He wanted this life, built it with his own hands, and she wanted to be part of it. For the first time in her life, she wanted to be part of something that did not move her on, something that stayed put for years, lifetimes. That’s what she told herself.
“How much would it take to get this place working?” she asked, with a new drawl in her own voice.
“An awful lot,” he said and shook his head. “The stock alone would cost and with the price of beef where it is, it would hardly be worth going into ranching right now. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, the fences, the cabin. It’s miserable in the winter. At least we have electricity, but I tell you, walking out to the shithouse in the middle of January ain’t no picnic and it can snow right through to June.”
“Still, if you love it and you thought you wanted to make it a home, it would be worth it,” she half-questioned, half-stated.
“Yeah,” he said, gazing over the land the way his mother looked over her front two acres.
That he did this all himself, that is what so stunned Ellen, the fences, the cabin, building the shelves for the few paperbacks he kept there. He told her how he would finish the kitchen and how it would be with a sink, a stove and running water.
“Could be fine,” he said. “Real fine.”
“It would be fantastic,” she pronounced.
She felt only a little bored after the four days and when they left she told him, “God, I want to stay.”
“It is a good place,” he said.
Now, she was in love. She was in love with Ronnie McBain, with his family, with his ranch, and with all of New Mexico. He showed her the New Mexico she never wanted to see. They rode the tram to the top of the Sandias. They camped in the Jemez Mountains and swam naked in a hot springs he found there years before.
“Up there, way up there,” he nodded to the surrounding cliffs, “I found a kiva, you know, where the Indians had their ceremonies. I damn near fell into it. It was a cave up there.” He pointed up to the mountain behind them.
“Everything was intact, pots, everything. I rode in three days and stumbled into it. Nobody else had been there and nobody else would ever find it, not for a long time. These pots,” he stretched his hands wide and round, “they were like this. Not broken, all painted. Unbelievable.”
“Could you find it again?” She was excited by the thought of seeing such a place.
“It would take pack mules and a couple of days and even then it wouldn’t be easy. The land looks different now with all the logging going on. New roads, that sort of thing. But, yeah, I could find it again.”
“Let’s,” she said. “Let’s go up there and find it.”
She wanted to see the Indian bowls with their black geometric patterns. She wanted to find the kiva, the room where they did their secret things. She wanted to spend the days riding with Ronnie McBain.
“Leave it be,” he said.
“Why? It would be fun.”
“I don’t want to,” he said and she heard a hint of anger in his voice. “Let’s leave it alone.”
No. That meant someday somebody else would find it, stumble into it. They would take the pots and sell them or keep them and she would never be there to see the secret place, to be the first reporter there, the one who could tell the story. She would not be able to have one of those black patterned pots, those priceless pots.
“How come?” she pushed.
“Forget it, Ellen. There are some things you have to learn to leave alone.”
He took her to the state fair, to the Indian dances, to the pueblos.
“I love this place,” he would sigh on their trips. “I surely do.”
So did she, she told him but she knew what she really loved was Ronnie McBain, the cowboy who would build a good, safe, Western world around her.
“You’d go crazy living on some ranch out in the middle of nowhere,” her mother told her on their once-a-week call. “Yes, you would, Ellen. You’d be bored to death in a month.”
“I don’t think so,” she responded. “This is different.”
“You were made for love,” he told her as they lay together. “You make me understand what it means to be willing to die for someone you love. Because I would, Ellen. I would die for you.”
She knew she had finally found the man she could trust, a man she could love forever.
“You could come here and live with me,” he said from the guesthouse bed.
“It might be a little crowded,” she said.
She didn’t want the guesthouse. She wanted an adobe house in town with red chilies hanging by the door at Christmas. She wanted a garden and a pickup truck. She wanted to work in the feed store with the farmers and the horse people. She wanted to talk about the ranch, her ranch. She wanted to learn how to fix fences. She wanted to be so busy with a new life, his life, that she would never have to worry about being bored.
“It sure is miserable up there in the winter,” Joan McBain commented. Ellen said nothing. She knew how warm it could be in that bed with Ronnie.
“You’re a sweet thing,” he said. “Such a sweet thing. Little skitty sometimes,” he drawled, and she melted. “And, I do like that in a girl. Good for breeding too,” he said as he ran one rough hand across her belly and her hips. “Wide and strong.”
The first time she steeled herself and brought up their need to talk about the future, he turned from her and shook his head.
“Everything is fine now, Ellen. Why do we have to talk about
