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“Ideas about what?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know. What all men out here seem to be obsessed with.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, girl. I was just making sure the snake behind you kept moving along.”

“What?” Snapping my head round, I just catch the thin black form gliding toward the grass. “Oh, my … Christ!” I shoot upright, shaking off the shiver that winds down my spine, and reflexively scratch at my back.

“Just a garter snake.”

“A snake is a snake. No matter how harmless they might seem.”

With a snort, he shakes his head and splashes his face one more time. “You’d never survive out here on your own.”

“You’re probably right. But you wouldn’t have survived that jump, either, so I’d zip it.”

“Face of an angel and the bite of a viper.” He pushes to his feet, strapping the canteen across his body. “I never thanked you.”

Seconds pass while I wait for the point of his comment,. I cross my arms, brows winged up. “And?”

“And what?”

“Did you intend to thank me for saving your life?”

“I will when you do.” As he passes me, he knocks my shoulder, and I glare after him.

“When I thank you for what? Carrying me into a two-hundred-foot drop that could’ve easily left me spattered on the rocks below?”

“You’d have preferred I leave you behind for Remus?”

“Of course not. I’m mature enough to be grateful.”

Keeping his back to me, he picks up the path we were on a second ago. “So am I.”

“That didn’t sound grateful, or anywhere in the same realm as a thank you.”

“That’s the best you’re going to get.” He follows along the creek toward tall stalks of cattails and breaks a few off. As he continues on, he grabs sticks and sprigs of dry grass up off the ground, piling them into his arm.

Taking his lead, I do the same, gathering up sticks I’m assuming he plans to use for a fire. “So, are we setting up camp here, or something?”

“Yes. It’s late, but I should be able to hunt something for dinner.”

“What do you hunt out here?” I kneel down to grab some particularly dry-looking stuff, pausing when I catch sight of a spider crawling over it. Shivering, I back myself up and move on to a scattering of thin twigs, instead.

“Squirrels, jackrabbits, birds.”

“You have no weapons.”

He slides the blade he used on me out of his pocket and holds it up in silence. Kneeling to the ground alongside the wall of a mountain, he digs a shallow hole, and piles in the sticks we’ve gathered. Splitting open the cattail, he dumps the fluff onto his pile, then reaches for two stones set on the ground beside his bonfire pit. Smacking them together creates a spark, and after a few tries, he manages to get the fire lit.

“I want you to stay here. Should only take about an hour to hunt something smaller.”

“Um. You want me to stay here? Alone?”

“You’ll be fine for an hour. I won’t have to go far, with the trees just up the path and the water nearby.”

“You mentioned … mountain lions.”

“They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”