High Country- Pigeon 12 Read Free

pleased with these human acquisitions. Anna Pigeon the ranger looked upon both relationships with a jaundiced eye.
     
    The first contact caused Anna's conscience the fewest qualms: Scott Wooldrich, the assistant chef. At thirty-seven he was old enough and at six-foot-four and two hundred twenty pounds he was big enough to take care of himself. Whether or not he would prove a font of information as she wormed her way into his affections, Anna couldn't say. Even without that professional perk, he was a worthwhile ally. Bluff, good-natured, fun-loving-all those Iowa farm boy cliché‚ Scott ran interference between offending waitpersons and the wrath of Jim Wither. The febrile and brilliant chef could hear Scott's baritone when his ears were closed to other voices of reason. Such were Wooldrich's charms, Anna'd even seen him tease a smile out of Tiny a time or two.
     
    What roused Anna's radar regarding the ease with which she'd become friends with Scott had little to do with the assistant chef and much to do with human nature-hers. Whenever she became bosom buddies with a blond, blue-eyed hunk that made her little heart go pitty-pat, she questioned her motives.
     
    The second connection was more likely to prove useful, but despite her attempts to justify it as necessary, it caused Anna the occasional stab of guilt.
     
    Mary Bates, an exquisite, naturally blond, seventeen-year-old hotel maid, was a concessions brat. Her parents had worked at the Ahwahnee and she'd grown up in the valley. This year Mom and Dad had moved on to better jobs at the lodge in Yellowstone. Out of love for Yosemite, Mary opted to stay behind and work for a year before going to college. It was the first time she'd been separated from family. She was a sitting duck for Anna's "hip mother" or, God forbid, "hip grandmother" routine.
     
    Anna had intentionally adopted her to use as bait. Being a woman of a certain age there were natural barriers when it came to cuddling up to the men on trail crew who'd worked with Patrick or the eclectic and unpredictable community of climbers inhabiting Camp 4. A nubile blond opened more doors than a gold badge.
     
    Revulsion at this subtle form of pimping might have outweighed expedience had Mary been made of lesser stuff. Having grown up in the park, despite her youth and fairy-princess good looks, she was accustomed to the dangers of bears, hypothermia, falling rocks and climber dudes.
     
    "Hey, Anna, over here," was hissed as Anna passed the hostess's station with an armful of heavily-laden plates.
     
    The very child she contemplated using for her own ends stuck her towhead from behind the fronds of a plant tired with winter and dropping leaves onto the stained and polished cement floor. Employees were discouraged from hanging about where they did not belong; one of the many niceties that marked the Ahwahnee as a grand hotel.
     
    "Yeah?" Anna whispered back, stealth being contagious.
     
    "When does your shift end?"
     
    "Three-thirty."
     
    "Want to go for a walk? I've been making beds all day and feel like an old wadded-up piece of tinfoil."
     
    "A walk would be good."
     
    The blond slipped into the underbrush.
     
    At three thirty-five Anna clocked out and left the hotel by way of a utility entrance that let out through the Dumpsters at the back. There was something Disneylike about the Ahwahnee, about Yosemite Valley. Natural features were too big, too perfect: domes of granite sliced neatly into aesthetically appealing halves, rocks and trees juxtaposed to delight the eye. The Merced River, clear and emerald by turns, chuckled through in glittering communion with wind in the pines.
     
    And, like Disneyland, Yosemite required machinery to run smoothly, law to regulate too many people, too many cars and buses, walls to hide the ugliness of Dumpsters, boneyards, toilets. Like H. G. Wells's future, parklands must have the Morlocks to keep Eden beautiful for the Eloi. Periodically, when this stage-set