Roswell Fanatics

“THERE – IS – NOTHING – WRONG – WITH – MY – SWIMMING – SUIT,” said Liz, crossing her hands in front of her and glaring up at her father.

As he heard the words precisely and individually intoned, significantly louder than her normal speech, Jeff felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He was, perhaps already beginning to feel that he had screwed up.

The feeling was a primordial one – similar to what prehistoric hunters must have once felt when they heard a saber-toothed tiger clearing its throat a few feet behind them. An urgent desire to flee the scene was delicately balanced against the feeling that such an action would be– by showing weakness – as likely to make the situation worse as to make it better. He needed to assert that he was the parent and she was the child, or he might well lose control of her altogether.

“Lizzy, it just plain doesn’t cover enough.”

“I HAVE BEEN WEARING THIS SWIMSUIT THE WHOLE SUMMER – Mom helped me pick it out while you were busy getting something at the hardware store. Why is it that it suddenly doesn’t cover enough?”

Uh-oh… This was bad. Jeff in fact remembered that particular shopping trip. He’d been bored looking at clothes and had gone off to look at tools instead. Nancy had mentioned she had disagreed with Lizzy on the suit that their daughter had wanted to buy and had instead gotten her to compromise on a more conservative style. The tacit approval of Nancy for this current suit had already cut the immodesty argument out from under him. The fact that he hadn’t even noticed her wearing it for all these months didn’t look good either. Desperately he mentally flailed, looking for a different rationale to justify his objection to Lizzy going off with Max dressed like that. In the interim, Lizzy appeared to be staring daggers at him.

“Well?” demanded the fourteen year old.

“Well, I’m concerned about you getting skin cancer, that’s what. Lizzy, what’s wrong with you? This is the middle of the desert. Do you have any idea how much ultra-violet radiation there is out here? I’m simply concerned about your health, that’s all.”

“Roswell isn’t exactly a shaded forest either, Daddy,” objected Lizzy, somewhat befuddled by her fathers quick change of rationale. “Besides,” she said, pulling a tube of sun lotion out of her shorts, “I’ve got plenty of sun screen.”

As he looked at the tube in her hand Jeff’s mind went back about twenty years – to this same spot by the river. Nancy had been four years older then than Liz was now, but wearing a very similar swimsuit. Between going through the river to get to the hot springs and a fifteen minute session in the hot springs themselves, the sunscreen had gotten washed off both of them. What started as assistance to Nancy – to help her apply lotion in places she found difficult to reach – had continued on down her neck and finally chest to assure Nancy wouldn’t sunburn her own – cleavage. The top had somehow come off – it had been the first time Jeff had ever gotten to second base with Nancy.

As he looked at Liz, all Jeff could see was a vision of his daughter standing by the hot springs – having sun lotion liberally applied to her entire upper torso by Max Evans.

“That’s not good enough. You ought to have a shirt – a long sleeved shirt … and wear your levis.”

“DADDY - It’s almost a hundred degrees out.”


“Lizzy, this is about your health. There is no compromise on this issue…”

“I won’t be healthy if I have heatstroke..,” said Liz, rolling her tearful eyes skyward in what was apparently the universal gesture used by teenage girls appealing for Divine intervention to protect them from the stupidity of their fathers.

And perhaps it worked – or more likely, sensing victory, Jeff knew they were still going to be camping out for a couple of days. He did not want his fourteen year-old sulking the whole time. Besides, perhaps it was time for the victor to be a little magnanimous.

“”OK. Shorts and a short-sleeved shirt then…, but I want you to promise me that you will PERSONALLY put sunscreen on your arms and legs as soon as you get out of the water, and at least hourly thereafter.”

Jeff saw that her lips were tightly pressed together and it was obvious Lizzy wasn’t happy about this, but she apparently knew that she’d gotten the best deal she was going to get.

“Yes, Daddy….,” she said. She turned around and went back into the big tent to change.

Jeff made it a point not to be obvious as he inspected his daughter as she left. He could see the swimsuit through the open door of the tent sitting on Liz’s sleeping bag and she was wearing the rumpled white blouse that she’d started the trip in – along with a pair of reasonably modest cut-off Levis. Careful not to rub it in, he told her to have fun and was rewarded with another roll of her eyeballs toward the heavens.

Jeff didn’t feel real good about the dust-up with Liz – their first since she was in the ‘terrible twos,’ but figured it had to be done. He was just happy that it had been successful. That particular notion lasted for almost five minutes.

He heard his wife and daughter coming up the trail from the river before he saw them, Nancy clearly upset with her daughter.

“Lizzy, I thought we had this discussion when we agreed that you wouldn’t buy that bikini. You have a perfectly good swimming suit. I can’t believe you would do something like – this.”

Jeff looked up to see his wife walking his daughter back to the campsite. Lizzy, it appeared, was wearing wet cut-offs and was naked to the waist.

“It wasn’t MY idea, Mom. I WANTED to wear my swimming suit. HE,” Liz exclaimed, pointing her right index finger at her father," made me wear this.”

It was only then that he noticed that Lizzy had buttons up and down her chest. The white blouse had become almost transparent and very clinging when it got wet, and the beige sports bra was clearly visible underneath. The next thing he noticed was an angry wife looking at him.

‘This is NOT going to be pleasant…,’he thought. It would turn out to be an understatement.

Jeff’s shocked look and failure to refute his daughter was quickly noticed by his wife. The agreement was an old one – they did not argue in front of Liz.

Nancy turned to her daughter and said, “Liz – put something more appropriate on right now. You invited a guest up here. I’d suggest you went and visited with your guest while your father and I have a talk.”

“But – what do I say to Max? I am so embarrassed….”

“I’m not sure what you say to Max, dear. Tell him the truth, I suppose. That you didn’t think that would happen – that you made a mistake…?”

“But what will he think?”

“I don’t know, Liz. But the time to think of that was before this happened – all you can do now is deal with it. You can’t pretend it didn’t happen, and you can’t run away from it. You are going to be facing Max for the next two and a half days at the very least. I’d suggest you deal with it.”

That pretty much took care of the conversation for the next three minutes – until Liz left on the path towards the river, wearing her swimsuit – the top also covered by a large opaque T-shirt.

As their daughter disappeared down the path, Nancy turned to her errant spouse.
“Well,” she said, “… let me tell you about my afternoon so far. I was minding my own business taking photos with my new macro lens – the wildflowers by the river are quite beautiful, by the way – then I heard the voice of my daughter and looked up to see her and Max fording the river – in it right up to their necks. I decided it would be cute to get a picture of them so I switched to my telephoto lens. Max got out first, and as he reached back to pull Liz out of the river and up on the bank – Gee, I’m not sure who was more surprised, Max or me.

