“Yeah,” he replied sincerely.
“The last person that mentioned my accent compared me to a beer salesman yellin’ at Yankee Stadium.”
“Your old boyfriend?” he guessed.
“Yeah.”
“He’s an idiot,” Peter flatly declared.
Goldie felt herself blush, which she didn’t do often. She liked Peter. She’d known him for less than twenty-four hours, but he was handsome, civic-minded, non-judgmental, except for Markie, and she suspected he liked her, too. In a way, such feelings made her feel guilty because even though Markie had broken her heart with Kristen DiVarno, she couldn’t just turn off her feelings for him like a faucet. Then again, she asked herself, what was she feeling guilty about? Markie wouldn’t even be born for another fifty years.
For now, at least, she dismissed such thoughts and concentrated on the scenery, loving everything she saw. Within another ten minutes, the vehicles turned onto a snowy road even more primitive than the one they’d been on, covered with about five inches of powdery white.
There was only one set of tire tracks on the road coming and going ahead, and Goldie figured it must’ve been from the McCaw brothers’ original scouting trip for the tree. Slowing down and stopping on a scenic ridge, Goldie looked out her window and ooooed at the view. The world was now divided into two separate horizons: the upper part was clear blue sky as far as she could see, and the lower part was a combination of jagged and rolling mountain peaks covered in white and lined with green pines.
“Wow! Absolutely incredible!” she gawked.
“I’ll take a picture of the view if you like,” Peter offered, turning off the engine. “But it’ll be in black and white, and you won’t get a sense of the majestic perspective.”
“Yeah. Please do.”
She climbed out of the station wagon and immediately felt the colder temperature and crisp air nipping at her cheeks. The McCaw brothers climbed out of their flatbed ahead of them and walked toward her.
“I wouldn’t step too far off the road if I was you,” Paul warned.
She looked down at the sparkling, pristine snow around her and took a step toward the edge of the road. “Why?” she asked. Her first and second steps were uneventful, but with the third, Goldie suddenly found herself off the edges of the road, and she plopped into nearly waist-deep snow. The sudden drop-off surprised her, and she gave a high-pitched yelp.
“That’s why,” Saul said matter-of-factly.
The McCaws just looked at her while Peter put his camera bag on the roof of his station wagon, then came around the hood of the vehicle and stepped out into the snow to help. “Here. Take my hand,” he said, extending it. Then he extended his other hand toward Paul. “Little help here, please.”
By making a human chain, Saul, Paul, and Peter pulled Goldie out of the snow in a matter of seconds. Resisting the urge to laugh but grinning nevertheless, Peter opened up the passenger side door, got into his glove compartment, and retrieved two items: a whisk broom and a .45-caliber army-issue pistol.
“Here,” he said, offering her the broom. “Brush yourself off.”
“What’s with the gun?” a snow-encrusted Goldie asked.
“Just a precaution,” Peter shrugged, sticking it into his side jacket pocket. “Up here, you have to be wary of critters.
“I don’t care,” she said, brushing herself off. “This is totally awesome. The view, the snow, I’m glad your dad wanted me to participate in this.”
“An adventure—I think that’s exactly what he was hoping for,” Peter confirmed.
“How high up are we?” she asked.
“Around nine thousand feet,” Paul said.
While Goldie finished brushing herself off, Peter grabbed his camera bag. He took a photo of the vista while Saul untied two axes from the back of the truck and handed one to Paul. After Peter put the whisk broom away, the brothers led him and Goldie into the woods via a deep trail of footsteps on the other side of the road, where the snow went almost up to their knees.
“How in the world did you ever find this place?” Goldie asked the brothers as they trudged through the white.
“To you, this is a mountain,” Paul said over his shoulder.
“To us, it’s our backyard,” Saul explained. “We know pretty much every tree and boulder around here, whether snow-covered or not.”
“It’s also our grocery store,” Paul added. “And when we’re up here huntin’, we’re also on the lookout for a pretty town Christmas tree.”
“We’re like Santa’s helpers,” Saul said, stone-faced.
