She smiled, a soft, gentle smile, considering she usually had a witty comeback on her lips. “Yeah.” She took a deep breath and looked away from him to examine an element of a deer. What was she thinking? Was she feeling this deeper pull like he was? “So where do you stand on the issue? The Legacy is yours now. You feel the same way as your mother? Or your father?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.” I’ve totally decided. And yet putting his desires into words seemed like such a hurdle to climb. “It’s a big decision to open all this up. Nothing would be private anymore.”
“The public wouldn’t need to know about it until excavations and documentation were done. And even then, it would mainly be taught about in college classes and updated on Texas history websites. Hypothetically speaking, of course. Then it would just be the artwork you’d need to protect.”
“But all those artifacts would get taken back to Austin.”
She was already shaking her head, then grinned at him as if he were naïve. He hadn’t been naïve about squat for years and wondered if, perhaps, his father had been wrong about his paranoia.
“Only with your permission. You own all of this. We have permission through the program your mother set up to take artifacts on loan back to our research lab, but you could demand them back at any time. It’s right there in the contract that items are on loan from Dixon Cattle Company. I would urge you if we identify any artifacts as belonging to the ancestors of known tribes or nations that you offer them to those people. There’s still quite a bit of distrust from all sides. Museums have a long history of exploiting native artifacts and still rub indigenous nations the wrong way. I don’t blame them. But all of this ancient stuff…
“Why not have professionals excavate, record, and preserve the information for all scholars to use, and maintain your own little museum out here? You could have visitors by appointment. Or have hours and charge a cheap admission. You could host some poor PhD student who needs to study your pottery for their dissertation. There are a lot of ways you could protect these sites, preserve the artifacts, and keep autonomy over them. Or you could loan them to a research lab, or you could donate them to a museum like the Smithsonian where anyone could come to see them for free. You hold all the cards, Toby. Your dad, while his heart was in the right place on the matter to keep them safe, was wrong about us. And the longer you do nothing, the more animals will burrow through these mats and destroy information that might be useful to the archaeological record.”
She seemed to come to a conclusion and refrained from speaking further, then meandered off. For nearly an hour, she looked around, absorbed every detail as if committing it to memory. Not once did she pull out her camera or notebook, and he came to realize it was because she respected that he, as the landowner, hadn’t given permission for the site to go on record. She knelt beside the remains of an old pair of sandals, woven from yucca leaves, so dry and brittle, the heels worn through. Obviously, the user of those sandals had abandoned them and had probably woven a new pair.
Finally, she came back to him on a sigh and glanced around once more as if leaving hallowed ground. “Every time I visit a rock art site like this, I feel like I’ve stepped into an old basilica. I feel a connection to the people who were once here, who I’ll never meet. I know it sounds cheesy, but…” She looked back up at him, trailing off. “Thank you, Toby, for bringing me here.” She nodded. Squeezed his arm. Smiled and continued. “I promised my crew I’d get them into town for showers, so I should probably leave. It’s going to take a couple hours at least to get everyone to the truck stop and back again.” She flashed a smile at him, her old, playful self fixed on her face, and waggled her eyebrows. “And then, fajitas.”
He chuckled, but his smile fell as she brushed past him to leave. She seemed to have put aside the serious turn their conversation had taken and resolved herself to let it lie for now. Toby grabbed her hand and stopped her. She looked back at him, her hazel-brown eyes withholding something. Frustration that he hadn’t offered the site to her to record? Perhaps despair at having to leave something so incredible when she’d barely gotten a chance to see it?
“I’ll think about what you said,” he murmured.
She seemed to understand what he was referring to, smiled, then slipped her hand free and left. Rose seemed to have a way of expressing why her work was important without pressuring others to do something they didn’t want to do. He saw the value in what she’d said, and if he was eventually going to wean the Legacy off of cattle, he’d need other ways to bring in revenue besides a paltry agreement with the Junior Ranchers. He’d already thought about opening up this land for research. Perhaps a grant would supply adequate funding to provide caretaking and oversight of these treasures. Perhaps, if he aligned with a university as a research site, the school would provide the upkeep.
Something to think about. One thing was certain, though. Rose had taken a step back. If he didn’t act as if he trusted her, why would she continue to entrust herself to him?
His phone buzzed in his pocket. How on earth did he have reception out here? He pulled out the device as he followed Rose out. It was a buddy from high school and one of the few guys Toby knew who still wasn’t married or saddled with children.
Keith:It’s poker night. Haven’t heard from you since last week. Am I dealing you in, bro, like usual?
Toby’s thumbs hovered over the keypad. He always went to poker night, tossed back a few beers, and pondered the dwindling group who hadn’t married themselves off yet. He’d forgotten all about it tonight. He looked at Rose’s retreating back, thinking of her and Sage, thinking of her in his shower, thinking of her on his land, walking into the main house as if it were her house. His mom would have liked Rose. Tough, smart, ambitious, funny. He glanced back down at his phone. Hell was officially about to freeze over.
Toby:Naw, man. Can’t come tonight.
Keith:Since when? You sick or something? Stella said you looked like crap the other morning.
Toby exhaled. Rose was about to disappear out of sight, and he felt an inexplicable urge to catch up, to make sure she didn’t disintegrate into the wind like a desert mirage and leave him.
She stopped and glanced back. “You coming?” Her eyes dipped to the phone in his hand.
“Yeah.”
Toby:I met a girl.
Keith:Like, you shacking up at a motel or something?
Toby:Naw. Like, we’re hanging out at my place tonight, eating fajitas.
Keith:Your place? The speech bubble stopped pulsing, then started again, and one word followed. Shit.
He smiled.
Toby:See y’all around.
He shoved the phone into his pocket and jogged to catch up, scooping Rose’s hand into his and holding it with no explanation as they descended back down to the arroyo. He had more research to do about his grassland project. And a proposition for Rose. She needed a job, and he had sixteen of them up and down this canyon that could give her prime real estate in some sweet journals. No sense in damming up a river when all it wanted to do was flow. These babies were hers—and had been from the moment he’d seen her at Stella’s. Hopefully, he’d convince her to give him a chance, too, and not just for some kissing and impromptu dancing but with her heart.