I now find out it was YOUR idea for Liz to be there appearing half naked? So tell me, Jeff, how EXACTLY have YOU been spending your afternoon…"

Nancy smiled at him and softly shook her head. She went to the thermos and emptied the dregs into two cups of coffee – lukewarm from last night and neither very full, and sat down on the rock next to him – her body pressing against his reassuringly – in very much the same fashion Liz had been making contact with Max around the campfire last night, he noticed.

“I don’t know that I would waste a whole lot of sympathy on our daughter over this,” Nancy said, taking a sip from her own cup, “… she’s as much at fault as you are. That blouse is an old one, but it used to be one of her favorites. She hand washed that and hung it up to dry at least a couple dozen times. She knew darn well that it would almost disappear when she got it wet. What I’m pretty sure she didn’t expect was that the beige sports bra underneath would do pretty much the same thing – or the effect of the cold water of the river on her nipples, for that matter.”

Jeff winced at the word nipples, not quite ready to accept that his baby-lady had breasts, let alone that she might have nipples on display through her bra – she’d pretty much kept her arms folded over her chest walking up the path from the river.

“You mean she actually intended …”

“What she intended, dear, was to get the best of her father. What she thought would happen was that the blouse would pretty much disappear and she would be left appearing just about how she was before you and she had your argument. A sports bra is as modest a garment as a halter top – at least when it’s dry. She was as surprised as I was when she came out of the water and – well, I think I actually have a picture if you want to see it …”

“No, definitely not…”

“Well, young Mr. Evans got quite an eyeful, and Lizzy got embarrassed and I got upset at Lizzy, and here we are – and then I find out that this incident was never about Max at all – it was about you.”

“Me? Why me? I didn’t want her to do this…”

“It doesn’t matter. By the time the two of you had your argument everything else became secondary. You were going to show her who was boss – she was going to show you she was growing up and was independent.”

“Well last night it seemed like she was – damn it, honey, she was practically crawling into the boy’s lap.”

“I spoke to Lizzy last night when she came to bed. I told her I thought she was embarrassing Max, and was pretty sure she was irritating you as well. Do you want to know what she said?”

Actually, Jeff was becoming pretty sure that he didn’t – but there seemed to be little choice if he was to get to the bottom of all this. “What did she say?”

“She said that since you were doing everything you could to make Max feel unwelcome, she wanted to make sure he knew that at least SHE was glad he’d come along. As for you – she didn’t care if you were mad – she wasn’t exactly pleased with you either.”

“What has gotten in to her?”

“I think the better question is what has gotten in to BOTH of you? Look, dear, I understand – you are irritated at Lizzy for the somewhat deceitful way that she tricked us into OK’ing Max coming on this trip – but I really do believe you need to think about just why she did that. It wasn’t just about having a good time with Max – probably not even mostly about that. Her intention was for us to get to know Max better – and most importantly for YOU to get to know him.”

“Look, I’ll admit I should have been listening better when she tried to introduce him before, but I don’t understand how this kid could be all that important to her all of a sudden.”

“Honey, it isn’t just Max – it’s that Lizzy is growing up. It isn’t enough to tell her to just do something – she has to agree with you that what you are asking is reasonable – not just arbitrary. When she wanted to get that bikini I didn’t tell her she couldn’t do it – I explained to her why I thought she shouldn’t do it – that it really suggested a desire to attract any young men that I really didn’t think was what she intended. She admitted that what it was all about was trying to attract a certain young man – that she really wasn’t – well, on the market so to speak – she just felt comfortable with him, and wanted to explore the possibility of their friendship being something – more meaningful. I suggested she buy the other suit and that she try to be a little more discriminating in the way she tried to get the young man’s attention. Perhaps this trip isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it’s probably her idea of trying to do that – to explore if any sort of a deeper relationship is possible.”

“Why does she need a ‘relationship’? And if it isn’t sexual, why does she need to show all that skin?”

“You know dear – she’s known him since the third grade. She’s with him probably thirty-five or forty hours a week at school, or doing homework together at the library.. If the object had been to show him her breasts, I really think she could have found a time to do it. She did not need to drag the boy into the wilderness with both her parents along as chaperones if the object had been to give Max a look at her nubile young body. She could have done THAT in Roswell. The fact is, dear, that Lizzy IS growing up. You talk about Max wanting to ‘get into her pants,’ although as far as I can tell he’s been a perfect gentleman on this trip, but even if I were to concede he does want to do that, Max is being polite – proper – heck, more than a little shy. Whatever he may be thinking, his actions have been perfectly proper.”

“I know, I know, it’s just that – this is all so scary – I’m worried about my little girl.”

“Your little girl is growing up, dear. I’m pretty sure that nobody is going to be getting in anybody’s pants anytime soon, but the fact is that the day will come when Lizzy is not going to be particularly opposed to some young man – maybe even Max – ‘getting in to her pants,’ and we are going to have to accept that. I hope that isn’t anytime soon – I hope that Lizzy doesn’t make the mistake of doing something like that when she’s too young – or with the wrong person – but no matter what we do that might happen, and if it does we need to be there to support her… to help her pick up the pieces. We can’t have alienated her in the meantime, but even more than that, dear…. If, God forbid, Lizzy makes a mistake, I want her to make the mistake because it’s an honest mistake. I do not want her to do the wrong thing with the wrong guy just because she’s trying to show her independence – to prove to her father that he can’t boss her around. That’s why I’m not altogether unhappy that she embarrassed herself here today. I just hope that she learns from this lesson – and I hope you do too…”

“Nancy, it’s just so damn hard… I don’t mean to challenge her – I don’t want her to be a child forever, it’s just so damn frightening.”

“Maybe Lizzy isn’t really ‘the Perfect Miss Parker', dear, but she comes pretty close. Max isn’t some wild child either, and he sure isn’t trying to exploit our daughter. She’s known him a long time and her opinion about him is probably better informed than ours. But I think your opinion is the one she really wants – she just wants it to be a fair opinion”

“Why me, especially?”

“Because you, dear,” said Nancy smiling indulgently at her husband, “have been the main man in Lizzy’s life for fourteen years. Like I told you, those days just might be numbered, but you are going to always be the yardstick she uses to measure the men in her life. Your opinion – if you can make it a fair one – will make a difference in how she perceives Max – or any young men that follow him – and her opinion about whatever young man does become her special someone is going to be based just like mine was – on how that man compares to her father. Daddy is the man you can always trust if you are a young woman. He’s the one that gives you complete and total love – without being biased by wanting to ‘get in your pants’. A guy like that is the guy you want to marry – and have get in to your pants.”

