Part 2
Kylie looked through the binoculars again and frowned uncertainly. "I don't think I can hit anything that far away, Burt," she said.
They were laying under some concealing brush, waiting for one of the bighorn sheep to appear on the rocks about thirty yards away. It was Kylie's first hunting trip and she was eager to prove to Burt that his painstaking lessons were getting results.
"You were hitting targets that far away," Burt reminded her.
"Well they didn't, you know, move around. What if I just wound it?"
Burt surveyed the area. "I'll take care of it if you do," he assured her. "I could take that mountain lion over there." He nodded in the direction of the cat, sitting sentinel on the far side of the outcropping. He examined it through his .375 H&H Mag rifle's sight--it lined up square in the crosshairs.
Kylie reached over and pushed the barrel away from the target. "You can't kill a kitty!"
Burt heaved a sigh. "A mountain lion is a dangerous animal, not a 'kitty'."
"Granted," Kylie said, "But that mountain lion isn't dangerous to you. He's just sitting there not bothering anyone."
"She," Burt pointed out.
Kylie looked through the binoculars. "How can you tell?"
"She has... she's... uh... nursing."
Kylie gasped. "You'd kill a mommie?"
Burt sighed again, exasperated. "I didn't say I would shoot her, I said I could make the shot."
"Oh."
"You new-age types," Burt muttered. "Always worrying that someone might kill an animal, trying to ban hunting--"
"Oh please, Burt," Kylie broke in. "I'm hardly a vegan, so you can stop lumping me in with the Nancys of the world, and am I or am I not here right now, hunting, even as we speak?"
He grunted reluctant agreement. "Besides," she continued, "my particular brand of new-ageism happens to believe in the cycle of life and all that entails, including eating critters lower on the food chain, so you can just take my name off your anti-hunting rant if you don't mind."
"All right, all right," he complained. "Don't get all wound-up."
She giggled at his attempt at a conciliatory tone. "You started it, Burt."
"I did not," he argued. "I'm simply saying--"
"See? There you go again," she said smugly. His chin went up as it always did when he got indignant. Kylie smiled at him, nudging him with her shoulder. "Just picking on you Burt." She leaned her head briefly on his shoulder then smiled up at him, battin her eyelashes. "I still like you, even if you do burst into a rant at the least provocation."
"I do not r--"
"Yes you do," Kylie said.
"No, I don't."
"Do."
"I don't--"
She patted his hand, cutting him off. "How about that one?"
Burt followed the direction of her gaze and spied two bighorn sheep at the top of the rock formation. "Yes," he murmured. "Aim for the closest one. Quietly, now. Don't spook him."
Kylie took the rifle Burt handed her and chambered a round, then took careful aim. The sheep lined up, just like Burt taught her, in the crosshairs.
"Take your time," Burt said softly. "Wait until you've got a good shot."
Kylie kept aiming.
The sheep posed majestically right at the crest of the rocks, as if waiting for her. It stood there, unmoving, apparently patient to stand there all day.
Burt looked over at Kylie, then back to the sheep. He'd say the sheep made a perfect target. He knew her skills--she wouldn't miss. Still, she didn't fire. He looked back at her again. "You'll never get a better shot," he told her.
Slowly, Kylie took the rifle away from her shoulder and handed it to Burt. She scooted back, carefully, from their position, then, without a word, stood and left, walking in the direction of Burt's power wagon.
Burt stared after her, mystified. He shook his head, then carefully unloaded the weapon and gathered their things. He gave one last rueful look toward the bighorn sheep, still poised at the top of the rocks, and turned to follow Kylie to the truck.
Kylie was sitting in the truck's passenger seat, her feet dangling over the side, the very picture of dejection. She didn't look up as Burt approached and stowed the gear in the back. She didn't look up even as he came to lean on the truck next to her.
"You want to tell me what happened back there?" he asked, gently.
Finally, she moved, to look off in the distance, then she shrugged. "I just couldn't do it," Kylie said at last. "It was right there, I knew I could make the shot. I just couldn't... kill it." She looked down at her lap again and heaved a sigh. "I guess I don't have a useful skill after all."
Burt patted her shoulder. He didn't know what to say.
She looked up at him. "How am I supposed to defend myself if I don't have the nerve to shoot the bad things?"
His hand tightened reassuringly on her shoulder. "That was a sheep, hardly one of the 'bad things'. When you need it, you'll find the nerve," he assured her.
