Will may have been long and lean, but he could swing a sledgehammer like he meant it. A good-looking, strong young man, Jennlynn thought as she watched. Takes after his father. "So what do they have you doing in the Air Force?" she asked.

"The last damn thing I ever thought I was goin’ to be doing," he said. "I thought I’d get somethin’ working with my hands, maybe somethin’ outside, but no, I work in an office all damn day, filling out Home Town News Releases. ‘Johnny Johnson of Johnsonville, Texas was promoted to Senior Airman in the United States Air Force,’ and like that. Kuwait is a little like home; like I said, it’s an even worse desert, but I haven’t been able to find a horse to save my ass."

"It’s got to be good to be home," she nodded, feeling just a little pang for Bradford, in spite of everything. It had been a long time.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Love that sweet smell of the sagebrush. It’s good to just be out here and on a horse."

"I can’t imagine you in the Air Force," Jennlynn told him. "In fact, I can’t imagine you any place but here."

"Here’s where I want to be," he said. "It’s where I belong."

"Yes, indeed."

Shortly, Jennlynn taxied the Skylane up to the improvised tie downs. They weren’t perfect, and were a bit on the flimsy side, but she’d spent enough time in Nevada over the last few years to know that extremely strong winds were unlikely this time of year. She’d be more comfortable with solid tie downs; say a 55-gallon drum of concrete set in the ground, or even heavier stakes with deadmen so they wouldn’t pull out, but these would probably do.

They headed in for lunch. It was dim inside the cabin; it was a coolish day, so it was comfortable. In the summer, when it got real hot, it must be an oven, Jennlynn thought, and in the winter an icebox – but it had produced some very hard, very nice people. In a short time, Ellen had some lunch ready, and they sat around and talked.

"So, what’s the deal with Sara? I mean, your Sara? I guess I haven’t been paying attention to the gossip much."

"Land sakes, you must not have been," Shirley laughed. "I guess you know it was up and down with her boyfriend Brett for years. He got to running around, so she said the hell with him and went to work with me."

"Yeah, I knew about that," Jennlynn nodded.

"Well one Saturday night, about four months ago, she was in the lineup when Brett came in, and he about like to shit his pants," Shirley laughed, as Jennlynn noted how her language tended to become a little more earthy and less precise out here. "They had a hell of a fight, right on the spot. I thought Larry and George were going to have to pull them off each other. He was real upset with her selling it, especially since she’d never let him into her when they were going together. She was just about as upset with him coming in to buy it. But they really do have a spark for each other, so somehow out of that fight, they worked out a deal. She told him that if he was going to buy it, she was going to sell it, and he said that was fine with him. He only comes in when she’s in the lineup, and then he picks out some other girl."

"I’m not taking any bets about how that works in the long run," Duane snorted. "They’re just going to spite each other to death."

"Could be," Jennlynn conceded. "It doesn’t sound real stable to me, but I’ve seen stranger matches, and I’ll bet Shirley has seen stranger yet. So how are you getting along with Will in Kuwait?" she asked.

"We get along," Duane told her. "Mike, that’s Chuck and Dorothy’s boy; he came up for a couple of summers to help out. He’ll be along later in the summer, but he had a summer college class. His sister Joyce will probably come with him for a while; she likes it up here, too. We’ll get by with them, I guess."

"I try to do what I can when I get home," Will said laconically. "It’s a real vacation for me, gettin’ out of that office, come home and do some honest work outside."

"I imagine," she said. "This has got to be about as far from being in the Air Force in Kuwait as I can think."

"Pretty much," he nodded.

"So your dad saves up chores for you to do."

"Somethin’ like that," Will agreed. "They’s always stuff that needs to be done."

"Well, if there’s anything I can do, just point me at it," she replied. "I just want to hang out with you people and spend some time on horseback. If there’s anything a set of soft, untrained hands can do, well, I’m up for helping."

"Will, we got that north and east fence that needs riding," Duane said. "That’s a nice pot-along-on-horseback chore. Jennlynn might like to go with you."

"What’s that involve?" she asked.

"Mostly just riding," Ellen explained. "Inspecting the boundary fence, stopping and fixing it where it needs it."