“But can’t this all just wait a few years?”

“The sexual part? Yeah, almost certainly, but she is growing up – she needs to develop the capability to think for herself – act for herself.
Jeff, Liz is a good girl and she values our opinions, and we need to keep it that way. Nothing we do can ever guarantee Lizzy won’t make a mistake but as long as she does value our opinion we at least have the opportunity to stop her from making some of the mistakes she might have otherwise made.
But honey – if this ever becomes a battle of the wills – if we tell her she can’t do something because she isn’t mature enough and she decides to do it anyway to show that she is… that’s going to be a disaster.”

“I guess she is showing reasonably good judgment – I mean – Max and I had a talk last night before we went to sleep. I apologized to him for what I said about the Clearasil – and the lawyer thing. It’s not like Lizzy invited along some sort of a monster – he’s certainly a nice enough kid. It’s just that I’m so damned uncomfortable with the thought that anything bad might ever happen to Liz….”

“Well tell her that then, dear. Don’t tell her that you don’t think she’s mature enough to handle something ... tell her that it worries you and you fear she’s underestimating the potential problem.
She loves you – she doesn’t want you to worry. Admit your fears to her – she’ll compromise with you like she did with me on the bikini, even if she believes your fears are unwarranted – or at least she’ll do her best to convince you they are unwarranted.
I think if you’d just honestly told her that you too were worried about her behavior toward Max last night she’d have told you what she told me, and you would have ended up closer – more trusting of one another – rather than both being embarrassed by what did happen.”

“I guess we are lucky at that. I mean – she could be interested in some older kid with his own car who might push her into doing something she really would regret, rather than a shy kid like Max.”

“Now you ARE sounding like my father,” said Nancy with a smile. “He was scared to death when I started dating an older man,” she said, "but Daddy told me about his fears. I convinced him that you really weren’t all that bad. Eventually he even took a liking to you…”

“Yeah, after Lizzy was born.”

“Not true. After we were engaged he told me he thought I had made a good choice. He still thinks that, dear, and so do I…”

“Even after I fouled up with our daughter?”

“Yeah, even then. But like I said, this was a fairly inexpensive lesson. Lizzy can apologize to Max for embarrassing him, and you can apologize to Lizzy and tell her just what you told me about why you did it – and I imagine after embarrassing herself today, Liz will be a little less forward with Max – which is probably a very good thing.”

“Well, Ill try to talk to Lizzy – and try to be a little less edgy when I see her and Max together.”

“So, have you changed your mind about them rolling their sleeping bags out on the same tarp?”

“No, but I will tell Lizzy the truth about that – not that she can't, but that it would make me profoundly uncomfortable if she were to do that – and that I really do think it was helpful that Max and I talked last night.”

“Well good. That’s a start anyway, and I don’t think Lizzy will disagree with you about that – especially not after embarrassing herself today. Now it’s time to get back to my photography and you were going fishing – not up by the hot springs, by any chance.”

“If I do, I’ll be sure to splash around and give them plenty of warning – I don’t want Lizzy to think I’m trying to sneak up on them or anything.

“Good, you are learning.”

“Maybe… but does it have to be so damn painful?”

Nancy smiled up at him, kissed him, and, camera in hand, turned back toward the river. Jeff collected one of the two collapsible fishing rods they had packed in and headed upriver – towards the hot springs where Max and Liz were no doubt already soaking.

It took a half hour or so for Jeff to work his way up the river fishing -- there didn't seem to be any biting right now. Apparently during that time the 108 degree hot springs pool had lost its appeal in the 100 degree afternoon sun. It looked like Liz and Max had been swimming in the river itself to cool off, and now were laying on their towels on a big rock alongside the river sunning themselves to dry off.

Although he could see they weren't doing anything but sunbathe even from a distance Jeff went out of the way to make some noise on the approach to alert them to his presence – it wasn’t like the damn fish were biting anyway, and finally got up next to his daughter and her … lab partner.

When Lizzy saw him Jeff could tell from her expression that although she had gotten over her embarrassment with Max she had not yet gotten over her displeasure with her father. He did his best to look conciliatory but apparently it wasn’t enough.

Max was laying stomach down on his towel and Liz quickly went to the tube of sunscreen and, ignoring her father, started to speak.

“Max, I have it on good authority that the sun in the Gila canyon is much worse than in Roswell. Can I put some sunscreen on your back?”

“Uh, sure, Liz…”

Jeff wasn’t really sure the boy was expecting what happened, as Liz straddled him at the waist and commenced to spread sunscreen up over his upper back and shoulders. The boy seemed to be growing redder by the second.

“Uh, Lizzy – could I speak to you over here for a second?” asked the father-unit. In a few seconds both were in the comparative privacy of a space behind a large rock.

Liz was looking fairly defiant, but Jeff spoke first.

“Look, if you want me to admit that I fouled up earlier – I do. If you are trying to stoke my paranoia that you are growing up too damn fast with the sunscreen demonstration– you have succeeeded. But Max and I had a talk last night – he’s sort of a shy kid, and I think a good deal of the redness he has right now is blushing in embarrassment, so if this is just about the sensual feel of lotioning down his back muscles, you might want to at least wait until I’m out of sight to keep from embarrassing your guest any more than you have to – any more than we both already have. If this really is concern for him getting a sunburn – don’t forget the backs of his legs. I got a real painful burn there once.”

The defiance seemed to melt from his daughter’s face and she blushed as she smiled. “The sensual feeling of lotioning down his back muscles...?” she asked dubiously.

“Well, perhaps it feels better from the other side – although I always thought your mother enjoyed it when I did hers. She may have been faking it though.”

“Daddy…”

“Look Lizzy, I’ve never gone through this before either. You are growing up – I know that and I’ll deal with it – somehow. But I don’t want to fight you about this, and it sure isn’t fair for you to use Max to win an argument – anymore than it was fair for me to be mad at Max because you snookered me into inviting him along.”

“You’re right,” she said, looking back toward the rock where Max was waiting, “… as enjoyable as the sensual feeling of running my hands over his lotioned back was…,” she continued with a grin towards her dad. “Really, we were done anyway. You want some company fishing?”

