
still braiding rope. He looked up, his eyes dark under his hat. 
             
"Hello," he said. "It is a good day." He looked at Bob, who looked
drawn and limp. "You have come to ask me about your daughter." 
             
Dave snorted. Linda nodded. "Yes," she said simply. 
             
"I would have to see her again," said the old man, not getting up.
"Perhaps lay my hands on her, but I have been thinking on what I saw,
since I talked to Bob." 
             
Bob jumped. He had never heard the man say his name. When he was
little, Greasy Face had called him
bééte'ín- vai, which meant "curious".
One day it had changed to the name for Boss in his language. He had
never called Bob by his white name. 
             
The old man went on. 
             
"When I first saw her, I knew she was sick - very sick. The Angels were
swooping low over her. They looked happy. They always look happy when
they are waiting for one who is worthy." 
             
"Angels?" Linda sounded weak. 
             
"Your word for the spirits of those gone on," said Greasy Face, pulling
at the rope. "When I saw her today, there were no spirits. It was a
puzzling thing. But, I have never seen one with the wasting disease who
was also with child, so I thought maybe what I was seeing around her
was from the life in her womb. But, if she were still sick, would not
the spirits wait for her anyway? I think she is not sick any more." 
             
Dave was finally looking less belligerent, and more interested. 
             
"She still has a tumor in her head," he said. 
             
"There are many things inside our bodies that should not be there,"
said Greasy Face. "Some are bad, and some are not. I see what I see.
That is all I can say." 
             
"Will you examine her?" asked Linda, real hope in her voice. 
             
"Linda ..." Dave said, warning in his voice. 
             
She turned to him. "She's in remission, Dave. How could he know that?" 
             
"This man," said Dave, taslking about Bob, but not looking at him,
"could have told him that. This could all be smoke and mirrors ... him
trying to get off the hook for what he did to Brenda." 
             
"Why would he say she was pregnant?" asked Linda. "Why would Bob even
TELL us that? He had nothing to gain, and everything to lose!" 
             
"We're taking her home!" insisted Dave. 
             
"Not until we're done here," said Linda forcefully. She turned back to
Greasy Face. "Will you look at her?" 
             
"If you wish me to, I will," said the old man. 
             
========================================

Crystal and Brenda were
standing on the veranda, as the group of four people came towards the
house. 
             
"There they are!" Bob heard her say. As they walked up to the steps,
she looked curiously at her parents. She knew them well enough to know
they were upset ... anxious. It was obvious to Bob that Crystal hadn't
told her about the baby. 
             
"Where have you been?" she asked, her question subdued. 
             
"This man is a Medicine Man," said Linda, touching Greasy Face's elbow.
"We want him to take a look at you." 
             
"Mother!" said Brenda, indignantly. "I feel fine! I wish you'd stop
worrying! Dr. MacNiel said I'm in remission." She looked at Bob. "I
suppose YOU had something to do with this." She folded her arms under
her breasts. 
             
Bob looked at Crystal. She looked back, with no trace of what she was
thinking on her face. 
             
"Just let him take a look at you," said Bob, gently. 
             
Greasy Face had been staring at the girl ever since they got close to
her. She looked at him. Now he smiled. 
             
"heebe be'éíyoo' ni," he said. "That means Hello,
little flower, in my language." His eyes sparkled. 
             
Brenda smiled. "What kind of flower," she asked. 
             
"It is a small white, flat-topped flower, that is very beautiful," said
the old man, to the young girl. "May I touch you?" 
             
"Thank you," she said politely. "Yes, you may." 
             
Greasy Face went to stand in front of her. She wasn't wearing her hat,
and he smoothed his hands over the inch long hairs that sprung out all
over it. He walked around her, as he did so, until he was behind her.
His hands slid down her neck, to her shoulders. 
             
"Don't be afraid," he said softly. His hands went to rest on her
abdomen, and then, slowly, lifted to cup her breasts. It happened so
quickly that no one was prepared for it. His hands squeezed gently, and
lifted, as if he were weighing them, or maybe feeling what was inside
them. As Brenda took a breath to say something, his hands slid back
down, and off her body, dropping away. 
             
