Page 38 of A Sweet Chat for the Cowboy

She giggled again. “Well, you’re making me look bad.”

“No, I’m not. I’m telling you, I walk in the woods a lot.”

“Obviously.” She shined her light down the slope. “It looks like it levels out soon.”

“Do you want to keep going?”

She hesitated. He didn’t want to encourage her either way. He didn’t care. She turned to look back up the slope. “We’ll be able to get back up, right?”

Yes, of course they would, but he understood her hesitation. She didn’t want the scree to give out beneath her feet and send her sliding again. “I can always tie a rope to Sundance, and have him pull you up.”

“Did you bring a rope?”

“No. You’d have to sit tight while I went and got one.”

She laughed again, but it was cut short as a toad’s cry broke through the night.

It echoed off the rocks around them, and neither of them breathed until the sound stopped bouncing and faded away. “Did that sound louder to you?” she asked.

He had no idea. It had sounded remarkably loud both times.

“And did it sound like it was coming from our right?”

Yes, it had. “Do you want to edge east?”

“We can’t get lost, right? You have one of those supernatural abilities to know what direction we’re going? Like a compass in your brain?”

He chuckled. “I do, yeah.”

“Okay, east it is.” But it was tough to head east with the loose rocks beneath their feet. He wanted to help her, but he didn’t want to insult her. If he asked her if she wanted a hand, that would be so awkward, so he didn’t ask, he just reached out and grabbed her arm. But he tried to make it as practical as possible, not touching her hand but wrapping his fingers around her forearm. She did not complain. Instead she gripped her own fingers around his forearm in a death clutch. If he wasn’t so worried about embarrassing her, he would have laughed. They made better time like this, and eventually he stopped just because he was afraid of going too far.

She sounded a bit breathless as she said, “What are we even doing? This is madness.”

He chuckled. It had always been a wild goose chase for a needle in a haystack. Them wandering around in the woods didn’t make it any more so.

“How about we just wait here a minute?” she said.

He let go of her arm.

“Not because I’m lazy,” she added. “I just don’t want to go too far until I hear it again.”

“No problem,” he whispered. He let out a quick whistle to get Sundance back, and then the three of them stood there peering into the darkness, waiting, watching, listening. A few brave insects whirled about near her headlamp, and he could see her breath.

They stood like that for so long that his legs started to stiffen. He didn’t want to complain, but he was ready to get moving again.

“I guess we can give up,” she said. “I’m not sure what to do. It seems he’s not going to call again.”

“We can head back toward base, and if we hear him, we’ll stop and redirect.”

“Good idea.” She seemed eager to head back.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked and then wished he hadn’t. What was he going to do about it if she said that she wasn’t?

“I’m a little chilled. I think I get too warm when I move, and then I get cold when I stop. So let’s get moving again.” She reached for his arm this time and gripped it the same way. He tugged her up the slope at a slant, so they were covering new ground. If they kept on this way, their path would be one giant triangle.

He wasn’t sure why, but it had been a pretty fun triangle.

---