“I’d love it,” he said, giving his daughter a kiss on the forehead. “Let’s go get Max…”

44 hours earlier

The cardinal rule in cooking with a cast iron frying pan is to never – never – wash it with soap. If you do, it’ll ruin the seasoning. Of course, you still have to clean it – especially when you’ve been frying fish in it. That’s why as the sun started to go down behind the mountain range to the west, Jeff Paler found himself down at the river scrubbing the frying pan with sand from the sand bar repeatedly and rinsing it in the water. It actually was going fairly well – better than he would have expected. He was nearly done when he heard the footsteps behind him.

“Need any help, dear?” asked Nancy.

“Almost done, actually.”

“I thought tonight was Lizzy’s turn to have K.P. duties.

“I am,” said Jeff, “… paying off a bet. We only had the two fishing rods. And she bet me that she and Max could get more with theirs than I could get with mine. She won – pretty overwhelmingly, really.”

“Well the meal was delicious, but I honestly didn’t think that Lizzy even liked fishing.”

“She never used to and chances are she still doesn’t, but what she does like is CATCHING, and she was doing a lot of that today.”

“And that, I suppose, was how you lost the bet?”

“Actually, I think I was sandbagged by Max.”

“Did Max catch a lot of fish?”

“Actually, I’m not sure he caught a single one, now that you mention it. What he did was TELL Lizzy where to fish – ‘drop the line in the eddy behind that rock, Liz’ – ‘drop the line in that deep hole in the shade of that tree, Liz’ ….”

“Max, I take it, has fished before?” asked Nancy, smiling up at him.

“He claims not. He claims that his father has taken him up to the Bottomless Lake three or four times and that he mostly just drowned worms without catching anything, but for someone who denies any real experience, let me tell you, it’s like he can read the minds of the fish.”

“Well, we certainly got a lot more fish then we’ve ever gotten before on one of these trips, and the way Max fixed it – and Lizzy made the lemon rice – that’s the best meal we’ve ever had on one of these trips.”

“I still don’t see how he did so well. I explained to them about fishing here – the gila trout is an endangered species. Sometime back in the 1930s, someone introduced both rainbow trout and bass into the river and they competed for habitat. The wildlife people would really like it if we could get all of those out. The only way you can fish for trout is fly fishing with a barbless hook which you can’t really do with a collapsible pole. But because of the gila trout, we can’t use live bait of any kind for the bass – the ones we had for dinner – either. You have to use artificial lures that are too big for the trout to be interested in – only problem is the bass aren’t that interested too a lot of the time.

But somehow Max knew where the hungry ones were lurking, and he’d tell Lizzy to fish there. Two minutes later she’d have a fish – you’d have died laughing to see how excited she got. I was doing my best to try to match her – Max was doing his best to clean the fish she just caught before she had another one for him to take off the line…

You know, in the end I don’t think either Max or I were doing anything but sitting there watching Lizzy fish – she was so excited she was almost squealing with joy – like she did when she was six years old.. She caught her limit, Max’s limit, and was probably about to work on mine when Max reminded her that someone was going to have to eat all of them. I wish you’d been there to see her.”

“I wish I had too,” said Nancy with a big grin. “I take it you and Lizzy declared some sort of a truce?”

“Yeah, but it was more than that. I didn’t want Max to be a ping-pong ball in a match between Lizzy and me, and neither did she…. and he is a likeable enough kid. If he weren’t so damn shy, well I imagine in a few years all the girls would all be swarming all over him. I’m not sure how comfortable he is with me – I don’t think he’s altogether comfortable with Liz even, although they certainly seem to have quite a history of things they’ve done together in science class.”

“Yeah, Max is the second best student in their class – after Lizzy. I’ve always wondered about that. Lizzy says that he always has all the answers until test time, then he usually forgets something – something he knew when they were studying together before the test. She winds up getting the top grade, he gets second.”

“Sounds to me like he might be sandbagging something other than his fishing ability,” said Jeff. “…our little girl might not be the only one with a crush here.”

“Are you still worried about Max?”

“About Max in particular? Not really. Max is about as unobjectionable a boy as Liz is likely to find. The problem is that I’m just not ready for her to have a boyfriend… any boyfriend.”

“Eventually she will, you know.”

“Yeah, well eventually the sun will burn out too – I’m not really ready for that to happen quite yet either.”

“Well, it looks like you are done. Want to go back to the campfire? I think there may be some more S’mores in the offing. I notice that Liz isn’t quite sitting in Max’s lap tonight. Was that something you talked about her with?”

“No..,” said Jeff, “… no I didn’t. Maybe it’s just – well the three of us had so much fun fishing, maybe Lizzy just thinks Max is a little more accepted, and she doesn’t have to be so – uh – demonstrative.”

“There does seem to be a lot less tension in the air tonight. Come on … Let’s go get some S’mores.”

Smiling at each other, Jeff and Nancy walked back up towards the campfire.



36 miles to the southeast

“Jefe, we can go no farther. We need water.”

“You can have water when we get to the river, not before,” said Pancho Gutierres.

The man could barely move, but his voice croaked in complaint, “We have not had water all day, Senor. You have water in your canteens. We must have some – we can do no more without it.”

Gutierres swore under his breath. The plan had been to get more water at a spring 30 miles to the southeast, but they had arrived only to find a group of Border Patrol and National Guard troops camped on the only water source within 65 miles. The group of eight – four carriers, three guards, and Gutierres had bypassed the spring and he had called back on his satellite phone to tell his people that they would go northwest to the Gila river where others from the cartel already in the United States would meet them with additional supplies of food and water for the hike out of the wilderness area.

The heavy lifting work was done by the four carriers – drug mules – whose packs contained cis –cinnamoylcocaine with a street values of almost $55 million which Gutierres had contracted to sell to distributors in the United States for $5 million. It was not really the $5 million that bothered him, it was the fact that this was a new and potentially very lucrative market that he was opening up. Not delivering the drugs simply wasn’t an option.

The unarmed carriers were simple illegal immigrants who had agreed to carry the backpacks in exchange for being guided through the desert. They neither knew nor cared that there were drugs in the backpacks – and since they had not had a drink in over sixteen hours, would have gladly traded their packs for one drink of water.

The problem for Gutierres was that the water was limited. They could probably make another ten miles tonight – the difficulty moving in the darkness somewhat offset by the cool temperatures, but the sun would rise in the morning and there simply wasn’t enough water left to get eight people the rest of the way to the Gila.

“We must conserve our water,” he told them. “We walk on tonight – while it is cool – and we will take shelter and all have water to drink when the sun comes up. Then we will go on to the river.”

