Page 63 of Last Chance Cowboy
Maybe that was part of the survival lesson.
Or maybe he hadn’t felt anything at all, that was entirely possible.
“Well. I have a fire.”
“Do you want a shelter?”
“Yeah. Why not? Let’s make a shelter.”
That was when she figured out what the rope in her kitwas for.
They worked at tying together branches for a lean-to, cutting the rope into different lengths as they pieced together a pretty competent shelter that was braced against the rock wall that she had liked because it provided shelter and privacy.
And now, it provided even more effective shelter.
She was also starving.
“Well, I guess I should’ve worked a little bit harder at foraging berries, because now I am ravenous.”
“I brought Meals Ready to Eat,” he said.
“What?”
“MREs.”
“Really?” She had a vague concept of what those were. Meals that were common in the military that could be reconstituted. They were used in the military, a reminder of where he’d come from.
It was hard to imagine him out there, all that violence swirling around him.
She didn’t want to think of it at all.
“Yeah. But… I also brought a line and a hook. So I figured I might try to catch a couple of fish.”
She spent the next hour, as the light waned completely, avidly watching him stand on the shore of the river and catch two large rainbow trout.
Then she watched as he cleaned them efficiently and expertly, and she had the sudden sense that there was so much she had left to learn.
Not that she particularly wanted to learn this skill, but there was something so… Compelling about it.
About the way that he had been able to make sustenance for himself, for them, about the ways that he knew to make a situation like this more comfortable.
She purified their water using the droplets, and he cooked the fish using some tinfoil that he’d also stuffed intohis bag.
She watched in deep fascination as he fashioned a bag out of the foil for the fish to be tucked inside, and then put it on the coals.
“Dinner will be ready soon.”
“I’m just sorry that we don’t have any mashed potatoes.”
“Well, you’re welcome to go and forage if you want.”
“No. I’m exhausted. All of the berries that we ate on the trail on the way here have long since evaporated, and I am sleepy. I just need to eat my fish and go to bed. And when we get back to civilization, we can raid the day-old pastries at the bakery.”
He groaned. “Now that sounds good.”
He gingerly pulled the tinfoil pouch out of the fire and opened it up. The fish inside was perfectly cooked.
Then he put one fish in half of the tinfoil, and the other in the second half, and handed it to her.
