"These mountains are as dangerous as they are beautiful. They might appear to be lovely and majestic but don't let 'em fool you. The beauty hides the heart of a killer," Brenda explained as she dug through her inventory, looking for a pair of gloves in my size.

"Got 'em!" she yelled as she held the object of her search aloft, a pair of insulated gloves joined the rest of my new wardrobe.

A slim and attractive woman in her mid-thirties, Brenda served as the colony's quartermaster. Medium sized, well-tanned breasts protruded from her chest, and a pageboy haircut framed her freckled face. The dented circular scar of a long healed bullet wound adorned her left breast, a few inches below her collarbone.

One wall of the armory displayed her honorable discharge from the US Army along with a citation awarding her the Army Commendation Medal for heroism, a Purple Heart for wounds received in combat, and an Iraq Campaign Medal. Ex-army and combat tested, she was the real deal.

The brand new garments still carried tags from LL Bean. I let out a long whistle when I did a tally in my head. The camouflage Gore-Tex hunting jacket and matching tactical cargo pants carried a hefty price north of eight hundred dollars. Gore-Tex is some amazing shit. The fabric is a lightweight, waterproof, and breathable membrane that repels liquid water while allowing moisture and vapor to pass through.

A pair of Gore-Tex lined winter hiking boots I had brought with me turned out to be the only article of my clothing which passed muster with Brenda. "The secret of staying alive in the wilderness is to stay warm and dry, and the proper clothing is your first defense," Brenda commented as she rummaged around for headgear.

"Is it true that we lose most body heat through our heads?" I questioned Brenda.

"We lose heat from any part of the body exposed to the air, but the head is a special case. For example, when hands are unprotected and exposed to severe cold, the human body tries to maintain a core temperature, and sometimes our bodies will shut down circulation to the hands to conserve heat," Brenda replied.

"The rapid loss of hand function is the net result. Eventually, they become useless popsicles. Our bodies will sacrifice our hands to save our lives. The head is different. Our bodies will never shut down blood flow to our heads, but it will sacrifice everything else to maintain our brains at a functioning temperature. Folks succumb to hypothermia and die from cold without ever realizing they are in danger," Brenda spoke as she produced an adjustable thermal fleece Balaclava Winter Face Mask.

"Is all this really necessary? We're only going hunting. We're not climbing Mount Everest," I grumbled.

"I use the 'parachute principle' when it comes to gear," Brenda said as she examined the facemask. Gear is like a parachute. It's better to carry one and not need it than it is to need one and not have it," she said with a laugh.

After a few adjustments and additions, Brenda smiled with satisfaction. My wardrobe now met her minimum standards for survivability in extreme conditions.

"You can't go hunting without a weapon." the quartermaster laid a Kimber 84M Mountain Ascent rifle on the counter for my inspection.

The rifle weighed in at less than five pounds. Fitted with a four round magazine, it fired a .30-'06 bullet with a muzzle velocity of a bit over three thousand feet per second. The rifle's two thousand dollar price tag was the heaviest part of the Kimber. Apparently, when you win the lottery, money is no object.

Brenda positioned me in front of a full-length mirror and, like a tailor, stepped back to admire her handiwork. "Very nice. Now you look like a hunter. The deer will take one look at you and die of fright," she noted with pride.

"More likely Bambi will die laughing. I feel like an escapee from an L. L. Bean fashion catalog," I said with a silly grin.

"Either way, dead is dead, and Bambi is dinner." Alice smacked her lips in anticipation of venison stew.

Unloaded rifle in hand, I followed her to the underground garage. A somewhat dented 2009 Kawasaki Mule retrofitted to run on hydrogen fuel would be our transportation. We spent the next fifteen minutes doing a pre-trip safety inspection.

I read out the items from our pre-trip cheat sheet, and Alice reported the status of each. Tires? Check. Fuel? Check. First aid kit? Check. Radio? Check. Emergency rations? Check. And so it went until we had checked each of the vehicle's systems.

Satisfied our pre-trip checklist was complete, Alice took her place behind the wheel. I climbed in next to her and rode shotgun, and we sped down the tunnel toward the exit.

