Tall grass country shapes and defines the men and women who choose it as their home.
Now the daughter...she was another matter all together. He hadn't seen enough of her to have a clear picture in his mind, but he had seen enough to understand that she carried in her blood enough of her tall father to stand close to six-feet herself. Her figure was willowy and supple and about her there was a sense of innate physical strength. She had dark brown hair almost as curly as his, and large dark eyes, both foreboding and inviting. He reminded her of someone, but he couldn't hang a face on that person.
He tried but failed to shake the feeling that he had just met the most beautiful woman who ever walked upright on the planet. She was gorgeous. He was drawn to her instantly, like a gigantic magnet, and he could not rid himself of the feeling that his life had just taken a sharp turn. He couldn't put his finger on the precise moment it had happened, but he knew that the two of them had somehow connected.
It was crazy and, also, impossible. She came from a camp that might very well be waging war against the Rafter R in a matter of days or weeks. In hours they could be enemies. Suddenly, he felt a need to walk away from where he stood and somehow erase her image from his mind. He needed to immerse himself in something, anything that would wash away his crazy yet troubling feelings.
Sparks and a sense of promise there had been. But, no, how could it be? It couldn't be, he told himself. In the real world it never happened that way. It was nothing more than wishful thinking on his part but, still, he had to admit that when his mind's eye brought her image into focus, he was both excited and frightened.
He could not know that Libby Merwin was grappling with her own powerful emotions. Meeting Truck Roller close up had heightened the feeling she harbored deep within her that she could neither articulate nor comprehend. They flowed from the emotions the sight of him had triggered, when she watched him walk across the street weeks earlier in Ekalaka.
She remembered the two things born in that moment. The first was that the moon had cast him in silhouette, defining him in an unearthly way. She called it "that Ekalaka moon." The second thing she remembered was that he carried himself in a way that drove home to her the certainty that one day she wanted a half dozen of his curly headed sons. The attraction was as inexplicable as it was intense. She blushed at the thought and turned away from them, striving to collect herself and her feelings.