"Miz Swift, I’d be tickled if you come along," Will said. "I’ve been kind of savin’ that one up. The way we’d usually do it is ride out of here in the morning, ride some fence, and come back in the evenin’. But I’ve been kinda thinkin’ I’d like to load a pack horse and do it all in one trip so’s I can do some campin’ out in the desert."

"Sounds like fun," she conceded. And it did: something exotic and different, about as far from Phoenix and Lambdatron – and Antelope Valley and the Redlite – as possible. It sounded fascinating, a real adventure. And Will was a nice kid; she remembered the three days they’d spent together years before, and she’d been comfortable with him, even though he was years younger. "But I’ll admit that I’ve never camped out, except one time in the Girl Scouts. That was in a cabin. I don’t think I’ve ever slept in a tent."

"Wouldn’t this time either," he grinned. "Just a bedroll out under the stars."

"Big thing is you’ll spend a lot of time with your butt in the saddle," Ellen cautioned. "You might get a little bit saddle sore."

"We could try it," Will suggested. "Ain’t no reason we couldn’t come back in if it’s too much for you."

"Talked me into it," she smiled.

* * *

That afternoon, Will and Ellen took Jennlynn out to the corral and introduced her to Suki, an older mare with some Appaloosa in her. "She’s a nice easy-ridin’ horse, used to girls," Ellen explained. "Ain’t really that good with cows, but just right for a job like this."

Shirley had first introduced Jennlynn to riding back at Bettye’s, and she’d come to like it. She’d even gotten to ride Patches some, a quite a bit more spirited horse than the gentle old horses they’d kept for the dudes who wanted to try riding. It had been four years since Jennlynn had been on a horse, but she discovered that she mostly remembered what she was doing. It felt good to have Suki under her. Will and Duane had some chores to do, but the three women saddled up and rode out for a bit, over to the ridge and up a wide draw to where there was a nice view over the desert. The afternoon was waning when they got back to the ranch. They got the saddles and tack off the horses, turned them loose in the corral, and Ellen asked, "How are you fixed for being sore after that?"

"Not a bit," Jennlynn grinned.

"You ride a good seat, and that’s half the battle," Ellen told her. "Just watching you, if you was to do it some, you could be a pretty good horsewoman. You get back from this trip and see how much you still want to ride."

Early the next morning, still in the half-light of dawn, she saddled up Suki while Will saddled up another horse and tied some gear onto a pack saddle on a third. It wasn’t much gear for a camping trip that might run several days, and some of the gear consisted of tools and parts for fence repair at that. "You ready, Miz Swift?" he said finally.

"When you are," she grinned. She rather looked the part of a cowgirl. She had on a big Stetson that belonged to Sara, shirt and jeans that belonged to Chuck and Dorothy’s daughter Joyce, and well-broken-in cowboy boots borrowed from Shirley. Now that she thought about it, she remembered borrowing these same boots before, back for the lineup at Bettye’s when she’d met Sam and Maureen. Although they’d been used for show then, these were really work boots, and while she was mostly along for the ride, it was a work trip.

It was a long, slow ride out to the corner of the property where they’d start following the boundary fence. "This is the long way to do it," Will told her, "But if we’re going to be out for days, it’s the short way."

Jennlynn was used to the countryside drifting by slowly looking down from well above it, but it was really slow from horse height. The riding was not difficult; she was just there, riding along, slowly crossing the desert, ever changing, ever the same. Sometimes she rode alongside Will, when the path was wide enough; sometimes she trailed behind. Time almost ceased to have a meaning; she glanced at her watch a hundred times, each time to be reminded that Shirley had suggested leaving it behind. For once she wasn’t going any place to get any place by any set time, really; it was going for the sake of going, and it took a revision in her mind set.

Lunch was on the light side, jerky and nuts and water in the thin shade of a couple of low cottonwood trees near a windmill-driven cattle water trough. Shortly after that, they reached the fence – just two strands of barbed wire, strung on a weird assortment of fence posts – some steel, some wood. The fence was pretty spindly and rather rusty; she couldn’t figure out how it could be expected to stop cattle. At one point she asked Will about that.

