by Ron Rayborne
“I am so sorry,” she wept. “Please forgive me.”
The horse was going into a pre-death state of non-feeling. It fell to its knees, then lay down on its side, head on the ground, as if surrendering to a bear-dog. Julie stroked it and said a prayer. Prayed that the earth would give this animal another chance.
An idea occurred to her. What if ... what if she could get the bullet out, what if she could fix it? She stood now and raced to fetch her pack. When she was there, she hefted it onto her shoulders and dashed back again fast as she could with the heavy thing. At the horse, she dropped it and got out the medical kit. Inside was a surgical knife and other tools. One was a slim pair of forceps. She had no real medical training, but she did have common sense.
Donning gloves and finding a small pair of scissors, Julie first trimmed the fur around the wound close to the skin. Next she got the flashlight and, holding it in her mouth, pulled back on the opening of the intrusion with the fingers of one hand while fishing around inside the wound for the bullet. The flesh inside wanted to close, and she had to maneuver in a certain way before she could see it again. It was lodged in bone. Julie pushed the forceps in and felt around, trying not to cause any more damage than necessary. Then she felt it, a hard protuberance. It was jammed tight. Carefully, Julie opened the pincers and slipped them around the projectile. She pulled, but it did not budge. Pulled again, and again no movement. Now, holding firmly, she began to rock her arm right and left, up and down. In a minute, she felt a shift. Hope sprung up in her, and she continued to rock her arm. Gradually, it began to loosen, moving a little more. Julie put her weight into it. Meanwhile, the horse lay with eyes closed. In a few minutes that seemed an eternity, the bullet released and she pulled back and out, dropping it on the ground.
A smile spread over her face. She needed some alcohol to disinfect the wound. All the kit had, though, were wipes. She had to have more. Yes, she did have a small bottle of experimental alcohol she’d brewed back at her first camp. She found it, opened and hesitated. It could cause plenty of pain, possibly making the animal thrash and hurt himself even more. Yet, she had to attempt it. Holding the bottle above the open wound, she slowly poured a little in. The horse did not react. She poured more, watching it fizz around the edges. She continued until the lesion was filled with alcohol, then wiped the outside of the wound as well. This took the rest of the bottle, for the fur here was very soiled. In the meantime, old red blood burbled up, cleaning the inside.
Julie stroked the horse, talking quietly, reassuringly. Slowly the hypo’s chest heaved up and down. When at last the fizzing stopped, she needed to get the alcohol out. Thus, wiping the forceps off and taking a piece of sterile cloth from the kit, she inserted it into the wound, absorbing the liquid, then removed it, squeezed it out and reinserted, repeating the process until there was no more.
Now she looked for some antibiotic cream. There was a tube. Walking to a small stream, Julie washed her hands, then returned and coated her index finger with antibiotic. She inserted it and swabbed around, unsure of how much to put in. When she thought it was enough, she stopped. Lastly, she needed to close up the wound. Taking out the needle and surgical thread, she paused, squeamish. Finally though, gritting her teeth, Julie began to push the needle in on one side of the opening. The Hypo, unconscious, shuddered and neighed.
“Sorry, baby. I’ll try to make this as fast as I can,” she promised.
Over to the other side, then down again. Back and forth went her hand, one side to the other, each time pulling the thread tight. The skin did not come completely together, but blood underneath filled the empty spaces. Julie wiped again, trying to dry it, and hoping that she’d done a good enough job. Then she got out a square, self-adhesive patch bandage. She peeled off the backing and placed it over the wound. It held firmly.
When she was done, Julie was surprised to discover that she’d been sweating profusely. She was dripping. Another surprise was to find that more time had passed than she’d thought, as the sun, now mostly shrouded by clouds, was higher in the sky than it should be. Also, the herd of Paras was back. They grazed around the two of them, keeping a watch on her, this strange biped. Though they knew the Hypo was not one of them, still, they knew it as horse, as brother. Their concern touched her deeply.