"Why did you do that?" asked Brenda, turning to look at him. He had
done it right in front of her parents, and she had no idea what to
think. Her father would be furious. She looked at him, but he was
standing there, looking decidedly ... curious. 
             
"The thing inside your head is not a good thing," he said. "But it
grows weaker. This I can feel. It is dying. You have many years left to
be a mother." 
             
"Mother?" Her face was blank. He had felt her abdomen ... and breasts. 
             
"Life grows within you. You will bear a strong son." He looked at Bob,
his eyes glinting. "The child's aura feels ... familiar," he said. 
             
Bob flushed. 
             
"What's going on?" asked Brenda, shaking her head, as if to clear it.
"What life? What son?" 
             
"He says you're pregnant, dear," said her mother. Linda's eyes were
shining brightly. 
             
Brenda paled, and Crystal came up behind her to put her hands on her
waist to support her. 
             
"Pregnant?" Brenda's voice was almost a whisper. 
             
"I told them," said Bob then, "about us." 
             
Her eyes strayed to him, and, like a wilted plant that has been given
water, she straightened up. 
             
"You TOLD THEM?!" she wailed. 
             
"I had to," he said, holding out his hands. "Greasy Face told me you
were pregnant, this morning, after you arrived. I had to tell your
parents. I couldn't risk any of your treatment hurting the baby." 
             
She turned around, her hands on her face, and bent over. 
             
"Ohhhhhhhh, you told them," she moaned. 
             
She whipped around, glaring at Bob. "They'll NEVER let me stay here
now, you idiot!" she barked. She turned to her parents, eyes flashing.
"I LOVE HIM!" she yelled. She blinked and went pale again. "I'm ...
pregnant?" Her voice was almost a whine. He own hands came to her
belly, then, and she turned to Greasy Face. "I'm pregnant?" 
             
He smiled. "It is a strong, healthy baby, even though it is very young." 
             
"It's a boy?" she squealed. "How do you know?" 
             
Greasy Face grinned and shrugged. "If I told you, you would not
understand. He will be born when the be'éíyoo'
ni, after which you are named, first blooms next spring. If it is a
girl instead, I will gift you a pony. That is how sure I am." He stood
up straight, which made him just a hair taller than Brenda. 
             
She looked stunned, but suddenly animated again as she ran down the
steps and threw herself at Bob, hugging him in a fierce grip. "I'm
PREGNANT!" she squealed. "THANK YOU, THANK, YOU , THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU
SO MUCH!" 
             
Bob held her uncomfortably, smiling weakly, as he glanced at her
parents. Dave looked slightly ill. Linda looked much better, a hint of
a smile on her face. 
             
She felt the stiffness in Bob's embrace, and pulled back. "That's OK
... isn't it?" Her face slowly transposed into a frown. "Oh, Bob,
PLEASE tell me it's OK," she moaned. 
             
"Your parents are not happy," he said softly. "But if you want me to be
... I am." 
             
"MY PARENTS!" she yipped, turning to face them. She dashed to her
mother and hugged her, making her take a step. 
             
"Mommy, I'm PREGNANT!" she said, excitement in her voice. Then, to
everyone's astonishment, she broke into tears. 
             
"Don't cry, baby, it will be all right," moaned her mother. 
             
Brenda pushed back. The look on her face was twisted. 
             
"I'm not SAD," she sobbed. "I'm so haaaaapeeeeeee" she started bawling
again. 
             
"We don't actually KNOW that you're pregnant, darling," said her
mother, worried now. "We need to get you to the doctor." 
             
"OK," said Brenda excitedly. 
             
She whirled to face Bob. "I can't stay right now. Can I come back
later?" 
             
Bob felt a little loopy. That she was so happy about this made his
heart soar. That her parents were so angry, made him ill at ease. 
             
"You need to talk to your parents," he said, his voice serious. 
             
She blinked. "Of course!" she said. "I have to make them understand."
She brightened. "I'll call you." she said happily. 
             
