Black Mountain
Lady
Jay
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder 8 March 1980

      On the weekend Jerry and Maude and some of their kids came by and left a puppy
with us. It's a special puppy because he is the son of Ernie. Ernie was a wild dog who
hung around our place all summer. He appeared to have Australian blood. He was a
strange, quiet dog, shy. He would eat but not let us pet him. Eventually I decided he was a
threat to the goats, so I took to shooting at him, but I never hit him, even at very close
range.
     Then one day Jerry and Maude were up with their dog, Cinder, a small German
Shepherd. Cinder was in heat, and Ernie was right there.
     Some time after that, Bob and I were sitting in the trailer one night when we heard a
long, loud howl, not like a coyote, but like a wolf. It was close. After that we have never
seen Ernie again.
     Now we have his son, a very Australian looking mongrel with his dad's short
bow-legs. We call him Ernie.
     He is to be the guard dog up at the trailer, whereas Judy, who by the way is becoming
quite huge, is a herd dog. Eventually we hope to breed the two, to get another good herd
dog, with Australian blood.
     Judy is constantly with the herd now, and even eats grain!
Chapter Thirty-nine

SPOT
     That last entry is such a collection of understatement. Johnny could blow the heart from a squirrel at thirty
feet with Betsy, his revolver. He practiced every day, usually striking with the first shot the bull's-eye at sixty
yards.
     In this case, the 'bull's-eye' was a short length of steel pipe suspended by a wire across the canyon. A
satisfying (and very reinforcing) ping or clang came back to the shooter from a hit, warping instant waves in
the air, high over Fugitive Creek.
     He was used to bagging bunnies at a variety of elevations and distance.
     He was a dead shot.
     Yet, when he stood with no hurry, on more than one occasion, and aimed and pulled at the motionless dog,
no more than twenty-five feet away, gazing back at him from a convenient profile, he missed.
     He missed. Every time. It was like the mutt was a mirage, and yet… he made Cinder pregnant. Little Ernie
was flesh and blood, and so were his brothers and sisters. Mirages cannot do that.
     They had named him Ernie, short for Ernest, because he was so earnest. And, partner, nothing is more
earnest than the baleful look from a dog when you are aiming a gun at him. He may as well have been made
from air.
     Then there was that howl. It really was made of air. Johnny does not mention that the losses to the lion
began right after that mournful warning. By then, old Ernie was gone like a dream or an angel, with little Ernie
left behind like insistent reality.
* * *
     They had sipped their tea in the grey spring wind. Selabjun told Cat where he was from.
     "The village," she said. "Do you miss it?"
     "I miss the mountains," he said with passion. "The village? Pah! I am glad to be gone."
     "How come?"
     "How come?" he repeated her question, not immediately understanding the childish grammar. How did this
come to pass? How come? Why?
     (Mara)
     "Oh. The people," he picked up. "The games, the rigid tradition, the gossip, the conflict…"
     "The bullshit?"
     Selabjun was jolted into a short silence by the country girl's vulgarity. "The bullshit! Yes! All the bullshit…
I feel like I have escaped from the bullshit!"
     "But, what about the bullshit here?" Cat sipped her tea and eyed him across the rim. "The university? The
administration? The deans?
     "What about our local customs? Our bullshit? We have gossip too," she finished, lowering her eyes.
     Selabjun knew that she was right, but he said, "No!
     "It's not the same," he said. "I was not born into this. Here I can pick and choose. Here I am free." The
way he said that sent a chill down Cat's spine. So there was danger here. But danger for whom?
     For herself and for Mr. Kirkhaz, that's for whom.
     "And you miss the mountains?" she asked, prompting him to a more cheerful subject.
     His eyes glowed. "The mountains, yes. The mountains are beautiful."
     "Was your village in the mountains?"
     Selabjun Kirkhaz frowned. "Yes and no," he answered thoughtfully. After a second, he went on, "The
village is in the mountains; but the mountains are not in the village. Do you know what I mean?"