The four men looked at each other and first one – then finally all four – stumbled to their feet and started the trudge toward the northwest, flanked by Gutierres and his three armed guards. One of them looked at him and nodded.

The guard and Gutierres had been together for a long time. Both knew the mules were expendable. They’d get as much out of the mules as they could tonight, then take the packs and the remaining water themselves and the four of them would strike out for the Gila. It went without saying that they would not leave the four mules alive to be witnesses.

As the last of the S’mores were finally being made the atmosphere around the campfire seemed a little more relaxed to Jeff Parker. In fact, he felt pretty good about the day altogether, despite the very poor start – and the fact that he got skunked AND lost a bet to his daughter fishing. His main problem, he decided, wasn’t with Max – it was with Liz.

In fact, Max seemed every bit the shy kid that he’d talked about being in their tent last night. Of course, there was no way to be sure. He might seem to be telling the truth, but he’d SEEMED to be telling the truth about not having done much fishing too, and Jeff was pretty sure THAT had been – well, if not an outright lie, certainly a ‘fisherman’s tale.’

“Uh, Max – If you really haven’t fished that much, how come you knew just where to tell Lizzy to cast her lure?” Jeff inquired.

“Max has always been good with animals, Daddy. When we had a class pet in third grade, he was always taking care of it – feeding it when other people would forget that it was their turn. Same thing throughout the rest of elementary school. Whatever the problem with the class box turtle – lizard – hamster, or whatever, Max would take care of it, nurse it back to health if someone stepped on it or something…”

“Well, he’s got his work cut out for him nursing those bass we had for dinner back to health…”

“Uh – they were a little different, sir. Like you said – they aren’t even native species. If they live, that’s just fewer of the Gila trout that have habitat.”

So it’s OK to get rid of the alien species if it helps the native species?”

Jeff was sort of surprised by the look that drew from the boy, but eventually he answered, “Yeah, something like that I guess.”

“Dad, you don’t have to interrogate Max, just because you lost a bet.”

“I’m not interrogating him – just trying to find out how to keep from losing the next bet to my daughter. Perhaps it would be interesting to watch HER scrub out the pots and pans.”

Liz just smiled at her father, “You just can’t admit that you lost to a superior fisherwoman.”

“Fisherwoman? I’m not sure that’s even a word. Besides, you just fished where Max told you. He was the brains of the team.”

“Yes he was, and as such he deserves the last S’more,’ she said.

“No thanks – not the last one, Mrs. Parker, you have it.”

“I am full to here, Max,” said Nancy Parker, using her hand to indicate a position about three inches above her head.

“You want it, Daddy?” asked Liz.

“No, you go ahead.”

“Split it with you, Max?” asked Liz.

“OK.”

As he went off to brush his teeth and wash up for bed, Jeff was shaking his head. Things had been going so well – right up until the point where Liz and Max had shared the S’more. ‘She could have just broken the thing in two,’ he thought. ‘Why’d she have to alternate bites of it with Max. Didn’t they teach her anything about food-handling in any of her science courses. She might as well have been kissing the kid,’ he told himself. ‘...swapping spit – sucking face….’ Which he was pretty sure was just what Lizzy had in mind.

By the time he got back to the pup tent, Max was already asleep, a disgustingly happy smile on his face – marred only by a smudge of melted chocolate bar.

“Good night, kid,” he said to the sleeping young man. He looked out the open mouth of the tent toward the larger tent where his daughter was sleeping, before looking sown at Max again and continuing, “… sweet dreams,” ‘not that I think THAT’S going to be a problem for you.’

28 Miles to the southeast:

“What do we do now, Jefe?” the gunman asked.

“Now? We carry the drugs ourselves. THAT is what we do now,” he said, before taking a long drink from the canteen.

It had started as a simple accident. Moving in the darkness, the foot of the first mule had landed squarely on the tail of a night-hunting pit viper. The rattlesnake’s bite had been defensive, but it still carried enough venom to disable the mule. One of the other mules, it seemed, was his brother, who refused to leave him behind – insisted that they leave the packs – leave the packs with the drugs that were necessary to open the new market – and instead carry his brother. In the ensuing argument, both cousins died and the two other mules had tried to run away. Had they not dropped the packs they were carrying, they might even have escaped – or at least gotten far enough into the desert night to conceal themselves. Without water, they wouldn’t have gone far. But they had dropped the packs so they could run faster, and there had been no reason NOT to give the order to cut them down before they could get away.

Pancho disliked carrying packs. He had spent decades working to avoid the common labor he had once had to do as a young man – yet still – one did what one must do if one was to be successful in this business. At least now the water available and the people alive balanced out. It was just unfortunate, that was all. Without the rattlesnake, they might have gotten these mules to carry the drugs another eight or ten hours. He looked at his map – finding the hot springs on the upper middle fork of the Gila – the place that they would meet the syndicate people coming to assist them. Yes, ten hours should do it – twelve at most.

“Vayamos,” he told his three men. They walked away from the four bodies without ever looking back.


Jeff awoke to an empty tent and a rolled up sleeping bag beside him. ‘Well, the kid is an early riser, you have to give him THAT anyway…’ Jeff struggled in to his clothes and went out toward the campfire – to be greeted by his wife, his daughter, and his daughter’s – lab partner.

“Good morning, Mr. Parker,” came the voice from the smiling face. Max, Jeff Parker decided, was obviously was more of a morning person than he was.

“Good morning, Max – Honey – Liz – I’ll get out the supplies and make breakfast as soon as I brush my teeth.”

“You don’t have to fix breakfast, Daddy, Max has got it all ready. As soon as you’re ready to eat, we’ll put it on the table.”

“Let me guess – more bass?”

“No, sir. Breakfast burritos. Sausage, scrambled eggs, cubed potatoes, and cheese wrapped in tortillas. We have orange juice to wash it down with too.”

“Well the potatoes and tortillas I can understand – maybe even the cheese – but how did you get sausage, eggs, and orange juice. We’ve been away from food stores for almost three days, with temperatures over a hundred degrees in the afternoon. Are you sure this stuff is safe to eat?” Jeff asked suspiciously.

“Uh, yes sir. I froze the sausage rock-hard in our freezer – same for the orange juice concentrate. I put them in aluminum foil and then wrapped them in a space blanket. I put bubble wrap around that, another layer of aluminum foil, then the cold eggs and cheese – added another layer of bubble wrap and put in the tortillas and potatoes – one more layer of aluminum foil, then bubble wrap and another space blanket. The sausage and orange juice were just barely defrosted and everything else was still cold when I opened it up this morning.”