"Doesn’t really," he said. "Cow pushes up against it, it gets knocked over. But the cows tend to stay together in herds, and the herds stay around the water troughs, or at least where they can get to water every day or so. The fence just sorta reminds them where they’re supposed to be."

"Kind of like the fence around the Redlite," she commented.

"Yeah," he said laconically. "Guess so."

They didn’t talk a lot. Oh, once in a while she’d have a question that he could answer, or once in a while he’d stop for a moment to tell her a piece of desert lore, but sometimes an hour would pass between a few words. It did not seem unnatural. Rarely, he would stop to spend a few minutes fixing the fence, usually using baling wire, but the repairs were mostly easy.

The countryside they’d gone through most of the day was pretty flat, with lots of sagebrush, but she could see as the afternoon passed that they were heading toward a high, rough ridge with an obvious draw in it; the Jennings Range rose green and cool in the background. The sun was starting to get down when they reached the ridge. Will led them away from the fence and into the draw, which proved to be a dry wash, fairly level. A quarter mile or so up the valley, things began to turn a little greener; there was more prevalent grass here, and not too far up, a small scattering of cottonwoods, and the tiniest little dribble of water in the center of the wash. "Good place to camp," he told her.

"Will," she said. "This is beautiful, especially after all the flat sagebrush we rode through today."

"I know," he told her. "Miz Swift, this may be my favorite place on earth. I’ve dreamed of coming back here for two years now, just to camp and spend the night. I never woulda dared to dream that I’da been coming here with you."

"Thanks, Will," she said. "Thanks for sharing it with me."

They got the saddles off the horses, got the gear unpacked – what there was of it – hobbled the horses, and turned them out to graze in the grassy meadow. With those chores done, Will motioned for her to follow him. They followed the little stream up above the campsite and discovered a small, rock-girt pool of water, filled from a little seep in the cliff above. "Not much of a swimming pool," he said. "But we can cool off and freshen up."

"Why didn’t we camp here?" she asked out of curiosity.

"Animals come here for water," he said. "Cows, horses, wild things. We don’t wanna scare the wild things off and make ’em go thirsty."

It didn’t take long for their clothes to be off, to be cooling off in the water, washing off the dust of the day – and not unexpectedly, two and a half years faded away as they melted into each other’s arms.

Jennlynn had long since lost count of how many times she’d had sex, except that she could confidently guess that it was well over a thousand, the vast majority of that paid. But here, half in and half out of this rock-girt pool by some scrubby cottonwoods in the middle of the Nevada desert, for the first time she found herself making love. It was very, very different.

Perhaps a little surprisingly, not a lot of kissing goes on with the typical prostitute, in Nevada or elsewhere. It’s more than mere custom, much more. The sex – it’s only sex; kissing involves an intimacy that surpasses and transcends mere sex, an intimacy that even the most seasoned prostitute is often unwilling to share. Jennlynn had always known that in her head, but now she learned it in her gut; she probably did more kissing in the first half hour than she’d done in the past five years of frequent commercial sex – and she enjoyed every instant of it.

After a long while, as the sun was starting to dive toward the distant horizon visible out the mouth of the little canyon, the two reluctantly got up, pulled on some clothes, and headed back down to their campsite. Over a fire of downed cottonwood twigs, Will made a dinner out of the pack, in a single cast-iron skillet. Jennlynn had enjoyed some great meals over the past several years, some cooked by Claudia, others by Sarah, a few in good restaurants – but nothing came close to what Will produced out of that single skillet, which they ate from together. No wine that she’d tasted could compare to the desert spring water from their canteens.

There was barely any light left when Will took the skillet over to the dry wash, scrubbed it out with sand, and rinsed it out lightly in the tiny stream. He came back, packed the few things from supper away, put a few more twigs on the fire, and they sat there watching it burn low. Not a lot was said, for little needed to be said; their sitting close together, arms around each other, watching the tiny dance of flame was all the language they needed. Then, as the fire burned low, Will unrolled the bedroll, and they turned in for the night, with the bright desert starlight filling the night sky above as they shared the warmth and intimacy of each other’s bodies.

