Author:ken_r
Rating is adult
catagory is conventional couples
The characters used all belong to the Roswell TV and Book people.
I am trying to use them in a respectful manner. The Navajo words come from google search on internet. There are many differrent spellings of this language. the Navajo culture comes from Dr. Hill of UNM. The references to rodeo come from interviews with members of the Sandia, Del Norte High School Rodeo club I was their sponsor for a few years. Elizabeth Parker is intellegent, short tempered and uses the language of a working cowhand. Can she be tamed. We hope not.
Liz of the desert
Chapter 1
Elizabeth Parker banked her small fire and finished her meal. She took sand from a nearby arroyo and rubbed her plate and utensils cleaning them the best she could. She then swished them in a pan of her small hoard of water from the barrel in the back of her pickup. She put water in a bowl for Rolf and poured a cup of food in his dish. Nights fell quickly in the desert. She already could feel the cool breeze blowing down from the highlands as the last of the rocks gave up their heat. Elizabeth Parker PhD., was a small woman about five foot two. She was slender especially in her beat up Levies. Under her hat her long dark hair was loose as it blew in the slight wind. Her dark brown eyes looked out across the mesa country. There was little as far as she could see. The sun setting made the view to the west look like an abstract painting, the mesas and volcano cores showing up in outline. Somewhere way to the south she could see the dust trail of a rancher’s or Navajo’s pickup as it ran toward the sinking sun in the west. Elizabeth was a shy girl in public. She really preferred things just as they were here. She was also as stubborn as a badger when she had an idea or what she would call a mission. She admitted that she had a temper. Maybe it was to make up for her size or maybe because she was independent and she felt the world was trying to limit her or maybe it was to make up for her shyness, she was prone to strike out at those nearest.
She was on a survey, fact-finding mission. She had one of the special Anthropological Research maps. One that was not printed for the public. It showed the different archeological sites along with the AR catalogue numbers of each. Elizabeth had found two of the sites in question and logged GPS numbers or Global Positioning System, for their exact locations. She hadn’t found what she had been looking for, though. Her job with the New Mexico Museum was to recheck the site locations and to log GPS numbers with the equipment mounted in her pickup. These numbers, using several satellites, would fix almost exactly the location of the sites. This would allow the use of satellite imaging to help check for vandalism and to better map out habitation patterns. There were so many myths and rumors about the inhabitants of the Southwest that any number of students could use this information to write dissertations and theses for years to come. It was unusual for a woman to be doing this alone.
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Elizabeth was not a shrinking violet. She had done a spat of barrel racing when she was in high school. She had even done a bit of team roping when she could find a partner. Trouble was, the partner wanted to extend the relationship further than the arena and Elizabeth found that his deficient skills in roping were mirrored in other activities.
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The Navajo people were a peaceful people with a few bad apples just like any other population. There were the results of Bureau of Indian Affairs experiment, where they had located many of the Navajo children in California. These children separated from their culture and their lands many times returned after learning the Anglo ways of crime. Alcoholism was also a problem among a people who often did not see a personal future for themselves. Sometimes, some of these men would see the slender lady as a target, but a few well placed shots from the Glock in her pack earned her the reputation of self-sufficiency. Elizabeth liked the little Glock. The forty-caliber cartridge because it did not kick too much, was easy to shoot and light to carry. Her ex-boyfriend, Kyle Valenti, a deputy sheriff of Sandoval County had drilled her in its use. He helped her learn to become proficient, but he himself couldn’t accept her need to go off on her own on this survey. A violent argument led to Kyle seeking companion ship elsewhere and Elizabeth doing what she intended to do anyway.
Back at the University Elizabeth had found references to a site where strange artifacts were rumored to be found. These artifacts did not conform to any other culture in the Southwest. Elizabeth wanted to follow her leads and the only money for this was to accept a job with the Anthropological Research board to relocate and re-log certain sitesby GPS. This job would keep her in the region she wanted to study and pay for her expenses. They made it clear that her first responsibility was to the AR people, but if she wanted to do any other surveys, they were fine with this. Elizabeth spent a year preparing for this research. During that year, she precipitated the argument with Kyle and bought, Rolf, her German Shepard.
