A Soldier's Pledge. Nadia Nichols

be kissing him, that’s for sure. I’ve learned my lesson.”

      “Where’s your father now?”

      Cameron focused hard on the ground at her feet. “Oh, Daddy flew his plane into a mountainside about a month after I got married. He was a real good pilot, careful. It was an unexpected turn of real bad weather, rotten luck and mechanical failure that killed him.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Me, too,” she said. It still twisted her up inside to talk about it. She guessed it always would. “Were you ever married?”

      “Nope.”

      “Smart.”

      He was having more and more trouble getting his leg over obstacles. Finally he stopped. “You go on ahead. I’m just slowing you down.”

      “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll go start the cook fire. You can’t miss the camp. Just follow the river. It’s not much farther. We’re almost there.”

      Cameron took it as a very good sign that he didn’t put up any argument about sharing her camp. It had been a hard slog, and he was ready for a break. They both were.

      This was only day two, and things were working out just the way she’d planned.

      * * *

      BY THE TIME he reached the camp, the sun was angling into the west. Cameron had started the campfire and opened the bottle of wine. The steaks were nicely marinated, the potatoes were all dressed and wrapped in aluminum foil jackets, ready to be nestled into the coals, and she’d made a salad, courtesy of the well-stocked cooler. Best of all, the breeze was still stiff enough to keep the bugs down. She had removed her mosquito netting, changed into dry clothes and touched up her makeup. The stage was set.

      He didn’t say anything when he arrived at the camp site, just looked around, laid his rifle case down, shrugged out of his pack and dropped into one of the folding camp chairs. He pushed the mosquito netting back over the top of his hat and sat there, looking completely wrung out. Cameron poured a glass of the bordeaux into one of the fancy polycarbonate nesting wineglasses that were a wedding gift she’d never used, and handed it to him, then poured a second glass for herself and sat in the other chair.

      They gazed at each other across the small cook fire, which was already settling into a nice bed of coals. She took a small sip of wine, wondering what she should say. His pant legs were soaked from walking through the wet brush, and she wondered if he had a dry pair in his pack. She wondered if she should suggest that he change into dry clothing because the evening was shaping up to be a chilly one.

      She pondered why she was wondering if she should say these things when normally she would just say them. She’d never been bashful when it came to speaking her mind, and Walt had told her more than once that she was downright bossy, yet all she could do was sit with her wineglass clasped in both hands and watch him and wonder what to say.

      “I have a plan,” she blurted out, startling herself because she hadn’t thought to speak aloud, not while he was looking at her that way. He raised his wineglass and took a taste, still watching her over the small campfire.

      “You give me the clothes you’re wearing,” Cameron continued, “I put them in my laundry sack, and tomorrow morning first thing I take them down to the trapper’s cabin. I’ll leave them there, hanging all around the outside of the cabin. Then I come back up here, pick you up and we leapfrog our way back to the cabin. You can walk a bit, or I can drag something of yours and do all the walking while you take the canoe. We’ll cover a lot more ground and lay a good scent trail that way. If your dog survived that run-in with the bear, chances are she stayed in the area. That cabin is the only human structure along this whole river. She’ll pick up your scent and home in on it.”

      He took another swallow of wine. His eyes never left her face.

      “My daddy had a couple hunting dogs when I was little,” she said. “Bang and Vixen. Every once in a while they’d run off on a hot trail, and when they hadn’t come back by dark he’d leave his wool jacket there on the ground. Sure enough when he went back the next day those beagles were right there by his jacket, waiting for him.”

      She set her wineglass on a flat stone, put another chunk of driftwood on the fire, raked out a bed of coals, nestled the potatoes on it and covered them with more coals. “I hope you like steak and potatoes,” she said. “That’s tonight’s special.” She used a piece of driftwood to nudge the live fire to one side of the fire ring, then laid the grill over the narrower end and the exposed bed of coals. “I won’t do a dirty steak, don’t like the grit. I prefer throwing steaks on a hot grill.” She rose to her feet, fetched the bottle of wine and topped off his glass. “There’s an old saying, ‘Wine gives strength to weary men,’” she said. “Sometimes when I’m really tired, the only thing that gives me the strength to cook and eat my evening meal is sipping a glass of wine first. That’s good wine, isn’t it?”

      She sat back down in her chair, cradling her own glass. “Bet I could catch us a char for breakfast right off this point when the sun sets.” She gazed out at the river. “See that riffle halfway across? Right below it. Bet there’s a beauty or two just laying there in that back eddy. Do you like trout? Rolled in cornmeal and fried in bacon fat, it’s the best breakfast ever.” She took a taste of the wine and congratulated herself for choosing so well.

      “Roy didn’t like fish,” she continued. “He liked to catch them, but he wouldn’t eat them. How can anyone trust a man who won’t eat a wild caught trout?” She stretched her legs toward the fire, flexed her ankles and admired her L.L.Bean hunting boots. “These Bean boots are good boots for this kind of travel,” she said. “They sure are good for tramping in the woods and canoeing. If I’m lucky, I can get four months out of a pair.”

      She cast a covert glance from beneath her eyelashes. Was he falling asleep on her? She pushed out of her chair, retrieved the steaks from the cooler and laid them on the hot grill. The steaks hissed. Fragrant smoke curled up from the bed of coals. “Maybe you could tell me a little something about your dog,” she said. “Like how you found her in Afghanistan.”

      He shifted in his chair, pulled off his hat and laid it on his knee. “I didn’t find her,” he said. “She found me.”

CHAPTER FIVE

      SHE FOUND HIM in the Hindu Kush, in the rugged mountains along the Pakistan border. He was on advance patrol, the only American in the group of four. They were scouting for a possible Taliban training camp in some of the roughest, wildest mountains they’d been in north of Hatchet. For over a week they’d had little contact with the outposts to the south, and they’d been unable to find the rumored camp. He kept to himself when they bivouacked that night, preferring to keep his own company. Ever since the outpost attack at Bari Alai, he hadn’t really trusted Afghan soldiers.

      He ate a cold MRE, drank from his water bottle, eased the small of his back against the side of the mountain. The sunset illuminated a jagged wall of snow-covered peaks to the west. If he hadn’t been living so long in this place of war, he would have thought this country was beautiful, but it was hard to admire the mountains when each and every day was a struggle of straight up or straight down, carrying gear that weighed close to seventy-five pounds, and wondering when and from where the next attack might come, and if he would survive it.

      There was enough light remaining to work on a letter to his mother he’d been writing for the past week. He pulled it out of his pocket along with the pen, used his thigh as a paper rest and added a few sentences. “These mountains at sunset remind me of home. If this war ever ends, I could be looking right at the future ski and snowboard capital of Pakistan. Hindu Kush could become a popular tourist trap. This mountain range is part of the Himalayas, and the mountains are rugged and wild. Hard traveling. We camp when we can go no farther.”

      He could hear the three Afghan soldiers talking and laughing quietly, and he could smell pot on the faint updraft. They smoked it