The Hypo slept, perhaps in a pre-death coma state. It felt hot. Julie got some water and brought it back, pouring some on the animal to cool it. Unusually, the horse made drinking and swallowing motions with its mouth. Possibly it had had no water since the shooting and was dying of thirst. Julie lifted the horse’s head ever so slightly and poured some in. Immediately the horse began to swallow. A lot went on the ground, but some was making it in. She went back to the stream with her skin bottle and refilled it, then brought it once more to the horse’s mouth. Again it swallowed. It drank a lot, drank until Julie worried that she might be giving it too much. So she stopped.
As the proximity of the Paras hid the Hypo from the eyes of predators, Julie felt that she could leave to take care of personal business. She needed a bath, and to eat. She’d had nothing since the day before and was suddenly ravishingly hungry. To her surprise, the herd did not bolt when she rose, but stayed and continued grazing. They seemed to know that she was not carnivorous. Perhaps it was her scent. Calmly, she walked through them and down to the lake. There she stripped and waded into the cool water.
A light pattering of rain began to fall on and around her, rippling the surface of the waters. After a few minutes, it stopped, seemingly waiting for just the right conditions to really let go. She bathed there in the cloud light, using the sand under her feet as soap. When she was done, she walked west toward an inviting stand of trees in hopes of finding something to eat in between. A stash of pine nuts and avocados provided her some protein, while at the trees she found a species of fruit she’d never seen before. It was purple and star-shaped. She tasted it speculatively with little nibbles. It was sweet. Deliciously sweet. She saw that the lowest fruits, the ones within easy reach of most of the fauna, had already been taken. Dung around the tree site, which contained pits of the fruit, told her of its edibility. When she was satisfied that they were safe to eat, she ate heartily. Then she carried a load back in her arms to have later, dropping some along the way.
She went to the Parapliohippus, and to the Hypo lying on the ground. The Paras, seeing the delicious fruit she was carrying, closed in around. That unnerved her, but she said nothing except a timid, “Uh, hi...” Soon there was a score of them encircling her. Julie reached out a hand with a fruit in her palm toward the closest horse. It sniffed the fruit, then slowly took it and began to munch, dribbling purple juice from its mouth. She did the same with the others until there was no more left. The horses now regarded her, some sniffing at her back or snuffling in her hair.
“Um, that’s it, I’m out, see?” Julie spread her arms to show that she had no more of the delicious star fruit. They stood staring at her, then one began to lick her palm where the scent of juice was. It tickled and she laughed. The abrupt sound jolted them and slowly they began to wander off to graze elsewhere. The Hypo she’d operated on still slept, she walked to it and touched its face.
“I’ll be back,” she said softly. She’d not planned on giving away all of her food, so she went to the wood for more. Now back under the purple spotted vine, she ate, and, with a mouth full of fruit, she studied them, trying to classify what they might be. Certainly she was aware of yellow star fruit from the Pacific Islands. She wondered if this might be a distant relative. Besides being delicious, it was wonderful to look at. Almost translucent, purple with reddish highlights, the tight skin broke gently to slight pressure from her fingernail. It was juicy, being full of water, and it was warm, thanks to the day. She couldn’t get enough of it.
“A person could make a fine liqueur from you,” she said. Julie grabbed another armload, and this time took them to the cave. On the way, rain began again to fall, though harder now. After depositing the
fruit, she went to fetch her pack and check on her Hypohippus. There was no change, except the horses had stopped grazing, choosing to wait out the rain. As typical, they lowered their heads to snooze and let the water run off.
Her Hypo was still alive, still asleep, so she grabbed her pack and ran back to the cave, leaving it under the rock shelter to keep dry. Then it was back out again, back to the injured horse. She sat near it, and, like a horse, dropped her head to let the rain off. Water pattered all around her, while the warm smell of the earth filled her nostrils. Sleepy, she lay down on the other side of her Hypo, the short grass downy soft under her. The rain was warm and rhythmically soothing.
