Never the Twain (3 page)

"Mr. McConnell and I have met," she said in response to Dan's introduction. Her
proffered hand was enveloped in a callused grip, one that sent a melting heat up her arm and into
her chest.

She wanted to look away, to smile at Dan, to admire the helicopter. Anything but drowning
in eyes like a boiling spring, icy blue and burning at the same time.

His wink broke her hypnosis. His words were aimed at Dan. "Miss Forsythe had a rather
sudden introduction to range cattle last week. I, ah...I came to her assistance."

Oh, God! Her face was as red as it had been when she left him on the trail.

"No, it was ol' Brindle," he was saying, in response to an unheard question of Dan's. "You
know how big she looks, what with her longhorn blood and all."

Genny headed for the helicopter, to load her daypack and map case. If he was going to tell
her boss all about her cowardly behavior, she didn't have to listen. She'd get enough ribbing from
Dan later.

McConnell was right behind her. As soon as he got in, he exchanged his fancy cowboy hat
for a billed cap with the legend,
The Way to a Man's Heart is Through His Fly
, in bright blue
across the silhouette of a fishing rod.

He treated her with impersonal politeness as he made sure she was strapped in, had the
earphones and mike correctly seated on her head, and her gear safely stowed. Only after the blades
began to whirl did she realize that the minuscule bubble in front of her was all that protected her
from the elements--and emptiness. There were no doors on the helicopter!

What was she doing here, sitting in a flying machine with no visible means of support, a
technological imitation of the exoskeleton of a strange, metallic insect? Surely this wasn't part of her
youthful dreams.

Those dreams had led her to Oregon.

As the youngest of four and the only girl on a New Hampshire farm, Genny's childhood
had been peopled with characters from books. She had been fascinated by the history of the
American West. The Oregon Trail called to her. Stories of wild and woolly cattle drives triggered
daydreams of excitement and adventure waiting for her somewhere beyond the sunset.

She had seen pictures of the rugged Cascades, of the broad Columbia in its black-walled
gorge, and of the vast emptiness of sagebrush plains. But vacations, to the Forsythes, meant the
Maine Coast or, sometimes, a long weekend in Boston, doing the museums. One did not venture
west of the Alleghenies. One never considered crossing the Great Plains, still believed to be
inhabited by savages--only now dressed in faded denim and high-heeled boots.

Five minutes into the flight, Rock was wondering just how big a mistake he was making.
She was even prettier than he remembered.

He switched to internal communication. "There's Mitchell Butte off to the left. You'll be
able to see Owyhee Dam pretty quick now."

He saw her nod out of the corner of his eye.

That wasn't all he saw. The dark green BLM shirt clung to delicious curves. Her uniform
pants weren't tight, but somehow they emphasized every line of her round little bottom, her long,
lithe legs.

Her fingernails were bright red, today.

Just like Selma's. And she had no more business out here in Owyhee Country than Selma
had.

She looked pale, and the hands clutching her binoculars were white with strain. Was she
scared?

He lifted the 'copter over a high ridge with more acceleration than necessary. Her throat
spasmed and her eyes went unfocused.

"You okay?"

Her voice sounded faint and quavery in his ears. "F-f-fine. Just fine." He saw her chin lift
and firm. She had her share of stubborn.

Now she was beside him, all the feelings Rock had been denying for a week were back,
clamoring for his attention, demanding recognition.

Visions of her face had come to him in the night, kissable lips smiling invitingly. Soft
brown eyes had smiled on him, rousing usually well-controlled instincts and reactions. He'd found
himself imagining just how he would go about extracting her from the layers of clothing she wore,
unveiling her pale body to his blistering gaze. She would be long and lean, warm and smooth under
his big, callused hands. She would...

Damnation! Why had he volunteered to take her in to Skeleton Gulch? If she was worth
her salt, she could read a map and Chuck, the BLM pilot, could have found the place.

If he had an ounce of gumption, he'd take her back to Vale and let Chuck do the job he
was paid to do.

A flash of white on the ground caught his eye. He nudged her, pointed.

