Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material (14 page)

“Is that a compass?” she asked.

“A special kind, yes. It’s called a Brunton compass.” He showed it to her. “The built-in clinometer measures the dip of a rock stratum. Of course, you’re supposed to lay it right on the stratum you’re working with.” He glanced toward the huge, nearly vertical chunk of land in front of him. “Since I left my mountain goat at the ranch, I’m doing it the easy way. For now, a guesstimate is good enough.”

“What did you learn from the compass?”

“That the dip of the rock layer is steep, but not steep enough to put an aquifer totally out of reach if you drilled down on the flats. That’s assuming there’s an aquifer in that broken mess,” he added, studying the rugged mountains. “And also assuming the aquifer runs beneath the mountain all the way down to your ranch without being interrupted by fault zones. Big assumptions.”

“What happens if it’s faulted?”

Rio mounted Storm Walker in an easy motion and settled into the saddle. “Sometimes the water leaks away at the fault zones. Sometimes the aquifer is offset so much by faults that you can’t find it again. Sometimes it just slips down so far that you can’t get to it.”

Hope gestured toward the steep mountain slope he had been measuring. “Is there an aquifer?”

“No. The sandstone is dry, or there would be a seep right here, maybe even a spring.”

It was absurd to feel disappointed, but she felt it just the same. “Oh.”

He replaced the Brunton compass in his saddlebag. “Don’t worry. This is just one small piece of the mountain. Not even a representative part. It’s a transition between Turner land and your own.”

“What do you mean? We’re both bounded by the Perdidas on one side.”

“The mountains near his place are almost entirely made of Precambrian rock a billion and a half years old, stone so hard it makes a steel hammer ring. There’s no way for water to sink into that kind of dense rock. Everything runs off in streams or gathers on the surface in lakes. Even where little pieces of the mountain have washed down to the plains and built up rough soil, the groundwater stays close to the surface because of the impermeable roots of the mountain beneath.”

She squinted, imagining a relatively thin layer of sand and gravel covering the much more solid rock layer beneath. “That’s why Turner has so much water, isn’t it? The water can’t sink down and get away from his wells. It’s all there, waiting to be tapped.”

“For a while, yes. If he doubles his cropland as he talks about doing, he’ll be living off the future. Sooner or later he’ll suck it all dry.”

At least he has a future.

Though Hope didn’t say it aloud, she might as well have. Rio knew how desperate the Valley of the Sun was for water. It was there in the empty sky, in the dry land, and in Hope watching him, eyes filled with fears and dreams.

Fourteen

W
HEN
H
OPE COULDN’T
bear the silence any longer, she looked away from the land’s innocent betrayal and asked Rio, “What’s different about my mountains?”

“The rocks are much younger, more porous. They erode much more quickly. That’s why your mountains are lower than Turner’s, even though they’re part of the same block fault. Your outwash plains are thick, deep. Water soaks down into them almost as soon as it falls.”

“Then the land should hold more water, not less.”

“But it’s out of reach,” he said simply. “There are many places on your ranch where you could go down a thousand feet and then keep on going for thousands more and get nothing for your time and money but dry gravel.”

Hope took a ragged breath at the thought of drilling that far down and finding no water, a dry hole draining away her slender reserves of money, turning her dreams to dust.

When Rio saw the fear darkening her eyes, he cursed his thoughtless words. With gentle, relentless fingertips he turned her face toward his. For the first time since he had seen his visions reflected in her eyes, he allowed emotion back into his voice, the deep certainty that came from a knowledge that had nothing to do with diplomas and schools.

“That’s why you hired me,” he said simply. “I won’t waste your money drilling where there isn’t any chance of water. Do you believe me?”

His words and his touch took away the fear that had chilled Hope. She put her hand over his fingers and pressed, not speaking for fear that her voice would break.

Her eyes spoke for her. They said that she trusted him with her dreams, and that she was quickly, inevitably, coming to the point where she would trust him with herself. That was something she had never done with any man. She had held herself aloof, knowing from the example of her parents’ lives and her sister’s life that loving someone wasn’t enough to ensure peace, much less a dream of love returned.

So Hope had loved only the land.

Now Rio was sliding through the hard layers that had protected the life-giving core of her. Each day with him, each conversation, each touch, he sank more deeply into her, coming closer to the instant when he would break through the last layer of her reserve and touch the flowing wealth of love concealed deeply inside her.

The thought terrified her.

And the thought that he might not break through, might not touch her, might not release her love, also terrified her.

“Hope?”

“Yes,” she said in a husky voice, “I believe you.”