When Julie awoke, it was still raining, though only lightly now. She turned on her back to stretch and saw a horse standing above her, head bowed and eyes closed. She looked around for the others, but they were away. She looked back at this one. The diagonal stripes, and on the left flank a white patch. The bandage. This was her Hypo! It had recovered! Or, was recovering. Its temperature was down, and the pain was gone. That and hydration had worked wonders.
Slowly, Julie rose and stood on her feet. The Hypo opened its eyes and lifted its head, but made no move away from her. He was a large specimen for a Hypohippus, his head coming almost to the top of hers. She’d not realized his full stature while he lay on the ground, but now he was standing and she was ecstatic, though she kept it discreetly hidden. Instead she stepped toward the horse and slowly reached out a hand, touching his neck. She felt it tense up, muscles tighten for ready flight. Nevertheless, it again made no move away from her. So she spoke to it in sweet undertones.
Chapter 28
Two weeks had passed since Tom and Little crossed the northern corner of the great Temblor Sea. Though he’d taken the sail, he left the raft where she’d run ashore, thanking her for the voyage. Then they set out once again on foot. He would have preferred to go the rest of the distance on the raft, but after the incident with the Megalodon, he ruled that avenue out.
The going on the beach was easier than the forest, as there were fewer obstacles to have to climb over or around. Yet there was still some of that, seeing as the tide carried every fallen tree back to the shore to roll endlessly in the waves or to block a path with lateral obstruction. Soft sand could bog one down too, so when they could, they stayed on the wetter sands near the tide.
As the miles dropped away, Tom discerned that, where on the plains they’d trekked in almost uniformly hot weather, now, with the coastal influence of the Temblor, the temperatures were mild and splendid.
As expected, there were a variety of coastline denizens to navigate. More marine crocodiles, for one. When rounding a headland and noticing them, Tom immediately stopped, then backed up. He and Little then climbed and scrabbled, with some difficulty, up the gravelly hill behind the foreshore and walked above them.
On the bluffs, they encountered bunches of Giant Coreopsis, attractive yellow flowers on tree-like trunks that stood ten feet tall, and Tree Lupine, also with yellow florets and similar height. After passing through them and past the band of crocs, they were presented with a choice: either climb back down, no easy feat, or continue along the rise above the beach. Because it was mostly open land with only small inclinations, Tom decided upon the latter.
The hillock afforded dazzling views of the vast sea, the sun glinting from it like a million blinding diamonds. Looking south with the binocs, he thought he could see where the other side of the Temblor ended in the far distance, but a haze there made it hard to tell for sure. As there seemed to be less obstacles and fewer fauna to deal with here, except for some small species of Tomarctus hunting nesting shorebirds and a few other minor animals, they kept mainly to this route for the next two weeks. However, gullies frequently forced them either to moderately higher ground or back down to the beach.
Fortunately, there was only one other group of the violent Paleoparadoxia, which they happened upon a few days after leaving the raft. It was a much smaller band, though, and these were considerably less animated; contented to simply lie on the beach and sun themselves. From the safety of the overlook, Tom got a mischievous air and lobbed a rock down at the biggest one. It bounced off the tough, blubbery hide and the great animal lifted its head, but not finding the culprit, set it back down and went again to sleep, no harm done.
There was yet another delight in store for Tom which first began to manifest itself a week after rafting day. The tide, the waves of water that rushed onshore, were actually glowing a luminous phosphorescent blue/green, a phenomenon especially apparent on moonless nights, and he wondered what in the world could be causing it. After the first night, they went to the beach at sunset the following day and waited for it. Tom strode into the water to wash cakes of sweat and sand off and Little caught crabs to eat. She knew better than to get near the largest of them though. Tom dug up giant oysters a foot and a half long, with shells an inch thick. Little tried her best to open them, but her human, fearing a broken tooth, forswore her this pastime. He ended up reburying them.
