Rogue's Revenge - By Gail MacMillan Page 0,59

her. “Heath?”

“Not so loud. We don’t want to let the wrong people know where we are. Come out and have some eggs.”

She crawled on hands and knees from their sleeping shelter and saw him near the riverbank. The thin trickle of smoke from a small fire drifted off across the river on a lazy breeze.

“Eggs?” She struggled to her feet, stiff from a night on hard ground. “Where did you get eggs?”

“Partridge. Big nest on the ground over there. I counted fourteen.”

“You robbed some poor bird’s nest?” Allison rubbed her eyes and looked down at the panful of scrambled eggs bubbling on the fire.

“No choice.” He hunkered down and stirred them with a stick. “We need nourishment. She won’t mind…much. Partridge often have up to three hatches a year.”

“And you had matches?” She pointed to the fire.

“I’d be a pretty poor woodsman if I didn’t have some in a waterproof container on me. Sit. These are almost ready.”

“What about the smoke? Aren’t you afraid someone might see it?”

“It’s drifting off across the river, away from anyone on this side who might be on our trail. It’ll dissipate fast over water. Ditto for any faint scent of cooking. At any rate, we have to risk it. We need nourishment, it’s too early in the season for nuts and berries, and I’m not feral enough to eat raw eggs.”

“And what’s for lunch? Some poor, dead animal?” She tried to be critical of what he’d done but realized he’d had little choice. She also realized she was ravenous.

“Let me surprise you.” He took the frying pan from the fire, using the sleeve of his shirt pulled over his hand as protection from the heat.

He dropped the pan between them and handed her a piece of bark he’d fashioned into a crude spoon.

“Eat,” he said and picked up a similar utensil.

She did and found she was even hungrier than she’d thought.

“Tea?” he asked when they’d cleaned the pan, eating scoop for scoop.

“Don’t tease.”

“I’m not. Raspberry leaves boiled make a strong, nourishing brew. Here, try it.”

He picked up the pot from where it had been cooling beside the fire and handed it to her.

Gingerly she raised it to her lips and took a sip of the bitter, bracing brew. She coughed, then took another drink.

“It won’t replace Starbucks,” she said, handing it to him, “but it does have a get-going kick.”

“That’s what we need right now.” Heath took a long drink, handed the pot back to her, and stood. “You’re staring. Egg on my face or what?”

“No, just a good healthy stubble. A further crack in your heroic mystique. A jungle movie hero, for instance, never sports a stubble, no matter how long he’s in the bush with his loincloth as his only luggage.”

“Sorry my whiskers have shattered the last of your fantasies. Let’s get packing. It might not be healthy to stay too long in one place in daylight.”

“I have to wash my face.” Allison got to her feet and headed down to the bank of the river.

She squatted by the river, splashed icy water over her face, pulled out her shirttail to dry it, and suddenly chuckled. Was she the same woman who only a few days earlier had thought ruining her designer suit a major disaster? Now here she was in bush gear she seemed to have been wearing forever, her hair such a tangle she could barely finger comb it, washing her face in a wilderness river, using her shirttail for a towel. She wondered what Paul Bradley would think of her and then laughed out loud because she didn’t care.

“Come on, Allie. Let’s get going.” Brought out of her daydreams by his call, she started back to where he was waiting, fire extinguished, packsack on his back. She had never felt so alive, so ready for whatever adventure would challenge them.

The terrain they traveled that morning varied. Sometimes their way was along a low riverbank close to a smoothly flowing stretch of water. At others, they climbed over rocks high above rapids and gorges where the river swirled and roiled like a thing possessed.

When they paused to rest at noon, it was in a gently sloping meadow that ended in a cluster of alders at the water’s edge. The bright sun and clear skies of early morning had vanished behind a low cloud cover, and a fog had begun to roll in. Together they gathered dry branches, and Heath lighted a small fire on the river’s edge.

“Sit here and rest.”