5. Stetson
FIVE
Stetson
I did not like this woman…did I?
I’d found her trespassing on our land. She’d been nothing but uncooperative since the second I’d laid eyes on her. She had no sense of self-preservation, she was feisty as all hell…I should not have liked her.
But I was a man of few words, and it turned out spending time with someone who would not shut up about frogs was actually…kind of nice.
Damn it.
We rode in silence for maybe fifteen minutes before she started peppering me with questions—about the creek, about the property, about my family and how long I lived her and what exactly I did for a living.
I gave her one-word answers: the creek was “nice”, property was “home”, family was “complicated.” Eventually, she figured out that I didn’t want to talk, so she started doing it for me.
That meant frog facts.
I didn’t mind frog facts as much as I thought I would.
The Holt Creek Chirping Frog, as she called it, was nearly indistinct from its near-relatives, the Cliff Chirping Frog and the Rio Grande Chirping Frog.
The difference, apparently, came down to toe pads.
Hers had slightly larger toe pads relative to body size—an adaptation, she said, for gripping wet limestone instead of the drier rock the other two preferred.
“That’s it?” I asked. “Toe pads?”
“That, the call, and they skip the tadpole stage entirely.”
“Skip how?”
“No tadpoles. No pond stage at all. The eggs hatch directly into tiny frogs.” She held one hand up, showing me a tiny length between her thumb and index finger. “Fully formed. Fully adorable.”
“Huh.”
“It’s called direct development. Most frogs need standing water for the larval stage, but these don’t. They never have to leave the rocks.”
Buck cut across the trail ahead of us, nose down, chasing something that only he could smell.
“They only call after rain,” she went on. “Or heavy humidity. Otherwise they go quiet for weeks. You could stand right next to one and never know it existed.”
“Convenient for you.”
“Devastating for me. I’ve sat in the dark, in the rain, for six hours waiting on a five-minute call window. Every second was worth it.”
I hummed. “Sounds a little like hunting.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Never done it.”
“You disapprove?”
She groaned under her breath. “Not…exactly? I understand there’s overpopulation, particularly with white-tailed deer in the Hill Country. I understand it serves a purpose. But I can’t stomach the idea of killing an animal.”
“So you probably wouldn’t love it if I told you my primary job here on the property is as a hunting guide and doing population control.”
“No,” she said. “I would not love that.”
“Figured.”
“Do you like it? Killing them?”
“No.” I kept my eyes on the trail. “Somebody’s got to do it. Deer overpopulate, they starve in the winter, or they wreck a farmer’s fence line trying to get to feed. Rather it’s quick.”
“That’s a very practical way to think about death.”
“Ranch teaches you that.” I paused. “For me, it’s more ethical than slaughtering the cattle.”
She was quiet for a second. Buck trotted back to check on us, then peeled off again.
“I’m not judging you,” she said, “for the record.”
“Didn’t think you were.”
“I just don’t understand how you can be that gentle with a dog and also shoot things for a living.”
“They’re not the same thing.”
“Fair.”
We were getting into more and more dense forest around the creek…it was deeper here, a subtle waterfall flowing along to our right.
“What about the frogs?” I said. “You ever have to kill one? For science.”
“Sometimes. Voucher specimens. You need at least one physical sample to formally describe a new species—genetics alone isn’t always enough for the taxonomy to hold up.”
“How do you feel about that?”
She didn’t answer right away, then: “Horrible. Makes me cry.”
I was quiet for a moment. Didn’t know what to say to that, when it seemed like she was really mourning something so…trivial.
“Strange to worry yourself over something so small.”
Bryn huffed a laugh. There was…something behind that laugh. I couldn’t place it. “Even the smallest lives can mean something.”
I thought about deer season—about Neto telling me the first year I could hunt that if you stopped feeling bad about it, you’d stopped doing it right.
I’d never told anyone that. Wasn’t sure why I was thinking about telling her.
I didn’t.
***
We rode until dusk—could’ve gone farther, but Bryn kept wanting to stop and check out the creek. She wasn’t all too pleased when I forced her to wear an oversized waders in the creek, but I didn’t want the damn wound getting infected.
For her part, she was back to walking normally by the time we settled down and made camp for the evening, going about her business putting her tent together, getting a campfire set, and breaking out some food.
She even had a nice setup for cooking—fire built in under ten minutes, a small grate set over it, a pot already going before I’d finished picketing the horses.
“You cook in the field a lot?” I asked.
She shrugged. “You learn or you starve.”
I got Rowan and Copper settled, water and feed, checked their hooves for anything they’d picked up on the trail. Buck ate some kibble then flopped down near the fire, close enough that he could catch any scraps Bryn decided to toss him.
“Smells like curry,” I said.
“Dehydrated,” Bryn said. “Add water, wait ten minutes, pretend it’s fresh.” She stirred the pot then glanced up. “Don’t get excited.”