Crystal took Bob's elbow and pulled him toward the house, while Dave
and Linda took charge of their excited offspring. They hurried toward
the room, to get her luggage. Crystal took him to the kitchen and sat
him down on a stool. 
             
"You OK?" she asked. 
             
"I have no idea," he said, rubbing his jaw where Dave had hit him. 
             
"It was a stroke of genius to get Greasy Face involved," she said,
admiringly. 
             
"Mrs. Ronson demanded to talk to him. Then she asked him to ... examine
Brenda." Bob shook his head. 
             
"I think it went pretty well," said Crystal. 
             
"We'll see, I guess." said Bob. 
             
========================================

He was still sitting there,
drinking a cup of coffee, when he heard yelling out in the hallway. 
             
"I AM going to say goodbye!" he heard Brenda's strident voice, and her
father's gruff one, though he couldn't understand what he said. 
             
The door pushed open, and Brenda strode in. She came to Bob and stepped
between his knees, forcing them apart. Her arms went around his neck,
and she kissed him, long and hard. When it was over, Bob saw her
parents standing in the open doorway. They looked a little
shell-shocked. 
             
"I wanted to leave my things here," she said. "Because I'm coming
back." She wrinkled her nose. "Daddy insisted that I take my suitcase
back home, but I'm not unpacking it. I AM coming back!" she said
forcefully. "I love you, Bob." She kissed him again. 
             
He held her waist, and pushed her back. 
             
"And I love you too," he was finally able to say to her. "Now ... don't
fight with your parents," he said. "I'm not going anywhere. Call me, if
you can, but don't argue with your parents. They're just trying to look
out for you." 
             
"You're as bad as they are," she pouted. She grinned. "I love them
too." Then she pecked his lips with hers, and turned around to go with
them. 

Chapter Fourteen

When three days had gone
by, and there was no call, Bob began to worry. It gave him time to
think, though, about lots of things, not the least of them what Greasy
Face had told him Dannie would want. He wished he could hear her say it
... somehow ... but he knew the old man was right. If things had been
the other way around, he would have urged Dannie to find love again,
and another father for Kyle, if he could. 
             
By the time two more days had dragged on, and there was still no call,
Bob resigned himself to having to deal with more loss. The sprouts of
hope that had sprung up began to wilt. He told Rowdy to schedule him
for something long and hard. 
             
Rowdy had been furious that he'd missed all the excitement. When
Crystal had told him all about it, he'd come to see Bob, but there
hadn't been much to talk about, at that point. It was a waiting game,
and it looked like things weren't going to go down the way Bob had
begun to hope they would. 
             
He was, in fact, in the process of digging a latrine at the line shack
where, it was quite possible, he had become a father for the second
time in his life, when one of the hands came tearing up on a lathered
horse. Bob was digging with a shovel, the old fashioned way. There was
a pile of lumber stacked nearby, brought out by wagon, that he planned
to build the outhouse with when the pit was ready. 
             
He heard the hoof beats, and recognized the urgency in them. When he
saw the horse, he almost cursed. 
             
"This had better be damned important," he growled at the young ranch
hand. "Rub that horse down right now!" 
             
"Sorry, Boss, but Rowdy said for me to get you back to the ranch
yesterday, and said I was fired if I didn't." 
             
"What's wrong?" asked Bob, stretching his back. 
             
"Got no idea," said the man, getting off his horse to take care of it.
"He didn't say. He just told me what I told you, and said where you'd
be." 
             
========================================

He had to saddle Ranger. By
the time he was done, the young cowboy had rubbed his mount down, and
given him water, sparingly. 
             
"You walk that horse back to the barn," ordered Bob. He put on his hat,
and mounted Ranger. 
             
"Yessir," said the cowboy, a little glumly. 
             
Ranger was feeling feisty, and wanted to run, so Bob let him, for a
mile or so. Then he pulled the big black down to a canter and went on.
He'd gone two more miles when he saw dust up ahead. 
             
It was Rowdy, and Dave and Linda Ronson were with him. 
             