     Cat shook her head, not quite. He tried again.
     "The village is in the mountains, but, when you are in the village, you are not in the mountains…
     "The people there… the mountains are not in them; they could live in Istanbul, Bombay, Moscow, New
York.
     "Some of us went into the mountains, the woodcutters, the miners, the herdsmen. The rest? The bakers,
the bureaucrats, the shopkeepers, the craftspeople, the maids and the tailors and seamstresses? None of them
went into the mountains… well, some did, but they were rare, like you and I are here."
     Rare. Cat One already treasured him for that alone. He was a rare one.
     Catherine Marie Dolan's experience with men was a challenge she had balanced for years. Still a virgin, she
was nonetheless wise in the ways of men, wise in the ways of women, and wise in the ways of men and women
together. The hunting Cat that Agnes Tawny guided was on far too intense a quest to leave unexplored such
lurid territories. If a mystery is hidden, after all, it surely could be there. The trail did not reveal itself to the
naive.
     At the same time, Cat One was well-versed in personal care and concern by the time that she was any age
near the normal adolescent, pubescent jeopardy. Andrea Clare may have abandoned the trail, but not what she
had learned upon it! She made effort to teach, to communicate with her daughter about the dangers of life,
with frank advice and training on how to deal with them.
     In a sense, this was a curriculum which extended and embraced a range of responses from self-defense to
safe sex. Over time Cat had engaged in a number of events that drew on this training. These ranged from
artful flirting to assertive control of situations, from hand jobs to a knee in the nuts, and from masturbation to
communication.
     And love? Pish. She had been in love and broken her own heart a dozen times, and now she could see
through all of it. But this man? He was rare.
* * *
     A note about chaparral: most of the population of Southern California cannot even spell the beautiful word
that comes from the Basque for thicket. Nor does the term elfin forest ring the appropriate charm in their
hearts. 'Brush' is what they prefer in their vain attempt to substitute scorn for hate and fear. It's a thicket
alright, a dense and scratchy and miserable tangle, suitable for nothing, and a fire hazard to boot.
     The first act of the property owner, prior to his or her development of a plot of land, perhaps several acres
in size, is often to scalp the captured earth clear to her mineral dirt. Clear-cutting is a gentle manicure in
contrast to the total destruction of all forms of life on which the suburban pioneer insists before the raped Eden
can be walked on.
     It's a fire hazard. Even the Indians burned it off. So did the Spanish and the Mexicans. So did the
Californios and the Americans. They dig deeper now; they take the soil as well, the compost of a million years.
When the condos are complete, they buy some dirt, enough to grow the ice plant and the roses. Then they call
it beautiful.
     They don't know how beautiful it was, down under the canopy. The lush green moss and the mushrooms,
the rocks and the twists of the land, the ancient trunks, the gnarls and flowers and patterns of shadows, the
humble mystery and the beauty of the light on it all…
* * *
     "I remember that's where I learned to walk, and toddling under the canopy of twisted dry oak and chamise
that hid my world from all others.
     "Except from reality. That's what my ma used to say, 'Except from reality.' But to me it all seemed very
real. It seemed normal to me too, for a time. Until the fire. That's when 'reality' caught up with us.
     "That's what my ma would have said.
     "After that we were back in the mine for a while. You'd think that with the kind of tragedy that happened
to us that there would have been an opening, a warmth in the folks who lived around us, but it wasn't that way.
Our little family was never tolerated, and it was on account of the killing. But I only saw it from our side then,
growing up with the three of them. I still only see it that way, sort of.
     "Anyway, that fire was bad. You know how brush burns. We were always real careful with fire ourselves,
and then 'some asshole comes along and lights a fucking cigarette and throws the match out the window of his
car.' That's my daddy's words.
