EAGLE NEST RANCH
BECERRO CREEK
Mike and Jill rode two of the ranch horses down the rugged path toward Becerro Creek. He was on his favorite mare, Azure, an adopted line-back dun Kiger Mustang and Jill rode Scooter, a bright red sorrel Quarter horse gelding with a flax mane and tail. Both horses picked their way over the rocks, around the cactus and yucca as Mike led them down to the edge of the creek to his favorite spot on the ranch; a deep clear pool formed by a bend in the creek surrounded by massive oaks and cottonwood. They dismounted; let the horses ground tie, loosened their girths and walked over to a large flat slab of fossiliferous limestone by the creek's edge.
Mike didn't know that this spot was also the favorite of his fifth great uncle, Jonathan Hermann. The twenty-four year old Jonathan had been killed back in 1836 when General Antonio Lopez De Santa Anna Perez De Lebron and his six thousand Mexican troops choose the part of the Rio Grande to cross where Eagle Nest Ranch lay in route to San Antonio de Béxar. The slaughter of all but one of the Hermann clan was the first battle prelude to the battle at the mission known as the Alamo. Mike's fifth great grandfather, Fredrich, was the sole Hermann survivor only because he had been on a supplies buying trip to Edinburgh. He arrived back at Eagle Nest shortly after the fight to find the rest of his family mutilated, bayoneted and desecrated. Fredrich noted with a small degree of satisfaction that his family put up a tremendous fight, accounting for over seventy of Santa Anna's soldiers.
The horses began to graze the short buffalo grass while Jill carried a wicker type basket with sandwiches, fruit and bottled water over to the limestone outcrop. Mike had taken an old gray woolen blanket with wide red stripes that had been tied behind the cantle of his saddle. He spread it over the rock for them to sit on and enjoy a peaceful lunch away from the BEF facility before they had to start prepping for that night's mission.
A bass slapped the water in the creek as Jill pulled the blanket back to get a closer look at the rock.
"Look at all those different types of shells in the rock."
"All this country was sea bottom during the Cretaceous. This type of rock makes great looking table tops when it's cut and polished," Mike explained.
"I can believe that."
"Ah, smoked ham, tomatoes, bread and butter pickles with mustard," Mike said as he opened the baggie and lifted up the top slice of homemade bread.
"Do you never get tired of smoked ham?"
"Not yet… Haven't found anything I thought was better. If it ain't broke, don't fix it… What did you make for you, turkey?"
"Of course. I've never tasted turkey like this."
"It's wild Rio Grande turkey. Don't think we've ever had store bought turkey on the ranch." Mike took a big bite of his sandwich, followed it with water from his bottle and continued, "God provides us a wonderful bounty. We only buy what we can't hunt or grow ourselves."
"I see why you love it here so."
"Five generations of Hermanns have lived here… Maybe we should talk about six," he said as he looked over the top of his sandwich at her.
"Maybe we should talk about that after we do our job and get the President back… How did you and Maria finally work out your little problem you were having in the sim?"
"Oh, that. Your suggestion about the targeting laser and the GPS did the trick. Just had to train our lying eyes not to look at the regular air speed indicator. And having the pilot not flying call out increases in airspeed from the GPS enabled me to keep eyes on terrain better at speed and be more aware of our inertia at a thinner altitude."
Jill took a bite of her turkey sandwich and said, "Maybe we need to add another program to the flight computers to reduce the optical illusion effect and allow for air density."
"I don't know… I think having to multitask tends to keep us sharper. Plus don't want to get to the point that we're just passengers."
"Don't see the possibility of that. There's still only so much computers can do. It's like watching those computer generated actors in a film… Just isn't the same."
"Roger that," Mike said as he leaned forward to brush a crumb of bread from Jill's lower lip.
Their eyes met and like magnets, they came together in a passionate kiss.
No comments:
Post a Comment