The other challenge came from empty bellies. They consumed the packaged food the first day. Rations were lean on the second, consisting of a couple of rabbits that Willy had brought down with an ad-hoc throwing stick. Sego lily, wild onion bulbs, and balsam root were boiled into a thin stew that didn’t go nearly far enough.
Brandon finally risked a rifle shot in a thickly timbered canyon to bring down a yearling bull elk. As the report echoed off into the distance, Breeze thought it sounded like the clap of doom.
“Think they’ll hear that?” Joelle asked, nervous eyes flicking in the direction of possible pursuit.
“Maybe.” Breeze placed a hand on her hip, wary eyes on the back trail. “Depends on how close they are. Empty bellies will doom us just as quickly as Edgewater’s goons.”
She indicated the women, resting now, looking bedraggled. “The rest of you, pitch in. We’ve got to drag that elk out and cut it up. Fast.”
She turned to Willy. “Want to do us all a favor?”
“Sure, boss,” Willy told her. The way he said it took her off guard.
“Scout our back trail. See if anyone’s following.”
Now seven abused, broken, and desperate women were all looking to Breeze for salvation. She hated it.
“I’ve got the horses,” Danielle assured her as she took to picketing the lead ropes.
“Come on, all.” Breeze led the women down into the steep-sided timber where Brandon and Shanteel were already gutting out the elk.
For city kids—with the exception of Mary Lou, who’d become Breeze’s sergeant at arms—they actually exceeded Breeze’s expectations when it came to the butchering. Maybe they were hungry enough, desperate enough, or just so battered as to be beyond shocking anymore.
A half-hour later, they were on the move again, heading higher along the peaks. Here the women labored, tripping and stumbling as they gasped for breath. On steep up-hills, it was Mary Lou who suggested that the weakest could hold onto the horse’s tails, letting the animals help pull them up.
“Amber and Sam died for us. Can’t let them down.” Breeze heard the words as they passed back and forth between the freed women’s lips. It had become a sort of mantra, the thing that kept them moving.
Bless you both, wherever you are.
Breeze kept hesitating on the high points, sitting on Joker, using her binoculars to stare back down the trail for as far as she could see. Searching for any sign of movement.
No sign of Willy.
No sign of pursuit.
But she could feel them back there.
Then she scanned the sky, smoke-thick from distant fires, searching for any sign of an aircraft. If anything would be their undoing, it would be that damned airplane. Especially here, where the trail skirted timberline. The scanty trees, the glacially scoured cirques and hanging valleys left no place to hide eleven people and ten horses and mules.
As the women reached the end of their endurance, they started to stumble, fall, and it took longer each time for them to stagger to their feet. The weakest were rotated onto Amber and Sam’s horses, and the previous riders took to foot. Watching them, Breeze realized with a sense of pride, that they weren’t giving up.
So much for the human condition in the last days of the world.
Brandon was the first to ride back, dismount, and lift Michaela Jenson—the busty brunette from Marin County—into Midnight’s saddle. There she slumped, tears of relief streaking down her face as Brandon took the reins, leading his big blood-bay gelding.
Danielle was next, offering her dapple gray to Rosa Bertolli who staggered on blistered feet that had gone bloody.
Brandon called a halt to the march a little before seven that night, leading them down onto a timbered ridge that stuck out like a defiant shoulder from the steep slope of basalt. Dark clouds were rolling in across the high country to the west.
Worn and fatigue-clumsy herself, Breeze recovered her entrenching tool from the boogie bag and set about scraping the duff back and excavating the trenches. Stumbling, staggering women went about the chore of dragging in wood, snapping off dead branches, and preparing the camp.
Brandon and Shanteel untied the diamond hitch and dropped the elk quarters from their respective mules before Danielle went about tying up the picket line.
Once the fires were built, and the women were shown how to roast meat on an open flame without burning it, Brandon squinted up at the darkening sky. Then he broke out the chainsaw.
“You think that’s a good idea?” Breeze asked. “It was bad enough we risked a shot this morning.”