     "We only had the one horse then, Spot. Widow had 'had to go back' was all I remember about the other. So
there we were with smoke everywhere, and Ma and the men had some of their stuff loaded on the horse. I was
crying because I wanted to sit on the horse. I was only four, but they were afraid the horse would break away in
the fire, so I had to stay on the ground. My ma huddled with me and said the air was better to breathe down
low. It was smoky and dark, and we didn't know which way to go.
     "I remember the animals were all out. There were deer and coyotes, foxes and badgers, and the precious
bunnies. My blanket was made all of bunny fur. We were all in the same fix. All around was crackling and the
smell of fire. Just like the animals, we couldn't go walking out of the canyon and go marching up to the
sheriffs and firemen that were up there on Black Mountain Road and say, 'Thanks for showing up; think you
can save the house?' Because of the killings we couldn't. And there was more killing that same day.
     "I remember how my mommy cried when the house went up. We heard the fire, somewhere in the brush,
near, but we couldn't tell where. The horse was going crazy, and there was sirens and helicopters. There was
smoke. It was very smoky.
     "Then, just like that, the house was just exploded with fire. Like it had waited all its life to do that one
thing, blow up and burn to nothing.
     "Of course, we weren't in it, but we weren't far away. We were all soaked with water, so dirty when I think
of it now, the mud and ashes. I remember the water in my clothes getting hot from the fire. I felt like a boiled
rabbit.
     "When the house went, we were running. I was in someone's arms; I remember thinking my ma's hair was
on fire! It was just fire everywhere, and running.
     "In the middle of all that there was someone else, pushing my ma, a fireman. I think now that he was
trying to help. I guess we were going right through their lines, hoping not to be noticed. There was so much
smoke; everyone was coughing. I'm not sure if I really remember all this, or just my ma's story. But he never
even saw Daddy Bob and Daddy Johnny. They just came through the smoke and killed him so quick, because
he picked the wrong lady to push around.
     "I don't know. These are old stories; I've heard them too many times. I myself, I do remember, the next
few weeks, `cause it rained, and we were back in the cave, the arsenic mine. No one was crying, I'll say that,
but we were cold and wet, hungry and nowhere to turn, not anymore."
* * *
     A month beyond the conference at the Lodestone Cafe, and a few days after that, Warden French met with
Johnny and Bob up at the ranch. He had driven out in the early afternoon in response to a message. This time
there was evidence, the young goat that had been left behind the night before when Johnny had come out and
turned his light on the killer.
     It was a lion’s work, he knew for sure. He examined the little corpse. He could see, and he could feel with
his fingers, the wound delivered with deft, almost surgical precision, the two holes where the fangs had entered
and had pushed between the neck bones to crush the baby goat’s spinal chord.
* * *
     Had Cat One got to know him very much better than she did, she would have learned how shallow his
rarity, or, to put it another way, how similar his depths. Similar to any other moronic man, is what she would
have declared to herself, not that all men were morons, but male morons were certainly available in droves.
Selabjun Kirkhaz was a nicely put together hunk of meat and hair, and bone, with a craggy visage that looked
like the lifelong work of an angelic sculptor commissioned by a goddess, a face that conjured eagles in flight,
cliffsides, wind and light.
     She was in love alright. It had caught her totally off guard.
     His first move, past the fawning remark about their mutual rarity, as well as additional, equally pandering,
comments, was to touch her ankle, itself nested in layers of cotton and wool, as if to ask permission.
Even that, his appearing to ask permission, was only a part of the seduction. Selabjun was not asking for
permission.
     And Cat One was not granting it, either. Toleration of the ankle touch led swiftly to a kiss. Up close she
sensed him like jaws of a wolf, but also like a fervent genie of romance. This she would die for was the crazy
thought that swept through her mind. She kissed back; her blood raced.
     That he was handsome clear to the bone was another equally berserk thought, followed closely by the words
of Agnes. "Do you want to be a dead little girl?"
     She pushed away, but his gentleness became sudden strength. In awe she measured the match and knew
how well she could do, how violent it must become if he were to overpower her.
     She realized then that it was only a question. It was only a choice. No, she did not want to be a "dead little
girl." She wanted to be a live woman. And she wanted more than that.