"Oh, wonderful!" she breathed into her mike. Her voice was a siren song in his ears.

The antelope disappeared over a ridge and Rock decided not to pursue them, No need to
make her airsick so early in the day. There'd be plenty of rough flying this afternoon, when the
temperature went up and the air density down.

He gave her the Grand Tour, down the length of Owyhee Reservoir with its colorful, steep
walls enclosing a deep lake of clear, cold water. He had to give her credit. In spite of her evident
discomfort, she made all the right responses. Her gasps of astonishment and "ooohs" of wonder
were all he could wish for.

All? No, all he could wish for was her in his arms, her slim body against his in a grassy
meadow under the hot desert sun. He wanted to taste her sweet mouth and feel her oddly clipped
accent with his tongue as she gasped out love words in the throes of her passion.

Right then and there he decided this was one time he'd break his own rules. He'd have her
and get her out of his system. Be rid of this churning need so he could concentrate on running his
ranch again. He surely hadn't been worth a hoot in hell this past week.

And at the end of the summer, she'd go back to wherever in the East she came from and
he could go on with his solitary, uncomplicated life.

Again he stole a look at her. The beads of sweat on her upper lip had dried and her color
was less greenish. Good. He turned the 'copter to fly up Leslie Gulch, pointing out the spires of
eroded tuff that made its walls look like the ruins of an ancient city.

Half an hour later, he landed up near the head of Skeleton Gulch. "We walk in to the
Shinbone from here," he said, before pulling off the headset.

Gulping, she nodded, her eyes on the vertical wall across from their landing spot. Rock
noticed she seemed reluctant to release her grasp on the edge of the 'copter's hatch.

The cattle trail into the gulch was deceptively easy walking. You tended to forget it was
straight down on one side. Rock saw her swallow hard the first time she looked over the edge.

"You aren't seriously expecting me to believe cattle use this trail?" It was the first
spontaneous sentence she had spoken to him that morning.

"All the time. There's a meadow up in the Shinbone that's cow heaven. Trouble is, there's
not enough water and it's too far and too rough for them to get to the reservoir."

"So that's why you want to build the waterhole."

"Right. I've had to keep Skeleton Gulch fenced off all summer in the past. Too hard on the
calves to get out to the nearest water."

"But where will the water come from? The topo map shows it's about five hundred feet
above the reservoir."

She was keeping up, much to his surprise. After her first blanch, she hadn't even seemed to
mind the narrowness of the trail. Rock warned himself not to make any allowances. She was doing a
man's work; she got treated like a man.

Until later.

"The same seep that subirrigates the meadow will feed it a little. Mostly, though, I figure
spring runoff will put enough in there to keep the pool full most of the summer."

She clambered over a rockfall, moving gracefully and with economy. "How will you get the
equipment in to build the dam?"

"We'll do it the same way they built the railroads, back in the Nineteenth Century. With
shovels, horse-drawn scrapers, and a lot of main strength and awkwardness."

Rock veered into the narrow mouth of the Shinbone, the first of several secondary gulches.
"Watch your step here. The talus is pretty loose." He led her across a rocky slope where the greenish
tuff of the hillside exfoliated every winter.

Again her voice expressed her wonder. "Oh my!"

"Yeah." He had to admit the meadow was a mighty nice place. The pale green rock, the
bright green grass, and the streak of black running through the tuff about halfway up the vertical
walls made for a right pretty scene. Put a few red cows in the meadow and a waterhole in the middle
and it'd be near perfect.

Put a lovely silver-haired woman naked on the grass and it'd be paradise.

He watched Genny Forsythe, gauging his chances. Probably not this afternoon. But soon.
Very soon.

"C'mon, let's get to it." He headed up the gulch toward where the east wall bulged out to
make a narrow neck.

"This is where I figure to put the dam." He unrolled an engineering drawing. "Some
judicious blasting, a little scraping, and we'll have a functional dam about ten feet high, with a ramp
up beside the spillway and a broad trail around the west side." He pointed, showing her where he
figured to blast.

She was sitting on the boulder next to him, peering over his shoulder. Although she wasn't
touching him, her scent, fruity, with musk overtones, beguiled his nostrils.