“That’s very clever of you, Max,” said Nancy. “Usually by this time we are down to canned or freeze-dried food. This is a real treat.”

“When we have these contests in science class – like trying to drop an egg off the top of the high school grandstand without breaking it – Max always wins. He is very inventive. Nobody can come up with more ingenious ways of doing things nobody else has ever done than Max.”

Jeff tried to keep a neutral face as he heard his daughter say that. It didn’t help when he looked at Nancy and saw she was looking at him – and trying hard not to laugh. It was twenty minutes later – after a breakfast that even Jeff had to admit was delicious, that he and his bride were at the river’s edge washing pots and pans again.

“Liz is an ‘A’ student,” he said to Nancy. “Why on Earth would she think that a father would like to hear that the kid his fourteen year-old daughter has a crush on is good at ‘doing’ things that no one has ever done before?”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like THAT, Honey,” said Nancy, trying not to laugh. “Liz is just excited – and very happy, in case you haven’t been watching. Even with Maria along, these trips were never really her favorite. She’s really getting in to the spirit of the thing this time.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure if that should make me happy, or worry me that much more. I talked to Max night before last. At least right now he doesn’t appear to be all that interested in taking this in to a boy-girl thing. He said they were too ‘different.’ THAT at least sounds hopeful, although I suppose it will disappoint Lizzy when she gets the message.”

Nancy smiled at her husband. “I doubt that you really understand the tenacity of our daughter, and I can tell you from personal experience that the crush of a fourteen year old girl can be real hard to get over, even if it seems hopeless.”

“Ah, it’s true confessions time, I guess. Do I know this mystery man? Have you kept track of him? What’s he doing now?”

“The answers would be; yes, yes, and washing a frying pan in the Gila river.”

“Me? You didn’t even notice me when you were fourteen.”

“The heck I didn’t. You just didn’t notice me noticing you. You were seventeen, and no doubt too busy chasing after all those older girls to pay any attention to a little fourteen year old.”

“Oh, I noticed you alright, but I thought with a three year age difference your father would have met me at the door with a shotgun if I’d tried to date you then, AND in retrospect, I wouldn’t have blamed him. Of course, we still had a three year age difference when you turned seventeen, but somehow seventeen and twenty seemed a little more reasonable than fourteen and seventeen.”

“And the rest is history…,” said Nancy.

“Even so, Max sounded pretty certain.”

“At fourteen, girls are physiologically and socially a couple years more mature than the boys. Whatever young Max’s opinion is today, I wouldn’t want you to get your hopes up that he’s not going to be interested in Lizzy in the future. You need to start to deal with this, Jeff. Like I told you, your days as the number one guy in your daughter’s life are numbered. It’s going to happen sooner or later, if not with Max, then with someone else. She sure seems to like Max though. Our ‘girl talk’ sessions at night make that pretty clear.”

“Well, I’ll concede he isn’t a jerk – that he’s at least respectful of Lizzy …”

“…and her parents.”

“…and her parents,” Jeff agreed. “But they are both only fourteen and while you may be right about Max just being immature and not yet ready, that’s all the more reason they should hold off on the boy-girl stuff. Heck, if Max comes back in three or four years and says he wants to date Lizzy, I might even give him my blessing – but right now neither of them is ready for it.”

“Well, ready or not, our daughter thinks she’s ready for it – thinks Max is too, or soon will be – and we can’t just ignore Lizzy’s feelings on this, Jeff. That’s not going to work, and I think even you know it. I’m just happy that she is sharing her thoughts – asking my advice – getting our opinion on Max, rather than trying to sneak around behind our backs on this.”

“Yeah, maybe..,” Jeff reluctantly conceded. “But I’d be a lot happier if she just would forget about this altogether for a few years. What the heck does she need a boy-friend for, anyway?” Actually, the question was rhetorical. Somewhere deep down inside himself he pretty well knew why Lizzy would someday want a boyfriend. He just didn’t want to admit it.

Nancy just shook her head and smiled.

Thirty hours earlier-

WHAM!

The little shotgun was loud – if not particularly powerful as it spit out over two hundred little number nine shot at the not particularly distant target. The problem was that the short barrel and virtually non existent choke on the small shotgun allowed the tiny shot to spread widely, even at 60 feet. Even for a target as big as an Apache Pine pine cone – almost six inches long – getting enough pellets in the target to knock it off the log was no foregone conclusion – it took an almost perfect shot. Of course, it didn’t help that the small shotgun had no real sights either.

But that was a reason that none of them should have been hitting the pine cones, not a reason that he shouldn’t be hitting them, Jeff reasoned. In fact, Liz was knocking pine cones off the log with every shot and Max, despite having never fired a shotgun before AND having rather poor shooting form, was doing almost as well as Liz was.

Normally it wouldn’t have bothered Jeff that Lizzy was winning the bet – even though it meant he’d be washing dishes for the rest of the trip. It was just that Max seemed to be getting better by the shot, and he wasn’t. After all, HE was the one that was supposed to be showing the boy how to shoot a shotgun – not the other way around.

They had set up the pinecones on a log with the canyon wall as a backstop. It had been Lizzy’s suggestion that they shoot at such an extreme – for the little shotgun – distance. It had, after all, been designed to kill snakes within about a twenty-five foot distance. She had also suggested the bet – not quite daring her father to take it. In fact, when she’d challenged him to match the AVERAGE score of her and Max, Jeff had been pretty sure that this was a match he couldn’t lose. But losing it he was.

Even so, Jeff couldn’t help but notice how happy Liz was – not just beating her old man at target practice – but happy the whole morning too. However concerned her old dad might be about her ‘relationship’ with Max, Lizzy was clearly enjoying this trip.

WHAM!

As Lizzy shot the last pinecone off the log, she broke open the shotgun and ejected the spent shell – then turned to her father with a big grin.

“That’s sixteen for us – or an average of eight for each ten shots, that’s three for you or an average of – let me see – that would be THREE for each ten shots. I wonder who is going to be doing dishes the rest of the trip?”

“OK, you won. So are you going to tell me how you did it or not?”

Liz smiled up at her father, looking sidewise at Max with a funny grin. “Well, let me go set up the targets again, than I’ll tell you – and let you try it.”

Jeff watched as the two kids went back toward the log. Max was sorting amongst the previously used pine cones for ones that did not appear too badly mangled. Liz walked over toward the tree next to the fallen log, apparently looking for some new cones. Jeff was getting out a new carton of .410 shells when he heard Max’s voice.