     Oh, she wanted all that she had said to Agnes, nothing that she had before, but something, something new.
But she wanted to come out of it in one piece as well.
     This much wisdom was not reached in quiet contemplation. They tussled. Once Selabjun Kirkhaz realized
that Cat's withdrawal was not mere coyness, not a tease but a rejection, he grew instantly rough.
     His hands went from embrace to seize as he pinioned her arms and slammed her back against the smooth
stone. He experienced his own awe when her muscles tightened and the energy exploded like a wildcat. That a
woman should be so strong!
     Her knee shot toward its target. Selabjun's nimble twist saved his testicles, but he absorbed a painful jar on
the hip. Angry and responding in kind, he kicked her butt. His knee sent a knot of pain to the brain of Cat,
and the struggling ceased. She was like a cat, one that has been hoisted by the scruff and dangles in paralysis.
Unlike dogs and wolves, cats seldom endure fatal beatings. Now Cat One lay in mimicry of the victim that her
mother had offered to be. Maybe she was just a tougher cut than her mom, but she was no victim.
     She had asked for this, and she meant to triumph.
     And she wanted to come out of it in one piece. In mute focus she watched her own stripping down from the
waist, her jeans and panties compressed against her boots, her knees splayed to an ache, her ankles bound by
the folds of denim.
     Now the kissing resumed, and she swarmed with it like a tongue full of bees. The hand that had so
hesitantly touched her hiking sock now explored her cunt with the haughty finger of dominance. He had no
idea what he was doing, and she raged with forlorn lust.
     Then he hoisted her legs, boots, jeans and all, nearly into her face, and he plunged into her butt-curled
vagina like a Mongol spear.
     As for Cat, she could survive his brutality, but she could not survive his mercy. She could not survive as
one of his caravan of warrior's wives, alive at his behest, grateful for his favor and his flavor, submissive to his
whim and willing to keep secrets.
     He sought to please her with his narcissistic thrusts. It was a side to his own pleasure, and she went along,
feigning it, coating her involuntary sobs and gasps with the sugar that men believe to be ecstasy and proof of
prowess.
     When he himself reared like a stallion of the steppes and whinnied his orgasm to the echo in the heavens,
he was not pretending.
     And now it was over, was it not? Now she is mine, is she not? Her eyes have not left me, have they? She
swoons in admiration and content, does she not?
     He eased from her pussy. As their connection was severed, as he moved backward, to a position on his
knees, her own knees drew to her chest with a purring sigh that registered on Genghis as a pure coo of
thankful, sleepy satiation. But Selabjun Kirkhaz was the suddenly sleepy one.
     She unleashed the cat, the coiled spring of energy, like the muscular propulsion that sends Tabby from the
top of the woodpile to the eave of the shed, that sends the bobcat like a torpedo through the tall grass, that
sends the mountain lion from his patient tree to the ground, and then to fly to a latch of claws and fangs on the
back of the deer or the goat.
     He saw her pupils flex with a last stare of contempt. Her boots struck him in the plexus. On the fulcrum of
his own toes he swung to the momentum of her straightening legs. He even heard her own raw cheer, her kiai.
It coddled him for an illusory moment, even as the burst of pain and paralysis blossomed from his center, even
as gravity swooped on him like a collar-yank from a giant goddess. It was her voice; it was a joke; it was an
accident, a mistake…
     Then his own voice found wings and fluttered a howling shriek of misery and fear. The first bulges of the
granite pillar struck him then, in the face, the feet, the bloody fingers, the crumpled hip, like her friends in
waiting around the corner who now leveled grim revenge. His body socked and rocked and buffeted to their
cruel jabs and stomps until finally he flattened across a slight dome nearly a thousand feet down and broke
every mortal bone.
