Charlie and Mindy B. 01

This is the fifth chapter of seven in Book 1 of the

Charlie and Mindy

tetralogy—which is a story of forbidden love between a brother and a sister. I am rewriting and reposting a series I removed over two years ago.

It takes time for the chaste love between a brother and a sister to become erotic love between a man and a woman, and the first few chapters of this book chronicle that transformation, so the early chapters of this series may not be what you're looking for. While there is sexual activity in every chapter, the "good parts" of the story don't appear until later chapters.

You can follow Charlie and Mindy's hike on USGS topographical maps or on on-line versions of them. (There are a number of good ones on the Web.) This chapter begins at their campsite above Island Lake, and they return to their old campsite at the upper Pole Creek crossing.

I value your comments and your feedback. When circumstances permit, I will try to respond to each.

—CarlusMagnus

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Friday

It was a cold night, even in the tent. I remember waking up, not too long after falling asleep, to pull the sleeping bag's top zipper up all the way—after which I rolled toward Mindy and pulled her close. She sighed and snuggled in close without waking. I vaguely recall a few more episodes of waking briefly when one of us, feeling too cold, or just too lonely, pulled the other close. Her little body felt like a toasty warm furnace in the doubled sleeping bag with me.

We woke together, I think, early that morning, trying to find each other. We lay there in each other's arms, trying to come to grips with consciousness. Her naked boobs pressed against my own bare chest. She wiggled her hips as she snuggled against me, showing me that she had trapped my morning wood, which projected from my boxers as usual, between her thighs. She rubbed her cleft against it, through the thin cotton of her boxers. I approved; rubbed back.

"Mmmm," she murmured, "that feels good. Do you dirty old men ever not have boners?"

"Oh, once or twice a month we don't. But I always do when a naughty little babe rubs her tits and her pussy against me."

She grinned, continued to rub. And she wiggled her shoulders so that her tits would rub against me, too.

"I am

not

little."

"I thought we settled that last night when I magmanimous… manganomous… magnimamous…"

"Is 'magnanimously' what you're trying for? It means 'with great generosity.'"

"Yes…when I, with great generosity, didn't drop you into the pond over there."

"'Magnanimously' my ass! You weren't man enough! And speaking of asses, who was it that wound up flat on his, Mr. Great Generosity?"

"That was the biggest, dirtiest

cheat

I've ever seen. It wasn't a fair fight. You used your feminine wiles."

"Yes, I'm feminine whiles you're not. And it isn't my fault that girls are just naturally smarter than boys."

I kissed her. We squeezed each other. But our bladders were too full for us to keep up the rubbing, however good it felt, and we were soon out of the tent. There was frost on the ground here and there, and on some of the boulders nearby; we hadn't just imagined that it'd been a cold night.

The sun wasn't up yet, but the sky was a clear dark blue, so sunrise was about a half an hour off. But even when the sun had risen above the horizon, making it officially day, we would still be in the shadow of ridges to the northeast. So we were an hour or two from getting any warmth from that source.

We scurried off to empty our bladders, and then, shivering in the cold, we scurried back to our packs. We dug out our woolies and got dressed as quickly as we could. There wasn't much breeze, so we warmed up pretty quickly once we had some layers on. It was time to think about breakfast. I started heating the water for the coffee.

"Oatmeal and pancakes?" I asked.

"Can I make the pancakes?" she asked.

"Sure. What about the oatmeal?"

"Too easy for an expert chef like me. Any dope can fix oatmeal. Even you can do it."

"You're just asking for it this morning, aren't you?"

She looked at me. Gave me her most evil grin. "I just might ask for something this evening."

"I call a foul! Illegal use of feminine wiles! Again!"

"Poor boy."

"Man!"

"Poor, poor little man."

I gave up and started getting the food out. Our verbal exchanges almost always wound up with me flat on my figurative ass and her standing over me. That wasn't ever going to change, I was beginning to understand. But it hadn't really sunk in yet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We had another long hike that day. I wanted to camp that night where we'd camped Tuesday evening—right below the uppermost Pole Creek Crossing. So today's hike would be a rerun, in reverse, of Wednesday's. It was still pretty early when, camp chores completed, we got on the march. We were still wearing a layer of wool against the morning chill.

