Free To Hell and Back by P. A. Bechko Page B

tonight. Can’t afford to lose one of the horses.”
    He turned to go again, but Amanda pulled him up short.  
    “Why don’t you just carry sulfur matches?”
    Jake grinned. “I do, but they’re for emergencies. Didn’t figure this was one of them.”
    Hollander turned on his heel, disappearing into the night shadows.
    Amanda had the flour, salt and bit of powder he’d given her, but nowhere to mix the dumplings. She rummaged through his supplies again. Nothing. For a moment she puzzled over it, then got to work.  
    Hollander walked as quietly as an Indian, listening to the soft rustlings and cracklings as night creatures skittered across the rock face to the pools. From somewhere to the north an uncanny shriek told him a big cat was on the prowl.  
    When he approached the horses, his own nickered to him in greeting and extended his head, nostrils flaring, ears pricked forward. It was a good thing he had come to get the horses. That cat might have caused both of them to pull their picket pins and bolt. He had enough just trying to keep track of Amanda Cleary and what was on her mind without being forced to take off on foot after their horses.  
    At least that was his gut reaction, but was it really true? Amanda, for all her headstrong, irritating ways, was still one to admire for her spirit. She was gutsy, she didn’t back down and when she set her claws, she didn’t let go. There were few women, green as she was, who would have taken to the trail as she had, not complaining, just riding it out. The trouble was she was ignorant, and there was plenty she’d have to learn before she could even say she still had a lot to learn. To make matters worse, felt she had to take it all in at once. All or nothing, do or die.
    “Whoa, son,” Jake murmured to his appaloosa, pulled the picket pins and started back to camp.
    He was torn between anger and wonderment when he gave thought to Amanda. Gun strapped to her rather shapely hip, she’d quite simply announced she intended to learn to use it—with or without his help. She managed to price him at every turn. Though he had not said as much to Amanda, he would teach her to handle the weapon properly, if for no other reason than he wanted to be behind her when she was practicing.
    The smell of coffee and bacon frying, filled his nostrils and knotted his stomach with hunger as he strode back into camp. Amanda had dumplings sizzling in the pan, coffee boiling and the snake meat neatly sliced along with the assorted greens he’d brought back. He grinned at her.
    “Good start.”
    The dumplings looked plenty brown to him, so he wrapped his neckerchief around the handle of the pan, slid the dumplings onto a warmed, flat rock, and tossed everything else into the heated pan.
    “Son-of-a-bitch stew,” he announced. “Let’s see what we get.”
    What they got proved to be damned good as far as Amanda was concerned, a feast in fact. The meat sizzled and popped along with the greens, roots and wild onions and squash Hollander had provided.
    “My god, this is wonderful,” Amanda enthused.  
    “You were hungry.”
    “No—well yes, but this is still wonderful. You have to teach me where to find these things, how to cook them.”
    “Don’t you ever ask for anything? Is it always something close to a command with you?”
    Amanda, plainly nervous, jerked at almost every night sound, or twig snapping.
    “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to be a burden.”
    The cat screamed again in the distance, a bit nearer now. Hollander nodded curtly at Amanda’s apology.
    “We’ll be having plenty of company here all night,” he said, “water draws the animals. Don’t worry. I’m a light sleeper.”
    Amanda shrugged it off, then said apologetically, “there wasn’t much flour.”  
    She didn’t know how to talk to Hollander when there was only one thing on her mind.
    “That’s all right,” he replied. “flour is one thing I know where to get more of tomorrow. It won’t be