Page 9 of Desert Angel

She nodded and started back down the hill, her eyes on the ground. He followed, taking in the surroundings. The desert was an easy place to find sites for shooting and it all made his job harder.

They spent the rest of the day finding ways to protect the animals, arranging for satellite internet and generally trying to make the immediate house property as safe as possible. While she worked alongside Dylan, Nikki realized she’d never really considered her land to be vulnerable, as she did now. Sure, she’d lock the doors at night, make sure the equipment building was secure and repairs on the buildings and other ranch structures were up to date. The ranch vehicles were always parked within the enclosure and keys kept on hooks in the kitchen, but they were rarely locked. What was the point, in this remote location? Now, she was rethinking the whole thing.

Dylan finally finished setting up the internet for her and turned with a grin. “Now, you’ll be able to start selling your goat products online if you want. And order anything you want online.”

“What would I need besides what I have?” She asked absently as she pushed at the sofa. She couldn’t sit with her back to the window anymore. She needed the couch somewhere else.

“Where are you moving it?” Dylan didn’t ask why she decided to move the couch, but stood and went to the other side of the thing. She gestured toward the wall with a bookcase centered in it and he shoved the case to the end of the wall and then helped her with the sofa. She sighed and sank onto its cushions then eyed the suddenly vacant spot in front of the large window. “It’s always been there, ever since I can remember.”

He nodded, sitting beside her. “You could put a table there, maybe a plant on it.”

She smiled despite her unease. “You an expert on decorating too?”

He laughed, “Not if you ask my sister. She tells me and Dan that we’re worthless when it comes to doing anything that doesn’t require a weapon.”

Her smile wanned at the mention of the weapon. “Does Dan work at Antelope Pass?”

He nodded and looked at her. “Merry said you’ve had some experience with the agents there.”

She nodded. “They’re nice but they also give me some grief about leaving food and water in the area.”

“How so?” She noted that he tensed a little then.

“Only that it might send the wrong message,” she said then quirked her mouth in a wry smile. “Just like you said.”

He nodded. “Sorry.”

“I know some people don’t understand what I do or why I do it, but I don’t see who or what I’m hurting, Dylan.” She turned to him in earnest. “I’ve cut back on leaving food. It’s only attracting predators, anyway. Even the canned foods seem to attract them.”

“Experience,” he said and she nodded. Animals had memory and if they could get into a can of food or an opened can was left on a trail, they’d return to the location time and again. “Anyway, I told the agents that I wasn’t going to leave the food there again. They seemed okay with it.”

“I don’t think the agents are our problem, Nikki.” He wandered over to the bookcase and studied the titles before pulling a book from a shelf. As he opened the cover, he glanced up at her. “We’ll check them out but I think we need to look in other directions.”

“Like where?”

“Town, church, the community at large.”

“We don’t have an ‘at large’,” she joked then turned serious. The closest town had a couple of hundred people in it, Lordsburg had a few thousand. Who would want to hurt her or scare her out of her desert work there?

Supper was spent planning the evening’s outing. She always did her desert work in the evening, as it was easier to leave water in the desert after the sun had gone down. Less evaporation, along with the night travelers, meant that she’d have more luck in connecting the migrants with water than during the day.

Later that night, dressed in old jeans, shirts, and lightweight jackets, they set out in the truck and headed south. Within an hour, they were within a mile of the border and deep in the desert. Wayne’s land to her east was a thin strip of land at the border, but he didn’t bother with maintaining anything other than the fence he’d constructed along the line between his and her land.

“Where’s the border?” Dylan asked.

“About a mile south.” Nikki squinted in the dark, trying to see beyond the fence line. “Wayne uses a multi-strand of barbed wire along the border with his property, but it’s cut regularly, as is this fence. Plus, some spots are stretched, like that one.” She pointed to her right to a spot in the fence that had been propped wider by a piece of spindly tree. “He’ll come along his border a couple of times a month and fix the holes.”

“And you?” Dylan looked at her and she shrugged.

“I leave them.”

“So, in some people’s minds, you might be giving consent by your inaction.”

She didn’t respond but filed his comment away in her mind. They walked along the fence for a while then she placed a plastic jug a yard from the fence, against a rock. As she walked away, he followed. “Has Wayne said anything about the water and the fence?”

“Only that I’m a do-gooder, that I’m aiding and abetting. That I don’t understand the minds of the people who cross over.”

“What is his opinion of what they’re thinking?”

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