Firelight at Mustang Ridge (2 page)

She had thought she was getting used to the dramatic beauty of the Wyoming backcountry they'd been bouncing through—all rolling hills and tree-shrouded rivers, with the mountains rising fat and purple in the distance. But this was something else entirely. Although the hills were dry and brown, the river valley was lush and green. Sloping banks ran up to the trees, and matching arms of stone wrapped around the green space, enclosing it in a geological hug that undoubtedly spanned hundreds of acres, yet felt safe and intimate. Especially when she saw a group of horses drift down to the water, almost lost in the distance as they stretched their necks to drink from the river.

“Welcome to Blessing Valley,” Krista said, grinning as several of the horses lifted their heads and pricked their ears toward the ATVs. “And there are your roommates—those are the mustangs of Blessing's Herd, all forty of them, with Jupiter leading the way.” She pointed to a dark gray horse that stepped in front of the others as if to say,
If you want to bother them, you'll have to go through me to do it
.

Danny didn't want to bother anybody, but her lips curved at the thought that she would be sharing her home with the beautiful creatures. She'd never been
particularly horse crazy, but the gray mare had a wise, knowing air about her. “She's beautiful.”

“It's thanks to her that we have the herd—Wyatt won a ‘train your mustang from scratch in six weeks' competition with her last year, and the prize money went to buying an entire herd and setting up a sanctuary in this valley and the adjoining acreage.”

“Why not call it Jupiter's Herd, then?”

“We thought about it, but we want the sanctuary to outlive a single horse or herd . . . so we named it after a foundling who was adopted by one of the earliest settlers in this area. Blessing. She married an early homesteader here at Mustang Ridge, making her my however-many-great-grandmother.” Krista grinned. “She's a favorite of mine in the family tree, and the name seemed to fit.”

“Blessing Valley.” Danny drew in a breath of air that felt even cleaner and fresher than it had down by the ranch, though an hour ago she would have said that was impossible. She wasn't sharing this air, though—it was all hers. A blessing indeed.

“Come on.” Krista restarted her ATV. “The campsite is about a mile in.”

A short drive brought them to where a bend in the river formed a spit of smooth ground. There, a firepit was lined with flat river rocks and surrounded by a cut-log seating area. As they rolled closer, Danny scanned the campsite, looking for the equipment she had sent on ahead.

Instead, her eyes landed on a hotel on wheels.

A big silver and purple RV was parked under the
trees, with its awning extended to shade a small table, a couple of chairs, and an outdoor rug. The name
RAMBLING ROSE
was painted on the side of the RV in glittering script, and the tinted windows gave glimpses of pretty rose-patterned curtains and leather chairs.

And Danny was gaping again.

“I hope it's okay,” Krista said, but she was grinning, like she could already see that it was far more than her guest had hoped for.

“Okay? Are you serious? I was expecting a pop-up camper and a six-pack tethered in the river. This is . . .” Too much, overwhelming. “Is the RV yours?”

“My parents'. He's Ed and she's Rose, and when the snow starts flying up here, they head south and go looking for stuff they haven't already seen. Thus, the
Rambling Rose
.”

“They don't mind my using it?”
Please say they don't mind
. Danny had told herself that camping out in the middle of nowhere would be a good way to figure out what came next in life. But the posh bus tucked into the private valley suddenly seemed like her own personal slice of solo heaven.

“That depends. Are you planning on throwing any wild parties?”

“I'm not, but I can't speak for Jupiter and her buddies.”

Krista gave her a shoulder bump. “I can pretty much guarantee she'll stay out of your way. She enjoys people well enough—I think we amuse her—but she takes her duties very seriously when it comes to keeping the herd out of trouble.”

“Then we should be okay on the no-parties thing.”

“Excellent. Let me show you around the RV. It's not big, but there's a whole lot of features packed into the square footage.”

The whole
it's not big
comment didn't fully sink in until Danny put her foot on the steps going up and found herself facing a dark, narrow opening. And stalled as the oxygen suddenly vacated her lungs.

Oh, crap. Not now. Please not now.

Stomach knotting, she muttered under her breath, “Don't be a wuss. It's bigger than the airport shuttle.” Except the shuttle had been all windows and open space, with a wide aisle and lots of room for people and luggage. What little she could see of the RV was packed to the gills, with drawers and cabinets tucked into every available square inch. And it was dark.

