“What’d I do now?” he asked the third time she pulled out the notebook, figuring she must be giving him more check marks.
“I’m making a list.”
“To report my transgressions?” he teased.
She swept him with a condescending glance. “That list is in my head. This list is of things to do before we return to the landing site. Plus, I have a breakdown of our income and expenses thus far, with a projection of how much we need to earn. In crude spreadsheet form, of course.”
“Of course.” Hell, I’m traveling with a human calculator. He snorted with disgust.
“What? You don’t like lists? Or planning?”
“There’s such a thing as too much order.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, seeming genuinely puzzled. “I really wish I had my Franklin Planner with me. I could organize this venture much better with a daily itinerary.”
Screw your itinerary. “I prefer spontaneity.”
“Spontaneity breeds chaos.”
“Huh?”
“By the way, exactly how much gold did you say you need to take care of your money problems?”
“I didn’t say.”
“How can I plan how many days we need to stay unless you tell me? I can make a chart for our daily input of gold and output of expenses, cross-referenced with the price of gold today, compared to the market value in 1996.
“Hell!”
“You swear too much.” She tapped her pencil impatiently on her pad. “Well?” she prodded.
“A hundred thousand or so,” he mumbled.
“Wh-what? You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I were, babe. I wish I were.” He rode ahead then, not wanting to discuss the matter further. The amount gave him a shock, too, every time Lorenzo ran it up on his adding machine.
Later, he saw a group of Indians up ahead near a river-bank and decided to stop for a break. It was well past noon and he was hungry. Besides, that should stop her whistling . and ooohming and list making for awhile.
“Do you think they’re friendly?”
“No, I think they’ll probably scalp us, after they stop picking those flowers,” he snapped.
The dozen or so Indians, wearing grass skirt garments down to their thighs, really were picking flowers, or rather they passed large conical baskets back and forth under a bunch of wildflowers and shook the seeds into similar baskets on their backs.
While Helen went into the bushes to relieve herself, he watered the horses, then walked over to the wary “redskins.” They looked as if they would run at the first sign of a tomahawk.
None of them seemed to understand English, but finally one old Indian sitting under a tree nodded and said, “Si,” when Rafe tossed out, “Habla Español?”
Rafe threw out a bunch of questions in Spanish, and the toothless man said he hadn’t seen anyone answering Pablo’s description, and told Rafe it would take another day for them to get to Marysville.
Curious about the shy Indians — mostly women and children — who kept darting inquisitive peeks his way, Rafe asked, “What are they doing?”
“My people gather the flower seeds. The women crush the seeds, then mix them with ground acorns and grasshoppers for bread making,” the old man said in stumbling Spanish. ” ‘Tis our way, taught by our ancestors.” He handed Rafe a slice to sample.
Grasshoppers? Yech!
Helen ambled out of the bushes then, hips swinging with an exaggerated sway — something she’d been doing since issuing her challenge. Rafe noticed immediately that she wore only a T-shirt over her sweat-dampened skin, having ditched her camouflage shirt and gown.
“What the hell?” He stood menacingly. “Put the gown back on, Helen, or I will.”
“It’s too hot to wear all those clothes,” she said defensively, dancing off to the side to avoid his grabbing her. “Besides, no one can see me the way we’re traveling off the beaten track.”
The old Indian watched them expressionlessly. He was probably thinking, Crazy palefaces!
Damn it, Helen knew how he obsessed over her breasts, and the T-shirt called attention to them. He could see that she took great pleasure in his discomfort, especially when she smiled seductively and then deliberately tucked the shirt into her slacks, real tight.