Beyond the New Horizon

by Christine Conaway

  She squealed and fell backward to escape the cold, wet stuff. Using her hands, she dug the snow out of her hair and from around her neck and contemplated what to do with it. She was tempted to put it somewhere else besides back out the door because Lucy and Journey were under the warm covers and she could hear them giggling.

  Gina remembered she had to sleep in the same bags the next night and threw it back outside.

  “You guys are lucky I woke up in a good humor this morning.”

  “It was snowing pretty hard when I got up somewhere around midnight. I checked the horses and made sure everything was covered up.”

  “Thanks,” Gina told Ben. “Somewhere, in one of those zipped bags are some heavier jackets and our rain ponchos. Anyone know which bag they’re in?”

  From under the covers, she heard, “They’re in one of the black bags. The big one with all the zippers.”

  This time, they all had a good laugh on Gina. Even Ben and Abby knew that all of their bags were big, zippered and black.

  “Well, ha! ha! to you too. You’ll thank me later if I find them and tell you which bag I found them in.”

  Gina hit the roof of the tent to make sure she wasn’t going to have any more surprises coming down on top of her head and crawled out through the opening.

  “Holy crap!” She had crawled out into a good six inches of cold, wet snow. Her full bladder urged her to hurry.

  Returning to camp, Gina heard Sailor give a short whinny as if letting her know he was ready for breakfast. The horses and Gus had been tied under the shelter of the tree branches, but while it had protected their heads to a certain extent, the rest of their bodies were layered with snow.

  Sailor whinnied again to let her know he wasn’t happy and the other horses acknowledged and made noises of agreement. Gus, not one to be left out, let loose with a loud squawk of his own.

  Gina got lucky and found their jackets in the second bag she checked. She was going to let one of the others locate the rain ponchos if they wanted them because her jacket was Gortex and shed moisture like a duck. She slipped it on over her sweatshirt and zipped it. Neither of the jackets would do much against the numbing cold, but she could always layer some of her clothing, under the outer one, and if they kept moving, she thought she would be okay.

  Gina saw Lucy bent over the fire pit, “Don’t even bother with a fire this morning. Let’s just get out of here, This may not be the last of the snow, and I for one don’t want to spend the winter camped right here.”

  Chapter ten…………First snow

  Ben and Gina, with Abby holding, put the tack on and hooked up the travois for each horse. Journey and Lucy rolled their bedding and tied them in place, making sure everything was under the tarp.

  One other time, a few summers before, they had forgotten to cover their bed rolls and excited about riding in a cooling rain, they had forgotten them. When it came time to roll them out to sleep in, they all had the experience of sleeping in wet sleeping bags. Now, bedding placement was checked and re-checked.

  To be safe, Gina snapped a longer lead line on Gus’s halter and tied him to Journey’s saddle horn. There was no way she wanted to experience the same feeling of loss she had felt the night before when he had disappeared.

  For the next six days, they walked, ate a little, and slept. By the third day, they had established a routine that worked for all of them and continued to use it.

  The only person who seemed to find any joy in each day was Abby. Lucy had talked with each of them, and they had decided as a group that Abby would get the bigger portion of their meals. She was still growing and had an active role in their survival. She carried water, fed the horses, brushed them, gathered wood and kept their spirits up in general. Abby did all of the mundane tasks that the adults now didn’t have to do.

  Gina and Ben spent their down time fixing the travois and replacing the ties that held them all together. They had already replaced most of the poles when the others had worn off from rubbing on gravel all day.

  Around the fire in the evenings, Lucy had put an end to them sitting and talking about how well they had eaten on previous trips or their favorite restaurants, or food in general.

  Lucy, always with their best interests in mind, continued to make biscuits with the dried meat, usually covered in a thin gravy. She made use of every drop of water and grease she used for the baking and cooking the meat. She told them there were needed calories in the water that she soaked the meat in to make it edible and used it to make the biscuits. With only one more box of biscuit mix and one ten pound bag of flour, she was concerned they would have to begin using the survival food.

  The weather had turned from fall conditions to full out winter with the first snow. The only benefit the snow brought, was that it would cover the gouges in the road they had left when leaving the truck.

  At least that was what Gina hoped. They had climbed the first day continuously reaching the higher altitude, and she hoped the snow had fallen at the lower elevation as well.

  With every passing day, Lucy’s limp had grown worse. Ben had convinced her to ride on several occasions, but she didn’t like to and didn’t hesitate to tell him.

  The horses had begun to drop weight with the short rations and little grazing time. The only one who seemed to do well for himself was Gus. He managed to snatch bites of the dried grass poking up from the snow-covered shoulders of the road.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with Lucy?”

  Gina had stopped on top of a hill to scan their surroundings. He was leading Bess, with Gus tied to her saddle, while Journey and Abby walked with Lucy and Joe, who had once again dropped behind.

  Gina had been lost in her own thoughts and hadn’t heard his approach.

  Gina looked at him, debating what to say. She chewed on her lower lip contemplating. She finally shook her head. “I can’t. It’s her story to tell and with time, I’m sure she will share it with you. She’s not sick if that’s what worries you.”

