Chapter 1

On this her third day of camping, Cindy would gladly have traded her last mouthful of dried apricots for a face-to-face debate with Euwell Gibbons over the spiritual rewards of returning to nature. Disgruntled and sweaty, her mind flashed on cereal ads featuring scrub-faced girls sitting next to impossibly heavy backpacks, hair pulled back in neat pigtails, armpits dry. Huh! She felt like a withered, rumpled, defeated frump. God, for a hot bath and a shampoo . . .

The nineteen-year-old trail-weary hiker propped her firm buttocks down on a rotting log, her bulging orange backpack leaning lazily beside her amidst a patch of wild strawberries. The sweat-popping June sun filtered sunshine over the splash of Indian paintbrushes, Butter Cups and other mountain flowers too delicate for this rugged man's country. The thin cotton of her T-shirt clawed at the clammy mounds of milky flesh beneath it, and her long tanned thighs the color of ripe wheat were crosshatched with red welts from scraping through underbrush and black and blue from bumping into rocks. A big gash encrusted with dried blood was a sorry reminder of her city upbringing; yesterday she'd skated down the slippery shale river bank, scraping her shins brutally.

Trickles of perspiration stood out like studded pearls on her tanned forehead and as the brunette wiped them away with her arm, a disparaging sigh broke from her throat. She glowered down at her polish-chipped nails. Another broken nail, darn it! Her smooth red lips drew into a pouty line that deepened her dimples and puckered her chin into a wrinkled button. That did it! Cindy Weinstein was ready to head back to Chicago and lose herself in the concrete jungle.

When Jed suggested this camping trip she envisioned lying naked in green meadows, watching deer nibble at apple blossoms, skinny dipping and passing the days in lazy bliss. Instead they were playing Davy Crockett, forging trails and competing in an endurance test with themselves.

"Look at the sky, Cindy! Ahhh . . . gorgeous!" Jed beamed like some witch doctor after a rain dance, staring up at gathering black clouds. "God, I love the mountains . . . "

"I do, too . . . on postcards . . . " muttered Cindy, hoping he wouldn't hear. Apparently he did, because his six-foot frame unfolded as he rose up from the ground and ambled over to her. His girl friend's pixie face was scrunched up in a frown and childishly she dug doggishly at the soft humus earth, chopping away toad stools with the vibran soles of her sturdy hiking boots.

Hands on his hips in an exaggerated masculine pose, Jed glanced down at his girl friend's lustrous curly hair that shot blue highlights back at the sun. He straightened his shoulders, towering above her. Poor judgment, was it, expecting this city girl, a pampered Jewish girl from Skokie, Illinois to appreciate the physical challenges that made men like himself sweat blood, tear ligaments and crunch bones for the sheer pleasure of knowing he had the guts to do it. Now that he thought about it, Cindy had never approved of his ambition to play pro football after he graduated from college, either. Well . . . he thought, working his square jaws on a handful of sunflower seeds.. . she'd have to learn.

"Like some sunflowers seeds or granola before we hit the trail?"

"Hit the trail . . . but . . . " Cindy's brown eyes paled as she lifted her head to follow his gaze that settled like noonday sun atop a craggy mountain. "No . . . you can't mean . . . ! "

"Come on," he cajoled. "You might hate me for it now, babe, but when we get back to Chicago you'll be ready to take on Arnold Schwarzenegger."

"Sure," she sniveled, reaching back to rub her own aching shoulders. "Are you gonna walk back to Chicago, too? No, maybe we should roller skate . . . or you could ride me piggy back!" she snapped caustically, suddenly hating the way the sun was baking dirty sweat on her forehead. What good would climbing a mountain just to sleep on it prove anyway? Why couldn't they have gone to London or some civilized place where somebody could carry their luggage instead of them toting it around on their backs like a bunch of plains Indians looking for better hunting grounds.

