“Toni,” Kurt Jenkins said.
She stopped and turned to him, her eyes just moments from tearing-up.
“Do something fun,” he said. “Something just for you.”
Nodding, she tightened her jaw against a wave of tears and left him alone in his office.
36
A cool breeze drifted down from the Rockies, caught the nose of the two horses tied to a tree alongside the river, and one of them whinnied loudly.
Some twenty yards away, up to his thighs in the frigid water, Jake Adams gave a little whistle to reassure the horses, as he gracefully swished his fly rod back and forth, letting out line in a precise display and dropping the fly into a small back eddy. The fly drifted down stream a few feet until his line straightened out slightly. He lifted the tip on his nine-foot rod and lightly set the hook. The cutthroat rose out of the water and flipped viciously to release the fly from the side of its mouth. Hitting the water again, the trout shot up stream and Jake kept the line tight against its escape. Less than a minute later and the trout had lost all fight as Jake brought the fish in front of him. He reached down and, without even touching the fish, was able to pop the barbless hook from its mouth, letting the fish slowly drift back down stream to fight another day.
“If you keep letting them go, how do you expect us to eat tonight?”
Jake turned and saw Alexandra sitting on the bank, her feet in waders still in the water, and a long piece of grass in her mouth. He slowly made his way out of the river toward her.
“I was hoping you’d catch something,” Jake said. “I don’t have the heart to keep them.”
She raised her brows at him and opened her whicker creel. He sat next to her on the bank and looked inside. She had kept two nice rainbows.
“Nice work,” he said.
She threw the grass from her mouth into the river and watched it drift downstream. “I had a good teacher,” she said, closing the creel.
They had gone straight from Berlin to her home near Munich in a rental car. She was authorized two weeks of leave. Then they went to his place in Innsbruck, packed up his fishing gear and clothes, and flew out immediately on the next flight to America. That was a week ago. In that time they had fished almost every river in a hundred mile radius of Bozeman, Montana. They rode horses into the back country. He had even introduced her to a few of his old friends, something he had rarely done with other women. Not since Toni.
He set his rod and other gear onto the bank of the river and put his arm around her. They kissed for a long while and then she put her head against his shoulder as they watched the river and listened to the birds around them.