With an effort of will, Rio forced himself to release the silky warmth of her. Even after he removed his hand, his fingertips tingled with shared warmth, the energy of two lives touching.

Without a word he turned Storm Walker toward the edge of Piñon Camp and forced himself to think only of finding water in a dry land.

“Are there other benches like this farther south toward the ranch house?” he asked.

Caught in her own thoughts, she didn’t answer.
His fingers no longer touched her skin.

She was shocked by the loss she felt at such a simple thing as the absence of his touch. Shaken, she reined Aces to follow the stallion.

“Piñon Camp,” she said finally. “It’s a landmark around here simply because it’s different.”

“How about cliffs? Old mining or timber roads? Deep canyons or ravines? I’m looking for places where I can see layers of rock that are buried out of sight in other areas.”

Frowning, Hope recalled details of the land she had ridden over since she was old enough to sit upright in a saddle. “Just on the ranchland, or on the lease lands, too?”

“If the lease is above your watershed, I’ll be glad to look at it, although I’ve already seen most of the government land. Whatever you have on your own property should come first.”

She urged Aces to the edge of the bench until she could see the country falling steeply away below. Storm Walker came up alongside the mare, standing so close that Hope’s stirrup rubbed against Rio’s.

“Over there,” she said. Pointing, she touched his sleeve. Even that light brush of her fingertips against cloth reminded her of his vitality. The heat of him demanded a deeper touch, a longer sharing. “See that bald spot just beyond the ranch house?”

“Yes.”

“Straight up from there, hidden behind the shoulder of the mountain, there’s an old road. A hundred years ago there was some kind of mining operation up there. Silver or gold, I forget which. It didn’t amount to a hill of beans, but they cut a wagon road up above Wind Canyon, into the high country where there was another mine.”

“Any luck?”

“Just the bad kind. The mine caved in long ago, but some of the road is still there. It’s a scary piece of real estate. It hangs by its toenails to the edge of Wind Canyon. The canyon itself is thousands of feet deep. The land is different there. Crumbly rather than solid. Even sagebrush has a hard time clinging to the mountainside.”

“Perfect,” Rio said, satisfaction obvious in his tone.

“If you say so,” she muttered. “I remember that road scaring the hell out of me.”

“You don’t have to go.”

She gave him a level look.

He knew she wouldn’t be staying behind.

“There are a few other places between here and there that have bare rock,” she said.

“We’ll see them on the way.”

She shook her head. “Not unless we plan to be gone for a few days. Each one of the sites is up a long, blind canyon.”

His eyes narrowed as he considered the possibilities. “Any signs of water?”

“Do you mean springs?” she asked in disbelief. “If there were springs, I’d be laying pipe instead of hauling water by truck.”

“Nothing as obvious as a spring. I’m looking for unusually big brush, grass that stays greener longer than in other places at the same elevation and exposure, that sort of thing.”

“Oh. Well, maybe in Stirrup Canyon. Dead Man’s Boot might be a possibility. Then there’s always Silver Rock Basin,” she added, gesturing toward the lower part of the ranch. “Jackass Leap, too. That’s up above the head of Wind Canyon.”

“Hold it.” Rio began unfolding more of his map.

The basic map was the result of a USGS survey. It showed each contour of the thirty sections of land that made up the Valley of the Sun. The paper was nearly four feet by four feet, more suited to a kitchen table than to a saddle. The map showed deep creases and frayed edges from being handled a lot.

Hope wondered how many times Rio had studied the map. And why. Surely the time since she had hired him hadn’t been enough to make that much wear on a map. Yet what she could see of the map covered her ranch and little else.

“Silver Rock Basin is no problem,” Rio said, “but where is Dead Man’s Boot?”

She laughed. “That’s a family name, not an official one. So are the other ones.”

Smiling, he refolded the map. “Where do you think most of the names on maps came from? Place names are one of the richest oral traditions in the West.” He handed her the pencil and the map. “Mark them in.”

She took the pencil, unfolded a panel of the awkward map, and was promptly lost.

The amount of detail already on the paper was both staggering and absolutely unlike any map she had ever used. In addition to contour lines showing the changing elevations of the land, there were many other lines whose purpose was a mystery to her. Most of those lines had been drawn in after the fact. Indecipherable symbols—both printed and handwritten—appeared in odd places on the map. Even more enigmatic notes appeared in the margin. Formulas, Greek letters, cryptic comments; all had been added by hand.

Hope had only to glance at the map to know that Rio already had put in a lot of time studying her land, much more than he could have in the less than two weeks since she had hired him. She looked up, puzzled.