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Elizabeth had grown up in Roswell. She had participated in rodeo sports and maintained a four point average. She had started out in college as a biochemistry student. In grad school, she had helped a friend with some ancient DNA samples and became intrigued with archeology. Teasing the slight strands of DNA from the ancient samples and learning about people that had been dead for hundreds of years was intriguing.
Along the way, Elizabeth learned about some strange artifacts in a dingy corner of the Anthropology Museum. Finding them was difficult because, like so much knowledge, it was misplaced. When she found the samples lost among Northwest coast carvings, she immediately saw what the finder meant when he said they did not match up with any known culture. When she finely found his notes, she learned that they had been found in the Chaco Canyon region. This was long before GPS logging and the description was sketchy. The surveyor had used compass readings from landmarks, but there was no notation whether he had taken direct readings or corrected the readings to true north from magnetic north. His descriptions were vague and no one had really sought them before.
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“Damn it, Liz, you are going to be out there for days at a time, away from communication and on your own! I won’t allow it,” Kyle yelled. Stupid Kyle, always thinking that volume would increase compliance. Well, Elizabeth wasn’t one of his drunks and all five foot two of her was determined. Kyle could screw himself. And that was the end of a year long relationship. After interviewing with the anthropology people and a couple of trial surveys, Elizabeth got the job.
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The Navajo people respected self-sufficiency and they appreciated those who offered assistance when needed. Liz always was willing to haul water for any family when she made her weekly trip to a trading post. Liz was small but she had a winch and boom in the bed of her truck to hoist the barrels into the back. Liz knew her limitations but she also used knowledge and technology to overcome those limitations. The willingness to share her labor and resources had earned her the trust of these people. It also earned her a certain amount of safety.
Elizabeth called Rolf. The silver shepard quickly appeared and wagging his tail trotted into camp. Rolf was more than a companion. He was her protection. Liz had spent the year of preparation training Rolf. He would stay near her and warn her if any varmint two-legged or more-legged came around. Elizabeth had very little trouble with either. There had been a mountain lion, but in the States they were usually shy and when the lion smelled human with the dog, he quickly left. Elizabeth had been told that way down south the lions were more aggressive. Rolf had waken Elizabeth a few night ago to protect her from a drifting cow that was more surprised than they were at seeing any one.
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Jeff Parker owned a small restaurant and ran a small feed lot in Roswell. He was proud of his daughter’s self sufficiency. Of course he worried that she would be out of touch with anyone for days at a time. As she packed her pickup, he brought out his cased little Remington auto shotgun. He laughed as he gave the case to her. “Take this Liz and maybe if you get lost you can at least find some sort of game to eat. The joke was birds might be found, but small mammals were highly infected with the plague. The southwest was the bubonic plague capital of the western world.
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Elizabeth thought of this as she watched Rolf eat his dinner. She picked up his dish and made sure he had water. Then, she went a few yards from the camp site and threw down her bedroll. Elizabeth loved the stars. Her grandmother used to tell her that somewhere among the stars she would find her true lover. This was when she was small and somehow the words still stuck. Beyond the Kyles, the Jakes and others, she still hoped for that magic lover to come down and take her away.
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Elizabeth, the smart one, the logical one, had been madly in love, briefly, with a bull rider. She remembered the first time she had seen him sitting on that huge bull. The bull was jumping so high she could see the crowd under him with every jump. Elizabeth remembered how she felt when she saw Jake fly off the bull’s back. She had no idea how high he had been thrown. She remembered the thud when he hit the soft ground of the arena. When he got up and raised his hands to the crowd, her heart went into her throat. It had to be the stupidity of youth. Elizabeth had seen bravery and celebrity in Jake. She went behind the bull pens and threw her arms around her brave hero. He grimaced from the pain, but he returned the kiss and Elizabeth was captured. She followed him for a time, going from arena to arena or rather hospital to hospital. Her father finally sat her down and talked to her.