     Minus the entropy endured as each successive bump robbed his hurtling form of energy, Selabjun Kirkhaz
was still traveling in excess of one hundred fifty miles per hour when he turned to a splinter splash of gore on
the breast of the hill. He was still cruelly alive, moreover, and he still could feel, not just the pain, which was
excruciating to eternal shame, but also the deceit, the treachery, the rebellion and the defeat.
     For all it was worth to Cat One, no one ever died more painfully, and less mourned. She knew nothing of it.
The wind carried off all but the first acknowledging squeal, and she was left in the white silence.
     She lay for a long time, knees pulled back to her chest, bottom bare, eyes lost in the timeless clouds. Her
lips barely moved in an inaudible chant, five little beats, noise like a palmist mantra, a silent, vocal pentagraph,
a quiet question mark of assertion that grew steadier, and deeper, and stronger, and plainer, and louder, until
everyone could hear it, Cat herself, and Agnes Tawny, who stood now like solid mist on the boundary of the
precipice.
     "Fuck with me, will you?
     "Fuck with me, will you?
     "Fuck with me, will you?
     "Fuck with me, will you?
     "Fuck with me, will you?"
     When Agnes gathered her in strong arms, she gave in and wept. She loosened her jaw and gasped and cried
away in tears and shudders, and the wind moaned about them, like a lonesome puppy, for a long, long time.
* * *
     So, for a little while, during that winter of beauty and horror, Johnny and Bob had a paper that said that
they were allowed to kill Tawngness.
     She wasn't mentioned by name in the document, but it was she who had made the kills, just another tired
old lady puma. She was not the mighty "he" that Johnny spoke of in some of his more literary diary entries. It
was only Tawngness.
     There was no cozy den full of cubs awaiting the return of their mama, their protector, their provider,
either; it was only Tawngness.
     She no longer even came into heat. It was irony for her, to see the young king, Lightning, when he passed
through her range. He couldn't find her, for she was not in heat, and whether he knew it or not, that was what
he was looking for. (Not Tawngness exclusively, but a cougar in heat!)
     That and deer. And he was finding deer. He himself was delighted with the density of the herd in this part
of his own vast territory. The deer population had indeed made a temporary rebound in response to Tawngness'
ever diminishing ability to catch them. Lightning knew nothing of that. Questions he might have framed to
express his puzzlement would have been, where is the lady of the woods, and why doesn't she get the itchy
chin-rubs for me?
     She couldn't even find the deer, sometimes, but she had no trouble finding Lightning, and no trouble
watching him from cover. Crafty feline that he was, nevertheless, his progress through the landscape was as
obvious to her as a parade. He was spraying his own pheromones; as a traveling sexual aura he was the size of a
couple of canyons, drifting along on a combination of panther legs and breezes.
     The fragrance made Tawngness alert, swept by feelings of nostalgia and déjà vu, but she kept to her
hideouts and watched the proud, young master cat. This Lightning was not from a litter of hers; she had never
seen him before. She could recognize that, for there was that much difference, and yet, she had seen him time
after time after time. He was that much the same.
     That she could watch him, and smell him, and even hear him when he gave his short yowls that almost
pleaded pathetically for company, as he walked through Eden alone, gave her pleasure. It sprang from wisdom,
but still he tugged at her heart.
     He never would live to have half the wisdom that she had. He would almost need that wisdom to grow old
enough to acquire it. In the absence of wisdom, only luck could support him across the gap. Tawngness wished
him luck, and watched him go, and when the time of his circuit had elapsed and he came through again
seventy-five days wiser, she welcomed him from her secret watch with a whisker-twitch almost like a smile.
* * *
     "So, you and Rico Vega seemed to be hitting it off over at the mine the other day."
     This remark, tossed gaily across the cab of the truck to her sister, brought a blush to the cheeks of
nineteen-year-old Chela. Now, ten years later, as she recounted the romance to Vikor, nestled in the belly of
the jet as it purred its way through the dark southwest night, she remembered how that blush had felt.
