Yesterday's Tomorrow, Nathan Wolf, Wolf [jenna bush book club .TXT] 📗

to have sex?" I said.

My blunt question seemed to take my hunting partner by surprise as she raised her eyebrows and blinked at me. She said nothing for several moments before responding, "Do you mean right now? Can I finish lunch first? Why do you ask?"

"At the meeting this morning, you asked me if I would share your bed tonight if you asked nicely. Was that a real question or were you just flirting?" I inquired as I moved to sit at her side.

"I was serious. I wanted to know if you would make love to me." Alice's face took on a reddish tint as she blushed. "Dennis, will you make love to me tonight?"

"Be honest. You are a lesbian, and I'm an old fart. Why would you want to have sex with me?"

She looked at me in silence for the longest time before answering. "I am concerned about my daughter."

It was my turn to be surprised. "What does your daughter have to do with us having sex?"

"My home is Liberty Mountain, and I'm here because I love my sisters. My daughter has displayed no interest in sexual relations with other women, but she has shown a keen interest in getting to know you in the biblical sense. I want her to explore her sexuality, and I want her to be true to herself. Star and I have had a few long talks about you. You are the first male she's met." Alice turned to face me and looked directly into my eyes.

"I warned her one man is not all men, and I told her I might give my blessings for her to have sex with you, but I would do so only after I've had a chance to check you out." Alice glanced at my private parts.

"Your daughter is still a child. I wouldn't feel right taking advantage of her that way." I sighed and fidgeted as the conversation entered an awkward phase.

Alice frowned and gave me a sharp look. "Bullshit! How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

"I-I was fifteen, and sh-she was nineteen." I stammered as I tried to remember who seduced who.

"So fifteen is old enough for boys.” She leaned back, crossed her arms and narrowed her hazel eyes. “But eighteen is too young for a girl?”

She frowned as she poked my chest with her index finger.  “Sounds like a fucking double standard,” she paused, “pun,” pause and poke, “intended!”

The final poke hurt.

"Ouch and okay. I get it I'm old-fashioned. However, I still don't understand why you would want your daughter to have sex with me." I studied her smoldering green eyes and searched for her answer.

"I want the best life for my daughter, and that begins with her being true to herself. If it turns out she likes men, I'm good with that. If she prefers women, I'm also good with that. If she's bisexual like her mother, that would be fine. I'll love and support her no matter who she is. Besides, I have a dream of someday being a grandmother," Alice said with an almost shy smile.

"What about you? Why is it so important that you check me out first?" I was looking for the truth behind her interest in me.

"Because if you turn out to be an asshole like her father, I won't let you near her; that's why. He was a lousy, selfish lover who cared nothing for the sexual needs of his partner," Alice concluded.

We spent the next several minutes in thoughtful silence as we finished lunch and got ready to resume our quest for fresh venison. Our vantage point on the ridge afforded us a clear view of the deer herd in the valley a thousand feet below. Under the watchful eye of a magnificent stag, a dozen does graze along the banks of the stream flowing across the glen's floor.

It would take all of Alice's driving skills to traverse the pathway to the bottom.

 

Chapter 13

 

"This is Liberty base. The National Weather Service has issued a revised winter storm warning for our area. Forecasters are calling for up to thirty-six inches of snow starting tonight at five o'clock with blizzard conditions beginning at 6:30 PM. Snow will continue throughout the evening and into late tomorrow afternoon. Winds south by southwest twenty to thirty miles per hour with gusts up to one hundred and twenty miles per hour along exposed ridges. Return home immediately. Please acknowledge."

"It's too bad we can't acknowledge a message we never received," Alice said as she turned off the radio's power.

I scanned the sky overhead. The wispy streaks of morning had given way to a high hazy overcast. Tops of advancing clouds were beginning to appear on the western horizon. The minuscule amount of weather lore I still remembered from my days as a Tenderfoot Scout told me high, thin clouds and mare's tails were telltale signs of approaching storm systems and usually signaled that a weather front was moving in.

We left base around 9:00 AM and had been on the trail for almost four hours. If we return now, we’d make it home with barely thirty minutes to spare before the storm hit.

"We need to turn back if we’re going to beat the snow," I urged Alice.

"No fucking way! I'm not getting this close without bringing back Bambi burgers," she replied with a look of determination that could blister paint. "Besides, we can get down to the valley floor and back in less than thirty minutes. We should have time to spare. Not much, but enough. I didn't come this far to go back empty-handed."