The night went quickly, all too quickly. Soon, there was early morning light; Jennlynn was one to sleep in a little, but Will stirred with the first callings of the birds, and she stirred with him. Once again, a small fire was built up, and the skillet was used to prepare pancakes and bacon, while coffee was under way in a small graniteware pot. It was possibly the best breakfast, the best coffee she’d ever had. It was hard to let the magic of the moment go, and finally, when the last drop of coffee was gone, she commented, "I guess we have to go ride the fence some more, huh?"

"Guess so," he told her. "Damn, I hate to leave here. It could be years before I ever come back."

"It won’t be long before you’re back," she said hopefully. "You don’t really have much time left in the Air Force, and then you can come out here when you want to."

"I wish," he said. "Miz Swift, I’m thinking about re-enlisting."

"Why would you want to do that? You don’t seem to be any great fan of the Air Force."

"I don’t want to do it," he said. "Not any more than you wanted to become a prostitute. But really, there ain’t a living on this ranch for both my folks and me. They can scrabble through somehow without me around for a while yet. But if I stay in for twenty years, I’ll retire with a pension, and by then they’ll be slowing down pretty much. I’d have my retirement pay to carry us over what I can make running cattle out here."

"Damn, Will," she said. "There ought to be some other way."

"Not really," he told her. "Miz Swift, let’s get real. This is a poor place, pretty hardscrabble, and everythin’s always right next to going broke. Gramma would never have gone back to the houses if they were any other way, and neither would Momma. Gramma, well, she likes it and you know it, but Momma, she had to do it, just to be able to live out here with Dad, where she loves it. Grampa, Dad, they got lucky with their women. There ain’t a lot of women left that would like to live like this. I know you sort of like it here, but a woman like you would find it pretty hard to be out here all the time. Hell, Sara, she likes it out here, she grew up out here, but she likes it in town better. If it weren’t home, she wouldn’t come out here to visit anymore."

"You’re right," she sighed. "Flush toilets, showers, they do have their attractions. I love it here, it’s such a wonderful change of pace, but I’m pretty hyper normally. I couldn’t hack it all year long for years and years."

"Maybe no woman can anymore," he told her. "Things ain’t like they were when Momma and Dad were kids, nor Gramma and Grampa, either. But retirin’ after twenty years, well, maybe I stand a chance of bein’ able to spend the rest of my life here."

"Will," she told him. "The fence will be there another day. Kuwait isn’t that far off, and you’ll be a long time. If you just want to hang out here today and soak it up, it’s fine with me."

"I shouldn’t," he said. "But damn it, I’m on leave, and it could be the only day of vacation I have. It’d give me somethin’ to remember until I can come back."

So, they called a day off. They really didn’t do much all day – explored up the canyon on foot a little, climbed to the top of the ridge to check out the view of the desert, and spent a lot of time back in the shade of the cottonwoods, not talking a lot, just being together, visiting the pool and making love again. Jennlynn thought it might have been the best day she’d ever had in her life.

* * *

They got up the next morning, had breakfast, saddled and loaded the horses, and rode out of the little valley. It had been a wonderland for Jennlynn, a magic place not soon – if ever – to be forgotten. The chances that she’d ever make it out here again were slim, but the memories were to be cherished.

They rode steadily all day, following the fence. Occasionally Will had to stop and fix it, and once in a while he needed Jennlynn to supply an extra set of hands. As the day was ending, they turned away from the fence and rode a couple miles to another windmill-powered stock tank and camped for the night a couple hundred yards away. Again they had a nice supper, a little fire, and went to sleep together in the bedroll under the starry desert sky. They didn’t talk much, for there wasn’t much to say, and most of what needed to be said had already been said.

The next morning, they were at it again, riding all day. There was a lot of time for Jennlynn to think, to dream, to recast things. Thoughts of a lot of things rolled around in her head without a lot of order or awareness, just simmering, like the Mooney and the possible arrangement with Lambdatron. The last few years at the Mustang, Bettye’s, and the Redlite, and where that might lead. A couple of projects at work, and where they might lead as well. And surprisingly little toward the handsome young man she rode side by side with all day and slept next to all night.