“Lost?” he asked, expecting it.

“Yes, but it’s not just the map.”

“What else, then?”

“You,” she said quietly.

He stared at her.

“Nothing adds up,” she said. “You’re a drifting horsebreaker who knows more about this land than the highly educated, highly recommended hydrologist who was out here six weeks ago. You’ve worked for me for less than two weeks, but this map is worn thin in the creases and has enough notes on it for some kind of textbook.”

She wanted to go on, to say, You have only one name, and it’s neither Scandinavian nor Zuni nor Scots. Nobody knows where you came from or where you’re going, but Mason trusts you more than he trusts anybody except me. You have a reputation as a bad man to cross, but you’ve been so gentle with me that it’s all I can do not to crawl into your arms and never let go.

She wanted to say those things, but she didn’t, for Rio was already talking, answering the questions she had asked and a few more that she hadn’t.

“I heard about you all over the West,” he said simply. “A drifter in Idaho told me there was a woman who needed help in a place called Valley of the Sun, Nevada. In Utah a farmer I helped said his wife’s sister had heard from her brother in Nevada that a woman called Hope needed a well and nobody would dig it for her. A cattle breeder I once found water for said he’d sold one of his best Angus to a woman with beautiful eyes and a mind like a steel trap, and that she was going to lose her ranch unless the rains came or she found water.”

Hope’s throat closed with tears she fought not to shed. But the thought of strangers knowing her need, and caring enough to help in the only way they could, made it very hard for her to hold back. She wanted to tell Rio to stop talking, that he would make her cry and she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t get any words past the emotion filling her throat.

“So I drifted south,” Rio said quietly, watching Hope with eyes that saw everything, the vulnerability and the tears, the determination and the strength. “And I listened. Every time the wind blew, it whispered your name and your need and your dreams.”

Silent tears slid past her dark lashes to leave shining trails on her cheeks.

“The closer I came to the Valley of the Sun,” he said, “the more people talked about you. People I had helped in the past left messages for me in every country store and café in the West. The messages all said the same thing:
This is a good woman, Rio. Can you help her the way you helped us?
”

The midnight blue of Rio’s eyes was so intense that it was like crystal burning in the sun. She watched him with equal intensity, feeling his words sinking into her, sliding through the protective layers she had built up to guard the vulnerable woman beneath.

“I didn’t know if I could help you, and I wasn’t going to come to you until I did know,” he said.

Then he looked out over the land again, freeing her from the blue blaze of his eyes.

“This country isn’t a stranger to me,” he said quietly. “I’ve found water in some damned unlikely places. And I’ve seen a few places where there isn’t any water to be found anywhere by anyone. I didn’t know if the Valley of the Sun was one of those places.”

She held her breathing, waiting, hoping not to hear the end of her dream.

I’ve seen a few places where there isn’t any water to be found anywhere by anyone.

“I went over all the USGS maps, got the latest satellite photos, talked to university experts and to Indians whose ancestors had hunted along the shores of long-ago lakes. I flew over the steep parts of your ranch with a photo recon camera and a pilot who wasn’t afraid of God, the devil, or gravity.” Rio’s mouth turned up wryly. “Hell of a flyer, though. He saved me weeks of rough-country riding and hiking.”

Hope looked at Rio, but tears prevented her from seeing more than the powerful outline of his body against the sky. “Why?” she asked huskily. “Why did you go to all that trouble for someone you didn’t even know?”

It was a question that no one had ever asked him. In the past, people had been more than happy to take what he offered. They had never stopped to wonder why he wanted to help.

But Rio had asked himself that question for as many years as he had drifted through people’s lives and through the bright, colorful shadows cast by their dreams.

He didn’t have an answer.

He had helped many people, touched the luminous edges of their dreams, and moved on. Those people remembered him with gratitude and sometimes even affection. They always had a meal and a bed and a handshake for him whenever he went back.

But they didn’t know him. He was as much a mystery to them as their ability to dream in the face of brutal odds was a mystery to him.

He found water for those special dreamers. And each time, each place, each well, he wondered if he would also find the ability to put down roots and dream for himself.

He hadn’t found any dream to equal the whispering seduction of the wind moving over the face of the land. He no longer believed that such a dream existed.

“I admire people who are strong enough to dream,” Rio said finally. His long fingers caressed Hope’s face, feeling the warmth of her tears sliding beneath his fingertips. “Like you.”

“You’re strong,” she whispered. Then, even more softly, she asked, “What are your dreams?”