When it was dark enough, they sat and watched the bright emerald waves with delight. Then, deciding to go for a stroll, he walked along the wet sands for a while. He was soon startled to see that their every step ignited in olivine radiance.
What he didn’t know was that the green he saw was being caused by dinoflagellate “blooms”, billions of microscopic, bioluminescent plankton, later called Lingulodinium polyedrum, or similar species, and diatoms, which were in turn caused by the presence of nutrients in the seawater washed down from the mountains and valleys by the frequent rains. What they were seeing, though, was but a scaled down representation of the truly huge blooms on the outer coastal Temblor and Gabilan ranges by massive amounts of phosphorous and other organic nutrients.
The phosphorus was churned up by “upwelling”, an upward movement of seawater from the bottom to the surface, present along the California coast during middle Miocene. Offshore winds, aided by a strengthened California Current, pushed the water away from shore, forcing cold, nutrient-rich deep waters to the surface. The current itself was triggered by the gradual cooling of the globe. Phytoplankton fed on the nutrients, and when these organisms died they accumulated on the basin floor in truly epic numbers to create organic-rich shales that in times past included the Eocene “Kreyenhagen,” and now the Miocene “Monterey Formation.” With time, heat and pressure acted on the buried organic matter within these shales to create oil and gas, the source of California’s famous rich reserves.
In the middle Miocene though, when the formation was still in its infancy, sea birds, whales, and fish converged in these zones to feed on the sardines and anchovies, which were in turn attracted by the plankton and krill.
It was a spectacular show, and, once again, Tom marveled at the beauty that was; and although a long way off, he mourned the eventual loss of that beauty in the future.
There was an unforeseen cost to his choice of this pathway by the sea, and Tom discovered it one afternoon after having to remove his shoe for the third time in a short while to let some minute, but annoying, debris out. Salt water had been working on the resins that held the shoe together.
Disaster! One of my so-called “indestructible” shoes has split. It now admits water, sand, stones and small sticks. Further, the tread on the underside of both has worn down. So much for technology. Will have to figure out a way to repair the bad one or replace it. If that weren’t enough, all of my shirts and pants are ripped. Those I can sew, but I’ll have to consider the long term. Argh!
Tom’s selection of solution for his shoe, tying a piece of cloth around the toe end, was short-lived, as he suspected it would be. He tried to sew it, but snapped one of his needles off attempting to push it through the polyurethane. As he only had three needles total, he didn’t want to risk another. So he stuck a wad of cloth inside and kept walking. Meanwhile, he put his mind to a solution. Certainly, when preparing him for the trip, Karstens had not anticipated that Tom
would be doing so much traipsing. The shoes were meant to last a good while of normal use, longer than the best commercial brand, but sooner or later he’d have to replace them. Looked like it might be sooner, than later.
Tom tried several concepts, he found a piece of bark from a large tree and kept it soaking in a stream while he explored an area of sun and shade. Hours later, he returned and removed it, finding it appropriately soft for cutting. He shaped it roughly according to his shoe size, then he smoothed the inside. Lastly, he tied some string around it to hold it on, finishing his sandals.
Lashing them to his feet, he was eager to try them out. But after a few dozen steps, the uncomfortable things began to fall apart. Tom swore and kicked them off, then, head resting in his hands, he thought. The bark was too dry; maybe he needed fresh, inner bark. Procuring it, though, would be something else. He would have to keep a look out. Meanwhile, he hit on an idea almost as good. Hanging from some species of palm trees were woody, half-oval shaped structures, two to three feet in length and a nearly a foot wide. They were the tree’s flower bracts. After safe development within the hard structures, the bracts opened along a seam, allowing rows of small flowers attached to a stem to come out. Upon pollination, the flowers became fruit and the bracts then dried and fell from the tree. While tough, the bracts were smooth inside. Their thickness was about a quarter-inch.