"I calculate there'll be water here until fall, most years."

Genny leaned against a rock at the edge of the meadow, grateful for the support. This
morning had required all the spunk she had. And then some.

The helicopter would have been bad enough without the man piloting it. With Rock
McConnell, it had been intolerable. All her defenses were concentrated on resisting his sexual
charisma; then they had flown over the first high ridge.

Good grief! No one had told her how a helicopter's motion was completely different from
that of a small plane. The forces acting on her fragile body had been calamitous; they had caused her
stomach to rebel and her head to spin. She'd come very close to disgracing herself during the first
ten minutes in the air. And from the mocking gleam in the cowboy's bright blue eyes, that was just
what he'd been waiting for.

Strange how the flight had gotten smoother after the initial half-hour, even though the
country they were flying over had become rougher. Or was it strange?

She forced herself to follow his finger, pointing first at the drawing in his hands, then at
the steep walls around them.

"We'll have to do an in-depth survey before signing off on your application," she said, after
he'd explained his plans. "We're so close to the Cedar Canyon site..." practically next door, according
to the map, "...that there could be petroglyphs here, too."

"Never saw any," he said, scowling into the sun. She could imagine how little a man like
him cared about the priceless archaeological resources these isolated canyons could hold. Too bad.
His cattle were just going to have to wait until her investigation was complete.

Genny looked at the vertical rock walls enclosing the Shinbone, comparing them to those
at the site she'd visited last Thursday. "These walls look like the Sucker Creek Formation and there
are often fossil plant deposits in it. There are also Miocene vertebrate fossils reported in this
area."

She pushed herself to her feet, legs feeling stronger and steadier as soon as she drew away
from him. "Do the rocks change as one goes up the canyon?"

"Gulch." He grinned, a fiendishly attractive grin. "This here's a gulch, little lady."

"I told you...." she began, furious at his sudden, patronizing attitude.

"So you did, ma'am. It's just that you do sound peculiar sometimes."

Yes, definitely fiendish. She felt herself bristling. "I sound peculiar? The very idea! I'm not
the one talking through my nose and dropping my g's."

"No, ma'am. But you sure do move your r's around funny."

His eyes were on her hips, gleaming with intense interest. The pun in his words broke
upon Genny's consciousness. Her face grew hot.

He went on in an innocent tone. "'Idear' and 'peculyah.' Now I never was much for
spellin', but I never did learn any words spelled that way."

Genny decided to ignore him. She got enough teasing about her accent at work. Dan, in
particular, seemed to take perverse pleasure in mocking her speech.

And Rockland McConnell should talk. One minute he sounded like an educated man; the
next he had a drawl so thick you could cut it with a knife. He wasn't your typical cowboy. Of that
she was certain.

They did a cursory reconnaissance of the Shinbone, enough so Genny felt familiar enough
to come back alone. She hadn't seen any signs of petroglyphs, or other traces of aboriginal use, but
they could be here. The Cedar Canyon site was the richest on the District. Had the same prehistoric
artists left their legacy in Skeleton Gulch as well?

"Ready to go, then?" He pulled a roll of fluorescent orange flagging tape from his vest
pocket. "I'll just mark the trail so you won't get lost when you come back." He led the way back to
the main gulch. "That there's the Armbone," he said, pointing downhill at another opening off to
the other side. "It's full of rockfall. Pretty treacherous footing. I wouldn't advise you to go exploring
in there. Not while you're out here alone."

"What peculiar place names. Do you know why ?" Genny found the trail steeper going out
than it had seemed coming in. She did her best to control her breathing so she wouldn't puff. He
was showing no signs of strain, despite those impractical high-heeled boots.

Or was it the view from the rear affecting her lungs? Again she could see the flex and jut of
strong buttocks under denim so worn and faded it fit like the sheerest pantyhose. He had the most
spectacular bottom she'd ever seen on a man!

"They say two human skeletons were found in here back in the 1890s and that's how the
gulch got its name. I guess when they were lookin' for names for the side canyons, they..."