“We’ll leave in an hour or so,” Longarm told her. “I don’t know about you, but the sooner I get up on top of the mesa, the better I’ll feel.”
They left Cliff Palace a short time later, and climbed back up to the top of the mesa without incident. They cooked a long-overdue breakfast and enjoyed a pot of coffee. The sun warmed them, and after their strenuous climb, it was easy to lie back and take a nap.
“Hey!” a voice called, bringing Longarm and Miranda out of a restful sleep. “Who are you?”
Longarm sat up and looked at a pair of cowboys who were standing about fifteen feet away. They looked friendly enough, so he said, “Hello.”
“What are you and that woman doing up here?” the cowboy repeated. “There ain’t no guides around.”
“We decided to come up without one,” Longarm told them, not caring if it sounded foolish. “Who are you?”
“We work for Mountain Packers,” the cowboy answered. “And we’ve just delivered supplies for Dr. Lucking and Dr. Barker. Are they down in the cliff dwellings today?”
“As far as I know,” Longarm said, thinking what a great stroke of good luck it was to have these men here so soon. “Will you be staying a while?”
“Naw, we’re going down tomorrow,” the other cowboy said. “We work our pack string out of Durango.”
“I see.”
“Funny time to be takin’ a nap,” the taller of the pair remarked. “Why, it ain’t even noon!”
“We’re on our honeymoon,” Miranda explained, rubbing her eyes and stretching with a yawn.
The cowboys suddenly looked embarrassed, and without another word, they marched back to their pack string of mules and began to unload supplies.
“What are we going to do now?” Miranda asked.
“I’d say that we ought to follow this pair down to Durango and see who is picking up those boxes of artifacts that I inspected yesterday.”
“Good idea.”
When Barker and Lucking returned to the mesa-top late that afternoon, they were anything but sociable to Miranda and Longarm, and did not invite them into their camp. That evening, the wind began to blow and the temperature plummeted.
“I’m afraid we might be in for a snowstorm,” Longarm said, his expression grim.
“We could go back down into Cliff Palace and stay dry.”
“We might never be able to climb out again given the snow and ice that could coat the cliff face.”
“Then what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that we had better cross our fingers and pray that we can ride off this mesa first thing in the morning.”
“Maybe Lucking and Barker will have to do the same,” Miranda said.
“I expect that they will,” Longarm answered. “It appears to me like this country is going to have an early and hard winter. I also can’t imagine that they would be very happy about trying to climb up and down the face of that cliff when the toe-and handholds are filled with snow and ice. I’m sure that they’ll have to pack up everything and come on down with the gents from Mountain Packers.”
“That would work to our favor, wouldn’t it?”
“You bet it would,” Longarm said. “So let’s see if we can keep from freezing to death tonight and cross our fingers that this is just a weak, passing storm.”
Longarm moved their camp into the shelter of some rocks that offered a good deal of protection from the wind. He fed their animals grain, and made sure that they were well tied and could not break away if frightened by the storm. By the time he was finished, the snow was really starting to come down and it was very cold.
“We’ll be fine,” Miranda told him as he huddled beside their fire and tried to warm his hands. “These storms are usually fast-moving.”
“Yeah,” he said, deciding that he had better change into a dry shirt and pants before jumping into his bedroll.
Miranda had other ideas. As soon as Longarm was undressed and before he could reach for a change of dry clothing, she was kissing his chest, then rubbing his half frozen thighs. “Custis, let’s sleep together and create some good old-fashioned body heat.”
Longarm wondered why he hadn’t thought of that first. He helped Miranda undress, and then they pulled her bedroll over his and began kissing and rubbing each other to increase their circulation. In a few minutes more, they were making love beside the hissing fire. Miranda was more passionate than she’d ever been before, and she rode Longarm until his hips began thrusting and he filled her with his hot seed. Then, her own body spasmed and she slumped forward, gasping for breath and clinging to him tightly.
“There is something about a stormy night that really gets me excited,” she confessed.
Longarm kissed her mouth, and then studied her lovely face in the firelight. “Maybe it would be better if this storm lasted a few days.”
“Don’t be silly. We’re not prepared.”
“We’ve got enough food and there is plenty of firewood around. We could even go find shelter in those ruins we first discovered up here on the mesa. We could pretend that we were ancient Anasazi.”
Miranda giggled. “I doubt that their women would have been as wanton as I’ve just been.”
