They were walking in a pine forest. The needles on the floor of the forest muffled all sound of their passing, and the whispering breeze hissing through the trees at the top of the bluff was soothing and cool on their faces.
He dropped his pack to the shady floor of the forest, and stretched, looking out over the hills and valleys.
Glancing back, he noticed Katie sitting on her pack, arms around her knees, just staring at the ground. She hadn’t said much since the attack earlier that morning, and now, as she sat there, she started to tremble and shake. The aftermath was starting to set in.
Kneeling, he wrapped her up in his arms, holding her head to his shoulder.
“It’s all right, Katherine. Your body is just reacting to losing all that adrenalin. The shakes are normal.”
He handed her his canteen, and she gratefully put it to her lips. “Do you get the shakes too?”
His expression softened. “Sure, but I usually do it late at night when no one can see. I have to protect my image.” His hand stroked her hair and his voice was gentle. “Your first time?”
“Yeah.” The one word was full of emotion.
“You did good.” He could see she didn’t believe him. With no idea of her upbringing, he didn’t have a starting point to help her. It was beyond his comprehension that she’d be so isolated that she never saw anything like that.
“Did I? Really? I killed some of those men. I’ve never killed a man before.” Her voice was a mixture of disgust and wonder.
He roughly pulled away, hands still on her shoulders. His eyes held steadily to hers until he was sure she was through feeling sorry for herself. He watched it all march past in her eyes. Loathing. Despair. No one should ever have to kill. It was not fair.
Slowly, then, reality set in, with her knowledge of the real world. Then resolve. But not pride. She was not proud of it, but she knew deep down that the killing was unavoidable. It was simply the price of survival.
The hands that had roughly held her away from him started caressing her arms and shoulders.
His voice was gentle. “How did you do today? Let me evaluate you as I would a soldier, Katherine. Most important of all, you were quiet and didn’t ask stupid questions. You did what I asked you to do without hesitation, and yes… you had the guts to kill when you had to. There was no choice. Those people who attacked our camp weren’t going to stop and let us take a vote about whether we wanted to die, and they sure as hell weren’t going to debate the morality of the situation. They were going to kill you. Or worse. Or both. Remember that.”
He continued. “Look at how the recruits did. They ran like rabbits. If more of them were like you. They might not have lost so many men. Besides,” he finished with a humorous glint in his eye, trying to get her mind off the attack, “you even saved my tail. That last raider would have put lead into me if you hadn’t nailed him.”
She smiled slightly at him, her eyes burning with something he’d seen in her before, when they met at the clearing.
“Then you owe me. Right? There’s bound to be a code of the forest, or something like that? You’re in my debt?”
He looked at her and eased away, not sure where this was going. “I suppose.”
“Then pay up.”
A half-formed question was on his lips, but it just made things easier. Her lips found his, softly clinging, then grinding with hunger. Her arms went around him as she entwined her fingers in his hair and held him against her.
“Are you sure about this?” Part of him wanted to slow down, the other part called him an idiot.
Her answer was another kiss, this one softer and full of promise.
All his resistance to her, which wasn’t much in the first place, fell away as his hands cupped her buttocks and pulled her tight against him, crushing her breasts against his chest.
Breathing heavily, she broke the kiss, chuckling as his mouth found her throat and his hands worked on the laces of her shirt. “Why, Marshal,” she breathed. “The things you do… and right here in broad daylight.”
3
The following day found them high on a mountain overlooking a natural basin about two miles across. Although he couldn’t see it from their vantage point, Trent could hear the rumble of water erupting from the huge spring below.
He gestured at the basin. “How did all this come about, Katherine? I had it pictured in my mind as being a lot bigger.”
She dropped her pack to the ground and came to stand by him, gladly taking on the role of tour guide just to get some rest. He hadn’t stopped all morning, and her tail was dragging.
“You hear all that noise from below? That’s the spring. I found some old tourist brochures that the Conservation Department put out before The Fall that told all about it. Millions of gallons of cold, clear, water comes bustin’ out from under this mountain every day. Then it makes a river of its own for about two miles, then ducks into a cave and disappears. It finally ends up feeding into the Currant River.”
He stood with his hands on his hips and took a deep breath, taking in the cool, moist air coming up from below. Katie came to stand in front of him, fitting into him naturally.
If this was to be his base of operations, he needed to know all about it and didn’t relish finding another library. “That’s what started the settlement, then? The water?”
“Yep. There were some small towns nearby, but when the plague started, no one knew what caused the sickness. Some of the locals thought contaminated water caused the plague, so they holed up here in the basin. This water was the cleanest around, I guess. At least, it was clean enough that the people didn’t die. Of course, there weren’t many people here until the last few years.”
“How did they keep everyone out? I would think once the word got around, everyone would want to come.”
“You’d remember this more than I, anything us young folk know is just hearsay.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “But with people dying so fast it was pure panic. Not many thought of Big Springs, and a lot that did, died before they got here. Then, of course, there was the road.”
“Road?”
“There was only one road into this place so they blasted it out. All this limestone is soft. A few sticks of dynamite in the right spot made the road disappear under a few tons of rock. Now the only way in or out is game trails, on foot, or horseback. Those can be watched, if need be.”
She was staring into the basin, leaning against him, absentmindedly rubbing the back of his hands he’d locked around her.
His thoughts turned to their lovemaking the day before. He didn’t know why he felt contented and apprehensive at the same time. Maybe things were too good to be true. “Katherine, about yesterday.”
She leaned back into him, pushing with her buttocks. “What about yesterday? You feel you were cheated, or something? Got took advantage of? Don’t like pushy girls? What?”
He sighed, and shook his head. “Be serious.”
She twisted around to look him in the eyes. “I’m dead serious.”
When you’re alone as much as he’d been, expressing thoughts to someone came hard. His mind stuttered and started a few times, and he was sure his mouth was opening and closing like a land-locked trout, before his lame reply finally spilled out. “I just want you to be sure, that’s all. I’m no bargain.”
“That’s a matter of opinion, Old Man. I’m not some city girl from back east looking to climb the social register or go to some cotillion. Wait, are there enough people to even do that anymore?” She chuckled. “What I’m trying to say is you are exactly what I want and need. Clear?”