Chapter 1

Zane Grey loved this country and made his fortune writing about it. I am well aware that I could never be the writer that he was, but he couldn’t have loved it more than I do. I will tell my story as best I can.

From the top of my mesa, I could see more than a hundred miles in every direction, except south. That was because the Grand Canyon cut a swath several miles wide, thirty miles or so to the south, and the land on the other side was at a lower elevation.

Vast swatches of color marched across the landscape to the north, at the Utah border. The vermillion cliffs there rose up to meet the forested highlands that led to snow covered peaks on the other side of Zion National Park.

Scattered Juniper and Cedar trees dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see, with Zane Grey’s purple Sage lending additional color.

Eight mile high thunderheads boiled up from the desert floor to the east, while the view to the north was black, with massive amounts of rain being dumped on Zion park. Between the thunderheads and the black storm clouds, fluffy white clouds shared the sky with brilliant blue sky.

Ah! Heaven! At 6000 feet, our elevation is well above Denver’s highly touted mile-high altitude. At this elevation, most popular conceptions of desert life went out the window. The temperature drops to freezing ten months of the year, after sundown. Even in July and August, the two warmest months of the year, the temperature seldom gets unbearably hot, as most people would imagine, on hearing that this was the Arizona desert.

Truth be told, my land wasn’t desert in the official sense. To be classified as desert, there needs to be less than 10 inches of rainfall per year. Our County Agent told us that the size, distribution and type of trees that we have were proof of at least 12 inches per year.

We bought the land many years ago, my wife and I and her mother. We lucked into a situation that allowed us to buy one of the very few privately owned sections of land in the 7.5 million acres of the Arizona Strip. This is the portion of Arizona that is on the north side of the Grand Canyon. The total population is just over 6000, concentrated in the towns of Colorado City and Fredonia.

Our section (one square mile which equals 640 acres) is a rarity in being privately owned. Nearly all the land in Arizona, and especially in the Strip, is owned by one government agency or another. There are Indian reservations, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), national forest lands, national monuments, state park lands and other agencies that own just about everything outside the two towns.

Our section had been homesteaded when the west was still wild, but the man who homesteaded it was long dead and his sister offered us a deal we couldn’t refuse.

My wife is gone now <sigh>, married to someone who is much better for her and her mother succumbed to the cancer that was visited on the area by the fallout from the nuclear testing that was performed in Nevada. They called those who shared her calamity, “Downwinders”. The U. S. government stonewalled their claims for many years, but finally agreed to reparations.

I had waited for many years, trying to get my affairs in order sufficiently to be able to live here, but until now, it had remained a dream. Although I would not be able to share the experience with the woman I loved, at least now that I was retired, I would be able to build a place for myself.

I was ten miles from a paved road or electric utility, eighteen miles from the nearest store, twenty miles to the post office and forty-five from a Walmart. I needed to be completely self-sufficient or be prepared to spend a lot of time and money traveling back and forth.

The world has changed a lot since we first fell in love with this property. Mobile telephone and Internet service are now available here, which makes a tremendous difference. The availability of solar power panels also makes a huge difference.

Even the BLM road is in better shape than ever, due to increased traffic as isolated homesteads began springing up, miles apart.

My appreciation for the better roads was at a peak, at the moment. I had managed to time my trip to coincide with one of the infrequent rainstorms. Not only was it difficult to see, but the challenge of dodging the rapidly growing pools of water was increasing. I was so intently focused on driving that I almost missed seeing the flutter of white to the side of the road.

I had driven this road often enough to know that the only colors out here were some shade of red or dark colors. There was no white, other than an occasional bit of paper blown in from the miles-distant highway.

Still, there was something about that blob of white that made me stop the truck and run out into the driving rain to investigate.

It was a girl! A young blonde girl, wearing the uniform of the nearby polygamist settlement--an ankle-length, long sleeved dress. What was she doing here?

She was in no shape to offer explanation at the moment and the rain made it prudent to get both of us to some sort of shelter as quickly as possible. I managed to get her in the truck and belted up to hold her upright and continued to my trailer before the road became impassable, which it frequently did after one of these gully washers.

My first concern was to get her to shelter and administer whatever first aid she might need, assuming that I had the necessary tools and supplies. I desperately hoped that she had no broken bones.

She was still unconscious when we arrived and although she probably weighed only a hundred pounds or so, her limp body made the process of getting her from the truck into the trailer a real task.