  “It’s not. I never even considered an illness. What I think is that Lucy has some sort of a back injury or hips or something like that. I’ve been trying to get her to ride more, but she’s one stubborn lady.”

  Gina gave him a half-hearted grin, “That she is, but I wouldn’t underestimate her. She is as tough as they come. You knew she saw action in Iraq?”

  Ben looked startled, he frowned. “I knew she was previously in the military, but not that she was deployed. When?”

  “Four years ago. That’s when Journey and I met her. After she got back.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Gina realized she had said too much. Ben already knew that she and Journey worked at the Vets hospital.

  “Look, when we get to the mine, I’m sure she’ll tell you everything. She just has this…this thing for not being overly…um, she has this idea that people will take pity on her and treat her differently. In some aspects, she is right, because I have seen it too many times.”

  Ben held his hand up, “Say no more. I understand completely. Now, how much farther do you think we have to go?”

  Gina didn’t answer at first. She had turned and was staring off into the distance. Slowly, as if marking the spot in her mind, she pointed. They were standing on the highest point of land they had been on since leaving the overlook above her truck and trailer. The forestry road had continued to follow the creek bed, going over hills when the terrain beside the waterway became too irregular for the road bed.

  Ben moved to stand beside her. He drew a mental line between her finger and the spot she pointed to. “Those rocks? It looks like a cutaway from the hill like it just sloughed off or something. Is that the mine?”

  She nodded, “That’s it, and hallelujah, there’s no snow down there.”

  “No snow yet, you mean,” Ben told her. “This is beautiful from up here. I would like to have seen it before the leaves all fell.”

  The valley was sheltered in the folds of the Rocky Mounta
ins. Had a person not known, it would have been hard to believe there was a major interstate just a few miles from where they stood.

  Spread out before them, they could see the strips of winding road between the trees, hopefully, the same road they were on. They could see sparkling water in several breaks of the brush and at least three open meadows of dried brown grass. The creek meandered alongside two of the grassy openings.

  Ben rubbed his hands together to warm them and then stuck them under his armpits. “I don’t think we can stand many more nights out in the open. Abby woke up this morning with a sore throat and the sniffles. She was coughing last night too.”

  “I heard her. By tomorrow night…Oh god.” Her eyes hadn’t remained in one spot as they were talking but roamed their little valley.

  “Oh God…what?” Ben hadn’t seen anything to alarm him. “What do you see?”

  “Smoke,” she breathed out. “There’s smoke coming out of the trees.”

  Ben tried to see what she was talking about but saw nothing. “Where?”

  She pointed toward the southern end of the valley, “There on the hill. Someone has moved into one of the old hunter's cabins.”

  “Cabins? As in more than one? I thought this place was off the maps?”

  “It is, but not to anyone who has ever spent any time up here. We found them easy enough when we were camping, but they’re off the beaten trail. I can’t believe that while we were sitting around our campfire, and maybe right down there, planning our next trip or what we were going to do the next day, that our whole world was falling apart around us, and we didn’t even know it.”

  “So…where does that leave us? Is the mine still an option for us or not?”

  “It has to be. Anyone who has ever cross country skied up here or done any hiking will know of the cabins and probably the mine too.” She pointed off to the north, “About ten miles that way is a ski lodge and Interstate 90 is only about another four or five miles past that.”

  “I had thought this was all wilderness up here, but then we hadn’t lived in Spokane very long. Cross country skiing and hiking were never my thing. What do we do now?”

  Gina looked back to see where the others were. Lucy was back on Joe, along with Abby. Journey was leading Joe. They hadn’t made much progress up the hill since the last time Gina had checked on them, but they had stopped at least long enough to get the girls up on Joe.

  Sailor nudged Gina from behind, and she turned to him. His head was held high, his ears pointed forward, the tips almost touching. She knew what he was going to do before he did it. Gina reached out to put her hand on his muzzle, but she was too late. He let loose with a loud, drawn out, whinny.

  Gina managed to stifle his next one. To their surprise, there was an answering whinny from somewhere down below them and one more from behind them.

  “Great! So whoever is down there, knows we’re up here.”

  Chapter eleven…………Silent passing

  “Who was that? Gina, why didn’t you stop him?” Journey huffed out as she ran the last few feet to the top.

  “Why didn’t you?” Gina asked, and nodded at Joe.

  “I didn’t know he was going to…Oh…Sorry.” Journey had the decency to look embarrassed.

  “I saw him too late too,” Gina admitted while continuing to rub Sailor’s muzzle to curtail any more announcements.

  Suddenly, from down below, they heard two more distinct neighs from two different horses. Ben quickly put his hand on Bess while Journey did the same for Joe.

  Gus, not to be outdone and before anyone could lay a hand on him, brayed loudly.

  “Does that mean we can’t stay here?” Abby asked. Her words were followed by a severe bout of coughing. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glassy. She didn’t look as if she felt well at all. Lucy pulled her back to rest against her chest and felt Abby’s forehead.

  “We need to find someplace fast. I think she has a fever and we need to get out of these damp clothes before we all get sick.”