“Liz, I rode bulls when I was young. I know the thrill of mastering the beast. It was your mother who told me she was tired of seeing me in pain. She said I should look into my self and see if it was bravery or foolhardiness that was propelling me. I gave it up so I could be a whole man with her and be healthy to see you.”
Elizabeth went to the hospital and kissed Jake goodbye. She then returned her attention to her education.
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Elizabeth lay looking up at the stars. The stars in the southwest were still magnificent. It was rumored that the power plant in the four corners area was polluting the sky so the stars were loosing their brightness but for Elizabeth tonight, they made a ceiling that covered her like a quilt. Liz heard the coyotes calling, but Rolf had learned long ago, that first, the ones calling were far off and those yodel pups that were close, were not really dangerous. Elizabeth drifted off to sleep as a handsome young man descended from the stars and stretched forth his hand and lifted her to dance in the heavens.
Liz would haul water to day so she indulged herself. She heated a large kettle of water on her stove. She placed a blanket in the sun and near the blanket she placed a low tub. She placed a table near the tub and when the water was heated, she poured it into a bucket of cold water until it was tepid. Then automatically looking around to see if she was alone, Liz stripped. Rolf would have warned her if he sensed any presence. Elizabeth stepped into the low tub. The sun felt good on her naked body, but the warm water felt better. Elizabeth soaped down and dipping water from the tub she rinsed herself as best she could. Elizabeth again poured hot water into a bucket of cold water and took the bucket and dumped it over herself to finally rinse off. Elizabeth stepped out of the tub and onto the blanket. She allowed her body to dry in the sun turning over like a cooking flapjack to dry the other side. Elizabeth put on clean clothes. They had a coin laundry where she would drive to fetch the water so Elizabeth would do laundry today. It felt good to wear clean clothes even it they were much like what she had wore yesterday and the day before.
Far away on a mesa top, much further than Rolf’s senses could detect, a young-appearing man adjusted his instrument and sighed as the girl dressed and went back to her pickup. He didn’t know who she was, but she definitely was not afraid to be alone in the Indian lands.
Elizabeth followed the directions given by Linda Tsosie. She had promised to see if her grandmother needed water. Elizabeth found the Hogan beside a white painted, Bureau of Indian Affairs, BIA board house. The BIA house was packed with wool, feed and other products while the family lived in the Hogan because that is the way they had done it for years. Elizabeth sat in the pickup until someone came out to see who she was. “Yah-a-teh” was the greeting given.
Elizabeth replied with the same greeting. “Linda, at the trading post, asked me to stop by and see if you needed water.” The younger children all spoke English, so Elizabeth was sure they would understand her. She waited. To a city ‘gringo’ it would seem a long time, but to a people who savored the presence of a guest, it was just polite to wait for a reply. The child said something to his grandmother and she called her grown son. The son motioned for Elizabeth to drive back to the platform where two barrels were sitting. There was a pulley system that lifted the barrel up and down from the platform. The son knocked on one barrel and it was empty. The other barrel on the platform was about half full. The young man lifted the empty barrel over his head and swung it into the pickup bed. He secured it with half hitches using a rope Elizabeth kept for this reason. Elizabeth waved and told the child she would be back tonight. Elizabeth drove with her map in her lap. Finally, she found the road she was looking for and followed it to the trading post. Elizabeth parked her truck near the windmill pump and went into the post.
Linda Tsosie saw her “Yah-a-the, Liz,” Linda greeted. Linda came over with her families mail and a sack of groceries for them. Elizabeth also bought some groceries for herself and a copy of the Navajo times. This slim paper had comics, national news and more important news that concerned the reservation. Elizabeth then proceeded to do her laundry. Linda yelled at a man working at the post and he filled up the Tsosie barrel and the barrel that was Elizabeth’s. Rolf had, all this time, sat patiently in the cab of the truck watching the horses, sheep, other dogs and, finally, the men.