“LIZ – DO NOT MOVE.”

Many years ago Jeff Parker had been in the New Mexico Army National Guard. His Drill Instructors in basic training had sometimes sounded like that. Not the voice itself, that was clearly Max Evans, but the tone – the seriousness. They had called it “command voice,” and it brooked no dispute – no equivocation – just instant obedience, and like the voices of those Drill Instructors two decades ago, Max’s command voice worked. Liz froze motionless right where she was standing.

From sixty feet away Jeff Parker never would have spotted the Gila monster if he hadn’t looked at Max Evans and then followed his eyes to find the reptile. Lizzy HADN’T seen it, and she’d been right on top of it. Jeff dropped a shell into the chamber of the shotgun and brought it to bear – then hesitated as he realized he’d be as likely to hurt his own daughter as he would to stop the ugly lizard. But Max Evans hadn’t stopped. Jeff watched the boy walk calmly toward the lizard, the reptile turning away from Liz to follow the moving boy as he came closer. Max distracted it by moving his hand to the right while grabbing Lizzy simultaneously and pushing her away with his left – out of striking distance from the lizard. The lizard tried to strike Max’s hand but as it did so he slid it quickly to the side. The lizard missed, but as Max pulled away to join a badly frightened Liz Parker, it seemed to lose interest in him. It hissed once and waddled quickly into a nearby hole in the ground.

Jeff dropped the shotgun and ran to where his trembling daughter was – ready to comfort her – hesitating only briefly as he found her burying her shoulder into a blushing and embarrassed looking young Max Evans before hugging them both to him. As they walked the quarter-mile back to the camp he didn’t let go of his daughter’s right hand and noticed Liz clinging just as tenaciously to Max’s right hand with her left – but for the first time since the trip had started, he was genuinely glad the young man had come along.

It was twenty minutes later before things were calmed down enough in the camp for anyone to speak unemotionally about the Gila monster.


“I’m just glad that Max saw that hideous beast,” said Nancy Parker. “I’ve heard all sorts of stories about them – that their jaws lock on when they bite you, and you have to cut the jaw muscles to get them off.”

“I’m not sure about that, dear, but they do have a painful bite,” said Jeff watching his daughter sitting on the rock next to Max, her hand still tightly gripping the young man’s hand. “The saliva has a venom that is extremely painful, and leaves quite a scar. We would have certainly had to carry Lizzy out and considering the distance – well, it would have been a real rough trip at the least. Liz might have even died. We owe you a lot, young man.”

“Anybody would have done that…,” said the blushing youngster.

“Well, anybody might have…,” said Lizzy, “… but you are the one who did,” she said, leaning toward him and kissing his cheek.

Max appeared to blush furiously and not really know what to say. Nancy looked at Jeff, with smiling tearful eyes and said, “Well, hopefully that will be the last of the scary drama for today. Lunch today is macaroni and cheese. Who is going to help me make it?”

“We will,” said Lizzy, Jeff noting that his daughter now felt comfortable making decisions for both herself and Max – whose hand still hadn’t left hers, “ … and Daddy will do the dishes.”

“Yes I will!” said Jeff. If Lizzy felt more comfortable right now holding Max’s hand – well, he could live with that, he supposed.

Jeff was amazed at how quickly Liz got back to normal as she sat next to Max spooning macaroni and cheese into her mouth. ‘Well, danger past is danger forgotten, I guess…’ he thought. Sitting on the rock close to Max, she appeared over her fear of the big ugly lizard, and perfectly happy.

“So tell me,” said Jeff, ‘…what was the secret to your shooting accuracy. If I’m going to be washing dishes, I should at least know how it was done.”

Liz looked at Max, who started to blush again. “Well, we didn’t cheat … not quite anyway. One of Max’s dad’s clients had a lawsuit brought against him. He’d been skeet shooting at a range, and someone claimed that his car windshield had been damaged by shot. Max looked up the ballistics and proved that it couldn’t have gone that far. The guy was just trying to get a new windshield for free.”

“And how does THAT apply to our target shooting?”

Liz looked to Max, as if encouraging him to speak.

“Well sir, it was a little involved, but your shotgun has a real short barrel – as short as it can legally have. Because of that the muzzle velocity is real low. To make things worse, you were shooting number nine shot. That’s really pretty tiny and the ballistic coefficient is really pretty terrible – both because it’s spherical rather than streamlined, and because it’s so small. The smaller shot is, the greater the surface area compared to the mass, so real small shot is almost like shooting dust – the air resistance really affects it. Anyway, when Liz got you to agree to shoot out to sixty feet, the drop of the pellets was about three feet. A rifle has sights to correct for that, but a shotgun doesn’t. So if you were shooting straight at the pine cones, you were shooting way too low – the pellets were going in to the log, not to the pinecones on top.”

“But you two didn’t seem to be taking any special effort to aim…”

Liz giggled. “Well, we didn’t QUITE cheat. Everywhere on the log we placed a pinecone – well, there was another pinecone on the tree branch three feet above it. We aimed at the top one and hit the ones below. That’s why Max and I were always setting up the targets…”

“Do you hear that, Nancy? All these years, we’ve cherished a viper in our bosom. That’s why the dang lizard didn’t bite her – professional courtesy.”

“That’s not quite right, Mr. Parker. The lizard was a saurian, not a serpent. That would make Lizzy the lizard, not Lizzy the serpent.”

“Lizzy the lizard. I wonder if I can find an occasion to call her that in public?”

“Hey, Max – whose side are you on?” asked Liz, hitting him playfully on the shoulder.

Jeff knew that shouldn’t bother him – he should be glad that Max had come along and been there to save Lizzy from the reptile, but even so – it was apparent how much more comfortable Liz had become with touching Max during the camping trip. Max wasn’t drawing away nearly as much as he first had either.

‘Just one more thing to worry about….’ he told himself.

“Well, it looks like I’m going to be washing dishes,” said Jeff.

“I’ll help…,” said Nancy.

“I think I may get in my swimsuit and go get in one of the pools where the hot springs mixes with the river water. I haven’t shampooed my hair in five days and I smell like fried fish, mesquite smoke, and stale sunscreen. I need a good long soak, and a fair amount of scrubbing. You want to grab your suit and come along too, Max? I could use some help with the shampooing.”

Max seemed a little flustered. Liz shook her head at him. “Oh, come on. You can at least watch out for rattlesnakes..”

”OK, I guess,” said Max, who seemed to be looking at Jeff waiting for him to veto his agreement.