“So you probably saw outside that you've got solar and wind power.” Krista flipped on the lights, brightening the gloom to unnatural fluorescence. “The keys are in the visor in case you need to move it.” She wiggled into the narrow aisle that ran between the popped-out kitchen and the matching breakfast nook on the other side. “You can fold the table away to make this a sitting area.”

As Krista demonstrated, Danny hovered just inside, keeping one foot hanging out the door.

“Then down this hall—it gets a little narrow here—you've got your three-quarter bath. There are a couple of tricks I need to show you, so you're going to want to crowd on in here with me.” Krista said it like it was no big deal.

Then again, to normal people it wasn't.

Taking a deep breath, Danny forged down the
tunnel, not letting herself see how it stretched out longer and longer, like a horror-movie hallway. Hoping Krista couldn't smell the fear oozing from her pores, she dug her fingertips into the doorway molding and managed to give a nod that she hoped related
Go ahead
instead of
I'm gonna puke
.

She could deal with this. She
would
deal with it, damn it. The last thing she wanted to do was seem ungrateful when Jenny's family was offering her the perfect getaway.

Krista gestured, lips moving as she went over a process that only half stuck—something about a cross of toilet paper in the bowl and keeping the gray water to a minimum. All Danny really heard, though, was a Charlie Brown–like
wah-wah-wah-whahhh
and a whole lot of blood rushing in her ears.
Breathe in, breathe out
. That was basic. It was mandatory.
In. Out. In. Out
.

Finished with the bathroom, Krista squeezed back through the narrow opening and forged even deeper. “This is the bedroom. We put the stuff you shipped in here, figuring you'd want to organize it yourself.”

To a normal person, it probably looked like a king mattress flanked by a wardrobe and a drop-down desk, with two big duffels on the floor. To Danny, it was a cluttered dead end with a tiny window that let in the light but wouldn't let her out no matter how hard she screamed.

For the love of God, don't scream
. Jamming her fingernails into her palms hard enough to draw blood, she sucked a thin trickle of oxygen through her nostrils.

“It's all pretty self-explanatory.” Krista reversed
course and headed back up the tunnel, talking all the way as she pointed out a fire extinguisher and a stack of manuals sealed in a Tupperware box under the sink.

Danny's feet stayed glued at the bedroom threshold.
Breathe in. Breathe out. You're not stuck. You can leave anytime you want. See? You're moving now. One foot, then the other. Turn. Walk, don't run. You don't want her to know you're a head case. A weenie. Broken
.

One torturous step at a time, she trudged back up the tunnel, sweating like it was a hundred and ten degrees rather than a shady eighty or so. Until, finally, she made it down the steps, through a walled-in opening so narrow that her shoulders brushed against either side, and out into the bright yellow sunshine of the green, green valley, with its bubbling water and open sky.

Where she could breathe again. Sort of.

“Anyway, I think that takes care of the basics,” Krista said, seeming unaware that Danny's brain had gone all Blue Screen of Death there for a few minutes, leaving her stomach knotted and her lungs struggling for air. “There's a satellite phone in the glove compartment for emergencies, and you've got the ATV for when you're ready to come back to the ranch for Gran's cooking, a real shower, and some company. You can explore with it, too, but watch your terrain and your fuel, and leave enough breadcrumbs so you can always find your way home.”

She paused, as if it was Danny's turn to say something. Which it totally was, but she didn't know what to say or whether she could get it out even if she knew.

Say something! Don't be a wuss
. Fixing her eyes on the
river—watching the water keep moving, never stuck in one place—she swallowed hard and managed, “I don't know how to thank you. I . . .” Horrifyingly, her eyes threatened to fill and she choked. “I'm sorry.”

Expression shifting to one of utter sympathy—but not pity—Krista touched her hand. “No,
I'm
sorry. You came here to get away from people, and here I am nattering away at you.”

“It's not that. You're lovely. It's me. I'm just—”

“Seriously. Don't stress.” She squeezed Danny's arm. “I glommed onto you the second you stepped off the bus. I'd blame it on hormones or being a new mom stuck in babyland twenty-four-seven, but I'm surrounded by adults on a daily basis.” One corner of her mouth kicked upward. “Confession time: I'm a little jealous of your getaway, and kind of wishing Wyatt, Abby, and I could set up camp farther upstream and hide out until the wedding.” She sighed. “Which we totally can't do. But it sure sounds nice.”

