The Wood Wife by Terri Windling (the false prince TXT) 📕

canyon, Mica Mountain rose from the desert floor to a height of fifty-five hundred feet, a part of the Rincon Mountain range that stretched across the eastern horizon.

To the north, the Catalina Mountains dominated the sky and local imagination. Most hikers, horse riders and climbers favored the taller Catalinas, or the Tucson Mountains at the city’s western edge, leaving the Rincon range in the east to the deer,, the mountain lions, the botanists and the rangers who fought off the lightning fires each summer. The Rincons were a secretive range; there were no roads up to the heart of it. To learn its secrets, one went on foot, climbing hour after hot weary hour, through cactus and scrub at the base of the mountain, up through gnarled groves of live oak, to the forests of pine at the peak.

Although designated as a federal wilderness, there were still a few places in the Rincons where old land claims permitted people to live, removed from the sprawl of city life below: the cattle ranches of Reddington Pass and along the Happy Valley Road, and the dude ranch in Red Springs Canyon, nestled in the northern slopes. The ranch had been built in 1912 out of oak, mesquite, adobe, and stone. Its buildings were scattered across the small valley, connected by footpaths and one rutted road. The dude ranch had flourished for a handful of years; a hunting club had owned the property for several more; and then the land had been broken up, the buildings sold off one by one. Each cabin had its own history now of owners and tenants who had come and gone; yet together they still formed a loose community close to, but separate from, Tucson.

Fox prided himself that he knew damn near everything there was to know about the history of the canyon; after growing up here, he knew these mountain trails far better than the city streets below. To him, this was a beautiful land, dramatic, surprising and mysterious. But he could tell by the look in the woman’s eyes that she was not One of Them, as Dora would say. One of Them, with desert heat in her heart and a desert wind singing in her bones. She looked around at the loose, dry soil, the spiny cactus and ocotillo thorns, with an edgy, city-bred wariness as thought it was an alien moon.

She turned that wary look on Fox, appraised him, then stuck out her hand. “I’m Marguerita Black,” she said. Her grip on his hand was firm.

“Johnny Foxxe. Or just Fox. You’re Cooper’s friend.”

“That’s right. I’m looking for his house. If you’re Johnny Foxxe, you’re the son of Davis’s housekeeper—and the man who has my key.”

He acknowledged that he was the keeper of the keys, and turned back to his cabin to fetch them. He was conscious of her eyes on his back until he stepped through the cabin door. He found the woman disconcerting; there was something too direct for comfort about her manner and her level gaze. He reckoned she was older than him, five years at least, maybe even ten; she had streaks of silver in her dark hair, and a sexy air of worldliness. He glanced out the window as he reached for Cooper’s keys on the hook by the kitchen sink. She stood looking up at the Catalina crags, watching them turn the color of old violet glass in the setting sun.

She clearly hadn’t expected to find the place so isolated and rough—a reasonable enough assumption on her part, Fox had to admit. Cooper’s address merely said Tucson, and Tucson was a modern enough city with a population of over half a million; you had to know the town to realize it had these wild pockets as well. He grinned, imagining what she must have thought as the roads took her farther and farther from civilization. She didn’t seem entirely pleased by the place. But she also wasn’t scared off. Yet.

He went back outside and handed over Cooper’s keys: the heavy iron key to the house and the smaller one to the generator shed. “I’ll take you over and turn on the water. We ought to check the flue as well before you light a fire there—I think something is nesting in the chimney.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”

He waved away her thanks. “It’s my job. Didn’t anyone tell you that? You own my cabin. And all this land from here, up the wash, to the third bend in the road. I take care of all the house repairs instead of paying rent. Don’t look alarmed. I’m not a nuisance, and old adobes need a lot of work. I’m patching Cooper’s roof at the moment. You’d best be glad you have me around or it would flood come the winter rains.” The woman looked at Fox warily. Too bad. He came along with the house. He’d claimed that cabin long before and wasn’t going to let go of it now. “There’s another cabin on your land, up there, just beyond that ridge. Tomás lives there. He’s an auto mechanic. He doesn’t pay rent either, but he’ll keep your car running, and he’ll bring you good game during the hunting season.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” the woman said flatly.

Fox grinned. “Take Tomás’s vegetables then. And his eggs. You eat eggs? He’s got a big garden. And chickens. And a bunch of goats.”

“What can possibly grow up here, in this soil?” she asked him curiously, looking around at the rocky expanse of mica-flecked granite and quartz.

“You’d be surprised,” Fox told her as he climbed, uninvited, into her car. He waited expectantly until she joined him. “Follow the road on this side of the wash,” he directed as she shifted into gear. The sun was passing behind the outer ridge, casting the valley into shadow.

“How many houses are there in the canyon?” she asked him, pulling back onto the road.

“Six.”

“Just six?” She sounded surprised. He was right. She hadn’t expected the isolation.

“Just six.