It was fifteen minutes later that Jeff and Nancy were back at the river, washing the remains of Macaroni and cheese out of a pot.

“She does seem to be wearing him down…” Jeff said with a sigh.

“They are good kids, Jeff. They won’t do anything they wouldn’t do if we were there.”

“I’m finding that less and less reassuring. She asked me for my razor – said she wanted to shave her legs. Why on earth would she think I’d want her to have smooth legs?” he implored of his wife.

Nancy stifled a giggle. “I believe she just wants to appear more feminine. I take it you told her, no?”

“You take it right. I lied to her and told her I didn’t bring one. I remember what happened that time when you were shaving your legs … and I was watching. You nicked yourself, I kissed it better – and then ….”

“JEFFERY. We’d been married for six months when that happened.”

“Yeah, damn good thing too, if I recall – and I do recall…”

“Well you might as well have not lied and given her yours – she wound up borrowing Max’s anyway.”

“Max shaves? How often? We weren’t going to spend a month out here…”

“Max isn't a child, he's a young man. Jeff – it’ll be all right. Liz growing up I mean. Trust me on this – OK?”

“Hey – you’re the one to talk. I think you nicked yourself shaving that time on purpose…”

“And what if I did?” asked Nancy. “Would that make me some sort of a wanton woman?”

“Well – yeah, my sort actually. I just don’t want Lizzy getting those sorts of ideas.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, Jeff. Oh, she’ll likely have them, but she won’t do anything about them for awhile yet.”

“Yeah, well from your mouth to God’s ears…”

Nancy smiled and kissed him. At least that was some consolation.

28 hours earlier

The man had heard the talking from several hundred yards away, the distinctive sounds of human voices standing out from the more natural sound of the water flowing over rocks and through tiny ripples. Initially the man had just moved toward the clouds of steam that rose even in the warm afternoon day, but then he’d heard the voices and they had brought him to the bushes on the bank opposite from the hot springs – downstream, where the cool water of the river tempered the sulfur smelling water of the springs.

As he peered carefully – quietly – through the bushes he saw them. The girl was kneeling on a towel on a large flat rock adjacent to the opposite bank. She was wearing a white blouse partially open at the front – covering her swimming suit – the color and texture of the cloth somehow making the raven-hair flowing down her back even darker and shinier. The boy was kneeling behind her combing that long hair. The man stepped carefully closer – keeping himself concealed in the bushes – as he listened to their talk.

It wasn’t the words he was noticing – idle chatter about the upcoming school year – it was the face of the girl – and the expression on that face. She was on the cusp of womanhood – her cuteness in the process of transforming itself into true beauty and her face reflected that as well. With each stroke of the comb through her long hair her conversation would stop – her eyes nearly closing as she appeared to nibble on her upper lip in an act of sensuous pleasure.

“Jeffery Parker!” came the urgent whisper from behind the man. “Please tell me you are not spying on our daughter and Max?”

Jeff’s eyes grew wide as he turned and saw Nancy standing five feet behind him. With any luck at all Nancy had not yet seen the two teenagers or at least not seen him watch them for very long. He had, he hoped, some plausible deniability – not much, but a little. He quickly retreated back towards his better half, keeping his voice low.

“I was just getting a little concerned, dear. It has been almost an hour since they left camp..”

“Forty minutes…”

“Well at home Liz showers and gets ready for school in a half hour. I was just becoming a little concerned that they might have run afoul of another Gila monster or something.”

“Jeff – at home Lizzy has a hair dryer. It takes a little longer when you have to comb it out – even in 100 degree heat.”

“Yeah, well she certainly seemed to have ample help. One would think that would quicken the process a little – and she seemed to be enjoying it too damn much, if you ask me.”

Nancy fought unsuccessfully to restrain her smile. “Oh Jeff, come on – I SAW what was happening. He was just combing her hair, and she happened to be enjoying the feeling. Hey, I enjoy getting my hair combed out at the hairdressers, what’s wrong with that?” she asked teasingly.

“Well your hairdresser is a woman – Liz’s is Max right now. It’s hardly the same. He’s a different gender, you realize?”

“Well not all hairdressers are male. Sometimes Mr. Henri does my hair, and you’ve never had a problem with that.”

“Mr. Henri is as light in the loafers as they come, dear. I think all male hairdressers probably are. Who would worry about them?”

“Jeffery Parker that is the most outrageous form of stereotyping and homophobia.”

“Homophobic? Me? Hey, I’d be pleased as punch if the males Lizzy surrounded herself with were all gay until she was twenty-five or so. Then I’d have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t NEED to spy on her to protect her from them – or from herself.”

“Jeff you can be so pathetic. She has to grow up, you know. She’s not going to be a child forever.”

“I’m not talking about forever – just another ten years or so. Say – Max told me that he wasn’t a candidate to be Lizzy’s boyfriend because he was – different. You think he might be gay? If he was, he could comb her hair all day and it wouldn’t bother me.”

“Uh, that would be a big ‘No,’ Jeff. If you’d seen the look on his face when Lizzy came out of the water wearing the white blouse that YOU made her wear – no, the young man is DEFINITELY heterosexual. I’ve never seen a boy blush quite that color of red.”

“Pity –that. Still, I’m just as happy he seems to want to keep some distance in the relationship.”

“Yeah, and he’s a teenager, which means 4 weeks from now, he might have entirely changed his mind. A few weeks are an eternity to a teenager, and any decisions that they make are subject to review on a continuing basis. Believe me, in a few months that young man will be grown up enough to change his mind, and all the girls will be all over him. He’s cute, smart, polite – Lizzy could do a lot worse.”
“I don’t want Lizzy to ‘do’ at all though Nancy. She’s too young, he’s too young – and I’m responsible for assuring her safety until she’s a lot more grown up than she is now.”

As they entered the campsite, Nancy just shook her head, chiding her mate. “Well, she’s a lot more grown up than you give her credit for being, dear, and so is Max. If you keep harassing Liz and Max you will just drive her away. I swear, I ought to take that frying pan we spent the morning cleaning and knock some sense into you.”

It really wasn’t karmic justice. It was only a coincidence that it was that moment that the rifle butt struck him in the back of his head – clubbing him to his knees. He heard Nancy start to cry out but she was quickly muffled.

“Tie them up and gag them,” said Pancho. "There are four bedrolls so there are still two missing. We must secure the other two as well. Then we can eat and rest.”

“Yes Jefe,” said another voice.

Jeff quickly felt his arms being tied behind his back while a gag was stuffed in his mouth.