Elizabeth arrived at the Tsosie Hogan about the middle of the afternoon. She gave them the groceries and mail from Linda. Then the boys had her drive under the pulleys so they could lift the Tsosie barrel up to the platform. It was stored to be used as soon as the other barrel was emptied.
Elizabeth had about two hours of driving before she had to stop. She was heading toward a canyon. “Rolf, this may be the one we are looking for,” Elizabeth spoke to her dog. Of course, Rolf just listened. That was why Elizabeth liked him, he was a good listener. “We have to look for three established AR ruins. Then, we look for what we are searching for, eh’ Rolf. We do what we are being paid to do and then we can work for ourselves.” Elizabeth drove out of the wash and high enough so that if a flash flood happened during the night, the truck would not be in danger. Flash floods could happen in these washes without any warning.
“The sun will set soon. We get cheated, old boy. Here in the bottom we loose about one hour.” Elizabeth remarked as she saw that the mesa tops were still golden from the setting sun while she was in ever-darkening shadow.
As she set up camp, the watcher was joined by another. They looked at their instrument and saw the girl. The first dark one was disappointed that she didn’t repeat the activities of the morning and then, just to please him she took off her pants and shirt and put on a flannel shirt and pullover pants.
The dark one was called Max. He turned to the huskier one called Michael, “She is heading right for the location of the dig.”
Michael turned and said, “We haven’t started disturbing anything yet. So I do not know if she can find anything. Maybe she will just look at the places of the old ones and then leave.”
The next morning, Elizabeth drove into the canyon. It wasn’t hard to find the AR sites. Elizabeth mapped them and logged GPS numbers. She had time to look around for herself. There were several new unknown sites that the wind and rain had exposed, so Elizabeth logged and recorded them all. Elizabeth worked all day with her instruments and her maps, but towards night just before Liz was to make camp, she found a strange mound. She looked at the notes and started to see some of the landmarks of the old surveyor. Elizabeth logged the location and photographed it. She made camp and the next day, she went back to her assigned work. Elizabeth intended to return as soon as she finished the work for the AR.
It was two months before Elizabeth got back to the canyon. Both she and Rolf were tired. They had gone from post to post living out of her truck and daily mapping and studying the AR maps. She kept her eyes open for any of old land marks from her notes. She did not find anything as good as she had found in the canyon. Elizabeth was excited as she, again, entered the canyon. She set her markers on her GPS instrument and watched as she approached the mound. It was to her dismay that she found a huge hole. “Pothunters was all she could whisper.” Those thieves of history that anger archeologist everywhere. Pothunters usually just take the best artifacts, never record anything about the site and are in the business of antiquities for profit leaving the site with no knowledge gained.
But this was remarkably, professionally done. The hole was square and to the side was a mound of sifted sand and gravel where the dirt had been sifted for any small artifacts. Elizabeth was chagrined. She had been here and she had lost everything she sought. Elizabeth photographed the site and recorded her observations thoughts. She made her camp that night with no joy.
The next morning, Elizabeth was just careless. Instead of putting on her heavy leather boots she was walking around in sandals. Everyone knows that a rattlesnake always warns before he strikes. But there are rebels in every population and the snake population is no different. Maybe, he had lost his rattles or maybe he was just impatient or maybe he was a she and didn’t need a reason. As Elizabeth walked by, the snake caught her in the leg just below the knee.
Elizabeth knew she was in trouble. This was one time she wished she had an extra hundred pounds. Her small frame would succumb quickly to the spread of venom. She was already feeling the pain. Her leg was swelling. Elizabeth crawled over to her truck. She stood with a great deal of pain. Elizabeth opened the back of the truck and pulled the bag of dog food from the truck. She placed her foot tub on the ground and filled it with water. That was as much as she could do. At least Rolf wouldn’t die for a while. Elizabeth tried to make herself comfortable as she waited for death. There were all sorts of remedies, but Elizabeth wouldn’t have enough strength to complete any of them. Rolf just laid down beside her but he seemed to be looking at something far off.
