This seemed to surprise the man. They sure grow them dumb in Colorado, I thought. Big, beautiful, built, but definitely dumb.
“Who did you think I was?” he asked.
I stood up and looked at him. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but you look a bit like our…our guide.”
The man grinned at me as though I’d said something he’d waited all his life to hear, and I thought, This is great. I couldn’t say or do anything to please one man, but this one seemed to be pleased by even a casual comment. Of course, being compared in looks to our cowboy leader might have seemed flattering to this man.
He extended his hand to me. “You must be Ruth. I’m Kane’s brother, Mike.”
I shook his hand, then set him straight. “I am not Ruth. I’m Cale Anderson, and your brother hates me.”
I don’t know whether it was the “hates me” part or the fact that I wasn’t the beauteous Ruth, whom he’d obviously heard a lot about, but something seemed to bother him. He stood there opening and closing his mouth so that it looked like a pumping human heart on one of those PBS programs.
“But Ruth is—Ruth and Kane—I thought—”
Wow, I thought, a real intellectual here.
As though he could read my mind, he stopped flailing about and smiled at me, and he kept holding my hand even when I tugged on it.
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about the mistake. Kane told me that he and Ruth were an item, so when you didn’t know who I was, I assumed you were Ruth.”
Now everything was clear. Now everything made sense. If I meet a man I’ve never seen before, then I must be Ruth Edwards. Of course. That made perfect sense to me.
Mike laughed, released my hand, and we sat down. He began to tell me a long-winded story about how he and his brother were identical twins. Yeah, right, and I’m Kathleen Turner’s twin. I guess he could see my skepticism, but I started to laugh when he said that for the next twenty-four hours he was going to pretend to be Kane. This made as much sense as my saying I was going to impersonate O. J. Simpson.
I listened to his whole story, told him congratulations on his new babies, and even asked after Kane’s sons, but I still thought he was crazy if he believed anyone was going to mistake him for his brother.
When he got through, he laughed at my expression and reassured me that he could pull it off. By the way, he said very seriously, “Who’s better looking, me or my brother?”
I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but the truth is, Kane is in a whole different class of men when it comes to looks. As tactfully as I could, I said, “It’s not that you aren’t a very handsome man, Mike, but Kane—” I didn’t finish my sentence because Mike laughed out loud, then kissed both my cheeks soundly. I don’t know what had pleased him, but something had.
Since he insisted that he could indeed impersonate his brother, we spent about half an hour by the stream discussing how he was to treat each person on the trail ride. I told him about Winnie-Maggie, and when he laughed at my jokes, I knew I had an audience, so I began to pour it on. At first I was cautious about saying anything about Ruth, but Mike’s laughter and his grin—the more he laughed at my jokes, the better looking he got—encouraged me. He encouraged me so much that I ended up doing a little impromptu parody of Kane and Ruth that sent Mike falling to the ground laughing.
“By the way,” I said, while he was still laughing, “I was telling the truth when I said that Kane hates my guts.”
He tried to look shocked, but I could see a little flicker in his eyes that told me Kane had warned him about me. Mike had thought I was the “good” one; therefore I must be Ruth.
“Why does he hate you?”
When he spoke, his tone told me that he couldn’t believe that anyone could possibly hate me. It was very gratifying, very, very gratifying, and I smiled at him with nothing short of love. “You may not be as good looking or as sexy as your brother, but I think I like you better. Why don’t you stay for the whole trip?” Somehow, that seemed to please him again, and when he got up, he offered his hands to help me up.
You know, I wish someone could explain sexual attraction to me. Why is it that you can put two equally good-looking men side by side and one will turn you on and the other won’t? Here I was, alone in the woods with a dream of a man, a man who laughed at my jokes and obviously liked me very much. But I felt only sisterly toward him. Sure, he had a wife and a couple of brand-new kids, but since when has marriage prevented attraction? On the other hand, Kane Taggert did nothing but frown at me at best, shout at worst. He hated me; I hated him. But too often my thoughts wandered to questions about whether his skin was that lovely golden color all over or was his stomach the color of a frog’s belly?
Mike and I walked back to camp arm in arm while he told me how much his wife loved my books. When Sandy’s campfire was in sight, we separated, and I stood back to watch him make a fool of himself as he pretended to be Kane.
It’s difficult to describe how I felt when I heard those people refer to Mike as Kane. Even Sandy grumbled that Kane had been in the woods too long and wasn’t helping. I nearly giggled when Mike winked at me conspiratorially. It was heaven to be the one who was liked!
Everything went smoothly as the two men saddled the horses and all of us prepared to move out. Mike came over to check my stirrup, which was fine, and asked me how Ruth’s horse’s neck came to be burned. I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t. Too many years of elementary school with kids chanting, “Tattletale, tattletale,” made me keep my mouth shut. I said that I had no idea, but my face turned red, and Mike snorted. “Somebody ought to give you some lessons in lying,” he said.
It felt good to be vindicated.
We rode for a couple of hours, and Mike gave all his attention to Ruth. We’d reached the wide section of an old road so he could ride next to her. Behind them were her handmaidens, both of them holding the pommels of their saddles as though they were going to fall off. Sandy and I brought up the rear, neither of us talking much and both of us watching Ruth and Mike.
By late afternoon my early happiness had worn off. I shouldn’t have been jealous, but I was. It looked as though Ruth had made yet another conquest. Mike was smiling at her, laughing softly over things she said, and in general adoring her.
We reached the falling-down town of Eternity at sundown. There were several buildings of weathered gray boards with a few signs falling off the buildings. One that said “Paris in the Desert” made me smile. Silently we rode down the wide main street, tumbleweeds blowing around us, heading toward a big house at the edge of town where Sandy said we’d camp.
Tired and aching, I dismounted when we reached the house, then looked up to see Mike coming toward me, Ruth’s saddle across his arms.