They were well past Drexel when Gina had Olivia pull to the side of the road. She thought they were about a third of the way, but with the wagon and the width of the wheels finding ways around the broken highway had proved to be difficult in places. Gina didn’t think they had made any more than a three-mile average. Willy had been right about the moon, but it wasn’t enough. Gina wasn’t ready to jeopardize any of the horses if they stepped in one of the many holes or as in one case, the pavement had broken away under them allowing the back wheels to fall off a drop. Sam and Willy had both gotten down and pushed with Gina leading the horses. Sham had taken to Joe as well as settled down into a great wagon horse, once he figured out what was expected of him.
As much as she wanted to be back at camp, Gina was prepared to stop, even if it meant sleeping out in the open. They could take turns standing watch.
Olivia had driven the whole way, never leaving the driver's seat, but Gina, not used to sitting still for so long needed to find a tree, as well as move around before her body stiffened up.
She and Oliva waited for Sam to drive up beside them, before climbing out of the buggy. While Willy had done wonders with the restoration of it, he hadn’t improved the springs under the seat. He probably never dreamed it would ever be used for transportation either. Looking at the buckboard seat and the pained expressions on both of the men’s faces told her Willy might be regretting not having made the improvements to make it a better riding vehicle also.
“How are you two doing?” Gina asked when Sam had set the brake.
“We’re okay, or at least I am,” Willy said, “But then I do get to move around some.”
Sam frowned, “I’m going to have blisters on my a…backside.”
“How much further is it? Do I remember someone saying you were just this side of the big hill?”
Sam laughed, “I guess we never did tell you exactly what was going on. We would almost be home if we were stopping there, but with a volcano and a geyser breathing down our necks, we’ve decided to make a move.”
“Move? Where are you planning on going? Is it any better anywhere else than right here?”
“Have you ever been down into the St. Joe River area? South of here about 35 miles or so?”
“Wilderness area? Camping? I’ve heard they had that area opened up, and was wanting to get down that way and do some fishing, but with my Mom being so ill, I never seemed to find the time. It does sound like a great place to set up a camp. How long will it take us to get there?”
“We’re not making as good a time as we did on the way here and I think it is going to take until tomorrow afternoon to just reach the ranch. That time frame includes stopping right here for the rest of the night. We can’t take any more chances with the horses. If that pavement had caved when they were on it instead of only the back wheels, it could have been disastrous.”
They kept a dry camp that night and sat leaning up against the wagon wheels. Reluctantly, Sam had taken the harnesses off and hung a high line between the two vehicles. They tied Joe on one side with Sham on the other. Both horses had enough line to reach the ground and graze the length of the rope. Gina turned Sailor free, knowing he wouldn’t go far and would return with a whistle.
“Sam? Why did you say we were in Whitefish? Aren’t you going to be sending those people up there a pack of trouble?”
“Two reasons or maybe three, One, It was only a diversionary tactic; two, depending on how this Silas and his bunch are getting around, I doubt they’ll even try and three, I have some doubts that Whitefish still exists. Their terrain is so much more mountainous than here. I have no illusions that these volcanoes are only localized. Something big made these mountains, and now something big is remaking them. Look at the direction they’re going. It almost seems that they now trail east and west.”
Willy nodded, “That’s a truth right there. Glen mentioned a couple of weeks ago that things were changing around. Here it is the middle of January, and we’re in shirtsleeves. If one of the travelers we had was right, there’s a mountain range running right through from Eastern Canada all the way to Texas. He said the Missouri and Mississippi turned inside out and now are a mountain range comparable to the Rockies. Course it doesn’t look like they are quite as impressive as they used to be.”
“And I don’t see it getting any better if these quakes and eruptions don’t stop. I can only imagine how it is elsewhere.”
“But Mr. Carver, at least we know what it is like here. Isn't it better to know than to imagine?”
“Child, why don’t you just call me Willy. No need to stand on ceremony. I haven’t been Mr. Carver in a very long time. Now I just call myself Willy Jones. It makes my life less complicated.”
Gina sat in thought for several minutes, “So, you are Carver Jones. I thought your voice sounded familiar. I listened to you my whole life. Why did you quit singing?”
Willy sighed, and Gina could see the tug of war going on in his mind by the expressions that crossed his face. He nodded and began to talk.
“I guess you have the right to know seeing as you’ve invited me to join your family. A long time ago, I used to sing, as you know. I grew up singing in church, at rodeos, and anywhere they let me pick my old guitar. I did a little bull riding way back then too. I met my wife and got married. Where else to have your honeymoon than where you were raised. She was a country gal out of Texas. People weren’t as tolerant back then with a black man like me scooping up the cute little rodeo queen and carrying her off. January 1993 we found us a preacher in Las Vegas, and we did it. Couldn’t get away from my contracts until the middle of February, so we had our honeymoon then. I took her to New York to show her where I grew up and then we were flying off to Hawaii after she met my Mom.”