Her grandmother was wrong. There would be no man coming from the stars to be her lover. She would miss Kyle and even Jake, that dumb son of a bitch. Her parents, she would never see again. Elizabeth drifted in and out of consciousness. She saw Rolf stand up, but he didn’t bark. She saw a tall dark man lean over her and he said something to her. She couldn’t tell what he said or did. The pain was horrible. Then, she just slipped away.
When Elizabeth woke up, a man in a uniform was knocking on the window of her pickup. Elizabeth sat up. She looked at her hands. She was alive. She opened the window of her truck. Rolf growled, but he sat still. Elizabeth looked at the man. He was a Navajo policeman.
“Miss are you all right?” he asked.
Elizabeth looked at her body. “I was snake bitten,” she answered. The policeman quickly said something in his radio and he helped Elizabeth out of the truck. Rolf just sat in the seat seeming to know that someone was helping his mistress.
Elizabeth was placed on a bed and her clothes were cut off her body. The doctor examined her leg and it had a silver colored area, but there was no swelling or any sign of snake bite.
Elizabeth thought, “Was she hallucinating?” Someone went out to her truck and brought in a change of clothes. They wanted Elizabeth to stay a while to see if somehow she was mentally unsound. Elizabeth thought she saw a tall dark man across the street from the medical facility. She got up and walked out, but there was no one there.
“That’s right, Sam, I am at Crownpoint. No! I do not know how I got here. I thought I was snake bitten. No, the doctors can’t find any evidence of snake venom. Rolf is fine and I completed the survey I was assigned to. Sam, I think I found it. I have pictures, notes and GPS readings, but Sam, I went back there and the site had been cleaned. Sam it was a professional job. I need to see someone from the Department of The Interior. Tell them I have evidence of a violation of the Antiquities Act. Sam, I will try to be in this afternoon.” Elizabeth hung up the phone. Elizabeth looked in her purse and took out her calendar. It was a small one that she marked off each day, so she could keep track of time while she was alone. It was Tuesday. She looked up at the leaf calendar on the wall, it said Friday.
Liz ran out to the pickup and took out her journal. She fed Rolf and checked his water. Rolf had taken up residence under the pickup enjoying it’s shade. Back inside the hospital, she sat down and looked at her Journal. She ran back to admitting and asked if she could see the young Bureau of Indian Affairs doctor she had spoken to earlier.
Dr. Levine was working off some of his medical school debt by working for the BIA. He was from back east and the cultural shock was telling on him. He was delighted to see, again, the lovely archeologist he had checked before. “What is wrong Liz?” he asked.
“Doctor, look at my journal. Look at the dates and the entries. Here is Tuesday night’s entry.”
3 pm Tuesday: I arrived at the site. I am devastated. The site is completely vandalized. It appears to be professionally done. The excavation is perfectly square. There is a pile of gravel and dirt that could be from sifting. There are marks in the fresh dirt where artifact bags were placed. There are no tire marks and I didn’t see any as I was driving up the canyon. All my hopes for nothing! If only I had taken the time to look closer two months ago, when I first found it.”
“I remember getting up the next day and I remember getting snake bitten, of which, you say, there is no evidence. What happened to the missing time?” Elizabeth seemed about to be panicked.
The young doctor flipped through the pages of the journal. He saw days when she had been at a trading post and the days she spent alone. He had no explanation how so organized a person could loose two days.
They finally released Elizabeth and she drove back to the freeway and then back to Albuquerque. She had promised to check in at the medical facilities there and, for once, Elizabeth intended to do as she was told.
When she got back to her office and Rolf was comfortably sleeping under her desk, Sam returned with her pictures on disc. They went through the first ones of the original pictures of the mound and then the pictures of the square hole.
“It is professional, all right. I just wish I could get my diggers to do a job half that neat,” Sam remarked.
They printed the relevant pictures and turned them over to the Department of The Interior. They, in turn, assigned an investigator and a Sandoval county deputy to visit the site. Because of the freshness of the site, they went out the next morning.
