Free Renegade Man by Parris Afton Bonds Page A

ones—completed her formal wardrobe.
    As children, she
and Soren hadn’t known each other that well. He had been older, and after he’d
moved away from Chihuahua Hill their paths just hadn’t crossed. “Why’d you come
back to Silver City?” she asked, watching him from her side of his Lincoln.
    He glanced away
from the road and smiled at her. “1 guess because it’s home. I don’t like big
cities. Too impersonal.” He turned his attention back to the road. “Are you and
Jonah a duo?”
    “What makes you
ask that?”
    “Well, you were
once, and—”
    “That was grade
school sweetheart stuff, Soren.”
    “And now that
you two are...” He paused, and she could tell he was searching for the right
words. “Living in the vicinity of one another?”
    She had to smile
at the flush that spread across his cheeks. Then he chuckled. “It was pretty
boorish of me to say that, huh?”
    “No, you were
reacting with purely masculine inquisitiveness,” she said, chuckling. “But as
to your question about Jonah and me—we just happen to be tenants of the same
sandbar.”
    “Well, if you
ever get tired of roughing it, Rolistof’s plant manager returned to London for
the summer. His cabin’s about five miles out of Santa Rita, and vacant.”
    “Too far from
the flats, I’m afraid. With the summer almost a third gone, I need to be
on-site as early and as late as possible. But thanks for the suggestion.”
    She had so
rarely dated that she felt awkward making conversation, and Soren didn’t appear
to be any more at ease than she was. During lunch, at the crowded Red Barn
Steak House, she got him to tell her about his job. He seemed to relax then.
    “...if Rolistof
lasts much longer, that is. Although it employs more than a hundred locals, the
townspeople are up in arms, claiming it’s polluting Bear Creek. But they’re
wrong. Even the Environmental Improvement Division says that Rolistof has
satisfied all the state requirements.”
    She managed to
pass up the chocolate torte and settled for an after-dinner coffee. “Well,
since I don’t get the Daily Press out where I live, I’m not familiar with local
politics.”
    “Then let me
tell you all about the city these days,” he said with a warm smile. “Do you
have to be back at Tomahawk Flats right away?”
    She shook her
head, and he said, “Good. A walk in Big Ditch Park ought to be just the thing
for a nice summer afternoon.”
    But as they
walked along the lush, tree-shaded path along Main Street Gulch, Soren talked
about his wife, who had died two years earlier. “I didn’t realize it would be
this lonely. It’s hard starting life over at thirty-seven. I suppose that’s
really why I came back to Silver City. Now that Stephanie’s gone, it’s the only
home I have left.”
    They were
crossing a picturesque footbridge, and they stopped simultaneously midway. “I
understand that bottomless pain at losing someone you love,” she said, leaning
against the railing. “My husband Robert died three years ago. I think what you
miss most of all is that sense of belonging. I have a son—Trace— but he’s at
UCLA, so sometimes I just can’t help getting lonely.”
    Soren took her
hand in his big one. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Rita-lou.”
    * * * * *
    A slight breeze,
still carrying the heat of the boiling June afternoon, rustled the oak leaves
above the redwood picnic bench Jonah used for testing his mineral finds.
Because its fumes were deadly, he had to heat the mercury outside his camper,
and he was careful to stand upwind. Once the quicksilver in his riffle pan
separated the gold from the minerals usually found with it—mostly garnet,
pyrite and mica—he only had to boil off the mercury and funnel the remaining
gold flakes into small jars.
    Mercury was so
expensive that he was often tempted to resort to the old-timers’ simple method:
splitting an Irish potato, then hollowing out one side and placing the mercury-covered
gold in it. After