Jed turned his back to her, his nostrils flaring with contempt for the weaker sex called woman. "Please quit complaining, Cindy," he pleaded, lightening the tension between them with a smile. ". . . Or I'll hang you up by the heels from that tree next to the food sack and let the bears get you."

"B-Bears . . . you mean there's bears up here?"

"Yes! And they eat up brown-eyed girls from Skokie!"

"Don't humor me, Jed! I'm not super woman, you know . . . "

He stared up at the mountain, its white snow cap kissing the blue sky. "Too bad you aren't . . . then you could carry both of us." His blue eyes squinted and blinked against the sun until he shaded his eyes with his hand, staring long and hard at the base of the mountain. "Come on . . . I'll help you get your pack on."

Judging from the sun's angle it was about five o'clock that afternoon as Jed gave in to exhaustion and slipped his backpack off his shoulders, the Sierra Club metal cup banging against a tree stump as he hit the ground in a bed of pine needles on one of the few flat stretches of ground before the rugged granite flanks of the Teton Mountains began jutting out like steely claws. Jed wiped the sweat from his brow and winced as he used both hands to support his left leg under the knee and stretch out his leg. The crunch of his kneecap sluiced the still mountain air and alternately wincing and rubbing, he worked at his football-damaged knee while the sun filtered angularly through the pines, the mountain winds whipping through the trees in a sussurated hush. The sound of snapping twigs jarred him. He raised his head in time to see Cindy trudging up the footpath, her tawny cheeks crimsoned from the effort, her lush breasts rising and falling in panting breaths.

Jed grinned up at her and nodded his head approvingly. Courageous girl, his Cindy. There weren't too many girls on campus who could keep up with his pace, on the trail or in between the sheets.

His hand rubbed over his swollen kneecap while his eyes rubbed over Cindy's lush five-foot-six-inches of tanned, healthy flesh. The weight of her backpack dragging on her shoulders tightened the perspiration dampened cotton of her white Peter Frampton T-shirt until the diamond chips of her nipples poked through the clinging fabric like two symmetrical eyes winking up at the blue Wyoming skies. Her gray leather hiking shorts rode high on her slender thighs tightened now from three days of hiking and climbing despite blisters and thirst. Some trooper, that Cindy, he thought, smiling to himself as the dying sun caressed the blue highlights of her impossibly black curls worn short and natural.

Back on campus he'd had to share her with her studies, but now he had her all to himself . . . he and the mountains.

"That'a girl. I knew you'd make it." She came closer, huffing, blowing a naughty curl out of her eyes.

"Aaaahhhh Gawd! I could drink a river dry. . . . " Shedding her backpack she collapsed on the ground beside Jed.

"Hey, don't get too comfortable.. . we have to build a fire."

"A . . . a fire?" she panted. "What for?"

"To keep the animals away. It'll be colder up here than it was down in the meadows." Jed had rolled up his pants leg and was hobbling over to his backpack on one foot where he rummaged around in the tightly rolled contents for an Ace bandage. Cindy winced, watching him wind the elastic bandage around the swollen nub that had once been a knee.

"Oh, Jed . . . that looks terrible! You shouldn't be walking on it for Godsakes! You won't be able to play . . . "

His don't-play-Jewish-mother-with-me look cut her off short and she looked the other way, mouth shut. Then he was dancing about on one leg gathering stones and arranging them in a circle. "Find some twigs . . . it'll be dark soon."

Begrudgingly she pulled her aching bones up from the ground and noticing that her waist line had tightened up, her mood lightened. "Didn't think I could keep up with you, did you boy?" she teased, coming up behind her lanky boyfriend and wrapping her arms around his back to clasp around his broad chest, teasing at the puckered nipples on his hair-fuzzed chest. "Thought city girls could only make it in the back seat, huh?"

Jed spun around, blue eyes playful. "Garr-rraagghhhh!" he growled and dug his fingers under her armpits, tickling her until she clamped her upper arms protectively over her rib cage. Girlish giggles chimed in the mountain air and a scolding blue jay took a low sweep over their heads while a squirrel sat mutely on a tree limb watching these two-legged animals.