That afternoon, Elizabeth had a visitor from some time ago. “Kyle, what are you doing here?” she asked surprised.
“Liz, I know that we are not together, and truthfully, I have moved on. But, I still care for you and I worry about you!” Kyle declared.
“What do you mean, Kyle?” Elizabeth had no idea what he was going on about.
“Liz, first you claim your were snake bitten, then you have a journal with two days missing and next you file a report of a crime that there is no evidence of existing.” Kyle was either very worried, or maybe irritated, that he had to travel all that way and found nothing.
“What do you mean, Kyle? Just look at the pictures! Here is the mound two months ago, here is the excavation Tuesday evening. I can’t explain the journal or the snake bite,” Elizabeth could get angry too.
“That is just it, Liz. Here is a picture of the site this morning. There is no mound and there is no excavation and there is no evidence of anything ever being there!” Kyle was almost yelling again. He always got exasperated when dealing with Elizabeth. “We checked your GPS numbers twice. We checked your Instrument in your truck. There is nothing wrong with them. I have never known you to be careless, so what gives, Liz? What the hell happened to you to cause this many mistakes?”
Liz looked at the picture. It did not show an excavation that had been filled in. It showed a picture of pristine ground with no disturbance for centuries. Liz dropped her head into her hands. She felt like sobbing but she wasn’t going to do it in front of Kyle.
Kyle went behind Elizabeth and put his hand on her shoulders. He started messaging her shoulders and back like he had done long ago. Liz couldn’t hold it back any longer. She just let loose. “Kyle, am I loosing my mind?”
Kyle leaned over and kissed Elizabeth on the neck. “No, Liz, something happened. I told you not to go out there alone.”
That did it. The old Elizabeth flared up and Kyle remembered why they were no longer together. “Kyle, I can handle my self and I do not need you to tell me what I can’t do!” the old Elizabeth almost shouted out.
Kyle backed up, “All right, Liz, but I still worry about you. Please, get a full check up.” Kyle departed just ahead of a phonebook that flew past his head as he hurried down the hall.
Liz sat in her chair. Rolf came up to her, whining in the way a dog will when he knows something is wrong, but his dog brain just doesn’t know what to do. Elizabeth bent down and rubbed his ears. “Rolf, what did happen? What happened the two days I lost out of my life? What happened to that excavation in the picture?” She leaned back as Rolf put his large head in her lap. “Why are those artifacts so important to me and why did I think they were associated to that site?”
Of course Rolf could only offer his devotion and the warmth of his body but could not answer any of Elizabeth’s questions.
Just before Elizabeth was ready to leave her office she received a phone call from her one remaining friend from high school. Maria had skipped college. She had been a back-up singer for several bands and then, finally, she had been noticed and she landed a song-writing contract. Her remaining contact to Roswell High was Elizabeth, or Dr. Parker, as she liked to tease Liz about. “Liz, I am in town for three days. You want to get together?” Maria was the perennial optimist.
“Maria, I just got in from two months in the field. You are welcome to the guest room to crash in and we might go out tomorrow. I really need someone to talk to tonight.” Elizabeth was almost pleading. Her anguish wasn’t lost on her friend.
A taxi brought Maria to the small house in the old, but proud, neighborhood of Nob Hill. Elizabeth had bought the small house when she started to study at UNM. They had supper delivered while the two friends sat talking.
“Maria, I may be loosing my mind,” Liz started. She told her friend the story emphasizing the snakebite, the lost days, the lost dig site and finally, the fact that her friends were beginning to think she was crazy.
“The look on Kyle’s face when he told me there was no evidence of a site hurt me more than anything else.”
Maria leaned back, “Speaking of Kyle, you know he has moved on and has a new girlfriend, don’t you?”
“Yes, but Kyle wouldn’t do something to hurt me like that and he is a good investigator, no matter what our past history was!” Elizabeth affirmed.
Their talk went from this to Maria’s travels and a song she was working on, to what was happening in Roswell and finally ended with Maria pleading for Elizabeth to try to go out tomorrow night.
