Gina nodded, both women seemed open to her idea. She wondered if either of them realized it sounded easy enough in theory, but one or all of them could die. She felt this would be the test of their lifetime to survive.
“As cold as it was last night, we need to get back there and set up some kind of a camp. We also need to move everything from the pickup and trailer there. Everything, no matter how small or insignificant it is.”
“How do you plan on doing that? It’s not as if the truck runs.” Journey asked as she gathered up their bowls and spoons and dropped them into a pot of water simmering on the fire.
“We’re going to figure out some way to build a travois. We’ll load it and pull it there with the horses. We’ll probably be making more than one trip, but we need to do it.”
“Or, we could ride down and throw ourselves on the mercy of those guys at the bottom of the hill.”
Lucy almost fell down in her haste to confront Journey, “You’re kidding, right? That wasn’t anything we talked about.”
“No we didn’t, but then that was before I found out we were going to live in a cave for the winter.”
“You heard what that guy said. He didn’t want us there. He was warning us away or didn’t you get that? So unless you’re prepared to be someone’s, or the whole groups bitch, for the winter, you might want to rethink that.”
“Journey, what about your friend in Libby. Could we go there?”
Gina answered, “If this wasn’t the start of winter, then yes we could. The thing that worries me is what happens if we get caught in a snowstorm somewhere along the side of the highway? We can’t carry all of our stuff with us, and we can’t afford to leave any of it behind. That’s why I suggested the cave. We’d have shelter, a heat source, water and a place to turn the horses out. Like Journey said, that creek probably runs all winter, and we’d have water and probably fish.”
“Why not stay right here? We have the trailer and the truck, and we wouldn’t have to move anything?”
“Okay, that idea has some merit, but there is also a downside to that.” Gina held her hand up and counted off on her fingers, “First, at least one of those guys knows we’re up here. Second, there is no good place for the horses to graze. Third, the water is too far away and four, we’re too close to the highway.”
Journey sat staring into the last of the coals from the fire. She had slid down in her chair, and her shoulders were slumped as if she were either totally relaxed or had given up.
Lucy pushed some more twigs under the grate and shrank back when they caught fire with a whoosh. She looked at Gina and grinned. “So, how are we going to build this travois of yours?”
Gina looked at Journey, “Whatever we do, we do it together. Are you with us or not? We can ride down this road right now and give ourselves up and hope we survive the winter and they don’t try to eat our horses or we can go over the mountain and maybe keep our horses and ride to Libby in the spring.” She sat back in her chair and waited for Journey to answer.
Journey, who had been looking everywhere but at either Gina or Lucy finally answered. “How do we know that this solar thing even happened for sure? I mean, right now someone could be down there cleaning up that mess of wrecked cars, or help could even be on the way right now. What about FEMA? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do in the event of a crisis?”
“It is, but remember what happened in Louisiana? Do you want to get looked after like that? Besides, there is no way they could have the resources to care for all of the people in the United States.” Gina shook her head, “I think we are better off if we take care of ourselves.”
Gina looked at Journey, eyes begging her to see the reasoning behind her words. “What happens when FEMA runs out of food, and we’re stuck in some camp? Don’t you think things are going to go downhill fast?”
“And what about sickness and disease? The people who are on medications to survive and they run out? And the drug addicts and, well…and just everything! I don’t want to be down there. I’ll take my chances with Gina and pray for the best.”
Journey, tired of listening to them, threw up her hands, “Okay. I’m in. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Lucy and Gina exchanged smiles as if they knew they could change Journey’s mind. Journey had been the driving force in school, but had always left the outdoor adventures to Gina and Lucy to figure out. This could prove to be the biggest outdoor adventure of their lives if they all survived it. A safe place to hide out was the number one priority as far as Gina was concerned. Then food for them and the horses and Gus. If she had her way, they would all survive the winter.
Briefly, while Lucy and Journey were arguing about who was to do their few dishes, Gina closed her eyes and said a quick prayer for their safety. While she wasn’t a practicing Christian, she did believe in God and believed it was He who had given her the answers that allowed her to finally get some sleep this morning.
“Before it gets too dark to see, does anyone know where the hatchet is?”
“In the supply box in the trailer,” Lucy said from the tailgate, where she was washing their bowls, cups, and spoons.
“Journey, can you get the notebook out of the glove box, and I think there’s a pen in there too. We need to make an inventory of what we do have. You can start on that while I cut down some trees.”
Gina stood on the shoulder of the road and mentally marked the trees that she thought would work for her purpose. She thought maybe four or five inches at the thick end and 10 or twelve feet long. If she cut them too short, they would be at too much of an angle from the stirrups where she planned to fasten them and too long, they would be tempted to load them too heavy. She wanted to get them right the first time.
An hour later she struggled with the butt ends of two logs, one under each arm. She hadn’t counted on how tall the trees had to be to find the suitable length or thickness that she wanted, nor the number of branches she would have to trim. Getting them both back up to the road, was as much trouble as chopping them down. She could have asked for help, but Journey and Lucy were occupied with the inventory.