Okay. Danny could breathe again. She could think. Sort of. As her pulse started to slow, she made herself focus on the conversation, grateful to Krista for smoothing things over and giving her time to pull herself back together. “I guess you could camp out for your honeymoon,” she suggested, her voice only a little wobbly. “Or, I don't know, a bachelorette party?”

“Ooh!” Krista straightened, eyes lighting. “I like that!” Then she laughed at herself. “And here I am, nattering again while my mom is undoubtedly spoiling the bejeebers out of Abby.” She didn't sound at all put out by the prospect. “I'm going to go, and leave you to your valley. But if I could make one suggestion?”

Torn between wanting the other woman to stay and wishing she were already gone, Danny said, “What's that?”

“Don't wait too long to dig into that basket of Gran's. You look like you could use a cookie or three.”

T
he black and green helicopter came over the trees and hovered above the clearing, looking like a giant dragonfly checking out some prehistoric field. Really, though, the rent-a-chopper pilot was probably just making sure his client hadn't been overly optimistic when he promised a safe landing spot. And, well, said client had admittedly been watching too many monster movies of late.

Sam Babcock grinned up at the flying machine. “What do you think, Yoshi? Should we buy a chopper and have it pimped out to look like Mothra?”

The brown-and-white-splotched paint gelding swiveled his ears back at the sound of his rider's voice, then forward again as the helicopter eased down, bobbling some in the crosswind.

“Yeah, yeah. You're right—waste of money, bad for the environment, think of the bunnies, yadda, yadda. Still, it'd almost be worth it to see the look on Axyl's face, don't you think?” The crusty old rockhound—a longtime family friend and Sam's right-hand man when it came to work stuff—was worth his carat weight in
blue diamonds, but he didn't have much of a sense of humor.

Yoshi snorted as the chopper finally settled in for a landing and the rent-a-pilot killed the engine. Moments later, the doors popped open and Axyl emerged, wearing fatigues and his trademark bushy beard, followed by Sam's engineers, Murphy and Midas. With a stubby blond ponytail, battered sandals, and the sort of cargo-pants-plus-button-down getup that cool kids paid a ton for in Boulder, Murph looked more like an off-season ski bum than a whiz-kid mechanical engineer. In contrast, Midas was taller and bulkier, with cropped hair, dark clothes, and tattooed knuckles. But while Midas might look like a bouncer from the sort of club that wouldn't let Murph in the door, he was a top-notch geologist and mining engineer.

As they climbed down from the chopper and headed for Sam, Axyl was scowling, and Murph and Midas were arguing, with lots of hand waving and disgusted looks. In other words, business as usual.

Sam guided Yoshi out of the trees. “So, what do you guys think? Heck of a view, right?”

“View, shmew,” Axyl grumbled. “I know you like to buy up open space, and that you wanted to field-test the prototypes out in the backcountry, but why here? It's in the middle of farking nowhere, and there are too damn many trees. Why not buy something closer to Windfall?”

Flipping open one of the bulging bags strapped behind his saddle, Sam said, “Because of this.”

The wind died suddenly and he could've sworn the
sun brightened a notch as it hit on the six-sided rod of deep red gemstone he had dug out of the side of a rocky hill less than a half mile from where they were standing.

“No way!” said Murph, his eyes going round.

“Hot damn!” Midas said in a moment of rare agreement with his nemesis.

Axyl just looked at the stone for a minute, then sniffed. “Not bad.”

“What do you mean,
not bad
?” Sam said. “That's a hell of a find and you know it!” Okay, maybe not five-figures good, but still. The deep ruby-red crystal pulsed with an inner glow that said jewelry-quality carats, and lots of them. It had been his first find on the new piece of land, confirmation of the quiver he'd gotten in his gut when he first rode up the shallow hill a few weeks ago.

“You didn't find that in the middle of all these trees,” Axyl said, still looking unconvinced. He hated horses and helicopters, and only barely tolerated four-wheelers. As far as he was concerned, if he couldn't get to his destination on a Harley, then it wasn't much of a destination. Unfortunately for him, most of the remaining pockets of decent gemstone in the state—at least the ones that could be gotten at without stripping the land to the bone—were in the back of beyond.

“There's a gully on the other side of the trees.” Sam pointed. “Past that is as gemmy-looking a hill as I've seen in a while. Come on, I'll show you.” Seeing Axyl hesitate, he prodded, “Aw, come on, old man. What's the worst that could happen?”

