The Blessed Blend (4 page)

Mountain Rose brightened up a little. “Will Lacie be there too?” she asked. Lacie was Uncle Caleb’s girlfriend and knew how to fix up hair lots of neat ways. Unlike her mother, Mountain Rose loved to play dress-up and have her hair done up fancy.

Callie smiled.”Oh, I’m sure she will. Uncle Caleb likes to treat her when he can.”

“He likes her a lot,” Red Wolf noted. “She gonna be our aunt?”

“I don’t know, son,” Callie replied. “They’re both still pretty young to get married. Maybe in a few years.”

“Mama, why aren’t you married?” Mountain Rose asked. “Are you waiting for our daddy?”

Pain shot through Callie from her heart clean to the marrow of her soul. She suppressed the tears that began to well up in her eyes. Kids weren’t stupid and her two were sharper than most. They knew they had a father even if she hadn’t told them anything about him.

A thousand invectives scrabbled about inside her waiting for her to vent her sorrow and anger, but she would never hurt her children by saying anything bad about their father. Instead she said, “When you’re a bit older I’ll tell you about him. Right now it’s hard for me to talk about it. Can you wait until I’m ready?”

The twins nodded solemnly. From the Native, Melungeon, and Gaelic blood they had inherited exceedingly keen empathic abilities. Any mention of their father was something that made their mama very sad no matter how hard she tried to hide it. She tried to hide it because she loved them. And they knew that she still loved their daddy even if she never said so.

“Can we ride to the lodge?” Mountain Rose asked. “Grandma and Grandpa are there.”

Callie thought on that for a moment and then assented. “Well, alright, but you have to behave yourselves in front of our guests. No fighting and no nosy questions.”

“Yes ma’am,” they answered in unison.

“Go wash up and change your clothes right quick. You’uns smell like goats,” she ordered, slipping back into the local dialect.

As they scampered off to the cabin in a gaggle with their cousins, Papa observed, “Callie, them two must look an awful lot like their daddy. They’s already askin’ about him. What will ye tell ‘em?”

She shrugged. “They’ve
been
asking and I don’t know what to tell them. If I tell them the truth it’ll hurt them to know that their daddy was a no-good jackass. If I try to sugar-coat things, they’ll wonder why we’re not still together. And there’s no point in trying to lie about it.”

“So what have ye told them?” Papa asked.

She took in a deep breath and let it out. “That I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

Papa laid a hand on her shoulder and said gently, “Ye have to let go of it someday, child. Keepin’ a hurt caged up like that just makes it meaner and harder to get rid of.”

Callie looked up into Papa’s black eyes and drew on the warmth shining out of them. He was the one who had encouraged her to spend a summer in Scotland and learn about that part of her heritage, and when she had come home pregnant he had been the one to defend her decision to remain silent about what had happened. As family patriarch, what he said was pretty much how it went even though he seldom raised his voice to make his mind known.

Red Wolf and Mountain Rose ran out of the cabin with their great-grandmother calling after them to come back and get their coats and caps. Callie pointed back at her grandmother without saying a word. The children stopped, their brows knitted, and Mountain Rose huffed, “Aw, Mama, do we hafta? It’s not cold at all!”

“Young lady, go get your coat and hat or stay here. Your choice,” Callie said firmly.

Both children turned and went back to the cabin. Jolena put their coats on and fussed at them a little bit for thinking they could just run off like that. “Yore mama spoils ye little heathens too much!” she fussed. “Ain’t no reason fer you’uns to ride down the mountain with her ‘ceptin’ ye be lookin’ fer more trouble to get into!”

Red Wolf replied, “Mama’s gonna be gone a few days. We don’t like it when she goes like that.”

Jolena sighed and said, “Me, neither, child. But it’s our livin’ an’ yore mama has to work like the rest of us.” She smiled and kissed both children on the forehead. “Now you’uns go on!”

The twins flew to their mother and Callie hugged them tightly and then turned to her grandfather. Papa put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead.