  “Where do we go?” Journey was staring down the hill and frowning. “If there are horses down there, there will be people with those horses. So, what do we do now?” She looked at Gina as if she held all the answers.

  “We go to the mine like we planned. With any luck, whoever it is, will be in that one cabin.”

  “We have to pass right by it, don’t we?” Lucy asked.

  “We do, but if you remember, both of the cabins are off on a side road. There’s no way to the cave without passing the road unless we go through the trees and I don’t think that can be an option now.” Gina nodded to Lucy and Abby.

  It appeared as if Abby had fallen asleep and Lucy was supporting her completely. Lucy, nodded in agreement, “They were out of sight from the road too,” Lucy said, as she shifted Abby to a more comfortable position.

  “I can take her,” Ben told Lucy.

  “She’s fine right here,” Lucy answered. “Let’s just pick a direction and go there, please.”

  Lucy rested her chin on the top of Abby’s head, holding her securely in her arms. Lucy wore a pained expression of her own and Gina knew her leg had to be bothering her or she wouldn’t be riding.

  Gina took hold of Sailor’s lead and began walking down the hill. The snow covered road had no tracks or telltale signs that anyone had been up that high and she knew they would be out of the snow as soon as they began to descend.

  Whoever was at the cabin already knew there were other people, or at least other horses in the vicinity. Horses didn’t walk in on their own, so she was pretty sure the other people knew about them.

  Ben had dropped back to walk with Lucy, Abby, and Journey, which left Gina alone with her thoughts. She knew that eventually, they would run into other people. They had talked about the chances of it happening one night around the fire.

  Occasionally, she and her friends had run into other campers, spent time with them and then went in their own directions. They had never met anyone on the trail that they would have considered being a threat to them in any way.

  She could only hope that these people had come to the mountains with the same idea of remaining invisible. She had no idea what they would do if it proved otherwise. For now, she thought, they would just have to take the chance. They needed to have shelter before they all got sick and the cave seemed to be the best bet, plus the fact that they were quickly running out of viable options.

  As she walked, Gina wondered just how far people would go and what they would do to survive. She remembered what Ben had said about the ones where he and Abby had run away from and it finally hit her.

  There would probably come a time when they would have to use deadly force to protect themselves. Gina stopped in her tracks and shook her head. Her throat tightened up, and she wanted to cry. Both she and Journey had taken up nursing to heal people, not to inflict pain or possibly death on them.

  She felt the time was probably coming when she would have to make a choice. Unconsciously, her hand had dropped to her gun. While she had put it on every morning, she had never considered if this would be the day when she would have to use it.

  “What’s up?” Ben whispered from behind her. Gina hadn’t heard them approach.

  “Nothing really. I guess it just hit me, is all. Soon we might all have to make decisions we’d rather not make.”

  “Well, let's just hope we don’t have to make them today. First things first, can we make it to your mine today?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. The first time we were here, we were riding and enjoying ourselves. I wasn’t paying attention to how long it took to get where.”

  “Gina, remember where we camped after leaving the mine? I think we passed it earlier. It didn’t look the same with all of the snow, but I thought I recognized our campsite. Remember Lucy and I piled up our leftover wood for the next campers?”

  Gina nodded and was mentally trying to remember what they had done that day. They had explored the two cabins, ate lunch and f
illed their water bottles from the creek. They had taken a few pictures of the deer browsing in one of the meadows, but for the life of her, she didn’t remember how long it had taken. She didn’t know whether or not it had been a short day or a long day for them.

  “We’re wasting daylight, so let's head down as far as we can. As long as we’re not close to either of the cabins and it gets dark on us, we’ll find a place to stop. If we have to, we can follow the road after dark.”

  Gina looked up and didn’t like the way the clouds had dropped down on them. While the temperature had risen with the sun, the air was still too cold to be called comfortable. It wouldn’t take much of a drop in the temperature for it to snow or worse yet, for it to rain sleet on them.

  Abby coughed, reminding them all, that she needed to be somewhere dry and warm for the night. Stopping anywhere but at the mine was out of the question.

  Abby continued to cough, but muffled it with her jacket sleeve. When she grew silent, Gina looked back to make sure she was okay. She was slumped back against Lucy, asleep again.

  As they lost altitude, the snow melted and turned the dirt road to mud. At the bottom of the last hill, before the fork in the road that led to the one cabin, Gina stopped one more time.

  She waited while the others caught up. Sailor hadn’t made a sound since the top of the hill, and she wondered if he felt the tension in the air or if he had understood her stilling his first whinny.

  Journey walked slump-shouldered, with the lead line for Joe tucked into her pocket along with her hand. Ben walked beside them with Bess, one hand holding the lead for Bess and Gus with his other hand holding on to Lucy’s saddle bag. None of them looked like they could walk much further.

  Gina felt exactly like they looked. The miles, the weather and most of all the worry, had taken its toll on all of them.

  Refugees, we must look like refugees, she thought. Just that morning, she had taken her belt up a notch and realized how baggy her Levi's were. Her muffin tops were all but gone, and her shirt hung on her frame.