Hawk's Way by Joan Johnston Page B

fears about the forthcoming journey. But he couldn’t help asking, “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
    She grinned. “For the first time in nearly a week I know exactly where I am.”
    Dallas was willing to follow where she led. He was impressed that evening as he watched herchoose a campsite along the Guadalupe River and start a fire. “You’ve done this before,” he said.
    Angel smiled at him. “Dozens and dozens of times. You forget, this is my world.”
    Dallas felt a stab of regret. Angel seemed perfectly happy here. It certainly didn’t look like she had any plans to return with him to the future. Assuming that he could return. He didn’t want to think about that right now. Or about what his life would be like in the future without Angel in it.
    Dallas had done some camping, but this was different. There was no civilized town over the horizon, no escape from the elements or the dangers of this land. He knew he ought to be afraid, but somehow the fear never came. Instead, he felt solace, a kind of peace he had never experienced in the future. Which was crazy. He didn’t try to explain it; he simply enjoyed it.
    After supper, Dallas sat back against a sun-warmed stone with a tin cup of coffee in his hand and realized he had never felt so content. “This is really wonderful,” he murmured.
    Angel sat cross-legged near the fire, her coffee cup warming her hands in the evening chill. The night sky was filled with stars that seemed timeless. “I missed this when I was in the future,” she admitted. “The spaces without people, I mean. And the quiet.”
    A coyote howled in the distance and was joined by a chorus of mournful yelps.
    â€œThat doesn’t sound so quiet to me,” Dallas said.
    Angel smiled. “The sounds in my time are natural. Crickets and frogs. The rustling of leaves. Even the coyotes. They’re not as harsh to the ear as the ring of a phone, or the whine of a motorcycle.”
    Dallas opened his mouth to agree with her, but froze when the quiet was pierced by a gunshot. He dropped his coffee cup, leaped up and kicked sand into the fire, then grabbed Angel around the waist and headed for cover. Their peace was gone. The clamor of a dangerous civilization had intruded.
    â€œYou expecting company?” Dallas hissed into Angel’s ear.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAny suggestions who that might be?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen I suggest we pack up and get out of here.”
    They matched actions to words and quietly and efficiently returned what they had removed from Dallas’s backpack and set off in the dark toward their destination. Dallas hadn’t realized how complete the darkness would be. There was no distanthalo of light that signaled a town. There was only the light from the stars and a rising moon to show them where to step.
    Suddenly Dallas felt a surge of admiration for the woman who followed in his footsteps, the woman whose hand he held tightly in his own. He knew her fear of the dark was genuine. Yet she seemed unperturbed by the vastness of the land over which they walked, the immense nothingness that was Texas before man had conquered its untamed reaches.
    They walked for several hours in silence, until Dallas was sure they weren’t being pursued by whatever danger lay behind them. At last he slowed and finally stopped in the hollow of a hill. “We’ll rest here.”
    â€œI’m not tired,” Angel said.
    Dallas grinned wryly. “I am.” He dropped the heavy pack he carried and sank to the ground near a lone mesquite tree, pulling her down beside him.
    â€œAre you cold?” he asked.
    She shivered in response.
    Dallas lifted her into his lap and enfolded her in his arms. She laid her head on his chest and snuggled up closer to him. Dallas smoothed the hair away from her forehead. “Do you think you can sleep?”
    She yawned.