     She remembered how her heart had thumped when she was first introduced to Millie Vega's young
brother-in-law. Millie and her husband Ed were both in their thirties by that time. But Eduardo's younger
brother, Enrique, was only twenty-three. All of the men worked at the mine. Rico and Ivan had been great
buddies. They had also been regular partners in the same little work crew, down in the shaft. Only serendipity
had prevented Rico's name from bringing the total to eight, on the sad list that was turned over to the
powers-that-be, once the rescue force had punched through to the chamber of doom. He still wore the bandages
that wrapped the injury that had him up in the infirmary on the surface, at the time of the cave in.
     A minor collapse, an hour earlier, had carved up Rico's shoulder. Even though he wanted to hang in, the
foreman had sent him up for x-rays, and better bandaging than that provided by the first aid kit. As far as that
went, his friend, Ivan, had patched him up just swell, but the foreman was taking no chances, so Rico lived
while Ivan died.
     The intensity of his loss partly accounted for the depth in his eyes. Chela fell into that depth like a bird
flying into space. The pain in his heart stole hers; when, out of range of his macho compadres, he sobbed in her
arms, she comforted him. She held him, and she loved him.
     She married him, she gave him twins, and she buried him, four years later. She amazed herself, as she
wove the spell on Vikor, seated next to her, how little there was to tell, how short a time it took to relay the
bare bones of events that took ages of care and anxiety to live.
     Rico and Chela had moved in first with Violeta, then into a nearby, abandoned shack that stood on the
same property. There was no one to say not to claim it for their home. Those first few months were
exhilarating. Rico's paycheck from his job at the mine went far in sprucing up the old place. Warm and tight by
winter, the newlyweds felt content with the feathering of their nest.
     Water they piped from a small impoundment, built generations ago from rock, and high on the creek,
above the falls. When times were good they cooked on propane. When money was scarce, they turned to pine
and mesquite. They had twelve volt lights (They did a lot of battery-swapping between the truck and the shack.)
and kerosene lamps.
      There was no phone. The nearest was over at Rico's brother's house, ten miles distant, up on the county
road.
     Chela's closeness to her sister was a constant blessing for each. Their separate pregnancies were a shared
delight. But Rico Vega had deep wounds that would never heal.
     He quit his job a year later, right after the birth of the twins. Lillia and Bonita were the lights of his life,
but the mine was the pit of darkness and nightmares. He began to drink, and his world became a fantasm of
heroism and despair.
* * *
     Stalking is a magical activity. Like all magic, its power depends on its secrecy. It was one of the things
Vikor began to get better at as early as that first trip to Birmingham. Learning is painful. Each time he found
himself with a dead body worth life in the penitentiary or prolonged execution (death row plus death) and not a
penny to show for it, it hurt. Perhaps a few moments of stalking would have told him that his quarry was broke.
     On a more positive stroke, the tip-off that the potential target was loaded might be as simple as the flash of
a roll of bills. After dinner, Vikor found himself with some time before he had to catch the train to
Albuquerque at six the next morning. He took yet another room, this time for cash, at a large hotel that was a
part of the renovation of downtown Birmingham near the train station. He deposited his luggage and his coat; it
was a warm evening. After a nap, he found himself up with hours to kill.
     Hours to kill. Ours to kill.
     People-watching has often attracted favorable commentary over the years. The joy of watching people,
civilization, life, from the vantage point of a terrace in ancient Athens, a sunny beach, a busy terminal or a
shopping mall, has been praised by countless writers. The writer himself, as the solitary observer, nursing his
absinthe in some romantic bistro, watching the swirl of life and dipping his pen into the blood and tears of
human joy and tragedy, is a trite classic.
     Vikor and Cat One had done a lot of people-watching. They used to make themselves endure mundane
exercises like walking past a table of diners in a restaurant or an outdoor cafe and then, shortly after,
comparing mental notes. That the aging, fat blonde wore a ring with a diamond the size of Gibraltar may have
been missed by Cat One. She in turn may have picked up a shred of conversation that her son might have
missed while he ogled the ice. Or she might notice that the suits of the gentlemen were cut from the finest
cloth, but a generation out of style.
