Reilly's Woman (6 page)

"Superstitious? What do you mean?" Leah frowned.

"He served overseas during the Korean war. He flew light reconnaissance aircraft. Survival kits were carried almost as standard equipment," he explained. "One day Grady forgot his and his plane was hit by gunfire. He crashed in some heavy foliage, breaking a leg. Luckily he was in friendly territory, but it was almost three days before he was found. He swore he almost starved to death. After that he never went up without the kit and he was never shot down again. When he'd served his term and was released from the service he came back to the States and got a job flying. He kept on carrying a kit like this as a good luck charm."
 

The partially unwrapped cellophane of crackers was in her hand. The appetite Leah had thought she had had receded. "The kit didn't bring him very much luck this time," she murmured sadly.

Reilly didn't comment on that. "I pointed out to him once that those dehydrated foods wouldn't be much use in this desert country where the most valuable commodity is water. His reply was that he'd never have to use it anyway, but this way the food wouldn't keep spoiling all the time."

Dully Leah swung her gaze to the rocky mound of earth that covered the plane. "Can't we get him out of there?"

"No. It would take men and machinery and a way of holding back the slide." She had known what his answer would be, but she needed to hear it. "I'm going to look for some wood to build a signal fire," Reilly continued, switching the subject back to their original topic. "You stay here. You'll be all right."

"Yes." Leah was still staring at the gravelike mound that covered the plane.

"Keep an eye out for search planes. I doubt if they'll be this far east so early this morning, but keep watch."

His firm voice reminded her that their concern must be for their rescue. The pilot was beyond help. Breathing in deeply, Leah returned her attention to the small package of crackers in her hand.

"I will," she promised.

"Shout if you need me," he added.

At Leah's nod, he smiled in reassurance and started up the mountain slope toward the abondoned mine. His lithe stride chose a new path, avoiding the unstable ground of the slide. Leah watched him until he disappeared on the rocky ledge high above.

Taking care not to tear the wrapper, she opened the cracker package. The salty square tasted dry and chalky in her mouth. She ate only one and tightly wrapped the others in the package. As she picked up the canteen, Leah remembered Reilly's statement that water was valuable.

Hesitating, she took a small swig to wash the cracker down, then re-capped it. It was ironic, she thought, how a person always felt more thirsty when they knew water was scarce. The arid landscape made the nearly full canteen seem like very little.

Setting it aside, she reached for her cosmetic case. She creamed her face with cleansing lotion before applying fresh make-up. When her long hair had been brushed free of the snarls of sleep and laid about her shoulders in a silken curtain of light brown, she felt almost whole again.

Her hazel eyes, bright again with renewed spirit, scanned the western sky. Not a single cloud broke the pale blue scene. The storm clouds of last night had completely disappeared.

A bird was soaring lazily above the desert valley floor below the mountain. In the far distance, Leah could see the wispy ribbon of a jet trail. The desert seemed to stretch for endless miles. The awesome fact registered that she couldn't see one sign of human habitation, not a building and not a road.

A tremendous sense of isolation closed over her. The incredible silence of the desert mountains was loud. What if they weren't found? Before it overwhelmed her, Leah rose to her feet. She was not going to panic, she told herself. There was a search party looking for them. She was not stranded in this forbidding wilderness forever.

She glanced at the rocky ledge where she had last seen Reilly. She wished he would come back soon. Shout if you need me, he had said. Right now, she needed to know he was still out there. But she stifled the desire to call out to him.

Activity was the answer. Sitting doing nothing, she had let her imagination run away with her. The search party would find them. It was only a matter of time. Meantime, the best thing was to occupy herself with some small task until Reilly returned. Favoring her injured arm, Leah glanced around to find that task. Her gaze fell on the damp clothes she had laid on top of her suitcase.

They would never dry in that heap. Her blouse was on top. Leah picked it up and carried it to a bush, spreading it out for the sun to dry. Then she returned for the next piece of clothing. Deliberately taking her time, she made a project out of it, smoothing out the wrinkles and spreading all four corners of the garment over the bush. It served to prolong the task.

When her clothes were laid out to dry, she started on Reilly's. She was straightening the sleeves on his brown jacket when a loosened stone rolled down the slope behind her. Turning, she saw Reilly working his way down, his arms laden with small, broken chunks of wood. The bulk of it seemed to be pieces of timber from the mine.

"Hello!" Her greeting echoed the happiness and relief she felt at his return. Mostly it was happiness. "I see you found some wood."

"There's more up there, so we won't have to worry about wood for the time
being." He flashed her a quick smile, the mask of aloofness gone. "I found something else, too."

"What?" Leah held her breath.

She sensed that whatever he had found pleased him. It was responsible for the brilliant light in his eyes that seemed to radiate a satisfied glow over his compelling features. Maybe he had seen a road or highway on the other side of the mountain.

"Water," Reilly stated, dumping the wood on to the ground near the center of the clearing. He looked back up the mountain. "There's a rocky outcropping on the east side beneath a slight overhang. It's shaped like a basin. Last night's rain filled it about half full."

"Then it's safe to drink?" It wasn't a sign of civilization he had found, but her cottony tongue said it was nearly as good.

"It's rain water." The corners of his eyes crinkled to match the smile curving the male line of his mouth.

"I feel like drinking the canteen dry to celebrate," she laughed.

"Be my guest." He motioned toward the canteen as he kneeled beside the pile of wood.

"Now that I know I can drink, I don't feel very thirsty," she shrugged.

Reilly picked out a thin plank of wood and used it as a scraper to clear a fire circle. "Would you gather some stones to make a fire ring? Some of those near the slide will do."