The reason it didn’t take much thinking was because it was so obviously impossible. While she liked Will, had liked him from the first time she’d met him when conscious, he was five years younger than she was. She was just shy of her doctorate, which she was working on part time when she found the time; he had just barely made it out of high school. By his standards, she was rich. As much as she enjoyed visiting out here, like she’d told him, at heart she was a city girl, and her main interest in life was high tech. To him, a windmill seemed about the right level of technology, and anything else was too complicated. Both were loners who did not let others deeply into their lives easily, or at all. Clearly there was no future.

But while she could never have admitted to being in love with him, and didn’t think she was, she was more comfortable with this laconic young cowboy than she’d ever been with any other man in her life. That was something new, something hard to comprehend, something to not make snap decisions on. And, more than any other man she’d met in the last several years, that she’d spent a fair amount of time working as a prostitute meant nothing to him, less than nothing. It was just the way things were, no more, no less, with no moral stigma attached whatsoever. That was unique, valuable – and something she had no idea how to even start weighing any implications, other than to enjoy it while the moment lasted.

They rode on for three more days, spent three more nights together, and in that time she lost track of what day it was. She was not too clear where she was anyway, except for the fact that she was somewhere out along the boundary fence of the Bar H Bar, and not much seemed to matter beyond that. Sometimes they rode through sagebrush and greasewood desert, sometimes on barren salt pans or hard-pan dry lakes; sometimes it was in hills, and sometimes in redrock desert cliff country. All of it was strange, all of it was wild, all of it was beautiful, and inside her was a part that somehow hoped this trip would never end.

But end it did; on the final day, they turned away from the fence at last and followed along the foot of a desert ridge of crumbled rock rising to their right. Here and there were places where it seemed like they ought to climb to the top of the ridge, but they never did. Finally, they came around a little wash and over a rise, and there in front of them were the lonely ranch buildings with the Skylane tied down nearby. Then, reality struck home: this neverland, neverworld was ending, and the real world was intruding again.

They rode up to the corral without any comment, each lost in their own thoughts. Wordlessly, he got down from the horse, opened the gate, had her ride through with the pack horse and followed with his, closing the gate behind them. One last time, they unpacked, took the tack and saddles off, and only when they walked up to the house did anyone discover they were back.

They stayed at the ranch two more days and nights, socializing, riding out every day to do some kind of work around the place, but the magic had faded a little now, and reality was starting to set in. Finally, the day came when Will had to put on his Air Force uniform; Jennlynn loaded Shirley and him into the Skylane, hugged Duane and Ellen one last time, and took off into the blue Nevada desert sky. She stopped at Antelope Valley just long enough to let Shirley off, letting her know that she’d be back in a week for her regular appointment, then flew Will on into McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.

She taxied the Skylane up to the fixed base operation and shut it down. "You’ll have to go in here and catch a cab or walk to the main terminal," she told him. "They’d get a little pissy if I try to drop you off over there."

"Don’t matter, I’ll get there," the handsome young senior airman said sorrowfully.

They got out of the Skylane and found themselves in each other’s arms. "Will, thanks for everything," she told him. "That was very, very special, and I’ll never forget it."

"It was very special for me, too, Miz Swift," he said sadly. "I’m glad it happened."

"Hey," she told him. "It’s not the end of the world. Maybe we can do something like that again some time."

"I hope we can," he said. "It’ll be somethin’ to dream about when I’m wishin’ I was home."

"Will, take care of yourself," she said. "I want to see you again."

"You’re goin’ to have to be the one to take care of yourself. All I hafta do is sit in an office and keep from being bored to death. In your job, you can work yourself to death."

"OK," she promised. "I’ll try to do better. Let’s try to keep in a little better touch, shall we?"

"I’d like that," he smiled, then let out a sigh. "Guess I’d better get movin’, Miz Swift."

"You know, Will," she said. "My name is Jennlynn, and I’ve never heard you use it."

"Maybe you never will," he smiled. "You’re so special that I think you’ll always be Miz Swift to me."

They spent a long time in each other’s arms kissing before he sadly turned away and headed into the building and toward the airliner that would take him back to the Persian Gulf. There were tears in both their eyes when that happened.

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