We headed back down to Island Lake. When we topped the rim of our little basin, the lower three-quarters of the lake came into view. As before, there were campsites along the lakeshore—though they seemed to be in different places than earlier. People had left, others had arrived.

At the bottom of our ramp, the Indian Pass Trail awaited us. We climbed up toward the unnamed pass that led to Little Seneca Lake. Again, we were lucky; we saw no one on the trail near Island Lake. As we topped the pass, we did encounter a party of five hikers traveling in a close group. But they were my kind of folks—respectful of other peoples' wishes to avoid unnecessary human interaction in the wilderness. We exchanged no words. They simply nodded politely at us as we passed; we nodded politely back.

Then we were back on the short ramp that leads past cliffs down through a notch to the trail junction where we'd lunched on Wednesday. We reached that junction a little past mid-morning, and took a break. The sun had warmed us, and we stripped down to our hiking shorts and shirts. We were feeling pretty good; after four full days at high elevation, three of them involving a substantial amount of hard labor, our bodies had hardened a little, and we'd acclimated some to the altitude. The view, though familiar, was no less awe-inspiring than it had been two days before. After ten minutes or so, we followed the Highline Trail across the basin toward Lester Pass.

It was nearly an hour later, and I was ahead of Mindy, rounding one of the switchback turns about halfway up the northwest shoulder of Lester Pass, when a rock rolled backwards and out from under my left foot. I'd just lifted my right foot and started to swing it through to step forward. I heard Mindy yell "Charlie!" as the mountain jumped up and body-slammed me with all the force of my 60-pound pack added to my own 190 pounds. Pain transfixed me. I didn't lose consciousness, but the impact dazed me. I don't have a very clear memory of the next minute or so.

When my mind started functioning again, my first thought was to take inventory of what hurt and what didn't. Most of the pain had localized to my right upper arm and my upper right shin. I lay on my right side on the trail. Most of the weight of my pack was on the ground—indeed, the pack supported me more than I supported it.

Mindy had managed, somehow, to shed her pack; she knelt beside me, looking very worried. She implored me to speak to her as she unbuckled my waist belt and loosened my shoulder straps. I looked back at her and somehow contrived a weak smile; I couldn't remember ever being so glad to see her.

When she saw that I'd responded (I have no idea if, or how long, I'd been unresponsive), some of the worry left her face, and she asked, "Are you okay, Charlie?" She smiled back at me—also weakly.

"I think so," I replied. "But I'm not sure. I'm pretty shook up. Give me a minute."

She continued to help me unstrap my pack, so I could move more easily. By the time we got me free, I knew that I hadn't broken any bones. I got to my feet. I could walk, and I could use my arm—both without additional pain. She steered me to a nearby boulder that I could sit on.

The pain in my arm was already diminishing; it felt like Mindy had learned how to deliver an effective punch and given me one there. (I was a little befuddled, but even so, I knew better than to tell her that.) My shin felt like a different story.

"I'm okay, I think," I told Mindy. "My shin hurts pretty bad, but everything else seems to be fine."

She smiled, but I could see that she was still worried. She ran her hands over my head, applying light pressure to see if I yelped. I didn't; I hadn't hit my head. She made me move all of my joints and muscles. They all worked without complaining. She began running her hands over me, gently squeezing or pressing parts of me to see if I'd hurt something and not noticed.

Under other circumstances, that would've been pretty enjoyable. In fact, even under those circumstances, I liked it—and not just because she was doing exactly the right thing. I almost said something about having a cute babe feel me up. But she was, correctly, treating this as serious business, and I figured out in time that making a smart-assed remark like that wouldn't be wise.

Eventually we decided that the pain in my shin, where a rock had scraped off a two-inch square of skin, was from the worst of the injuries I'd sustained. It was only an abrasion—though it was a nasty-looking one.

We had a stuff-sack full of first-aid equipment with us, and she dug it out of my pack. She poured some of her iodized drinking water onto the wound, and cleaned it as best she could with a sterile gauze pad. Then she spread some antibiotic ointment on the bleeding area.

As she taped another gauze pad over it, I realized that she, too, had sustained a shock, and that taking care of me had helped her recover from it. But I also knew that that wasn't why she'd taken care of me.