I blotted as much water as I could manage, from her hair and face, but it was very obvious that she needed to get out of her wet clothes. She was already beginning to turn a bit blue and was shivering uncontrollably.

Although well aware of the potential consequences, my mind told me that her only hope was to get dry and warm as quickly as possible.

Somehow managing to roll her unresisting body back and forth as needed, I managed to strip her completely of all the complex clothing she wore. Once again, I blotted all the moisture I could from her body and rolled her under the covers before stripping and joining her so I could add my body heat to hers.

Almost immediately, I joined her in dreamland. The adrenaline that had been surging through my veins left in a rush.

Morning came in a fog of incomprehensible sensation. The sunlight streaming through the windows was normal, but why was the bed shaking and what was that snuffling sound?

I rolled over and remembered. The girl was curled up into a tiny ball as far from me as she could get in the small bed and she was sobbing quietly into her fist.

“Good morning,” I told her. “You have nothing to fear from me. I found you on the side of the road and brought you here to get you out of the rain.”

The sobbing continued so I slid out of bed as decently as possible and wriggled into some dry clothes.

“My name is John. I’m going to fix something for us to eat. Maybe you will feel better after eating.”

When she continued sobbing, I told her, “I’m going to put your clothes out in the sun to dry.” If anything, her sobs grew louder.

I gathered them up, wondering at the purpose of some of her underclothing, and carried them to my clothesline. They might be a bit stiff after drying without washing, but at least she might feel more secure with her uniform to hide in.

When I had breakfast ready, I took some of my clothes into the bedroom and told her she was welcome to wear them until hers were dry and that she could eat when she felt like it.

There was no change in her manner, so I closed the bedroom door and left her to her sorrows. Sooner or later, she would have to get up. There was no need to put pressure on her.

I finished eating and puttered around to be nearby when she decided to resume contact with the world.

I tried once more. “I’m going to go outside and check for storm damage. When you need the bathroom, it is the door next to the bed and there is food in the kitchen. Your clothes are outside in the sun and should be dry before long. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

Still no response, but I didn’t really expect any, now.

I really did need to go out and check for damage. There were a few places here and there that had suffered minor damage, but nothing drastic. Output from my temporary solar panel array seemed to be slightly down. A few depressions in the panels indicated that there had been some grapefruit sized hail along with the rain. I would need to check the roof of the trailer for damage, as well.

I quickly gave thanks for the relatively minor damage and for our escape from a worse danger than I had realized. Hail of that size can be deadly.

After checking the weather forecast and my e-mail, I spent a few minutes scanning for any news of a missing girl, with no results, although there were reports that the nearby town had suffered hail damage.

I jumped in the truck and rode around the property, looking for any other signs of damage. Evidence of the severity of the storm was everywhere. When a storm dumps enough water to leave standing puddles in sandy soil twelve hours later, it qualifies as a major event.

When I drove back up to the trailer, her clothes were gone from where I had hung them, so I assumed that she had made it out of bed.

I announced my entry loudly so she would not be surprised, but did not find her. She must have decided to hike out to the highway. There didn’t seem to be any food missing, but hopefully she had at least taken something with her. This wasn’t a true desert, but it was close enough to use common sense rules of desert living.

“Never go very far from shelter without carrying some sort of food and water.”, is a very sensible rule and has saved many lives. If she was planning to hike over ten miles without being properly prepared, she could easily get into trouble.

I had lots of things I needed to do, but I couldn’t simply abandon someone who showed no experience with desert life.

She had made it a couple of miles. I saw her in the distance as she topped a rise on the road. She appeared to be staggering.

When I caught up to her, she was once more curled into a fetal ball. I had to find some way to get through to her.

“Miss, I wish you no harm, but I can’t stand by and watch you try to do something that could result in great harm to you. If you will tell me enough about your situation to be able to help you, I will do so. Otherwise, all I can think of to do is to take you to the Sheriff’s office and let them deal with your problems.”

When I mentioned the Sheriff, her head jerked up and I could see her parched lips.

I handed her my canteen and said, “If you will allow me to help you, then I will, but as long as you won’t let me help. All I know to do that I could live with is to take you somewhere else. I can’t leave you in a place in which you have no ability to survive. Is there someone anywhere around here I can take you to?”

Her continued silence was getting on my nerves. Her actions had dropped a huge burden of responsibility on me and she was refusing to acknowledge it.

I gave her a few more minutes to drink and ponder her situation, then stood. “Ok, if that’s what you want, we are going to the Sheriff.”