“You be careful, Callie,” he warned gently. “Rich or not, strangers are still strangers.”

Callie nodded as she put her hat on. “I will, Papa. Besides, I have my security detail to handle anything I can’t,” she said as she mounted up. Papa handed the children up to Callie. Mountain Rose went on her lap and Red Wolf was placed behind the cantle, his legs hanging off the saddle bags and his arms about his mother’s waist.

She clucked to Chick and drew the reins across the mare’s neck to back and turn her. As she tapped her heels to the mare’s sides she whistled sharply. Four large gray shadows emerged from the woods. The wolf-hybrids had been raised in captivity by people who thought that owning a wolf was a cool thing to do and then abandoned when those same people realized that they couldn’t handle these animals. Dumped in the mountains with no training in the ways of the pack and no survival skills, most starved to death or were shot when they attacked livestock.

Jim had started rehabilitating such wolves with a pair who tried to take a deer he had just killed. Over the last few years, with assistance from his children and a couple of local wildlife officers, he had rescued and retrained enough wolves to form a decent pack. Since most had been neutered, they couldn’t increase their numbers as nature intended, but the addition of a mated pair donated by a breeder offered hope for a truly wild pack in the future.

Only one of Callie’s ‘
security detail
’ was a true dog and that was Brutus. The huge dog was from an old line of American Leopard Curs that some of her settler ancestors had brought with them over the mountains in the early eighteenth century. He had a blue merle coat with rust-colored trim over the eyes, muzzle, and legs. He was an extraordinary hunting dog and fiercely protective of his territory and people. Brutus would stay by Callie’s side until they returned home.

Nightside, Snake, Smoke, and Raze were mostly Timber Wolf with some Malamute or Husky mixed in. Callie had worked with them to teach them how to be wolves and had been largely successful, but they considered her their alpha and chose to pack with her. They would stay out of sight of the hunters but would come to Callie’s aid if she were attacked. Wolves run silently and whatever fool tried to put his hands on their alpha wouldn’t know what was coming until their fangs were tearing at his flesh.

Callie was to guide a group of six this trip- one Spaniard, one German, two Americans, and two Scots. Europeans didn’t like to be grouped with Americans and Darlene made every effort to schedule accordingly, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. The Europeans tended to treat their hosts with more respect than did American clients, partly because they admired Native Americans much more than most Americans did, and partly because they had better manners.

But they could be just as obnoxious as Americans when it came to keeping their hands to themselves when up in the woods with a woman, and particularly a young, petite one like Callie. Jim, a former Army Ranger, had taught his children hand-to-hand combat skills including how to incapacitate or severely disable an opponent.

Or kill him if need be. Callie could throw a knife, axe, or hatchet with dead-on accuracy, and was a highly-skilled marksman. Nothing about her was weak or delicate and in matters of survival her response was instantaneous and ruthless. Usually a well-placed blow to a particular part of the male anatomy was enough to get the point across but on occasion she’d had to resort to damaging other parts as well.

She hadn’t killed anyone yet, but she’d meted out some fractures and severe contusions in the few seconds it took for Brutus and the wolves to come to her aid. Fortunately, Brutus’ presence alone was enough to deter most men from acting upon any testosterone-induced idiocy.

Offenders were escorted out of the woods posthaste and did not receive a refund.

Period.

Nobody had ever sued over it, either. Jim Awiakta was a shrewd businessman who knew how to draw up contracts like a corporate legal shark. He had included a morals clause in the basic contract right along with a waiver requirement for accident, injury, or death- especially if the client’s own actions precipitated it.
Cover your ass with both hands and Kevlar drawers
was one of his favorite axioms.

It was a fine fall day on Powell Mountain. She could see Newman Ridge southward across Snake Hollow and an occasional glint from Blackwater Creek as it ran the northeastward course. The sky was a crisp blue and the air sweet and cool with just the slightest tang of wood smoke. Her family lived in one of the more remote parts of the county despite Big Sycamore Creek Road which traversed the length of Snake Hollow from the southern-most end of Powell Mountain to State Route 70 up in Virginia. Sneedville lay in a valley to the south of Newman Ridge but to Callie it existed only when she gave it any thought.