     Together they might notice and recall that the aging fellow in glasses was also in a wheel chair, or that the
brunette on the west side of the table was blind.
     Everyone is good at spotting money; when handfuls of the stuff enter daylight it's like a screaming beacon
to the rest of the crowd. Cat and Vikor became even better than that. Not just the big-time displays, the
boisterous man about town flashing his C-notes, the cascade of quarters from the slot machine, the old lady at
the checkout counter with her penny collection, but they learned to spot the subtle discomfiture of more
modest folk who palm their large bills, who stand the extra few seconds in front of the automatic teller while
they stuff the stack of twenties safely out of sight.
     Vikor and his mother grew skilled at noticing the intersecting vectors of concern, the eyes of a couple
turning to the woman's purse in an involuntary reality check at the mention of money or crime. The presence
of unsavory types in a crowd was enough to get most men to make furtive gestures toward their wallets or their
wads. Some will pat the wallet in the inside pocket of their suit coat, and pretend to be scratching or adjusting
their necktie. Sometimes the stalkers would see a fellow take his wallet from his faithful hip pocket and stow it
in the front pocket of his jeans, then leave both hands tucked in, for a while.
     Vikor was no pickpocket. Neither did he punch the money from its owners. Until the moment when he took
his liberty and their lives, he respected their rights to property and privacy. He had no wish to terrorize. He
knew better than to raise suspicion. Expect neither warning nor threats from the real predator. Pure logic
alone warns us to be advised, and if that is a threat, perhaps the whole challenge of existence is a threat. Be
advised our wise minds tell us. Life is risky. We die.
* * *
     Ironic it was, for it was Bob who first initiated the free-wheeling romance. Carol had nursed him all
through those months of agonizing hardship. She had never subjected herself to the soul-searching of the likes
of Wendy Ward's. Carol hadn't really had any priorities, goals or allegiances prior to the battle. She had only
love to turn to for a clue when the dust settled, and decisions had to be made.
     Maggie was dead, a victim of the event, an accidental casualty. The only love left in the heart of the isolated
country girl was brand new and blossoming. She loved her saviors, and she never hesitated for a moment to
question her decision, to ask herself if it was all right.
     After the first night, Bob had been able to ride. He was riding in a semi-coma, but he seemed to
understand, in some way, at some level, that his cooperation would be very helpful. If he could get his big body
to go through the circuits it knew almost by reflex, from constant repetition, if he could get up into the saddle
and ride, they could escape.
     In some way, and at some level, he knew that this was what he had dreamed of, to escape into a world of
adventure as real as the tired, sensible, realistic and boring world that he was leaving behind. He didn’t need a
fully-functioning brain to realize his challenge; he only needed to be alive.
     The afternoon before, Carol and Johnny had used the horses to tow Bob to a safer campsite, away from the
carnage, the flies and the law. Johnny had fashioned a primitive travail from the leafy saplings that grew by the
pond. Now, the eucalyptus poles were left behind. Johnny urged Bob into the stirrup and up into the saddle,
with him at every motion to add just the control and balance to keep the wounded man from throwing himself
over the top of Spot to a crash down the other side. Carol was over there, on the right side of the horse. She
secured Bob's foot into the right stirrup, and then came around the horse's rump to stand at the side of Johnny.
     It was good that Spot was a big horse. Johnny cupped his hands, and Carol placed her left foot into the
human stirrup. Smoothly working together they launched her into a position behind Bob. Mounted on the
bedroll, she was able to keep him from falling; she cradled him like a mother cradles a child.
     All the night previous she had cared for him. She had held him close in the hope that her own strength, or
health, or wholeness would somehow penetrate into the battered young hero's body, and the blood would stop,
and the skull would mend, the wound would heal and the mind would smile hello.
     In the long hours that Johnny Stream had been gone in quest of supplies, Carol Gallagher had fallen in
love with Bob Cabler. She wept for him. Her heart swelled in pride for how gallant he had been.
