“Good morning, handsome.”
Dega knew that word well. She called him handsome a lot. It meant he was pleasing to her eyes. “How you be?” he asked, and caught himself. “Sorry. How are you?”
“I am fine now.” Evelyn yearned to reach up and pull him down and kiss him, but she contained herself. “I’m looking forward to this day so much.”
“I, too,” Dega said. He had learned to keep his responses simple. His English was nowhere as near as good as he would like it to be. The less he spoke, the less apparent it was.
“I’ll be right back.” Evelyn hurried inside. She had left her pistols and the Hawken on the table; she wedged the flintlocks under her belt and cradled the rifle in the crook of her elbow, then went to the counter for the basket. When she turned, her mother was in the doorway to the bedroom pulling her robe about her. “Ma. You’re up.”
“I am always up at dawn,” Winona said. “Your father is getting dressed.”
Evelyn hefted the basket. “Tell him I love him.” She was almost to the front door when her mother said her name. “Yes?”
“You gave your word to him.”
“About what?” Evelyn asked, knowing full well.
“That Dega and you will be home by dark. We are holding you to it. Do not disappoint us.”
Evelyn hoped she wasn’t blushing from the shame she felt. “Haven’t I always done as you’ve asked?”
“Almost always,” Winona said.
Evelyn smiled and nodded. “Don’t worry. Dega won’t let anything happen to me.”
“It is what you might do to yourself that concerns me more.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know very well.”
“See you tonight, Ma,” Evelyn said, and got out of there. She couldn’t bear to look her mother in the eye. Quickly, she tied the basket to her saddle, mounted, and reined the buttermilk next to Dega’s sorrel. “I’ll lead the way.”
“I will follow,” Dega said. It occurred to him that when they went on rides together, she nearly always led. He had never given it much thought, but now that he did, it bothered him.
Evelyn clucked to Buttercup and poked with her heels. She passed the corral and was midway to the forest when she glanced back. Her mother and father had come out of the cabin. Her father raised his arm and waved. She returned the favor and said under her breath, “I’m sorry, Pa.”
The woods closed around them. Here and there were oaks and a few mahoganies, but the forest was principally evergreens: ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, and Douglas fir. Higher up were aspens and spruce.
The air had a pine scent that Evelyn always liked. Wildlife was everywhere. Ground squirrels scampered about. Tree squirrels leaped from limb to limb. Rabbits bounded away in fright and marmots whistled from atop their burrows. Once a porcupine waddled away, bristling with quills. Evelyn lost count of the number of deer she saw. Most were does. The older bucks were too wary to be abroad during the day; it was the younger ones, the spikes, that braved the sun.
The woods were a bird paradise. Sparrows chirped and crossbills beeped. Siskins made a peculiar buzzing sound. Jays screeched and woodpeckers
Ordinarily Evelyn drank in the scenery and the pulsing throb of life with relish, but today her enthusiasm was directed at the rider behind her. She couldn’t stop looking back at him. It got so, she willed herself to face front so he wouldn’t think she was being silly.
Dega wondered why she kept glancing back. Once or twice he could understand, but twenty or thirty times made him wonder if she was afraid he would change his mind and turn around. She needn’t have worried. He needed to have a talk with her. He needed to know if his mother was right.
Evelyn found the pass without difficulty. It was at the base of a rock cliff, a narrow gap invisible from below. Deer and elk tracks were proof it saw regular use. The far end opened onto a timbered valley. She reined to the north, toward a serrated ridge fringed by firs.
Dega was surprised. He’d thought they were coming to the valley they had visited before. “Where we go?” he called up to her.
“You’ll see,” Evelyn answered. Once the sun went down and she didn’t show up, her father would come after her. Maybe her mother, too. They might think to take the pass into the valley below, but they would never expect her to cross over into the next valley to the north. Even if they did suspect, tracking at night was hard and slow, even if they used torches. At the very least it would take them another day to find her. Which suited her just fine.
It was the middle of the afternoon when they crossed over. Evelyn drew rein on a grassy shelf and pointed. “Look there. Is that a perfect place for a picnic or what?’
Below lay a small valley split by a narrow stream. The valley floor was lush with high grass, the slopes dense with trees.
“We need perfect place?” Dega asked. As near as he could remember, “perfect” meant the best that something could be.
“I want it to be a day we’ll remember for as long as we live,” Evelyn told him.
“Picnic important?”
“Everything we do is important to me.”
The ride down took half an hour. Evelyn had seldom seen forest so thick. At times they had to force their way through. At length they came out of the shadows and into the high grass. Only then did it hit her how quiet it was. “Listen. You can almost hear your heartbeat.”
Dega raised his head but heard nothing. Certainly not his heart. The stillness was unusual. Only a few times in the past had he ever known it to be so quiet.
Evelyn reined toward the stream. She was tired and her throat was dry. On a low bank she drew rein. Sliding down, she arched her spine and pressed her hand to the small of her back. “All that riding about put a kink in me.”
Dega tried to decipher her comment. A kink, to the best of his recollection, was a bend or twist, like the time Nate King had a kink in a rope and had to unravel it. He did not see a kink in Evelyn. “I am glad it not put one,” he said for a loss of anything better. Alighting, he went down the bank, dropped onto a knee, set his lance on the ground, and dipped his hand in the water. It was runoff from on high, and cold. He splashed some on his neck and face, then cupped his palm and sipped.
Evelyn quenched her own thirst. She had set the Hawken down to use both hands, and admired Dega over her fingers. When she was done she wiped her hands on her dress and said, “Well.”
Dega wondered if he was supposed to say anything to that. He tried a “Well,” of his own.
“Here we are.”
Where else would they be? Dega asked himself. All he said was “Yes.”
Evelyn stood and turned in a slow circle. “It’s pretty here, don’t you think?”
“It quiet.”
“That will change once the wind picks up and the sun starts to go down,” Evelyn predicted. By then the meat-eaters would be stirring and fill the night with their howls and roars and screams.
“We have picnic here?” Dega asked, and patted the ground.
“We could so the water is handy,” Evelyn said. But the truth was, a secluded nook was more to her fancy. She pointed at the woods to the west. “I’d like over yonder better.”
“What you wish,” Dega said. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how they nearly always did what she wanted and rarely what he wanted. The same as how she led when they went riding.
Evelyn’s saddle creaked as she swung up. “Let’s go, Buttercup,” she said, and flicked the reins.
Dega trailed after her. Conflicting tides of emotion were tearing at him. He had much he wanted to say once they made camp, but he was afraid to say it for fear he would lose her.
Evelyn hummed as she rode. She couldn’t wait to set up camp. She imagined how it would be that evening around the fire, talking, and other things, and she grew warm in anticipation. Then Buttercup snorted and stopped, and she looked up. “Oh my.”
Dega drew rein beside her. He saw what she was looking at. “Someone live here.”