"Ohhhhh . . . haaa, Jed s-stop!" His fingers moved to the center of her chest to play with the puffy nipples of her milky breasts.

"Oh, oh! There's a bear!"

Cindy went pale, her giggles dying in her throat.

"Ha ha . . . gotcha!" he snickered, amused at her false fears. "I'm gonna bite your nippies off with my fangs . . . rrarggghhh!"

By sunset the air was crisp as a bite into a cold green apple and a steady breeze whined through the pines, serving as a windbreak. . . silent, save for the eerie howl of the night's breath. Somewhere out there an owl whoo-oo'd. The campers sat close enough to the fire to feel it burn their tanned cheeks.

"Jed . . . ? " she started, a Sierra Club cup hot with tea clasped in her hands,". . . doesn't it scare you to know there are . . . wild animals out there?" Her rounded shoulders shuddered involuntarily and her down vest rustled restlessly as she hunched her shoulders, hunkering against Jed who sat staring mesmerically into the fire.

"Not really . . . better animals than humans. I'd rather have a bear mad at me than Coach Dickerson."

"Oh come on!"

"No, really . . . " Jed gritted his teeth, chips of bark flying as he hacked with his ax at a dried pine bough and tossed it into the biting orange flames that spit and crackled from the sticky pine resin that made the night air smell suspiciously of air freshener. Now and then the crack of twigs in the blackened shadows of the trees beyond would make both of their heads spin around to see nothing, and then Jed would look at her sheepishly. To be safe, the flashlight sat within reach . . . not that it could stop a mountain lion or an angry bear.

Animals of the four-legged variety wasn't Cindy's only fear. Her spine felt as though an army of ants was parading up and down that vertebraed path and she eyed her boyfriend, hoping his knee was paining him enough to keep his mind on it and off his other biological organs. (Organs . . . that's how her mother had labeled the fleshy machinery between a man's legs.)

Being close with a man when your fingernails were caked with dirt and your hair stuck full of pine needles wasn't Cindy's definition of romance. Making out-that was her prescribed limit, anything beyond that was self-deprecating. Her first semester of school her mamma had told her what to expect from a man in the sex department, and her soured description of what should be physical bliss sounded more like Medieval torture.

"Sex is a cross we women have to bear. Nothing is fair or equal about it. On your wedding night your husband will take your virginity. Your hymen will be brutally ripped, the pain will be excruciating.. . and then you will hemorrhage. Women have bled to death on their marriage beds. Once-you remember?-I broke my leg and the bone popped out of my skin?"

Cindy nodded, remembering the afternoon when she was five years old, she'd had nightmares for weeks after seeing the blood, the white bone, and hearing the sounds of her mother's screams.

: "You remember how I finally passed out from the agony, and when they tried to move me I came to again, and how they had to give me morphine to ease the pain?"

Wide-eyed and wondering, Cindy said quietly, "Go on."

"Well the pain that afternoon was nothing compared to the agony I suffered when your father took my virginity . . . even though he tried to be gentle."

"But I thought making love was supposed to feel good!" Cindy objected.

"Making love, huh! Making war is more like it, for the woman is always defeated, degraded and subjected to indignities."

Cindy's mother sat forward in her chair. "Can you imagine what it's like having some sweaty, hairy male beast crawl like a spider over your naked body?"

Now, two years later Cindy still felt spiders crawling over her body, and as Jed stripped off his down vest and folded it up for a pillow, the orange flames made shadows dance over his strong jawline, giving him a hollow cheeked vampire-like profile. The reflection caught his glimmering eyes just right, giving them a gimlet cast and then and there Cindy would gladly have stared a bear in the eye than crawl in between the zipped up down that might as well have been a marital bed. The two preceding nights they had shared campsites with strangers on the trail, but tonight it was Cindy and Jed and the mountains.