========================================

Both of them looked a
little bedraggled, and Linda was favoring her buttocks, leaning from
side to side to ease the discomfort. At least this time, she had the
reins in her fingers. They stopped before Bob got to them, and Bob
cantered to within yards before he pulled Ranger up. 
             
"Didn't expect to see you," he said. 
             
"I told that boy to get you back pronto," growled Rowdy. 
             
"He almost killed his horse trying to do just that," said Bob. 
             
"We owe you an apology," said Linda Ronson suddenly. 
             
"Beg your pardon?" Bob asked. 
             
"We lost your number. The doctors kept wanting to do more and more
tests. By the time Brenda started screaming, and we thought to call the
Last Wish people to get your number again, she told them she was
through with tests, and was coming back here." 
             
Dave Ronson took off his hat. He didn't look mad, this time. 
             
"I just loaded them up and we all came here," he said. "We owe you a
debt of gratitude. I'm sorry I punched you." 
             
"I don't understand," said Bob. 
             
Linda got animated. "They don't know why - they've never seen anything
like this - but the doctors are all convinced that, when Brenda got
pregnant, the hormones that produced started killing the tumor. It's
even smaller now, Bob! You saved our baby's life, Bob!" She started
sniffling. 
             
Bob was thunderstruck. He had no idea how to respond. 
             
"She's back at the house," said Dave. "She wants to see you." 
             
"She didn't ride out with you?" Bob asked. 
             
Rowdy snorted. 
             
Linda looked injured. "A girl in her condition? Riding around on a
horse? Bumping along? I wouldn’t hear of it!" 
             
Bob thought about how Dannie had ridden regularly until she was seven
months pregnant with Kyle. Then, the only reason she stopped was
because her belly stuck out so far that it rubbed the saddle horn
uncomfortably. He decided this wasn't the time to educate Linda Ronson. 
             
========================================

Now Bob did let Ranger run,
for as long as he wanted to, which turned out to be almost all the way
back. He left the Ronsons in Rowdy's company, when they told him to go
on ahead. It was pretty plain that they no longer had any objections to
him ... seeing ... their daughter. 
             
She was standing on the veranda, dressed again in a sundress. 
             
He pulled up short, to avoid raising a cloud of dust around her. She
watched, apparently placid, while he climbed down from his horse. His
eyes drank her in. The sundress was held up by a strap that went around
the back of her neck. The ends of that strap widened, to attach to the
bodice, which supported her breasts, and showed them off at the same
time. He saw the bumps of her nipples under the thin fabric. 
             
"I'm sorry we couldn't call you," she said, her voice subdued. "Are you
mad at me?" 
             
Bob remembered the torment of each day that passed, while he waited for
the call that never came. 
             
"No," he said. "I'm not mad at you." 
             
"I'm really pregnant," she said. "They checked. My due date is March
fifteenth. They said it was too early to tell whether it's a boy or
girl." 
             
"I'm glad," said Bob, just enjoying looking at her. 
             
"They also said that being pregnant is what made me get better." 
             
"I know," he said. "Your parents told me." 
             
"They aren't mad at you any more," she said. 
             
"I know that too." 
             
"Do they have a school here?" she asked. 
             
"School?" 
             
"You know," she said seriously. "Teachers ... class rooms ... stuff
like that." 
             
"I guess so," he said. "I never really paid any attention." 
             
"I should probably finish school," she said. 
             
"Here?" he asked. 
             
She nodded. 
             
She seemed so sure of herself ... so confident. She fact she was going
to have a baby didn't phase her. He felt himself stiffen, inside his
pants. 
             
"What have you been doing?" she asked. "I can't hug you and kiss you
when you're all filthy like that." She sniffed. "You probably stink
too." 
             
"I have to work," he said. "It's a ranch. There's lots of work to be
done." 
             
"There are other things you need to do on this ranch too," she said.
There was passion in her eyes. "But you need a shower first," she said.
She didn't move, but her meaning was clear. Just in case, she said it
out loud. "I'm very horny right now." 
             
