Beyond the New Horizon

by Christine Conaway

  “It will be a full-time occupation keeping them fed.”

  “It’s that, or turn them loose to fend for themselves and hope they can make it through the winter and I for one am not prepared to do that. I’m pretty sure neither will Lucy or Journey. Those horses and that mule are as much a part of our family as we are. Besides that…”

  “Shh…,” he pointed to the lower log cabin visible through the underbrush. Without leaves, they had a good view of the cabin below.

  Following Ben’s lead, Gina crept through the brush and settled to her knees beside Ben. The cabin looked completely different from when she and her friends had been there. Someone had constructed a lean-to of tree trunks beside it and built a kind of fireplace out of rocks. Brush and small trees were stacked along one side of it.

  “Forest service cabin?” Ben questioned in her ear.

  Gina nodded, her attention focused on the cabin. It was obvious that someone had made it their home in the couple weeks since they had passed through. Her eyes met Ben’s and she nodded and shrugged, “They’ve been here for a while by the look of it,” she whispered back.

  Parked off in the brush was an old Willys jeep still painted army green. Parked along the side of it was an old stock trailer that had seen better days.

  “Oh my god!” Gina breathed out and pointed. Hanging from a tree appeared to be a body hanging by its arms.

  She jumped when Ben touched her. “It’s not a person, it’s a deer. Someone has it hanging there to cure.”

  Gina felt stupid for just an instant, “We didn’t hear any gunshots?”

  “There are plenty of other ways to bring a deer down other than shooting it.”

  “Yeah, and if you turn around nice and slow, you can see one of them first hand.”

  Ben stiffened beside her, and her eyes met his. Almost imperceptibly he shook his head.

  “That’s right Miss, don’t do anything stupid. I can assure you I am as good as they get with this.”

  Gina followed Ben’s lead and turned around slowly. Without being told, she raised her hands above her head as she turned. From her knees, it was hard to turn and keep her balance.

  Gina looked up into a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever seen. He had whiskers covering most of his face as if he hadn’t shaved in weeks, and not days. The arrow protruding from the bow, looked as if it was made from razor blades and his arm was pulled back as if he could turn it loose in an instant. He slowly moved it between Ben and her.

  “Now, that I have your undivided attention, what are you two doing up here? Are you spying on us?”

  “No!” Gina blurted out, “Not really spying. We were just…”

  “Yes, we were. We needed to find out who our neighbors were. Just like you guys came and spied on us last night.”

  The man started to drop his bow, and frowned, a look of complete puzzlement on his face. His eyes moved past them to the brush behind where they knelt and then to their left. “Come on out Mary. Lucas, you stay where you are and remember what we talked about.”

  From no farther than ten feet away, a woman stood up with a rifle aimed at Gina. A rustle in the brush as she stood up, was the only hint that she was there.

  “What are you talking about? We weren't anywhere but here last night. We heard your horses when you came in, but that is the only indication we had that someone else was up here.”

  “You weren’t sneaking around in the bushes, scaring off the wildlife?”

  The couple seemed genuinely sincere to Gina. As much as the man tried to hide his expressions, he had been taken aback at Ben’s words. If not them, then maybe someone else in their party? Gina didn’t know what to think, but she knew they needed to be on friendly terms with this group.

  “Listen, we didn’t come up here with any bad intentions, but to find a safe place to stay and sit this out. My friends and I were on vacation…on a pack trip. When we tried to leave my truck wouldn’t start and…”

  “There were three of you? You came right by our place over a week ago?” The woman asked.

  “And they had a donkey with them, Mom,” a young voice called out.

  “Gus is a mule,” Gina answered out of habit.

  “Three women, no men.” The man looked at Ben, “Where do you fit into the picture?”

  Gina went to drop her arms, “Keep them up!”

  Gina forced them back up. “This is ridiculous, we were only looking for a safe place to stay. I guess that we don’t want to be here any more than you people do.