Lucy wasn’t strong or big enough to handle the tree trunks, and she couldn’t withstand the climbing through the brush.
Finally, Gina dropped her trees to the ground. Using her shirttail, she wiped the perspiration off her face. If Lucy had thought they had smelled bad yesterday, she was going to love Gina’s fragrance today.
Gina grabbed a lead line and went back down to the creek, Bess was at the edge of the water with Gus. Listening, Gina could hear Sailor and Joe across the creek. She whistled softly and heard Sailor coming to her. The amount of noise told her that Joe was coming with him. Gina had decided to try her idea with Sailor before she went to all of the trouble of cutting more trees and having the travois idea not work.
After tying Sailor to the trailer, Gina got his saddle, his blanket, and brush from the tack room. She brushed his saddle area and girth then saddled him up.
He rolled his eyes at her when she carried the first tree trunk up to him and laid it on the ground at his feet. She laid the second one on the other side of him and stuck the thin end through the stirrup. With the second trunk stuck through the other stirrup, she stood back to see how it could work. She immediately saw the first problem. While she could tie the tree to the stirrups, she had no way to keep the tree trunks apart, and they would also put the wrong angle on Sailor for pulling. She wished that she had opted to use a breast collar on him. She then could have shortened the stirrups and tied them off to the breast collar making Sailor pull from his chest rather than from his girth.
Both Journey and Lucy used breast collars on their horses.
“Guys, I need an opinion here.”
Both Lucy and Journey crowded in to see what the problem was.
“I want to make it as easy for the horses to pull these things as I can, but I need some way to keep the stirrups from pulling back, and I need a way to keep the poles apart, s
o they aren’t rubbing his sides raw.”
Journey walked to view the travois from behind, Hands resting on her hips she studied the contraption. Then she disappeared, to return with an extra old saddle girth that had been hanging on the tack room wall.
“What about this around his chest? Tie the stirrups to it and putting a bar across the poles a foot or so behind his legs to hold them apart. The things on the travois would probably hold them out, but a pole across would for sure.”
It only took a few minutes to adjust the rigging. Gina was satisfied that Sailor would be able to pull it without doing damage to him.
“How are you going to keep our things from falling through? We don’t have any canvas or anything to stretch across the poles.” Lucy asked.
“The bales of hay. They are longer than the gap so they can rest on the poles and we can put the rest of our stuff on top and don’t forget that Gus already has his pack set up for the camping gear. We only need to get the hay and pellets up to the cave.”
“Wow, I don’t know how you came up with this, but I think it will work just fine if the horses don’t object to pulling them and us riding.”
Both Gina and Lucy turned to face Journey. “Really? You think they’re going to haul all our stuff and us too? Come on Journey, use your head.”
Gina put her hand on Lucy’s arm, “Journey, we can’t expect that much of them. We’re going to walk and lead them. We don’t want to kill one of them by working them to death.”
“Oh. I guess I wasn’t thinking. How long did it take us to ride back here from where the cave was?”
Gina pursed her lips and thought, “A week more or less. But it’ll take us longer because we need to rest the horses more and we can’t walk as fast as they can.”
Journey thought about what Gina had said, and looked at Lucy and then down at her leg. “Lucy can’t walk that far or as fast either.”
“I can too. You always try to baby me, but I am capable of more than you think.” Lucy’s cheeks had reddened as if she were embarrassed to be singled out as Journey had just tried to do.
“Honey, I don’t think she meant that the way it sounded….”
“Yes, I did! She can’t keep up with us when we’re walking let alone keep up with the horses. Her leg will be rubbed raw within two miles.”
Lucy’s shoulders dropped as did her head, “So I am going to be a liability to you guys,” she muttered and turned to walk away.
“Oh for fuck sakes! Listen to yourselves! We need all of us to get where we’re going in good shape. This is not one of our leisurely camping trips we’re going on. This is about our survival.”
Both Lucy and Journey looked at Gina with their mouths hanging open. Gina hardly ever swore let alone drop an F-Bomb.
“It will take everything we have to get through this winter, and it won’t be easy, but we’re going to do it, and we don’t need anyone injured or getting their feelings hurt every time someone says something without thinking first.”
“I’m sorry. I was only thinking of Lucy.” Journey turned and hugged her friend, “I know you can do this, but you need to let us help you when we think you need it not when you’re ready to admit defeat. Like yesterday, you should have told us you were in pain. With no antibiotics, an infection could kill you in a heartbeat.”
Lucy finally returned Journey’s hug. “Well, I’m sorry too. I just don’t want to hold you guys back. I do realize I should have said something, but it’s hard being a cripple like this.”
Both Gina and Journey erupted with peals of laughter and soon Lucy was laughing with them, although she had no idea what they found so funny. Like the previous day their laughter was infectious.
Gina removed the travois from Sailor and turned him loose to find his way back to the other horses and Gus. She didn’t replace his hobbles as he wouldn’t leave the other horses or their camp for very long. He always came when Gina whistled for him.