"Your parents will be along pretty soon," he said. 
             
"I already told them I'm staying in your room tonight," she said, as if
she were only mentioning that the table cloth was cream, instead of
white. 
             
"You did, did you?" he asked, grinning. 
             
"Uh huh," she said. "I feel all dirty from the ride here. I think I
need a shower too." 
             
"You don't look dirty," he said. "You look luscious." 
             
"You just want to ravish me again," she said, her face completely
serious. 
             
"I confess," he said, taking a step toward her. "And if you're going to
take a shower too, it doesn't matter if I get that pretty dress all
dirty." 
             
He swept her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. Her placid behavior
vanished, and she became wild, pulling at him and grinding her body
against his. 
             
"I'm soooo horny," she moaned, pulling him toward the door of the house. 
             
He stopped, and she jerked as he stopped her too. 
             
"What?" she moaned. "Come on, Bob!" 
             
"We can't do this if you haven't agreed to marry me," he said. "Are you
going to marry me?" 
             
She rolled her eyes. "Of COURSE I'm going to marry you, you silly man.
Why do you think I came back?" 
             
"I thought maybe you were just ... horny," he grinned. 
             
========================================

The shower was quick, but
thorough enough to have them both panting as they dried off together.
She ran and jumped on his bed, flinging her arms wide, and spreading
her legs. As he appeared to be about ready to jump on top of her, her
hands came in and shielded her abdomen. 
             
"Careful," she warned. "Don't squish our baby." 
             
Their lovemaking didn't last long either, by virtue of the fact that,
as soon as he was fully inserted in her, she had her first orgasm. By
the time, two and a half minutes later he groaned and pumped her full
of thick white cream, she'd had another, and was close to a third. It
didn't really materialize, because he stopped thrusting into her, but
she didn't really care. This was just the appetizer, and she knew it.
She was going to sleep in a big, soft bed with her lover, and father of
her baby, and the anticipation of that was almost as much fun as doing
it would be. 
             
When they were done, they got dressed, and, hand in hand, went
downstairs, where her parents were sitting in the parlor, sipping cool
drinks. Crystal was talking to them. 
             
Brenda dropped Bob's hand and went to sit on her father's lap. He
looked uncomfortable, but melted when she put her arms around his neck
and hugged him. 
             
"Daddy, can I marry Bob? He asked me very politely." 
             
"Well ..." he cleared his throat. "You're still awfully young, young
lady." 
             
"They have a school here and everything," said Brenda, lying through
her teeth. "And I already have my home schooling books, that we've been
using at home. I'm a year ahead of all the other kids my age, in
regular school. If I work really hard, I might be able to graduate
before the baby is born." 
             
She didn't let up there, though. She kissed her father's cheek. "And my
baby needs a real Daddy ... who's married to his Mommy. That's what I
had when I was growing up, and I think that's the best thing. It was
for me." 
             
Linda covered her mouth with the fingertips of one hand. Her eyes were
smiling. 
             
Dave frowned. "He really asked you?" 
             
"He did," she said. "He'll beg, if I ask him to. You want him to beg?" 
             
"Brenda!" gasped her shocked mother. 
             
Brenda looked at her mother and shrugged. "I'm just trying to figure
out how to get Daddy to say yes," she said. "Don't I get points for
being creative?" 
             
"What you should get is a paddling," growled her father. "Now, get off
my lap. It's not decent." 
             
Bob spoke. "I can promise you she'll finish school," he said. "If she
doesn't, I'll paddle her myself." 
             
Brenda tried to look hurt, but wasn't very good at it. 
             
"Tell you what," said Dave. "We'll leave her here for a week or two,
and then check back with you, Bob. You may have changed your mind by
then. She can be a real handful, and she's disappointed me on more than
one occasion." He said it completely seriously, but Linda spoiled it by
laughing. 
             
He got up and took his wife's elbow, obviously getting ready to leave. 
             
"Can't you stay for supper?" asked Crystal, who had watched the whole
thing, and was smiling from ear to ear. 
             
