He strode down the perimeter step into the great room and took her hand, giving her a playful yank. “Yup. That’s the idea.”
Still shaking her head, he led her out the door, locked it, and trotted down the steps to the landscaped walkway.
“You got water?” he asked.
Her heart skipped another beat. They were going out into the countryside.
“Yup, ever the Girl Scout and always prepared,” she said, slapping her backpack.
He helped her back into his ranch truck and fired up the diesel, then set out across the desert, arriving at a cattle grate, which they rolled over with a rhythm of bumps. He revved along the dirt path, kicking up a trail of dust that rose onto the air like a jet stream through the sky. They wove along the flat expanse, parallel to Cerro Casas Grandes in the distance, meandering with the course of the canyon dotted with lechuguilla, tall sotol shafts, and yucca.
“Where’re we headed?” she asked, fingers crossed that it might be another rock-art site.
He grinned at her and turned up the Zac Brown Band on his playlist but said nothing. They were totally going to look at something cool. His expression reeked of a man who knew exactly how to impress her, and it wasn’t with flashy jewelry or bouquets of flowers. Get her a set of archival pens or a gift card to Cabela’s for some outerwear, and she just might swoon.
Finally, he turned off road and down into the beginnings of another canyon, which was still just an eroded, dry depression in the ground. It would take hundreds of thousands of years to work itself into a respectable ditch. He rolled over the uneven ground and up onto the other side. The main house was long since abandoned behind them. In the distance, beyond a wire fence, desert scrub surrounded a nearby water tank. Tough-looking cows grazed on mesquite pods.
“Gotta do something about that—”
He tapped his phone, putting it on speaker as the music paused.
“Hey, boss,” a man said on the other end, the sound of drilling through lumber droning in the background.
“Hey, Sam. How long these heifers in the northern ten been grazing on that mesquite?”
“Not long. Gonna move ’em out soon to clear some of it. Again. After we finish up with these here barn repairs. Ain’t gonna cause ’em any harm so long as they get on over to the next enclosure tomorrow or the next.”
Toby nodded. “Good. Don’t want ’em to get sick on too much of it. Don’t want ’em sowing those seeds all over the next pasture, either, ’cause you know what goes in one end comes out the other. We finally eradicated those little bastard trees in the surrounding enclosures.”
“Yeah, I remember gettin’ gored by those trees’ thorns, boss. It was a blast.”
Toby grinned, and the foreman on the other end chuckled.
“I’m out for the afternoon with the crew chief from panther shaman to talk more research. Might lose signal for a bit.”
Rose’s pulse quickened more as she listened to Toby talk. Lose signal? They were totally going to another site.
“You need anything and can’t reach me, save it for tomorrow, you hear?” he continued.
“That archaeologist’s sure made an impression on you, boss, hasn’t she—”
“F off, man, she’s sittin’ right here listening,” Toby scolded playfully, but a lopsided smile lingered on his face, dimpling his cheek. “You’ll give her ideas.”
The foreman broke out laughing amid the din behind him. “Speakin’ the truth ain’t a crime. If she got ideas, it’s ’cause you’re already a goner—”
“Bye.” Toby stabbed the End Call icon, interrupting the teasing, and the music resumed, redness creeping up his neck.
He didn’t say a thing and finally crunched to a stop, putting the truck in park. He cracked the windows and unfolded a sun visor, jamming it across the windshield. They got out, and Rose took several swallows out of her water bottle, then jammed it back into her backpack.
“All right, the suspense is killing me.” Her stomach fluttered with anticipation, about where they were going, about what to make of the foreman’s teasing… “What are we doing out here?”
He jammed his keys into his pocket and slung his pack onto his back. Then he slid his shades over his pretty-boy blues and adjusted his hat with a tip of his finger. He flashed his dimple at her.
“Come on.”
She loved his twang, the way “come on” sounded like “come own.” She smiled back, impatient but giving herself over to the unknown.
He set off on the course, and she followed, having rubbed a fresh coat of sunscreen on her face and neck while they’d ridden in the truck. She’d need a bath for sure today. She felt grimy from fieldwork and knew her hair was a rat’s nest on top of her head. He descended down a natural water runoff into the canyon, a few miles north at least from panther shaman. A wasp zoomed by, and in the distance, turkey vultures circled in the air, floating upstream on a current upon their massive wingspan as if they were kites tethered against the wind. A tarantula crept along the ground in the distance; a horned lizard lay upon a rock, sunning itself; and a drab house sparrow flitted over the mesquite. On the breeze, the faint, pungent smell of a javelina reached her nose. Wildlife abounded, unafraid and unencumbered by the human visitors it probably rarely, if ever, saw.