While Journey and Lucy fixed them some soup from their dehydrated vegetables, Gina cut down and trimmed up four more poles and three shorter lengths for the cross pieces.
While she worked, Gina mentally went through their things placing them on the different travois’. She didn’t want to overburden any of the horses, but she also didn’t want to leave anything behind. Food for the animals was paramount to their continued survival once the snow had cleared off. She hoped for light snow and being at a lower elevation, she knew it was possible for the horses to survive just fine on what they could forage.
The creek could provide water for them, and they would have to stay on top of clearing away the ice daily, with supplementing with a flake of hay now and then.
“If we make it that long,” she said, dragging the last log to lay it beside the other five. The hatchet had lost its sharp edge quickly, and she hoped that somewhere in their camp gear there was the stone she had gotten to sharpen their knives and the hatchet.
“Good timing, come and eat,” Lucy said. “It’s not much, but it’s tasty,” Journey said, “We’re on short rations, so I hope you don’t have a problem with that.”
“Nope. It’s not like I can’t afford to go without a meal now and then. There may come a time when we wish we had rationed sooner.” Gina wiped at her sweating face with the hem of her shirt. “At least that chore is done. I’d like to get them put together first thing and do a trial on packing them. With any luck, we can get out of here by noon tomorrow.”
“Lucy and I sorted the stuff we think we will need, but you need to look it over. If you put the hay bales on first, we can tie other stuff on top of them.”
“That’s what I was thinking too, but there is no such thing as stuff we don’t need. At this point, everything has value no matter how insignificant we think it is.”
Lucy laughed, “Does that include the plethora of baling twine hanging in the trailer? Or how about that box of books on the back floorboard of the pickup?”
“Or the tool box? Surely we won’t find a need to have tools with us,” Journey added.
“Everything! We leave nothing behind. Now, how about that soup Lucy was telling me about?”
They were sitting and talking while they ate when Gina paused with a cracker halfway to her mouth, “Hush for a minute…do you hear that?”
Chapter Seven…………Company?
“I think our lives are about to get more complicated,” Gina looked around to see what was visible. Most of their possessions were stacked behind the trailer waiting to be loaded on the travois and what wasn’t behind was sitting inside the door of the tack room.
“I thought motors wouldn’t work?”
“That is an assumption. We don’t know what is and what isn’t going to work. That sounds like a four-wheeler to me. Lucy, grab your pistol and step off into the trees.”
Lucy rose to do as she had been asked when Journey spoke, “You’re kidding right? Why on earth would she take a gun with her and why would she hide in the first place?”
Lucy shook her head and went to do as Gina had asked her. Armed, she climbed to the high side of the road. She thought that they were going to have to have a talk with Journey before they went any further. It didn’t appear as if the gravity of their situation had sunk in. Lucy understood, and it was apparent that Gina did, but Journey had never experienced anything more than medical school and a cushy life before that. Lucy knew that Journey had come from a moneyed family and had never experienced the harsher side of life.
She had more than her share in Iraq and knew how cruel and vicious people could be. She had seen parents turn their children into human bombs, a woman stoned to death for not wanting to marry an old man and another, because she had needed to go buy food for her children and did not have a man to walk her to the store to buy it. Lucy suspected, that if the U.S. had lost all power, their country had joined the list of third world countries, and nothing good would be riding up the road after sundown.
Lucy squatted down in the brush, with the trunk of a pin
e tree between herself and the fire which would attract whoever their visitor was and waited.
“Journey, whatever you do, do not volunteer anything. These may or may not be part of the bunch down below, but we can’t take the chance.” Gina walked to the trailer and lifted her 30/30 off the gun rack and stood it beside the hitch. She handed Journey her pistol and slid her own down the back of her pants. She went and sat back down in her chair.
They heard the motor die before it got to them and wondered if it had run out of gas or been shut off out of hearing range with the hopes of sneaking up on them.
“They couldn’t have known exactly where we are unless someone has already been up here,” Journey said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“My thought exactly. So, either we have been under observation, or whoever it is, has run out of gas.”
They waited and were surprised to hear someone running up the road toward them. In fact, it sounded like two sets of running feet.
Gina now wished she had picked a better place to have parked the truck and trailer. One that was on more of a straight stretch of road. They would have to wait until whoever it was, came around the bend.
“I hear someone crying?” Journey said her head cocked in the direction of the running feet.
Gina wasn’t waiting until they came into view and picked up her rifle. She jacked a shell into it and waited, her back to the fire. Whoever was coming their way wasn’t trying to disguise the fact they were there, so she wasn’t going to hide the fact that they were waiting for them.
To her surprise, an adult sized person and a child-sized person quickly came into view. Both were running full out with huge packs on their backs. The smaller person was being dragged along by the bigger person and they were almost to the truck when the smaller person fell, and the taller person dragged them a few more feet before stopping. He reached down to help the smaller person up and finally saw the campfire.
Gina saw the second that he spotted her. His whole body tensed up, and he seemed to be considering what to do. He looked at his friend and then to Gina, framed in the firelight with her rifle pointed right at him.
Beyond the New Horizon Page 5