I wasn't going to win this argument.

The thirty-degree angle of the slope and the sheer granite face of nearly treeless stone made for a treacherous descent. We had almost made it to the base of the ridge when our rocky trail abruptly narrowed before ending in a dead end at the edge of a vertical cliff. It was fucking frustrating. We were within a hundred feet of our goal. As far as we were concerned, our destination could just as well been on the dark side of the moon.

"Shit! I missed the turn, we're on the wrong trail," Alice swore as she reached for the radio and turned on the power.

Haste makes waste, but I kept my thoughts to myself as I scanned the sky.

"Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in, please. Over." Alice paused and repeated her call, "Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in, please. Over."

It was useless. A granite slab a mile thick stood between our location and the base's radio receiver, effectively blocking out our signal. The steady hiss of static ruled the airwaves. Alice handed me the radio's microphone and instructed me to repeat the call to base every five minutes.

Backing up the steep slope was a royal pain in the ass. Reverse gears are slow, and the best speed our Mule could manage up the incline was not much faster than a slow walk. Our retreat finally paid off when we came to a wide spot on the trail after twenty minutes of travel. Alice executed a tight three-point-turn, and at last, the front of the ATV pointed in the right direction.

The trail up the side of the ridge was difficult to follow. The overcast changed the light. None of the landmarks we’d passed on the way down looked like the ones we passed on the way up the trail.

We blazed our own path and followed the contours of the slope in an ever upward journey. Slow and steady wins the race in fairy tales. In our case, we gained the ridge in an hour and thirty-six minutes and lost our race against the clock.

We used too much time backtracking, and there was no way in hell we would be able to make it home before the weather turned to shit. Unless we could find a sheltered place to hunker down and ride out the blizzard, we would both be dead before dawn.

"Do we have the time and tools we need to build a lean-to?" I asked.

"Good idea. We have the tools, but we don't have the time. We've gotta find something almost ready-made, like a cave, rock overhang, or a cluster of fallen trees," Alice said as she handed me a pair of binoculars.

We drove to an outcropping with a good overview of the eastern face of our ridgeline.

"Scan to the north, and I'll scope out the south," Alice said as she lifted her binoculars and searched our southern flank.

The heavy overcast of clouds reduced the daylight in the valley to near twilight conditions even though sunset was still forty-five minutes in the future. In a classic case of the lull before the storm, the wind died down to almost nothing. I felt a drop of wetness on my cheek and a few moments later, another on my nose. Like the advance scouts of an approaching army, the first flakes of snow explored the ground around us.

"Damn it! There's nothing to the south of us!" Alice growled in frustration.

To the north, the slope of the ridge gave way to a nearly vertical drop. Conditions were favorable to the formation of rock shelters. Over the eons, slabs of granite had broken away and tumbled to the ground. I was looking for anything resembling a natural rock lean-to or cave opening.

"Alice! I think I’ve got something," I shouted with more hope than conviction as I pointed to a dark shadow in a land of shadows at the base of the granite cliff.

My partner studied the rock feature with her binoculars for a moment before slamming the ATV into drive and racing forward to the possible sanctuary. Hope turned to disappointment as we got close enough to see the details of our target. We were well and truly fucked; the rock outcropping was too large and exposed to serve as a shelter. Daylight was nearly gone, and snow was falling as fast as the thermometer.

"Now what the hell do we do?" Alice pounded the steering wheel in anger flavored with fear.

"Let's check that out," I said pointing to a stand of saplings about a hundred yards to the left of the useless overhang.

Maybe we could construct an emergency lean-to from the young Aspens. We drove across the dusting of snow-covered ground and dismounted our vehicle. Flashlights in hand, we inspected the thin grove of trees.

"Holy shit, there's a cave opening back here!" Alice shouted and pointed to a five or six foot wide opening at the base of the cliff behind the trees.

The remains of the aborted attempt at gold mining were almost hidden behind the stand of saplings. We explored the inside of the cave with our flashlights. Thankfully, it was uninhabited. The dry and dusty floor of the tunnel sloped upward to a level area, which formed a low, cramped chamber about fifteen feet across and twenty feet deep. At most, we had about four feet of headroom. Whoever had been looking for gold hit a dead end, gave up, and went home. Bad for them, lucky for us.

"Unload the Mule and get our stuff inside while I cut down as many saplings as I can with our survival saw,"