Kylie just looked down at her hands again, sighing miserably.
Burt considered her, uncomfortable. He never knew what to say or do in these situations. It seemed best to just... move on to something else. "Well, no need to waste the day," he said heartily, straightening. "Let's have an early lunch and I can teach you how to kill graboids."
She looked at him sardonically. "Am I going to have to shoot one?" she asked. "As I think we've recently established, I'm out there."
Burt shook his head. "No guns," he assured her. "We'll use the Basset Method."
She watched him go around the truck and get in as she swiveled in her seat and closed the door. "We're going to use dogs?"
They stopped briefly at Burt's bunker to exchange supplies, and Burt brought out a large, heavy, green metal ammo box and some bulky items wrapped in a tarp. Then they rode for the far side of the valley.
The trail Burt followed hugged the cliffs at the northeast tip of the valley. It had started on the flat of the valley then gradually worked its way up to a narrow track that wound its way upward, hugging the side of the cliffs. Kylie looked up nervously at the tons of rock that towered over the truck on her side, as anxious about them as the drop on Burt's side of the truck.
"I'm never going to be too comfortable being this close to a cliff again, Burt," she commented.
"I've surveyed most of the valley by now," he told her. "There's no degradation of the rock here."
"Still..." she began uncertainly.
They turned into a curve of the mountain and drove past some scrub brush then pulled into an almost forest-like area covered in green and growing things. Kylie forgot her worries in the charm of it. "Burt..." she said, her voice full of wonder. "Did you make this?"
He shook his head and got out of the truck. "It's natural," he said.
Kylie got out of the truck too. "But how? I haven't seen anything else like this in the desert."
"Let me show you," he said. His voice sounded almost as eager as it did when he was showing off one of his guns.
He pushed through some tall bushes at the right of the clearing they'd parked in to a trail that wound downward through the greenery. The clearing and this trail showed signs of recent and fairly frequent use. Kylie bet herself that this was another one of Burt's secret places he went to hide. She felt privileged to be one of probably less than a handful of people who'd ever been invited to any of them. She smiled.
The trail led to a smaller clearing and, wonder of wonders, even more surprises. "A lake?" Kylie cried.
Burt smiled, looking just as proud as if he'd come up with the concept himself. "More of a pond," he announced. "Runoff, mostly. Comes from the mountains and down through that pass up there."
Kylie looked up where he pointed to a sort of notch in the rocks where water flowed out, winding down a series of gentle waterfalls until it got lost in the greenery surrounding the miniature lake. At the far side of the lake was the last waterfall, where water trickled into basin there and pooled into the shallow lake.
"It disappears in the summer," he said, "but winter runoff fills in the natural depression here and we have an oasis, of sorts."
"This is beautiful!" Kylie announced, going to the edge of the water and dipping a hand in. The water was warm and clear. She looked up and gave him one of her sweetest smiles. "Thank you so much for bringing me here."
Burt shuffled his feet and looked away. "Thought you'd like it," he said roughly.
Kylie's smile turned to a grin. She knew Burt wouldn't appreciate her knowing that he'd gone out of his way to cheer her up, so she didn't say it out loud, but she filed it away in her memory of the growing list of thoughtful things he'd done for her anyway.
She turned her attention to the water again searched her mind for a way to change the subject. "There aren't any creepy-crawlies in here, are there?" she asked.
"Negative," Burt said, on safer ground again. "The bottom's mostly rock and it's not here long enough to grow much in the way of wildlife. It just supports the plant life here in this area. Everything turns brown by July." He turned and gestured toward another trail leading off to the left. "Let me show you the rest."
"There's more?" Kylie stood and followed him, giving one last, speculative look at the pond before pushing her way into the bushes after Burt.
This trail led to the other side of the clearing where the truck was parked, then down a gentle slope to the valley floor. Up a slight incline toward the truck was another cliff that dropped off sharply about 20 feet. Kylie kept her distance from there.
"You sure like to play king of the hill, don't you?" Kylie asked.
He turned to her. "What do you mean?"
"Everywhere we go, you're at the highest possible position. Even your bunker overlooks the rest of the Valley."
Burt's chin went up. "Nothing wrong with choosing a strategic site."
Kylie just grinned impishly at him.
"How about an early lunch," Burt suggested, "and then I'll show you the Basset Method."
"Great," Kylie said, walking with him to the truck. "You promise this doesn't involve feeding dogs to El Blanco, right?"
"No dogs," he assured her.