  From somewhere behind her, Gina heard the muffled sound of a baby crying and looked at the woman. She seemed torn about what to do. Her gaze swung between the man, obviously her husband and the direction of the cabin below them. “Sam?”

  The man, Sam, nodded and the woman took off at a run, her rifle cradled in her arms.

  Ben hadn’t said much and Gina wondered what his plan was or if he even had one. He had stood silently with his arms up. Gina tried to catch his eye, but his had remained staring at the man.

  Finally, “Look, I met the women down on the highway. My daughter and I were doing the same thing as you guys.”

  “Wait a minute…we rode past your house?” Gina interrupted, “I only remember riding by one occupied property. It looked like a hay ranch or maybe cattle, and that was in the valley east of here. You have the log cabin?” She stopped, regrouping her thoughts and frowned, “If you have a house there, why are you here? It seems to me it would have been smarter to stay in your house.”

  “Lady, do you know how many people from the highway found their way to us? We couldn’t even provide food for all of them, nor call for help; the phones including our landline didn’t work.”

  “Look, this is crazy. My name is Ben…and my daughter and I fled Spokane as soon as the trouble started. We holed up with some guys just this side of Mullan for a few days until I realized they were not the kind of people I wanted around my daughter, so we left.”

  The man stood switching his gaze between Ben and Gina as if knowing one of them would continue the explanation without prodding from him.

  “The women rode down looking for help, and I warned them off. I never dreamed I’d be running into them when we left the highway. Now, can we at least put our arms down?”

  The man nodded, “Sit down and cross your legs, and please, don’t do anything stupid. I know you both probably have guns of some kind, so do us all a favor and leave them where they are.”

  As soon as Ben and Gina were seated on the wet ground, he sat across from them. He laid his bow on the ground beside himself. “I still have you covered by my friend and he won’t hesitate to shoot with a nod of my head.”

  His last words were louder as if he were talking to the person hidden in the brush. His eyes glanced off to the side as if reassuring himself there was someone there.

  The man introduced himself as Sam, the brother-in-law to the woman. He told them how many were in his party, but little else.

  By the time Gina and Ben had told him their stories, they heard someone coming through the trees towards them. It was the lady, and she carried a bundle in her arms. Her rifle was protruding up past her shoulder as if it was held there by a sling of some kind.

  “How is he?” Sam asked. “Any improvement at all?”

  The woman shook her head and cuddled the bundle closer, making it obvious she carried a baby. She murmured something soothing to the child and jiggled it gently. “I think we need to get him to the doctor or a hospital or I don’t think he’s going to make it.” She sniffed loudly as if she had been crying. She turned her teary eyes to the man, “Sam, I can’t lose him. We have to do something. Please…I’m begging you, we have to leave.’

  Sam, deflated at hearing her words, as he sighed, “I don’t see how we can. We can’t put him on a horse, and the ride out in the jeep will only do more damage to him. We don’t even know if one of the clinics or the hospital is open. I’d hate to take him and find out there’s no one to help him.
”

  Frowning, Gina looked at the baby. “Why would you not take him in your jeep? Would you let me see him, maybe there’s something I can do? I’m not a pediatric nurse by any means, but I did learn a little something in school.”

  The woman frowned, and held the baby close. As if realizing what Gina had said, “You’re a nurse?” she turned her eyes to the man. “Please, Sam. Let her look, maybe there is something she can do.”

  “At least, let her look,” Ben told him. “I swear to you on my wives grave, we mean you people no harm. If there’s a chance that Gina can help you, why not let her.”

  The man seemed to come to a decision and nodded, “Go ahead. Just remember…aw never mind just do it.”

  Before Gina could reach out for the baby, the woman turned and took off at a run back down the trail. Gina looked at the man who had gotten to his feet.

  If he had given his permission for her to look at the baby, why had the woman fled? Gina stood, undecided what she was supposed to do. Ben had risen and stood beside Gina unsure himself.