“I could wind up living out here for the rest of the summer in some cobbled-together shack with solar
panels on the roof, a cistern on one side, and a composting toilet on the other.”

Midas elbowed Murphy. “Did you get all that?”

“Shut it,” Axyl grumbled. But his eyes stayed locked on the crystals. “Any more like that?”

Sam patted his saddlebag. “I got lucky. Started poking around this morning and hit on a good-size pocket.”

“Lucky is right. Let me guess. You had a feeling about this place.”

“Something like that.” And that was all he was going to say on the matter. All he needed to say.

The grizzled prospector glanced around, studying the trees now rather than scowling at them. “You name it yet?”

“I was thinking of calling it Misty Hill.”

The crow's-feet around Axyl's eyes eased up. “After your ma. That's nice.”

Actually, Sam had decided on the name that morning, when he'd woken up wrapped in his bedroll and found himself surrounded by a dense, low-lying fog despite the drought. But, yeah, maybe there had been something subconscious at work there, too. His ma's name had been Mary, but everybody had called her Misty—except his father, who had called her “My Mary” or, more often, “your Ma, bless her soul.”

“Misty Hill it is,” Sam said, his voice going thick. Clearing his throat, he added, “What do you think, Murph? You going to have enough sky to work with, or are we going to need to cut some trees?”

“Hm.” Murph, who was the overlord of all things solar-powered at Babcock Gems, studied the clearing, squinted along his outstretched arm to make some
thumb-level measurements, and got a look on his face that Sam recognized as meaning,
Stand back, folks, I'm doing calculus in my head
. After a moment, he nodded. “I can make it work.”

“Good. Get going on plans and a supply list. You know the routine. Take Axyl's cobbled-together-shack idea, make sure there's room to sleep, cook, hang out, and sort rocks, and keep it as eco-friendly as you can get it.”

“I want a separate building to house the prototypes,” Midas put in. “We'll want as many as we can airlift or motor out here. It's time to do some serious field-testing.”

Murph's mouth flattened. “Not if by
field-testing
you mean treating the equipment like a bunch of crash-test dummies. This is precision machinery we're talking about here.”

Midas held up both hands. “Hey, it's not my fault that your inventions don't always stand up to the real world.”

“There's a difference between regular use and ‘Whoops, I just dropped a fiber-optic probe four stories into a caldera.'”

“The grip was like a wet banana.”

Murph's face went a dull, infuriated red. “Only for someone who forgets he has opposable thumbs.”

“So,” Axyl said to Sam, his voice carrying over Midas's squawk, “you want to show me that crystal pocket?”

“Sure. Back here, through the trees.” While the other two escalated from “Damn thing should've been shockproof anyway” to “Oh, yeah? Says the guy who totaled his new mountain bike because he was watching a hawk,” Sam patted Yoshi's rump. “You want a ride?”

Axyl snorted. “Not on your life, boyo.”

They headed off as the engineers went straight past “your momma” territory into geological insults. It was background noise to Sam, though, like the crunch of a shovel or the ring of a hammer on stone, and it faded quickly once they got into the trees, with Yoshi picking his way and Axyl grumbling about the smell of sweaty horse.

When they reached the other side of the narrow forest band, the grumbles cut off as Axyl got his first look at the slope where Sam had found the gemstone pocket. The old rockhound came up beside Yoshi and scanned the huge, rocky expanse, which rose a couple hundred feet in almost no time, with streaks in the blocky stone chunks suggesting that most of it was metamorphic rock with some amphibole. The high temperature, high pressure, and slow cooling processes that went into forming the stones were also the forces that generated species of corundum—like rubies and sapphires—and other valuable deposits. Better yet, there were glittering inclusions of vermiculite schist, which was another marker that valuable stones could be nearby. And the rocky slope stretched on for miles.

Axyl whistled, his beard a-quiver.

“Admit it,” Sam said, prodding. “It's a good piece of land, and not just for field-testing the new gadgets.”

“It's okay.” Then, with his expression flattening to something that was almost a smile, Axyl allowed, “It's better than okay. Even if you hadn't found that crystal pocket, I'd have to say it's got a damn good look to it. Gemmy as hell.” He studied the glitters, which tempted a rockhound to imagine riches beneath. “Your old man would've liked this place.”

“I thought so. It's got a great view, a good place to stick a campsite, and a whole lot of potential for surface mining, but no guarantees.” Trooper Babcock hadn't been the best prospector out there, certainly hadn't been the luckiest, but he had loved the land and the thrill of the hunt.