He squinted from under the brim of his black Rand’s hat. “It’s gonna rain like hell tonight, Sis. You really think those women can take it if it turns to slush or snow?”
“Probably not.”
Brandon went about burning up the last of his gas as he cut down lodgepole pines, then dropped a thickly branched fir tree, and began limbing it.
“We’re building a shelter, guys,” he called. “Give me a hand here.”
Breeze, however, just had that prickly feeling.
Taking her M4, she pushed her weary legs back up to the trail. A chainsaw could be heard across long distances.
No doubt about it, as thick and black as the clouds were, the night—and maybe all of tomorrow—was going to be damned miserable. Even in midsummer, people died of hypothermia in the high country.
She climbed up on the ridge and scanned the backtrail with her binoculars. Carefully studied each of the stony gray outcrops of cracked basalt, checked each dip and ridge they’d crossed. Nothing moved but a small herd of mule deer does, yearlings, and a couple of fawns.
No sign of Willy.
Nothing.
“Where are you?”
The first rumbling of thunder rolled down around the peaks.
And then a real flash, followed by a deafening crack, as a bolt discharged into the peak above her.
As it rumbled away into the distance, the first drops of hard, cold rain splattered around her.
She was turning back when she heard it: the distant sound of a rifle shot.
Seconds later a faint crackling reached her ears. A fusillade of answering gunfire that was carried away by the wind.
Then the storm broke in earnest.
Chapter Fifty
As cold rain fell, lightning illuminated the surrounding trees and cast weird, actinic shadows across the smoking fire where it struggled to hold its own against the downpour.
Breeze—her hat soaked and streaming from the brim—walked over and tossed another section of deadfall onto the hissing and sizzling flames.
The wet surface steamed until it burned down to the dry wood beneath. Lightning flashed again to gleam in the water that ran down her slicker.
“One thing about it,” she called. “Tracks will be washed out in the trail.”
“Yeah,” Brandon answered from the other side of the fire. “As if they didn’t know which way we were headed. Only so many trails up here. Even if the steep parts are washed out, anyone with a half a sense can still find the shadow of a print in the flats. That’s the thing about a shod horse ridden on damp ground.”
“I’m worried about that shooting Breeze heard,” Shanteel added. She stood beside Brandon, head bowed so the rain dribbled from the brim on her hat, shoulders slumped in her rain-coat.
“Me, too,” Breeze added.
From the shelter of the lean to, Mary Lou called, “It had to be Willy, right?”
“Most likely,” Breeze answered. “Hope he got one with that first shot. Hope even more that he got to cover before the bunch of them shot back.” She gave them a grim smile, illuminated by the flames. “You get to feeling really small inside when a bunch of bullets go clapping past your head.”
“So what do we do next?” Kylie Havel, the redheaded girl from Oakland, asked in a small voice. She had her sleeves pulled over her hands for warmth as she snuggled against the rest of the bedraggled females.
Bra
ndon looked at Breeze and shrugged, then turned his attention to the women crowded shoulder-to-shoulder in the lean to. “That depends. The temperature’s down in the forties. Up this high it can stay that way for days. Smart money would be stay right here, fix up the shelter better, haul in more firewood. Shoot another critter to keep our bellies full. But somebody’s shooting at somebody else back down the trail.”
“I don’t want them to catch us,” Joelle said, her breath clouding in the cold.
“So where are we?” Shanteel asked, glancing at Brandon.
“Just to the west of Frying Pan Canyon.”
“Why do they call it that?” one of the girls asked. “For its shape?”
“Nope.” Brandon smiled. “It’s because it’s so steep, and the downed timber’s so thick, that if you ever kill an elk down there, you’d better have a frying pan, salt-shaker, and fork. You’re going to have to cook that elk and eat it right where you shot it because you’ll never pack it out.”
Shanteel tilted her hat so that the rain ran off the other side. “Y’all aren’t laughing. I didn’t get it either. It’s local humor.”