  “Go!” The man commanded as if realizing they had no idea what he and the woman had been talking about, “To the cabin, follow Mary. It’s my brother John, someone shot him.”

  Gina took off at a run, stumbling and leaping over branches as she went down the trail. She didn’t look back to see if Ben was following her just plunged headlong through the brush. At the cabin, she threw the blanket covering the doorway aside and went in. It was dark inside, and she stood blinking until her eyes could adjust. The woman was kneeling by some kind of camp bed where a man lay under a blanket.

  A young girl held the bundle the woman had been carrying. She backed into a corner at seeing Gina come through the doorway.

  Gina, knelt by the woman who was pulling the blanket off to expose the man’s injury, “Where?”

  Without the blanket hiding the wound, Gina could see that someone had bandaged him around his chest and shoulder, but the white bandages were now heavily stained with fresh blood.

  “I need scissors. I need to see where the blood is coming from.”

  “I think it must have been a shotgun, the hole is so big,” she said and pulled a box from under the edge of the bed. She handed Gina a pair of small scissors and Gina began cutting the sodden bandage away. Where the bandages had stuck along the edges, Gina clenched her teeth and peeled the material away.

  As soon as she saw the wound, she knew the blood pooling under the man, hadn’t come from the wound on his front. He had a nice neat hole surrounded by puckered red skin. The edges of the wound had started to dry out, and Gina wished she had their emergency kit. She knew there was at least some Neosporin. Blood continued to pool under him, so as much as she hated to move him, Gina pulled his body toward her, onto his side. Whatever he had been shot with, had ripped its way through him; Mary was right, the hole was huge and gaping. A small but steady flow of blood seeped from it.

  Momentarily, Gina was at a loss as to what to do. They had to find the source and stop the bleeding. “I need Journey here now!” Trying to be as gentle as she could be, Gina grabbed some of the old bandage material and pushed it into the wound. “Tell Ben to go get Journey, now!”

  The woman stood for a second unsure what Gina wanted, and then turned and ran out the doorway, the blanket flapping down behind her.

  The bullet had gone just under his clavicle and as near as she could tell, came out just under his shoulder blade. Frowning she mentally chased the trajectory of the bullet. In her opinion, he had to have been on his knees or lying down when he’d taken the bullet.

  As Gina laid the man back down, he groaned loudly and pulled away from her probing hands. It was clear that her voice, an unknown to him, was upsetting him.

  “It’s okay. I’m here to help you,” whether it was her words or her tone, she didn’t know, but he relaxed back onto the bed. They had seen so many injuries very much like his, but they were usually already treated and beginning to heal. Never had they gotten patients with fresh, open, untreated wounds.

  She saw nothing at hand to clean his wound with, but she couldn’t leave it the way it was. She leaned close and sniffed, but she didn’t smell the sickly putrid odor of rotting flesh. They needed to get the wound clean and figure out some way to stop the bleeding, even if it meant cauterizing and sewing.

  They had basic supplies in their medical kit, and she remembered seeing a needle and suture material. There was a small plastic bottle of betadine scrub as well.

  The girl was still squatting in the corner of the room as if she was afraid to move. The baby rested on her raised knees.

  “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to try to help him,” Gina pointed to the man. “Is this your father?”

  The girl nodded, her eyes filled with tears, “Is he going to die?”

  “Not if I can help it. I need water and something to heat it in.”

  The girl pointed to the doorway, “There's water in the bucket beside the fire and a pot.”

  Realizing that someone had to tend to the now crying baby, Gina stepped outside the dark cabin. As soon as her eyes had adjusted to the light, she saw a pot sitting on the edge of the fireplace. A blue water container sat on the ground beside it. She filled the pot and set it close to the coals.

  Gina looked around for anything else she could use and noted how the outside of the camp had changed since they’d gone through. It seemed like it was only yesterday, and while they had lost track of time or the day, she knew almost two weeks had passed.