Dave put his hand over his eyes, like he was rubbing them. "Afraid not.
You see, for the last four years, I've been preparing for my only
daughter to die of cancer. Now, I'm leaving her here, knowing she and
this young man here are going to ... well, become very close. We'll
just leave it at that." He frowned. "I can't actually figure out which
is harder. I think I'll just leave, so I don't have to deal with it any
more." 
             
Brenda ran to him and hugged him, kissing him on the cheek. 
             
"I love you, Daddy," she said. 
             
"I know, sweetheart, and I love you too. That's why we're leaving." 
             
Linda came to Bob, and hugged him. 
             
"Thank you for saving my baby," she whispered in his ear, and then
kissed his cheek." 
             
"It was my pleasure," he said automatically. When Linda's mouth fell
open, he hastily said "I mean ... I'd do it again any time!" Linda
started laughing as Bob covered his face. "You're welcome!" he said
through his fingers. 
             
"We'll find out what we have to do to make this go smoothly," said
Linda. "I worried about what to do, but I think this is the right
thing. You'll be patient with her, won't you? She IS very young." 
             
"I'll love her," said Bob. "And I'll treat her at least as good as I
treat my horse." 
             
Linda blinked, and then smiled. She turned to go after her husband. 
             
========================================

Later that night, Brenda
dropped her last piece of clothing on the floor and rolled on the bed.
She lay on her side and raised one leg, bent at the knee. She was
splayed open to Bob. 
             
"You gonna rub my belly, like you do Dammit's?" she teased. 
             
"I might, at that," he said softly. 
             
"I heard what you told my mother," she said. "about treating me at
least as good as you treat your horse." 
             
"It was a compliment," he said. 
             
"I know that," she said, rubbing her pussy lips, while he slowly got
undressed. 
             
She rolled to her back and opened herself for him as he crawled on the
bed. 
             
"If you're going to treat me like a horse," she said, reaching for him,
"then I feel like galloping right now." 
             
They both galloped, late into the night, until both were lathered up
with sweat. 
            <p class="content2">The next day Bob hauled
himself out of Brenda Jean Ronson, and out of their bed. He got dressed
and, while she started making wedding plans with Crystal and Donna, he
went to check on the horses. Having seen the young cowboy riding one
much too hard, he wanted to inspect them all. When he was done, he
wandered down by the bunkhouse. He saw Greasy Face sitting on the porch
again, a wooden bowl in his lap, and leather packets of herbs laid out
neatly on the porch boards beside him. He went to sit with his old
friend. 
             
Bob sat down beside Greasy Face, who was mixing up some kind of paste
in the wooden bowl. Greasy Face made most of the concoctions that all
the ranch hands used, for whatever ailed them at the moment. 
             
"Looks like the little flower has come back again," commented the old
man. 
             
"She's here to stay," said Bob, still feeling the joy of that. 
             
"It is a good thing," said Greasy Face. He tasted the paste in the bowl
and made a face. 
             
"You helped," said Bob. "If you hadn't told me she was pregnant, I
don't know what would have happened. I was still fighting ... things." 
             
"Who knows?" mused the old Indian. "Maybe this is what I came here to
do." 
             
"Way back then?" Bob chuckled. "You're very patient." 
             
"This has been a good place to be," said the man. "I'm glad, if
anything I did helped be'éíyoo' ni' come to live
here. She will be a good woman." 
             
Bob nodded. "I'm curious. When you laid your hands on her ... that day
when her mother asked you to ... how did you know what was inside her?" 
             
"With my hands on her belly, I could feel the spirit of the child,"
said the old man, adding something to the paste. He stirred slowly. "I
felt your spirit in the child, and knew then, who had lain with the
girl." 
             
"And her breasts?" asked Bob. "Did they feel like they were getting
ready to make milk?" 
             
Greasy Face looked at him sideways, and a smile cracked his lips. 
             
"No, it has just been many years since I felt the breasts of a woman. I
didn't mean to dishonor you, neneeceeb. I hope you will not punish me
for this." 
             
They heard Bob's laughter all the way up at the house.

The End