Our Kawasaki Mule abruptly decelerated the moment we hit daylight.

"Why so slow? I can walk faster than this," I said to Alice.

"This is our exit protocol. We reduce speed when crossing the meadow to minimize damage to the grassland," Alice kept our speed to a crawl.

It was all rather clever. The Colony's survival strategy was to do nothing to alter the visual footprint of the valley. The likelihood of someone accidentally entering the valley at Liberty Mountain was modestly remote. However, it was a virtual certainty on any given day dozens of Google Earth's armchair explorers loaded images of the valley into their computers. Dirt trails left by vehicles exiting the mountain would attract unwanted attention.

Once we crossed the meadow and entered the forested area, the air temperature dropped like a rock as our rate of travel increased to a more reasonable twenty miles per hour. The ground was littered with splotches of sunlight mixed with delicate patches of sparkling frost feathers left over from last night's deep freeze.

The ecosystem of the valley and the mountains idled between fall and winter as plants and animals braced for the arrival of winter and the season's first major snowfall.

"The herd we're hunting should be about fifteen miles ahead of us. We'll need to cross a steep ridge and two valleys to get there," Alice said.

Thanks to the modifications to our ATV's exhaust system, we journeyed westward in near silence. The sound of our tires on the rocky trail was louder than the whispering purr of our engine. As we topped the crest of the last ridge between our deer herd and us, Alice let the ATV coast to a stop.

The top of the rocky ridge offered a spectacular view of the snow-capped summits all around us, and the clear, chilly air gave the illusion distant mountains were much closer than they actually are. High overhead, the bright indigo sky of the morning now had a hazy white tint and high altitude streamers of wispy mare's tails and cirrus clouds smeared across the heavens from the west.

"Time for lunch and a potty break," she said as she secured the vehicle, killed the engine and dismounted.

"Great idea! I gotta go water some moss." Turning my back on Alice, I used my body as a modesty screen. As I was busy unzipping my fly, Alice moved next to me and stood at my side.

"Do you mind?" I protested.

"Don't get your knickers in a knot. Just pretend I'm not here," Alice responded with a wink. "Besides, you weren't very shy when my daughter and I were playing with you in the shower the other day," she reminded me.

Despite some major boundary issues, I was both amused and flattered by her interest in my man parts. Since our shower episode, she flirted with me and teased me at every opportunity. As much as I hated to admit it, I enjoyed the sexual flirting between us. It was a weirdly major turn-on.

My bladder was so full I started to leak and dribble. I gritted my teeth and tried to stem the flow. I didn't have time for an argument, so I raced to pull my prick out of my pants as quickly as possible. It was a photo finish. The floodgates opened just as the head of my dick cleared my fly.

My knees trembled in relief as urine drained out of me. I am at the age where my early warning system is a bit out of tune. The interval between the sensation of needing to take a piss and the uncontrolled act of urination was razor thin.

I turned to rebuke Alice for her bad manners. She was intently watching every movement of my man parts. Her eyes might just as well have been super glued to my pee-hole.

"Oh, shit! Now I gotta take a piss," said Alice as she succumbed to the power of suggestion.

"Would you like some privacy?" I made a point of drawing out and embellishing the final word of my question with extra syllables for dramatic effect. My version of "privacy" sounded like a blurry "Pretty-City."

"Thank you for asking," Alice said as she unbuckled her pants and lowered them and her blue cotton panties to her ankles. She squatted down, looked me in the eye, smiled, and pointed to her neatly shaved crotch as she let loose a thick stream of bright yellow piss.

I frowned at Alice for her exhibitionist behavior, and she burst into laughter. "Don't be such a prude. I caught you spying on me while I was spying on you. You liked what you saw so I gave you a show for the fun of it."

"Lady! That was no show. That was the whole damn circus," I growled as ' pretended to be annoyed. My stern demeanor crumbled when my shoulders started to shake with suppressed laughter, and my mouth broke into a grin.