They were going to a country western club. Liz was dressed in designer jeans with stitched lizard cowboy boots and a bright embroidered shirt. Maria had a short wrap-around skirt with a puffed-sleeve blouse and stitched boots. They were at the Hitching Post, a nearby C and W, (country and western), bar. They had been seated for only a few minutes when Kyle, leading a buxom little blond approached. “My favorite women, hey, Liz and hey, Maria,” Kyle said.
They both said “Hey, Kyle.” Then Maria added, “Kyle, introduce us.”
Kyle led his girl in front of him like he was displaying a prize heifer. “Folks, I want you to meet Tess Harding. Tess, Maria writes songs and Liz has just returned form several months in Navajo land.”
Tess turned to Elizabeth and said, “I just love traveling abroad don’t you?” Kyle laughed and led her away.
Maria turned to Elizabeth, “Are those things real or is she a Dolly Parton look-alike. Did you get that traveling abroad stuff when Kyle said you returned from Navajo land?”
Elizabeth laughed and just then two strictly DS cowboys (drug store) came up to their table. “Would you ladies care to dance?” That was from the tall, dark one whose hat was pulled down, his eyes just showing under the brim. Elizabeth looked at Maria and, still laughing, stood up and gave the man her hand. She looked back and Maria was walking away with the other man. Elizabeth was sure neither man had ever had to kick shit off of his boots, but what the hell, they were here for a good time and dancing had nothing to do with being a real cowboy.
Elizabeth looked into his light brown eyes showing under that hat brim: “My name is Liz,” she coyly said.
“My name is Max,” he replied.
They danced a two-step and a polka. Then they sat down at their table. About that time the other man came back with Maria firmly gripping his arm. “Would you ladies like a beer?” Max asked. They both nodded in the affirmative. Max nodded to the other man and he went to the bar to get the drinks. Elizabeth drank very little. She always liked to be in control and drinking too much was a sure way to loose this control. Michael, the name of the other man, returned and gave Liz a Coors Lite. She frowned because this is just what she would have ordered for herself, if he had asked. Michael placed a black bock beer before Max and giving Maria a Bud lite he took a German beer for himself. Elizabeth was still frowning, because Bud Lite was probably what Maria would have ordered. The fact that the men both chose exotic beers, not usual in a place like this, also was not lost on Elizabeth.
Elizabeth pushed Max’s hat back so she could better see his eyes, “Tell us Max, what do you do, as a living that is?”
Max carefully looked at her and said, “I search for my identity.”
Elizabeth was still frowning as she turned to Michael, “I protect Max,” he said automatically.
Max looked at the girls, “What do you do, as jobs I mean?” his statement dripping with double meaning.
Maria answered for both of them as she leaned against Michael’s chest, “Lizzy is an archeologist and I am a song writer.”
They all talked of nonsense things for some time, then Max stood and offering his hand to Elizabeth, he asked her to again dance. She was in his arms and he looked down at her, “I hope you can forgive me, Doctor Parker, but I just had to see if you were all right.”
Elizabeth tried to yank herself from his arms, but he just held on tighter. “Now, Doctor Parker, Liz, if you make a scene, many innocent people might get hurt. I was just worried about the snakebite. That was the first time I ever cured a snakebite. Don’t worry about the two days, that beautiful, silver animal slept beside you the whole time. I had trouble making him go outside to eat and drink.”
Elizabeth tried everything she could do to wiggle free of her dance partner. He was so strong that she couldn’t even make an attempt. She was just about to scream when he looked into her eyes, leaned forward and kissed her. “You were so beautiful taking a bath on that sandstone mesa a few months ago.”
That did it! Elizabeth was now really ready to scream when her partner spun her out of his arms and he disappeared into the crowd. Elizabeth fought her way through the crowd to the door. She looked out and there were a few cowboys backing their girls against their pickups making out, but no tall dark stranger. Elizabeth fought her way again back inside to her table. A despondent Maria was sitting at the table. Elizabeth sat down.
Stories by ken_r