“Do I look excited?”
She peered at me. “You don’t look like you’ve ever been excited in your whole life.”
I snorted, then dropped my pack by the fire and sat down on a log across from her. She’d taken off her shoes and was inspecting her stitches, which…thank goodness, actually looked alright.
“Stitches okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Helps that the wound is higher up toward my ankle too…I think I can start walking on it again—”
I grunted.
She cocked her head at me. “You wanna see? Are you a foot man or something?”
I frowned. “Am I a what?”
“Are you into feet?” she asked. “It’s—it’s a thing.”
“No, I’m not into feet.” I shook my head. “You’re an odd duck, Bryn.”
She laughed. “That’s what my ex always said too.”
“Well, fuck him.” I paused. “Or her. I don’t know.”
“Him,” Bryn said. “Very progressive of you not to assume, though.”
“I try.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes; Bryn put her shoes back on, then went to clean off her hands…then came back to the fire to finish the food. Eventually she dished out two bowls, her eyes darting to the dog.
“I can’t give him curry, can I?”
“Not unless you want him shitting himself all night.”
“Noted.”
She fed Buck kibble from her own hand instead, and he took it like she'd done it his whole life.
We ate. The fire cracked. Somewhere in the dark, water ran over rock.
"Tomorrow," she said. "Foot's fine. I can walk."
"We'll see."
"I'm telling you."
"I'm telling you we'll see how it looks in the morning."
She narrowed her eyes at me over the bowl. "You're stubborn."
"Takes one to know one."
Buck rolled onto his side and sighed. She looked at the fire instead of me.
“He was an idiot,” I muttered.
“For my part, I think Buck is very sweet,” Bryn said.
“Don’t be obtuse,” I snorted. “Your ex. You’re odd, but it’s…endearing.”
Her brows shot up. “Oh…so first I’m trespassing, now you find me endearing.”
“Just speakin’ my mind.”
She pulled her knees up, arms around them, and didn’t answer right away. She didn’t look at me when she spoke again.
“That’s a big word for you,” she said. “Endearing.”
“Same amount of syllables as trespassing.”
She laughed. “Fair enough, fair enough…don’t mean to be insulting.”
“I’m not insulted.”
“Nice to be around someone who isn’t so bloody precious about their ego.”
I looked into the fire with her—around the fire at her. “You wanna talk about him,” I said.
“That’s alright—”
“I’m not asking,” I said. “I’m saying you want to talk about him. Keep bringin’ him up.”
Bryn finally looked up, her chin resting on her knees. “He didn’t want me coming out here.”
“Was he worried?”
“No, he just thinks this is a fool’s errand.” She sighed. “These things…they can take years. Establishing a unique population, petitioning against someone’s ownership of water rights. It’s no easy task.”
“You seem more than capable of handling it.”
“Wasn’t handling much of anything before I left Austin a month ago.” She paused. Eyes on the fire again. “Had a bit of a health mishap. It was scary. He didn’t react the way I wanted.”
I didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to; she was offering it all up like she had no choice in the matter, like every word was water spilling over river rocks.
“We’d gotten pregnant,” she said. “Turned out to be ectopic. I…almost died, had to leave the state to get treated. Then when we came back I—” She paused, the words stuck in her throat.
“He was relieved. He was so happy that it hadn’t gone the way I hoped.
But that little thing…I’d already fallen in love with it.
Because I’m the kind of person who falls in love with tiny, insignificant things I guess.
The kind of person who cries over a frog I had to kill for science. ”
I had no idea how to respond, but it felt wrong not to. So all I said was, “I’m glad you’re okay.”
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, letting out a groan and a bitter laugh. “Right—I needed to be okay so you could haul me around in May heat while I look for frogs the size of a thumbtack.”
Buck lifted his head, looked at her, then got up and walked over. He set his head down in her lap without permission, then sprawled out again.
“Oh,” she put a hand on his neck, fingers weaving into his soft fur. “Hello there.”
I let her sit with it—didn’t want her to feel judged, or say anything inappropriate, or…I don’t know. I had no clue what I was supposed to do. Here was this beautiful, brilliant woman, baring her soul to me, and I’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
I didn’t talk much. Didn’t mean I was a good listener. But…she seemed to think I was, and I didn’t want to prove her wrong.
The fire had burned down further, coals more than flame now. The creek babbled along beside us, a Texas lullaby.
“I don’t know why I told you all that,” she said. “Hardly know you.”
“Needed to get it out, I guess,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t mind it.”
She smiled at me across the fire—then she sighed and got to her feet. It really did look like she wasn’t favoring that foot anymore as she took a few steps to the tent, flashing me one more smile before slipping inside.
Buck looked like he was going to follow her for a moment before he shuffled over to me instead. I reached out to scratch his ears.
There was something just…good about it. About a person who cried over the tiniest creatures.
I did like her.
But I didn’t know what the hell to do about it.