"Thanks," I said, "for helping me, Mindy."

"Like I wouldn't? It scared the shit out me when you fell and didn't get up. Mostly I was worrying about how you'd take care of yourself if I had to go for help. I'm really glad you're okay."

"Boy, I'm glad, too," I said. I had heard the relief in her voice. And I'm sure that she heard it in mine.

"Do you think you can travel?"

"Yeah. That won't be a problem. But I'm still a little shaky. Let me have a few more minutes while the adrenaline subsides."

She handed me her water bottle, and I took a big drink. I handed it back to her; she put the lid on it, and set it aside. She grabbed my head with both hands, pulled me close, and gave me a big kiss on the lips. "God, I'm glad you aren't hurt!" she said when she'd finished.

I put my arms around her and pulled her close. I squeezed her; she squeezed back. I said, "And I'm really glad that you were here to help me. It meant a lot to me to know that you were here when I didn't know if I'd been hurt bad." We looked each other in the eyes and kissed again.

When we parted, I said, "I think I'm ready to move again."

For the first time since I fell, I thought about my pack. It was still lying in the trail, open, some of its contents strewn about, because Mindy had gotten the first-aid kit out of it. I looked it over carefully, paying careful attention to the frame. It didn't seem to have been damaged—even though it had probably taken a good share of the impact.

It suddenly occurred to me that Mindy, distraught as she had been when I'd fallen, might've just dropped her own pack where she stood. If so, she could've damaged it. I looked around, and saw that when she'd taken it off, she'd been careful to place it on a flat boulder where it could lean safely on another boulder.

Evidently,

I thought,

my wonderful little sister doesn't panic easily.

I stuffed things back into my pack, dusted it off as best I could, and shouldered it. Mindy shouldered her own. We'd lost about half an hour, and I had a sore shin. We each also had a renewed and deepened sense of how important we were to each other—and not just because we had to depend on each other out there in the wilderness.

We reached the summit of the pass a little before noon. We stopped there briefly to enjoy the view. Below us and a little to the right lay Lake Nelson—easily recognizable because of the island near its southern end. Tommy Lake, for which we were headed, was hidden behind the low ridge that lies below the pass and just to the left of our trail.

In the distance stood the conical peak of Mount Baldy. As it had been up on there two days earlier, the northwest wind was uncomfortably strong and cold. Rather than put on extra layers, we simply descended the southeast slope, and let the pass block the wind.

I had pretty much recovered from my fall. My shin still hurt, but it had no effect on my ability to walk. I reckoned that, the next day, I would ache all over—but some aspirin would take care of that.

At Tommy Lake, nearly an hour later, we took a lengthy break. We needed it, after the stress of my accident. Mindy checked the bandage and found that a little bit of blood had seeped through the gauze. But it was holding well, and we didn't think we needed to do anything else.

We got out some trail food and our water bottles, and sat on the hillside above the lake. The notch where Angel Pass crosses the Divide commanded our view to the southeast as we munched. Nothing eases stress in a teenager quite the way food does, and after that break we were pretty much ourselves again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was about 3:00 when we reached Tuesday evening's campsite. It had been a good site, and we decided to reuse it. We made camp about 15 or 20 yards from our old spot, in order to reduce our ecological impact.

We hung out for a while, working on our journals, reading, or just enjoying the scenery. Eventually, having decided to fix supper, I put some water on the stove. We'd only used half of the freeze-dried beef we'd brought, and I planned to use the rest of it that evening. There was also macaroni left, so chili-mac seemed like a good idea. We also had plenty of oil and vinegar left, so I again visited the "salad garden" spots I had found on Tuesday.

As I started working on supper, Mindy put her book away, and sat down on a rock near me. She looked at me seriously. "What could I have done better after you fell?" she asked.

"Well," I said, "I think you did everything right. I guess it might've been better to leave my pack on me until you knew I hadn't broken anything. Where did you learn to check someone for hidden injuries the way you did me?"

"I took a first-aid course last winter. I wasn't even thinking about a trip like this. I just thought it would be a good thing to do."

She continued: "Are you sure that's the only thing you can think of?"