Willy chuckled as if his memories brought him pleasure. “It sure did throw my mother off her routine to see me show up with a white girl for a wife. It sure did surprise her all right, but when Tessa, defended my choice, woo-we the fireworks began. You could hear those two a mile away. They finally came to the conclusion they both loved me and came to an understanding. I took Tessa out to see every landmark that New York had become famous for. We were in the underground parking garage C-level of the Trade Center. Tessa forgot her purse and ran back to get it. We were having lunch that day on the 103rd floor. I could see the car, and was helping an elderly couple by the elevator get the woman’s wheelchair out of their trunk. I let her go alone.” Will stopped, wiped his eyes, and smiled. “It was good while it lasted. I enlisted right after the funeral.”
“You were a legend back then too,” Sam told him. “I heard some of the stories…”
Willy held his hand up, “That was then, and this is now, and you’re right Miss Olivia, it is always better to live in the present. Tell me about where we are going.”
It took less time to get on the road the next morning, and between Oliva and Gina, they had the horses harnessed up and set off as the sun began to show itself on the horizon.
Willy took a turn at driving the team with Olivia as his copilot. Gina drove Sailor and was proud of the way her big horse had once again proven what a versatile horse he was. When they got to the river, Willy and Sam had to roll rocks out of the way to get the buckboard across. When they reached the Minnaker’s, they stopped while Sam and Gina looked over the farthest pasture where they had last seen the horses. They appeared to be all gone until Oliva pointed.
“What’s that?”
The three adults looked but couldn’t see anything where she was pointing. “I’m sorry Olivia, but I don’t see anything,” Gina told her.
“Right there by that pine tree. In the grass.” Oliva took off running and didn’t stop when Sam hollered for her to stay with them.
“Well, Damn. I’ll be right back.” He loped off after the girl, and as Sam ran closer, he saw there was indeed something hiding in the tall grass. Oliva had already dropped to her knees in front of it, hiding it from his view.
He heard Oli
via talking to whatever it was before he got there. He didn’t think it could be a foal because most people didn’t have their mares foal until spring. Cows were the only farm animals to drop calves in January. He stopped running as he worked it out in his mind. Sam looked around fully expecting a pissed off cow to come running to protect her calf. He saw nothing.
“Leave it be Olivia. There’s nothing we can do for it.”
The calf was eagerly sucking on the fingers of her hand and butting with his head. Olivia looked up at him, “Why not? He’s only hungry.”
“We have no way to feed it for one thing, and his mom might still come back.”
Olivia pulled her fingers from its mouth, got to her feet and looked around, “Do you see a cow anywhere? You said we keep anything of value or if it really meant something to us. This calf means something to me, and it’s valuable. I’m keeping it. I’m going to name him Colby.”
Sam frowned and realized that and not only was Olivia right, because he had said that, and he didn't see a cow anywhere. He didn’t know if the cow had died or what, but from the look on Olivia’s face, she wasn’t going to be persuaded to leave it. In good conscience, Sam couldn’t either. They had plenty of wolf sightings the past year, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before they showed up.
“How are you going to feed it? Without milk, it’s going to die anyhow. As near as I can tell, it can’t be more than a week old. We don’t have any cows left at the ranch because we already moved them all and they are probably days away from us by now. That calf can’t live without eating, and it’s not even a beef cow.”
“Any kind of milk?” Olivia obviously had a plan, but Sam couldn’t see where she was going with her questions.
“Well, cows milk or milk replacer, which we have neither of.”
“Okay then.” She knelt down and tried to pick the calf up. It struggled in protest, but she got her arms around its butt and chest, but couldn’t stand up with it in her arms.
“Damn, set it on the ground.” He knelt and lifted the calf back on its feet. Using the same lifting technique, he rose up. “You might want to rethink your name for her.”
“It’s a girl? I can still call her Colby. It was my favorite cheese.”
Sam groaned, “You’re going to name a calf after food? Let’s go. We’re burning daylight. I can see that you’ve already got a plan to feed her, but don’t get your hopes up, because she’s probably not going to survive. We don’t know that she got colostrum milk from her mother and they need it for a good start.”
“If she didn’t already drink from her mother, wouldn’t she already be dead?”
Olivia had a point. The calf wasn’t so deprived that it was starving, but it certainly was hungry. It had turned its head, and Sam could feel it gumming his arm through his shirt.
As they got closer to the wagon’s he thought that Gina would be coming to see what they had, but she was up in the back of the wagon, moving things around. Willy was helping her, and he thought they must be making room for the calf.