The first frost had already fallen and the nights were quite chilly. Leaves were falling heavily, carpeting the forest floor with red and russet and gold accents while those still on the trees rustled their songs in the breeze. The deep green of pines and cedar trees stood in stark contrast to the half-bare deciduous trees. As Callie and her children chatted, blue jays called, squirrels barked, a hawk whistled high overhead, and an elk bugled in the distance.

The elk and deer were in full rut now, with the males battling for territory and harems and the females picking out the time, place, and male of their choice for breeding. Of course, the predators knew that while the adults were so preoccupied with the getting of next year’s offspring that this year’s fawns were a bit more vulnerable to predation. This also made the cougars and bears a bit more vulnerable too, since they could be more easily found by hunters.

 
Guests paid well for the chance to get a bison, elk, or bear and even more so for the very few tags allowed for an adult mountain lion. Tags for deer were far less expensive, and for hogs only a hunting license was required. Feral hogs were considered invasive pests and destructive to the environment.

The local ones were huge, often weighing nearly one thousand pounds and reaching eight to nine feet in length. Dubbed “hogzillas” after a huge hog shot in southern Georgia, they were extremely dangerous even for the most experienced hunter. It took a .308 or higher caliber rifle to kill one and usually more than one shot was required to do the job.

 
Hunting hogs was Jonas’ specialty. His pack of Black Mouth Curs was well-trained to bring a hog to bay while staying clear of its tusks and he knew how to bring one down. Still, he admitted it scared the piss out of him every time he looked a hog in its mean, beady eyes. They were the most unpredictable and dangerous animals in the forest, far more so than even bear or lion. Too many things could go wrong when hunting or cornering them, and if folks had the misfortune to stumble across a herd of sows with their pigs they’d be lucky to escape with their lives.

Callie could see the smoke from the lodge rising up about a half-mile away. She wondered briefly about the men she’d be escorting this day but didn’t involve herself in speculation. Beyond the fact that they were clients whose money provided her family with a decent living, their lives were their own business and not hers. Most of the time she figured out all she needed to know after a few minutes of dealing with them and had no desire to know any more.

When she was within fifty yards of the clearing around the lodge, Callie ordered the wolves to stay put. Experienced at this routine, the four sat down to wait as Brutus followed Callie to the lodge. When the guests were mounted and the pack-string under way, they would shadow them, staying close by but out of sight.

Callie emerged from the woods and came up to the lodge.
 
A string of four mules were being loaded with the guests’ gear by her brother Caleb and cousin Mike Dalton. Six horses stood saddled up and ready for the guests to ride.

She lowered Red Wolf and Mountain Rose to the ground before dismounting. Dropping Chick’s reins over the long hitching rail, she gave the mare a treat before going over the rest of the stock. She spoke to each horse or mule in turn, petting and giving each a treat from her pocket. The twins followed along, copying their mother as they greeted and petted the horses and mules, calling each by name.

Nancy Jo, her Uncle Dave’s wife, opened up the side door and stepped out to get a breath of fresh air. Wiping her hands on her apron, she smiled and greeted Callie. “I see you brought your young’uns. Your mama’s in the office. Have these kids et yet?” When Callie said they had, Nancy Jo nodded and then continued speaking with hardly a pause. “Looks like you got a real nice bunch of gentlemen this time around!” she said. “Couple of real handsome young fellers, too!”

Callie avoided rolling her eyes. Aunt Nancy Jo was always trying to set her up with this man or that one, assuming that Callie must be absolutely miserable without a man in her life. Perky blonde cheerleader-types had always made her sick, even when they were kinfolk or kin-by-marriage. Callie laid on a Hollywood-style Southern accent as she replied drily, “
Do tell!
How will I evah manage to do mah job while swooning over such delightful company?”