Danielle appeared out of the dark, rain pattering on the hood of her slicker. “Horses are good. But I’ve got an idea. This is that really hard section of trail, right? The one that skirts the head of Frying Pan Canyon. Lots of slippery climbs and descents.”
“Yeah,” Breeze told her. “You spent most of the time slipping and sliding, and that was on two feet.”
Danielle looked east into the night, toward the field camp. “The other side of Frying Pan Canyon, that flat we could see from the canyon edge, that’s where Brandon and Shanteel holed up during the storm, right?”
“Yeah,” Brandon told her.
Danielle turned back, staring thoughtfully into the fire. “Took us a hard day coming this way. Probably be two days getting back given how the girls are moving. And there’s no place to camp in all those rocks and steep places.”
“You got a point?” Breeze wondered.
“How long would it take us to climb down Frying Pan Canyon through all that deadfall, then climb up the other side?”
“Most of a day,” Brandon told her. “Assuming you didn’t have packs.”
“And how long would it take you and Breeze, both excellent back-country riders, to bring the horses around on the trail to meet us on the other side?”
“Most of a day,” Breeze answered.
Danielle raised her hands and gestured, as if to say, “Well?”
“Taking these poor women down into that mess?” Brandon asked. “Do you know what you’re asking?”
“We’re primates.” Danielle stuffed her hands into her belt. “We can crawl up, over, around, and through. And we’re a team. Michaela, and Kylie, and Rosa are in the worst shape. Shanteel, if you’d come, help Mary Lou and me, together, we could all make it. Help each other.” She lifted her chin defiantly, “And it would leave us no more than a half day from the field camp. There’s food there. And the morning after, we can scout the situation at the ranch.”
Breeze eyed the huddled women who were watching from the lean to. “Do you understand just how tough this will be?”
Courtney Volusia, an auburn-haired beauty from Chicago, said, “Could Sam and Amber cross that canyon in a day?”
“Well, sure. But they were—”
“Then we can do it,” Rosa Bertolli told her. “If my feet get so bad, I’ll crawl up the other side.”
“Fuck that,” Mary Lou told her. “We’ll pull you up.”
“We won’t like, run into a grizzly bear, will we?” Joelle asked.
“Might,” Brandon offered. “Frying Pan Canyon? Just about perfect habitat.”
“Screw ‘em,” Michaela muttered where she huddled cross-armed, damp hair in strands. “After what we’ve been through, and as many of us as there are, what’s a grizzly bear?”
“I’ll have a rifle,” Shanteel told them. “And Danielle will have her pistol.”
Shanteel turned to Brandon and Breeze. “Come morning, we feed these girls the rest of the elk, pack up before daylight, and you make tracks. Meet you at the wickiup.”
Brandon nodded as he studied the huddled women. “You be damned careful down there. No risks. You fall? You break a leg? It could be days before we get you out of there.”
Verla Tollman—a sixteen-year-old blonde from Seattle—brushed her hair back. “Brandon, we’ll make it. If we’ve made it this far there’s nothing we can’t do.”
Breeze exhaled a breath that fogged and rose into the rain. Just back there, maybe two or three miles, someone finished the day in a gun fight.
Chapter Fifty-One
Patterns of rain came and went through the night. Breeze, Brandon, and Danielle spent most of the long, wet hours keeping the fires going, cooking the last of the elk.
Piled together as they were in the lean to, the women actually slept. Breeze suspected that not only were they exhausted, but they had full stomachs for the first time in weeks. And she suspected that they were coming into their own. They actually had hope. Part of it was tomorrow’s challenge of Frying Pan Canyon, part of it had to be bonding among traumatized survivors, that sense of “we few”.
Must be nice.
An hour before dawn, Shanteel awakened the women. Told them that they needed to eat.
Breeze shivered, having munched on elk loin for most of the night. As the camp was packed onto the mules, she stood in the drizzle in an attempt to get Joker to take the bit.