     It took two days of steady riding to reach Fugitive Creek. Had Bob been conscious he would have
experienced misery, to be treated so harshly while wounded so grievously. As it was, Carol Gallagher bore the
brunt.
     Johnny Stream had long ago discovered a more direct route to ride on the occasions when he repaired to his
mountain retreat. He went that way now, mounted on Widowmaker and guiding Spot with a lead rope snapped
to his bridle. They rode south, but only till they came to Peňasquitos Creek. Then they turned east.
     This much they accomplished without seeing, or being seen by, anyone. Now staying invisible became easy
as they disappeared upstream into the canyons. Hour by hour, the two on Spot jolted together through the
horse's wading creeks and climbing stubbly bluffs. Johnny rode ahead. His only concerns were that they ride in
private isolation, and that they leave as little sign as possible. To this end his leadership led them through a
torture of water and rocks, and, to his credit, they were lost and never seen again.
     Bob returned to clear consciousness in a campsite within hearing distance, on a quiet night, of the rumble
of Boulder Creek. He opened his eyes, and if ever a man had an angel, he did. The pure love that flowed from
her lips and her eyes to him swept his seventeen year old heart away. He was in love, and it was serious, mister.
Johnny Stream loved her by that time too, for it was only natural that one so beautiful be loved. She was the
crown of creation for Johnny, the center of the world that he saw, the final delicate blossom that makes it all
tits.
     Seeing her care for his buddy over all those rocky miles, seeing her total presence and devotion by the fire
when they camped, seeing her suffer and grit her teeth, he was all admiration. He loved her to an infinite
extreme, but just for that reason he felt that he would never seem good enough for her, and so he kept his love
like he did all of his feelings, to himself. When he saw his buddy win her by virtue of his goddess-given charm,
he was happy for them both, and still he felt sad and old.
     Bob made no bones about his passion. Rapidly recovering, he swept Carol off her feet. Those were heady
days, living the lives of wild, free nomads on the flanks of the mighty mountain. Johnny and the wilderness
granted them privacy; the canyons and waterfalls echoed their laughing shouts. Two blonde dreamboats, they
tumbled down their own cascade of love, bouncing in backcountry glamour. Everything about one another was
so lovely; their life together was achingly beautiful.
     When Johnny could coax them to come in, to sit by a roasting kill, to feast and talk, their talk was of
nothing but joy, and Johnny rejoiced with them. Their talk was of the beauty of the lovely land to which he had
led them, and he shared their awe, and the beauty itself shone in their own being. Reflections of the waterfalls
danced in their eyes. The changing phase of the moon was all over them with its languid grace, in perfect pace
with life's sweet rhythms.
     Johnny loved them as if he were their mother or their god.
     Like a mother or a god, his heart broke, when he saw them break and stumble. It was already the second
time that Johnny had been close enough to feel that sudden warning twinge.
     The first had been when Carol had got her period, to put it plainly. Carol put it plainly herself, rebuffing a
sexual advance, and irritated that Bob had not been alert to more subtle signals. Not one to mince words once
misunderstood, when asked why, she had spit the reply, "I'm on my period!!!"
     Now, Bob was familiar with this female cry, in turn an excuse, a claim or a curse. He learned the term from
the coarse usage of Veronica Brown, his mother, and the whores that were her friends.
     Not clearly understanding either the meaning, or why he could not have been told more gently, he was
hurt. He sulked for a spell. Johnny was there to bridge the gap, to brew tea after a mountain twilight and listen
to the fears and the dreams of a young woman. He was there to hear her talk of her lover who rode even then
in the high darkness on a lonesome and dejected trail.
     He heard her tell how much she really loved Bob, and how she wished he would understand.
     He was there to be the peace when Bob returned, days later, when he and Carol looked at one another and
saw with tear-filled joy that it was still there, when they swept into one another's arms and included Johnny in
their happiness.