“I admit I don’t much like bears. Well, actually I’m afraid of them. But going after them like that is wrong.”
“Bears will mostly leave people alone if we don’t get in their way. But to go out and kill dozens of them just for small pieces that can bring a lot of money—that goes way beyond killing to eat, or even killing for a single trophy.”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “Then we have any number of people who, if left to their own devices, would drain every stream and creek of fish. There’s a reason for size and catch limits. We do what we can, but somehow we always wind up having to restock in some places.”
“What other things do you deal with?”
“The whole gamut, basically. Right now I’m worried that there isn’t enough water in the stream in the valley where you’re painting. We had enough snow, the spring thaw didn’t start much earlier than usual, so there’s no obvious reason that stream should be running so dry so early. It looks more like late July or early August. That suggests there may be some obstructions causing problems on the feeder creeks. So far nothing.”
“You have a full plate.”
“Keeps me busy,” he admitted. “But I like it most of the time.”
“How much trouble do poachers give you?”
“Most skedaddle, figuring they can come back. They’re only likely to get angry when I confiscate their booty or equipment, or want to arrest them.”
“Do you often?”
“Every now and then, if I have evidence. The ones who really tee me off are those who use traps.”
“Traps have always struck me as so inhumane.”
“I agree with you.”
Relaxing, she was finally able to put the radio aside. The cabin was warming, and she slipped off her jacket. When he fell silent, she guessed he was waiting for her to do her share of talking. She wasn’t quite ready yet, though.
“So these trappers. They can hurt more than animals, too, right?”
“They sure can. They cover the traps with pine needles so they’re not obvious. They could just as easily trap a hiker, but so far we’ve been lucky.”
“Do you have help?”
“It’s a big forest. I only cover part of it. And if we catch wind that something big is going on, we work in teams.”
“Good. It’s got to be dangerous enough facing down a couple of poachers, never mind a larger group.”
“You’d know.”
She supposed she did. Benefit, if you could call it that, of having been in a war zone. “It’s funny, but I never thought about this stuff. I think of national forests as peaceful places where people going hiking, fishing and camping. I don’t even think about the hunting, and never poaching.”
“No reason you should.”
“When I first saw you I thought you were pretty heavily armed and I wondered what happened out here. Now I know.”
His smile was almost as warm as the fire. She liked the easy way he smiled, and wished she could emulate him.
“So you’re on vacation?” he asked.
“I guess you could call it that. A little R and R of my own.” And this was it. The questions would start coming and she’d have to decide how much she wanted him to know. Then she wondered why it should even matter, since she probably would never see him again. There was nobody safer to confide in than a stranger. But she deflected anyway. “Any more problems with Buddy?”
She saw it happen. His face closed, and she sensed his withdrawal, telling her that he realized she was putting up barriers. And if she was going to put up barriers, so was he. An unexpected ache struck her then. Man, surely she didn’t really care yet what this man thought of her.
“Well, he’s building a watchtower along his fence line. Seems a little extreme.” Then he rose and went to open her cooler, keeping his back to her as he checked on what they could make for dinner.
She was being hypersensitive, she told herself. Way too much. It wasn’t as if she had some deep dark secret in her past. Well, except for her ex telling her she was a lousy lover, and there was no reason to broadcast that. But Craig had already seen the one thing she most didn’t want others to know about her, that she could dissociate, however rarely. If she had any real secret, that was it.
“My boyfriend broke up with me a few months ago,” she volunteered. “It was ugly. I started to