"Yep." I smiled at her. "You did better than I probably would've. You took a few seconds to set your pack down carefully instead of just dropping it. That shows just how levelheaded you are. If you'd gotten hurt, I'd have been in such a hurry to get to you that I'd probably have thrown my pack off and let it roll down the mountain."

She smiled back. "Somehow, I don't think so. And I'm really glad it wasn't worse."

"Me, too. But I have to tell you that, when you were checking me for unnoticed injuries, I almost told you how nice it was to have such a babe feeling me up."

She stopped smiling. "Charlie, if you'd said something like that when I was so worried about you, I'd have picked up a big rock and brained you on the spot." The smile came back. "And no jury would ever have convicted me—not even an all-male one here in Wyoming."

"Ummm… I think that's why I didn't say it. I knew it was serious business, and I knew you were doing exactly what you should've been doing. You're a good, strong, smart woman, and it makes me proud that you want to be around me."

She glowed again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After supper, she shooed me away from the kitchen area, saying that I'd done enough for the day. She cleaned up the dishes, and she put water on the stove for our hot chocolate. Ensolite pads in hand, I found our old seats against the familiar rock ridge, and waited for her.

It wasn't long before she came from the stove with our capped cups in hand, both full of cocoa. She handed me mine and sat down at my left. She picked up my arm and put it around herself, wiggled in close, looked up at me, and said, "Hi, handsome."

I was in the middle of a slurp of chocolate. When I finished, I looked off to the right, away from her. "Do we have a guest?" I asked.

"Charles Edward Magness," she said severely, using my full name—in the words of Tom Sawyer, the name 'they lick me by.' "You are the world's biggest dope. Kiss me, you great big hunk!"

It was an offer I couldn't refuse. "All right, Melinda Lee Magness, I will," I said, not wanting to be outdone in the use of the other's full name. And I did.

When I'd finished, she looked at me, smiled, said, "Mmmm. A sexy guy with chocolate breath! What kind of kiss could be better?"

"Well," I said, "maybe for you. I'll take a babe with beer breath myself."

She knew I'd developed a taste for beer during my year at college. And the remark got me an elbow in the ribs.

We sat silently and worked on our cocoa for a bit, each enjoying the other's closeness. After a while she asked, "Can we be serious for a minute? It's nothing bad—I just want to say some things I want you to really listen to."

"Okay," I said. "I'll really listen."

"When you were fixing supper, you told me that I'm 'a good, strong, smart woman,' and it makes you proud that I want to be around you. I want you to know that you've always been my big brother that I've always looked up to. You've always taken care of me, protected me, and…"

She paused for a moment, and I could see that she was rummaging about in her memory. She went on. "Do you remember that time you beat Dan Shearer up because he hit me after I called him a 'dumb fuck'?"

"Do I?" I replied. "I was about eleven, and he was two years older. He almost cleaned my clock, but I got in some lucky punches. Mom whipped me for it. Dad was away somewhere—probably exposing someone for one of his trials—so she used one of his belts. But he'd hit you and he deserved it."

"That's '

de-

posing,' you dope—not '

ex

-posing.' And 'lucky punches,' my ass! He was a lot bigger than you, but you blindsided him and knocked him into a mud puddle. He never saw it coming. You were on top of him before he even knew what was happening. He never had a chance. And you wouldn't quit working him over until a couple of high school boys pulled you away from him, because you were trying to drown him in that puddle. And everybody thought you were about to succeed!"

"Well, I sort of lost my temper when I saw him hit you. And it looked like he was going to do it again. After he hit you, you called him an 'asshole'—and he didn't like that, either. But I promise I was going to let him take his face out of the water as soon as he was unconscious."

"If he was unconscious, how could he have taken his face out of the water?"

"I didn't think that was my problem…"

"But you did it because he'd hit me! Mom wouldn't have whipped you if you'd just said so. I heard her tell Dad later that she couldn't figure out why you did it. She said that all you would tell her about it was that he was a bully and he deserved it."

"Yeah, he was, and he did. And you were right. He was a 'dumb fuck,' too. But if I'd told her why I did it, you'd have gotten Dad's belt laid across

your

heinie. She would've wanted to know why he'd hit you, and if she'd found out you'd said 'fuck', she'd have given you the licking of your life for being so uncultured."