Hampered by her sore arm, it was a slow job collecting the medium sized rocks to form an outer protective ring. When Reilly had the ground cleared to his satisfaction, he took out his pocket knife and began splintering wood for kindling. The tiny mound of wood chips lay in the center of the circle.

"Do you have any paper?" Reilly asked.

"Some tissue in my cosmetic case," Leah volunteered.

"That should work fine." While she went to get it, he removed a box of matches from his inside jacket pocket.

She handed him one of the white tissues and watched him stuff it beneath the wood chips. Removing one match, he struck against the side of the box. He cupped the flame protectively with his hand as he carried it to the tissue and
kindling. The white tissue charred, then burst into flame. A teasing breeze swirled the tiny fire.

Reilly nursed it carefully so the fire wouldn't be blown out. "If there's one guarantee in lighting a fire, it's that no matter which way the wind is blowing when you start, it will change direction the minute the fire has started." He slid a glittering look at Leah, amusement in the crooked smile. "Invariably blowing the smoke at the person who started the fire."

"Is that a piece of Indian lore?" She laughed at the truth in his comment.

"Naturally." As the kindling started to burn, Reilly added slightly larger pieces of wood, stacking them in a pyramid around and above the small flame.

There was only a small breeze blowing, a mere breath of wind. Leah looked around the clearing at the dry-looking sagebrush that stretched over the mountainside. Here and there a pinyon tree dotted the slopes, but they were very few.

"There isn't any chance of starting a grass fire, is there?" she asked, trying not to imagine the horror of trying to escape from that.

"Very little," Reilly answered. "The fire ring will keep the flames from spreading as long as the wind isn't strong. Strangely enough, it's rare to have a fire sweep through the desert, considering how dry and flammable some of the plants are."

"Why?" Leah tipped her head curiously to one side, absently tucking the opposite side of her hair behind her ear.

"Mainly because it's so dry," was his cryptic reply. Then he explained, "There's so little moisture in the desert that the plants can't grow close together. Their roots systems are wide and deep to absorb every available trace of water, so they choke out any new plant that tries to grow. The distance between plants keeps any fire that starts from spreading."

He sat back on his heels, waiting for the pyramidlike stack of wood to catch fire. Leah understood what he had meant last night about it being a slow process to build a fire, without the aid of kerosene or starter fuel.

"Now that we've found water, we can mix up some of that dehydrated food," he stated.

"I'll see what we have." Leah opened the metal box and began looking at the packages inside. "Here's some beef stew, but what shall we heat it in?"

"There's some twisted fragments of metal from the plane wing over by the slide. Maybe one of them can be used as a makeshift pan."

"I'll see." She started to get to her feet, but he motioned her to sit back down.

"On second thought, I'd better look," he said. "I don't want you accidentally cutting yourself on the metal edges."

He stacked two more pieces of wood, larger than those propped against each other, making sure there remained openings at the bottom to keep a circling draught of air.

Leah didn't object as he rose smoothly to his feet. With only one hand operating effectively, she had already discovered gathering rocks for the fire ring that she was very clumsy.

Within a few minutes Reilly had returned with a twisted piece of metal using two of the rocks around the fire, one as a hammer and one as a hard surface, he beat away the sharp edges around the outside. Then he turned the angulary hollowed center upside down on top of the rock and hammered a flat bottom in the pan. When the sides were fairly straight, he examined it for a moment, then glanced at Leah.

"Do you think it will work, cook?" A mocking eyebrow was lifted in question.

"So I'm the cook, am I?" Leah nodded in an amused, knowing manner.
 

There was a wicked glint in his dark jade eyes. "Cooking is squaw's work, isn't it?"

Leah smiled and shook her head, silently amazed that they could be joking about the Indian blood that flowed in his veins after she had made that challenging and unwittingly derogatory remark last night.
 

"I've heard that it is," she admitted.

"Will the pan do, then?" He held it out for her inspection.

"I think so." Leah took the pan and set it on the ground beside her. "Hand me the canteen, will you? I'll start mixing the stew while you get the fire hot."

First, Leah rinsed out the makeshift pan with a little water, wiping it dry with some tissue. By guess, she roughly measured the amount of water required into the pan and added the dried soup.

"What can I use to stir this?" She glanced at Reilly, her face breaking into a sudden smile. "Better yet, how are we going to eat this without a spoon?"

"Here's my pocket knife." He handed it to her with the blade closed. "I guess we'll have to stab the meat and potatoes with the blade and drink the liquid."

"The pan will have to work as a community bowl, too, I guess," she laughed shortly, and stirred the dry ingredients into the water.

It was almost an hour later before Reilly could separate a few glowing coals from the fire bed to heat the stew. He propped the pan an inch above the embers on some flat rocks.

It wasn't long before the liquid started bubbling, emitting an appetizing aroma.

In the interim, Reilly had fashioned two shallow bowls from the metal fragments of the plane, explaining that the sides of the pan would be too hot to drink from. When the stew was heated through, he took the shirt Leah had draped over a bush and folded it to use as a potholder to remove the pan from the coals.

Carefully he poured part of the stew into the two bowls and handed Leah's to her. Leah refused his offer to use the knife, choosing to scoop out the chunky pieces with a cracker. Neither utensils were efficient, but both served their purpose.

"Cigarette?" Reilly offered when they had finished their meal, removing a pack from his shirt pocket and shaking out a filtered tip for her.

"Mmm, please." Leah accepted the cigarette, bending forward as he lit the end with the burning tip of a stick from the fire.

They smoked their cigarettes in a comfortable silence. Leah finished hers first, then tossing the butt into the glowing camp fire.