“Hey, old fellow,” she greeted, slicking the water off his back. “We’ve got a tough day today. But it’s make it or break it time.”
Joker did his best to search her pockets in forlorn hope of a treat—and only got the cold bit in reward. Then she helped Shanteel, Danielle, and Brandon saddle up the pack animals; last she pitched her boogie bag onto the roan mule’s crossbucks and lashed it tight.
“You be damned careful,” Brandon told Shanteel for the umpteenth time. “Watch out for the deadfall, wet like this, the wood’s gonna be slick as snot on a doorknob.”
“Who you worrying about? We’ll be fine.”
“Just trying to remind you that these women aren’t like us. They’re city people.”
Shanteel laughed. “Go on with you, Brandon. Now, you hear me. You don’t hurry on that trail out there. On those steep sections, you give Midnight his head. Don’t you go crowding him. Let him pick his way.”
“Telling me how to ride my horse?”
“Only ‘cause I think it will keep you alive.” She pulled him close, hugging him to her. “See you on the other side, lover.”
“You, too.” Brandon stepped into the saddle. “You get in a mess down there, I’ll be coming to look as soon as I can.”
Breeze stepped into Joker’s stirrup and threw a leg over the cantle, taking the reins. After checking the way her M4 hung under her slicker, she walked Joker around to grab up the lead rope for the rest of the string.
Then they were off, climbing up onto the trail as the first gray of dawn began to filter through the clouds and rain.
The horses’ hooves clacked on wet rock as they made their way south along the canyon rim.
“Think they’ll be all right?” Brandon asked over his shoulder.
“Hell, I don’t know.” She paused. “But then I don’t know much anymore, little brother.”
Another ten minutes passed before she asked, “Think you and Shanteel will have kids?”
“She’d help me raise ‘em right, that’s for sure.”
“You really love her?”
He turned in the saddle. “Sis, you got a problem with Shanteel?”
“God, no. Now turn around so you don’t fall off your horse and look any stupider than you usually do. No, I was just wondering what love was these days.”
“It’s kind of wonderful. Kind of scary. I just want to be with her. I mean, every minute. It’s like it’s all perfect. How she thinks, the things she says. The way
she just takes what comes along. Thomas says she’s got an old soul.”
Breeze let Joker tackle a steep ascent, shifted to help him keep his balance when he slipped, and stuck with him as he buck-jumped his way up the rocky trail. Behind her, the pack animals followed with a clattering of hooves and loosened rock.
“Yeah, well, nothing’s the same anymore.” She tilted her hat so the water ran off. “Let alone human life. At night I think about what I’ve done, who I’ve become. I don’t even think twice about killing a human being anymore.” A beat. “What kind of monster does that make me?”
“About the same kind as me, I suppose.” His shoulders slumped as he settled into Midnight’s gait. “Shanteel and I have talked about it. How the only thing that matters now is keeping people you love alive.”
He was silent for a time, then said, “I never would have thought I’d be killing people. Let alone that I’d be less bothered about it than I am about shooting an elk. What’s that say about who we are?”
Locked in their thoughts they might have been alone, motes lost in a hazy gray mist, sole occupants in a universe of wet and gray. Breeze remembered the long climb the horses now tackled, the trail appearing out of the mist, rocks, scrubby subalpine fir and whitebark pine passing by, only to vanish into gray nothingness behind them.
“What about you?” Brandon asked as they crested the top of a knife-like rise; Midnight slipped and slid his way down the other side.
“What about me?” she asked, staying loose in the saddle as Joker felt his way down ahead of the pack string.
“You were going to conquer the world. Had your sights set on a place in Manhattan, didn’t you? Big time stock-broker? Not that I doubt you’d have made it, but what now?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“We get home, I want you to spend some time with Thomas.”
“Whoa. That came right out of left field.”
“I guess what it boils down to is I didn’t think you were coming back. Not given the way you left. Not after you went off to school. And most particularly not after you, Sam, and Amber headed down to raid that ranch.”
Dissolution: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book One Page 36