Renegade Man Read Free

me?”
    Magnum’s tail
wagged another joyous response that correlated with the “Whoof!”
    Anxious to get
to work on her project, she stashed her perishable groceries in the minuscule
refrigerator, then went to the other tent and found a hammer, a steel measuring
tape, a compass, surveyors’ stakes and a ball of twine. By noon she had staked
out a twenty- yard grid that resembled the sheet of graph paper she had
prepared earlier. Sweat trickled down from her hairline, and she wiped her damp
palms on the back of her shorts before she began to string the twine along the
stakes, creating a waffle effect.
    As she worked,
steadily, methodically, meticulously, she was conscious of the light breeze
stirring the cottonwood leaves and of the doves perched on the branches, cooing
in noisy chorus. A good feeling, a feeling that all was right with the world,
welled up inside her. It was a perfect day, a day without the intense heat that
would come later in the summer.
    She hadn’t
realized how much she had missed the Gila wilderness. As a child, she had run
wild here come roundup time, when her mother had been brought out to the Split
P’s ranch headquarters for two weeks every spring and fall to cook for the
cowhands.
    At thirteen,
that term had been one of the first things Rita-lou had learned from Chap.
Cowhands were the proudest members of the cattle industry, the riders who
worked cattle—trailing, cutting, roping, branding and rounding-up. “When you
call them cowpokes,” he had told her, grinning, “you smile and act like you’re
just kiddin’.”
    Cowpokes, the
aubum-haired fourteen-year-old had gone on to explain slyly, needed only one
thing: a poor sense of smell. They rode with the cattle during rail shipment,
when it was their job to see that none of the animals lay down, because that
could cause others to stumble when the train’s brakes were applied. Their name
came from the small sticks they carried to poke the cows and urge them back to
their feet.
    Of course, she
had eventually learned much more from the shy, handsome boy. She had learned
the joy of loving and giving, and the devastating agony of being left to face
down the condemning stares and vicious gossip alone. Well, not exactly alone.
Before long she had had their son Trace to brave the world with her.
    The two of them
against the world. No, she thought, fiercely rehammering a stake into place, it
had eventually been the three of them against the world: she and Trace and her
husband Robert.
    Hot and sweaty
and more than ready for a lunch break, she laid aside her hammer, painted
fluorescent yellow so it could be easily located, and, with Magnum trailing,
strolled across the flat’s gravelly silt.  It was strewn with driftwood from
recent rains. After a heavy rainfall the creek became a violent river that
overflowed its bank. Yet normally it appeared and disappeared along its course
until it emptied into a small lake in Chihuahua, Mexico.
    Along this
portion of Tomahawk Flats, the Renegade was shallow, wide and rapid. Kneeling,
she dashed the chilly water over her face, then washed her hands. She was
fastidious, overly fastidious for an anthropologist.
    She sat back on
her heels, patting her face dry with the back of her sleeve while she watched
the shifting pattern of light and shadow on the river. Her interest was caught
by the opposite bank, higher than the one on her side and with an overhanging
ledge.
    She had walked
this area of the creek extensively on her preliminary exploration, but this was
the first time she had seen things from this angle. If she hadn’t been
squatting, she wouldn’t have noticed the steel cable anchored in the solid
underside of the rocky ledge and dipping down into the water. It swayed
slightly with the current. Curious—and a little concerned—at this evidence of
other human habitation, she rose and followed the cable downstream, searching
for stepping- stones to the opposite bank. Trails through this area had