Digging into his saddlebag, Sam came up with his custom-molded, reverb-dampening rock hammer—one of Murph's earliest contributions to the team—and held it up in challenge. “One hour, best specimen wins, Midas judges?”

Axyl unslung his pack and pulled out a scuffed rock hammer that probably had a cousin in a museum somewhere. Lifting it and getting a gleam in his eye, he added, “Loser buys the beer.”

*   *   *

Danny's early days in Blessing Valley had passed in an odd slow-motion blur, where each hour seemed to stretch endlessly, yet somehow she was already into her second week and running low on food. She wasn't ready to return to the ranch, though—wasn't ready for chaos and human noise—so she had taken to supplementing her stores with the edible berries, greens, and flowers she found on long walks that took her along the river and up gentle slopes. She was usually dragging by the time she returned to camp, ready to wolf down a quick meal, fire up her solar-powered electric fence, and crawl into the tent she had set up beside the dark, narrow RV. She rarely made it through a night without the dreams finding her, though, and she never slept in.

On day nine—or was it ten?—she emerged from the
tent not long past dawn, to discover a beautiful morning of pale blues and pinks in the sky, with birds singing up in the trees, the river bubbling in its banks . . . and a pair of squirrels sitting on the table, surrounded by a mound of white-paper confetti and in the process of tearing more shreds from a gutted paperback.

“Hey!” she said, stomping a foot. “Stop that!”

The bushy-tailed thieves levitated off the table, up onto the RV's awning, and from there to an overhanging branch, where they clung, chittering down at her like she was the one who was trespassing. Reddish brown, with tufted ears and puffed-up cheeks, they would've been cute if they'd been minding their own business.

“That's my book!” she exclaimed, recognizing one of the self-help, find-your-path-in-life guides she had packed in the bottom of her duffel. “Where did you get—” She broke off at the sight of a narrow gap where the RV's door should have been tightly closed. “Ohhh, no. I didn't!”

It was entirely possible, though. She had forced herself to go into the camper last night to snag the last of the canned soup, and although she had mostly gotten over feeling like the walls were going to snap in on her at any second, she still got shaky being inside the tight quarters, and she always rushed to get back outside.

Yeah, she might have left the door open. And a couple of squirrels might have gotten into the beautiful RV, with all its gadgets, custom touches, and shiny things.

“Please. Don't tell me.” The chitters increased overhead when she opened the door the rest of the way and stuck her head into the dim interior, blinking to focus
her eyes as she scanned the driver's seat, with its lush leather covering and the embroidery running down the side, spelling out
RAMBLING ROSE
. She didn't see any scratches or holes, though, and there didn't seem to be anything out of place farther down the narrow tunnel, in either the sitting area or the kitchenette.

The creatures had been in there, though. They had gotten into her duffel. Who knew what else they had done?

Forcing herself up the RV steps, she ignored the fear-prickles.
Knock it off. You've been in here a bunch of times. Nothing bad has ever happened, and nothing bad is going to happen this time, either.
Holding tight to that logic, she edged into the darker, narrower hallway beyond the kitchen, past the bathroom-coffin and finally to the bedroom. Where, darn it, she saw that her duffel was open, the contents torn and strewn across the bedspread, with shreds of bright yellow packaging—all that was left of a forgotten bag of Peanut M&M's—dotted over the things that had decorated her room at the hospital, then rehab: two gift-shop teddy bears, a mug that read
CLIMB FASTER: GRAVITY
IS ONLY A THEORY
, and a dozen paperbacks—stories about climbers, castaways, and explorers, all with get-well notes on their inside covers that were signed “Love, B.” And, front and center, a framed, zoomed-in snapshot of her standing alone at the tippy-top of a high, rocky precipice, wearing climbing gear and a bright, eager smile.

Hissing out a breath, she stumbled back a step, her vision graying around the edges. She remembered the cloudless sky and the perfect sunny day spent with her parents and sister, remembered her mother caroling
“Cheese!” as she snapped the picture, even remembered having a blister on the back of her left heel, where her sock had worn through on the long hike to reach the out-of-the-way Grade IV climb. But as she backed up another step and banged into the too-close bedroom wall, things shifted, turning the sunny day dark and dismal, and pulling the invisible ropes that suddenly wrapped around her so tightly that she couldn't breathe.