"One day a voyeur and an exhibitionist walk into a bar and," I took a breath as I tried to remember how the joke went and my mind went blank. All I could remember was the punch line. "Here's looking at you kid."

An interesting fact of life: it is nearly impossible to stay pissed-off at someone when you are both sharing a laugh.

After the show-n-tell piss break, we got down to the business of lunch. The thermos we had filled in the kitchen prior to our departure produced two steaming hot bowls of the colony's legendary venison stew.

I studied Alice as I dug into my serving of stew. Despite our shared laughter, there was something about Alice's sexual advances and continuous flirting that didn't ring true. Why would a hardcore lesbian like Alice suddenly decide she needed a man in her life?

There was a frantic, almost desperate desire for us to engage in sex, so much so that she was even hinting at bringing her virgin daughter into the action. Even though they were both hotter than a Texas parking lot in August, I held my libido in check. Until I had a better understanding of the mother/daughter dynamics involved, I decided to make haste slowly.

Years of social trial and error had taught me the best way to clear the air between two people was to speak plainly. I liked to think of it as playing poker with my cards face-up on the table.

"Alice, we need to talk. Curious minds want to know, do you want us to have sex?" I said.

My blunt question seemed to take my hunting partner by surprise as she raised her eyebrows and blinked at me. She said nothing for several moments before responding, "Do you mean right now? Can we finish lunch first? Why do you ask?"

"At the meeting this morning you asked me if I would share your bed tonight if you asked nicely. Was that a real question or were you just flirting?" I inquired as I moved to sit at her side.

"I was serious. I wanted to know if you would make love to me." Alice's face took on a reddish tint as she blushed. "Dennis, will you make love to me tonight?"

"Be honest. You are a lesbian, and I'm an old fart. Why would you want to have sex with me?" I asked.

She looked at me in silence for the longest time before answering. "I am concerned about my daughter."

It was my turn to be surprised. "What does your daughter have to do with us having sex?"

"My home is Liberty Mountain, and I'm here because I love my sisters. My daughter has displayed no interest in sexual relations with other women, but she has shown a keen interest in getting to know you in the Biblical sense. I want her to explore her sexuality, and I want her to be true to herself. Star and I have had a few long talks about you. You are the first male she's met." Alice turned to face me and looked directly into my eyes.

"I warned her one man is not all men, and I told her I might give my blessings for her to have sex with you, but I would do so only after I've had a chance to check you out." Alice glanced at my private parts.

"Your daughter is still a child. I wouldn't feel right taking advantage of her that way," I sighed and fidgeted as the conversation entered an awkward phase.

Alice frowned and gave me a sharp look. "Bullshit! How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

"I was fifteen, and she was nineteen." I stammered as I tried to remember who seduced who.

"So fifteen is old enough for boys," she leaned back, crossed her arms and narrowed her hazel eyes.

"But eighteen is too young for a girl?" she frowned as she poked my chest with her index finger. 

"Sounds like a fucking double standard," she paused, "Pun," pause and poke, Intended!" the final poke hurt.

"Okay. I get it I'm old-fashioned. However, I still don't understand why you would want your daughter to have sex with me." I studied her smoldering green eyes and searched for her answer.

"I want the best life for my daughter, and that begins with her being true to herself. If it turns out she likes men, I'm good with that. If she prefers women, I'm also good with that. If she's bisexual like her mother, that would be fine. I'll love and support her no matter who she is. Besides, I have a dream of someday being a grandmother," Alice said with an almost shy smile.

"What about you? Why is it so important that you check me out first?" I was looking for the truth behind her interest in me.

"Because if you turn out to be an asshole like her father, I won't let you near her, that's why. He was a lousy, selfish lover who cared nothing for the sexual needs of his partner," Alice spit on the ground.

We spent the next several minutes in thoughtful silence as we finished lunch and got ready to resume our quest for fresh venison.

Our vantage point on the ridge afforded us a clear view of the deer herd in the valley a thousand feet below. Under the watchful eye of a magnificent stag, a dozen does graze along the banks of the stream flowing across the glen's floor. It would take all of Alice's driving skills to traverse the pathway to the bottom.