  She heard voices coming from the brush and was grateful when she spotted Ben and Sam coming down the trail. To her, it had seemed as if she had been with the man alone for hours, but she suspected she was wrong. Just being outside had helped clear her head. Gina drew in a breath of cleansing air and waited for them to get close. She expected the men would want to hear the truth.

  Chapter thirteen…………Helping the neighbors

  Abby, bored with setting up camp inside of the cave, had tied Bess up to a tree closer to the mouth of the cave.

  She had turned a bucket upside down and was standing on it to brush Bess’s face. She was talking and brushing and didn’t notice or hear the boy who came running into the clearing, followed by a woman. Both were breathing hard and couldn’t speak.

  They didn’t seem afraid to be seen there, so Lucy waited, mentally prepared for anything.

  Finally, the woman, still bent over at the waist, and drawing in big gulps of air, pointed up the road. “They need help!” She finally panted out. She remained bent over with both of her hands on her knees, trying to get her breath back.

  “My Dad needs help,” the boy said as he ran up to Abby and Bess. “The other lady said to send Journey.”

  “Journey!” Abby screamed, “Gina and Dad need you!”

  Journey came from the cave wiping her hands on her pants. “Abby, stop yelling please.”

  Seeing two strangers, one standing over Abby, Journey pulled her gun from behind her back and pointed it at the woman. She didn’t know why she bothered to point it at the woman because she was shaking so hard, she couldn’t have pulled the trigger or hit what she was aiming at if she’d had to. “Who are you?”

  At hearing her, the woman looked up, straightened and immediately began backing away, her hands held out in front of her. Her flushed cheeks immediately drained of color at seeing a gun pointed her direction.

  The boy had the nerve to step forward, “That’s my mom. Miss Gina said to bring Journey up to our camp.”

  “They came down from the cabin to get you. Gina needs help,” Abby interjected. She had already heard the short version from the kid.

  Journey felt her insides tighten up, and her knees felt weak. “What happened? Is she okay?”

  “It’s not her,” the woman managed to pant out. “It’s my husband, he’s been shot. Your friend sent me to get you.”

  Journey’s training kicked in, “Let me get the medical kit, and I’ll
be right there.” She started to run for the cave and stopped and turned, “Where is he?”

  “At the cabin, right up there,” the boy pointed up the road.

  “Okay, I’ll be right there.” She almost bumped into Lucy who was bent over exiting the cave. “I need the medical kit.”

  “What happened? Who for? Are Ben and Gina okay?”

  Journey was rummaging around in one of the black bags looking for anything she thought she would need. She jammed everything into her small backpack and put it on, “It’s not Ben or Gina. I don’t know really, but I need to go.”

  “I’m going with you!”

  Lucy bent at the waist and ducked out of the cave, “You need to stay here and watch our stuff. Stay with Abby.”

  Lucy ducked out behind Journey, “Okay, but …”

  Journey untied Bess’s line and with the use of the bucket to stand on threw herself up and on Bess and rode off at a lope. It was then Lucy saw the boy and woman.

  The woman seemed to be arguing with the child. He stood defiantly in front of her shaking his head, when Abby walked over to them. She said something Lucy couldn’t hear and the woman began running back up the road.

  The boy stared after her. He was trying hard to not give into his anguish, but his face scrunched up, and his shoulders shook. He turned his back to Abby. Abby put her hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away, ran to a tree and slumped at its base.

  Lucy gave him a few minutes and then went to him and kneeled in front of him, “It’s okay to cry if you’re sad. We all do it.”

  “My Mom said I had to stay here,” he sobbed out, “but I want to see my Dad. What if he dies and I’m not there?”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say to console him. She had no idea how bad he was shot, nor even if he was still alive. She couldn’t believe that either Ben or Gina would have shot anyone.

  “I’m sorry, but if anyone can help him, it would be that lady on the horse. She helped me, you know.”