Chapter 34 Evan Tries to Move On
He couldn’t watch her drive away. He turned back to watch her go, but caught a glimpse of her in the left side mirror as she pulled away and saw the pain in her eyes. It was just too much for him and he had to turn his eyes away and dismiss her. She had made her decision. Maybe it was the right decision for her. It didn’t seem like the right one to him, but he had really only known her for a week and he couldn’t presume to understand everything about her. His heart didn’t agree with the same logic and it was sabotaging his thoughts.
Evan heard the last sounds of the car tires as they crunched over the gravel on the road. He veered away from the barn and turned toward the pasture fence. He leaned upon the top rail and looked out across the grass toward the winding stream that followed along the base of the slope to the south of his lonely ranch. Its loneliness had doubled in the past two days and that had doubled in the last two minutes as he forced himself to let go.
He felt the pain rising out of his chest and into his throat as one of the mares on the other side of the pasture fence made her way over to him and shoved a velvety muzzle into his face. He felt her warm breath and the snuffling sound of her nostrils. He knew she didn’t understand what was going on inside of him, but she did have the keen sense of knowing that something was not right with him. He had noticed this particular quality in this mustang mare that was absent in the domestic horses.
He had gotten Annie from a neighbor who had adopted a mustang through the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse Adoption program, but soon discovered that it wasn’t all that easy to tame a wild mustang. When she and Evan first stepped into the round pen and went through the paces of a peace treaty, the result was an instant affection that had never been broken. The neighbor transferred the mare over to Evan, and he had gotten a couple of decent foals crossed with a quarter horse stallion out of her. She had a third at her side who showed even more promise. The colt’s curiosity brought him over to poke his muzzle in Evan’s face as well, but like a foal often does, he tried to nip him and Evan pushed him away. “You need to teach him some manners,” Evan warned Annie. He reached up and stroked her muzzle. The moment of compassion from Annie encouraged him to get back to work. That was the best way to get his mind off of Alexandra.
Skipping lunch was nothing new to him. He didn’t really feel all that hungry at the moment anyway. He had a filly that needed some riding and the cattle over in Brush Creek needed a little attention. Bob Fraser and the other ranchers from the pool would be riding Brush Creek and Beaver Creek in the morning, and he could help things along pretty well if he started some of the cattle in Brush Creek around the steep, rocky trail that led into Elk Creek.
“Well, old girl,” he said as he stroked Annie’s muzzle. “Seems like you and I have been through this before.” He suddenly remembered how Annie had been there for him in a very similar situation when Grace left him. “But I’ve got work to do, sweetheart. Thanks.” He patted her neck and rubbed her muzzle one more time and then turned toward the barn.
He caught the 4-year-old filly that he had been working with before he started Bill. He chuckled at how the gelding had gotten his name. He had quoted the line, “What is in a rose that by any other name would not smell as sweet?” Alexandra had been shocked at his quoting of Shakespeare and when she said, “Shakespeare?” He decided to call the gelding Bill after William Shakespeare. His heart ached and started to stir up all the images of their week together, but he pushed them aside and concentrated on saddling the filly. When he had finished, he led her out of the barn, mounted in the ranch yard and headed out to the road that led toward Beaver and Brush Creeks. He and Alexandra had ridden out this way several times together and it seemed extraordinarily lonely to be heading out alone.
As hard as he fought it, the images crept back in. As he rode past the place where Alexandra’s car had broken down, he recalled the first time that he had seen her. He remembered the fear, then the anger at his isolated life and lack of a phone or a truck, but most of all, he remembered the change that had come over her and the joy and freedom in her eyes when she fell in love with the horses and with the mountains. She was even beginning to appreciate his life a little bit. As he rode past the fallen tree where he had rescued her from the bear when her saddle had turned, and Cherry had run off. He remembered holding her as she shook and sobbed from the terror that she had experienced. He remembered how she had been waiting in his bed, completely nude, and how the tension had been broken through a long night of lovemaking. He had fallen in love with her long before that, but after that night, he realized that there was chemistry between them that flowed as naturally as a mountain stream.
He let his heart cherish their time together for a moment and then his mind interrupted things to remind him that she had made a choice that did not include him. She had promised herself to another man and that was that. The pain, led to another bitter memory and a wound was reopened as he remembered how Grace had left him. It wasn’t another man that had caused her to leave. Grace left him because the romance of being with him in this wild and lonely country had finally worn off. They had met while he was teaching at a small college in upstate New York. The mystery and intrigue had been what won her over more than any sort of love for him. Evan did not realize that until several months after she had left him.
As he rode toward Brush Creek and started to gather a small group of cattle that were close to the trail that led over into Elk Creek, his mind was swept back to the moment when he and Grace had met.