Gina let out a whoop and climbed down. Sam didn’t think him arriving back at the wagon with a young calf was anything to whoop about until he saw her pulling the threads on the top of a bag at her feet. Willy held up a calf bottle about the time that Sam got to the wagon.
“If I didn’t think it was impossible for you to know about the calf in advance, I would feel that this is a conspiracy. Where did you get the bottle and the milk replacer?”
As Gina scooped out the powder into the bottle, she told him, “You were kind of busy with Steve when Olivia and I took the stuff from the room. There was a new case of six bottles and three bags of replacer as well as some other things we might find useful. I’m not sure why we packed it all, but you said clean the room out, and we did, I just never thought we’d use it this soon.”
Gina added water, put the big orange nipple on it and shook it up, “Here you go. Looking after that calf is your responsibility now,” she said, holding it out to Olivia.
She grinned and took the bottle. I think my dad had the bottles and replacer because he was going to let me raise a calf for 4-H. He hadn’t said he would, but he knew I wanted to, and maybe it was a surprise. He said I was getting something I really wanted for Christmas and maybe this was it.”
Sam shrugged, “Maybe.” His tone said that he doubted it, but then strange things had been going on since the lights went out.
The calf had latched on to the bottle as if he’d eaten from it his whole life. For Gina, it was entertaining to watch. Bubbles of milk came out the sides of his mouth, and he kept trying to bump Olivia as if she were its mother. The calf sucked until the bottle was dry.
“I’m not wasting water to wash it out, so that’s going to be it until we get to the ranch.”
Olivia insisted on holding the calf on the seat, but then there wasn’t room for Willy to drive. He helped her move the calf down into the footwell, and that’s where it curled up and went promptly to sleep.
Sam drove the buggy and led the way with Gina sitting beside him. He kept glancing at Gina because he was sure she had something on her mind when he couldn’t stand the silence anymore, “Okay…you going to tell me or do I need to start guessing?”
“Does it seem funny to you that we’ve been married for four days and this is the first time we’ve been alone together?”
“Kinda makes you wonder if we were the lucky ones getting to go now doesn't it? We could have been sitting at the ranch babysitting the goats.”
Gina laughed, “Put like that, getting to spend time alone is highly over-rated. Just think how much more we’ll appreciate it when it finally happens.”
“IT?” Sam waggled his eyebrows at her, and she laughed watching his red bandana rise and fall as if it had a life of its own.
Gina felt her forehead, the bandage felt dry for a change, and she hoped it was starting to heal. It had begun to itch, and she knew it was a sign of something happening. She would have Journey check her burn as soon as they got back and had a minute.
“Do you still think there are people left in Seattle or any of the big cities?”
“If the cities are still there, I believe there are people. I’m just not sure what kind of people they are.”
“Come on Sam! You can’t believe everyone has gone bad. If they banded together to survive as we all did, there must be some who have fundamentally good values. You don’t just cast them aside in times of conflict. I think humans have a pack mentality and while there always has to be a leader, they would do what is best for the group. It takes a special person to survive alone.”
“I agree with you on the part of that. Willy is a survivor, and I would trust him to be a leader also. In fact, I think I would trust him before any of the rest of us, myself included.”
“Why is that? John makes a good leader most of the time.”
“Because Willy is not biased. He has no emotional connection to any of us. Anything he did would be for the good of the group, not one individual.”
“After knowing what he did for those old people, and Glen, I think you’re right. Maybe it’s something we need to bring up?”
“Leave it be Gina. Besides, I don’t think it’s a position he’s interested in.”
Gina saw Sailors head go up and his ears flip forward, he swung his head toward the water. She could practically read his intentions just from his behavior. “We must be getting close. Sailor smells something familiar.”
They were back on the stretch where they had to follow along with the river bank, and Sam had slowed them to a walk while Gina watched for obstacles in the path. Without warning, Sailor stopped and threw his head up and down. He whinnied loudly snorting at the end and stomped his front foot.
“I’ll check, there must be something in the path that we can’t see.”
Gina climbed down and walked up beside Sailor. She studied the route in front of them, and there was nothing to cause the horse any alarm. “What’s up Sailor?
” Gina took the side of his bridle to lead him forward, but he refused to move. He bugled in Gina’s face. She stepped back and looked to see if he’d hurt himself in any manner, but found nothing. He was standing on all four legs equally. He whinnied again, and this time Gina heard an answer.
“Gus! Gus is in trouble.” Sailor hadn’t taken his gaze from the water, so Gina ran to the bank. Gus was standing down below chest deep in the water looking pathetic. The crest of the bank was a good eight feet above the running water. Gina crept closer, and she could see where the opposite bank had been cut out by erosion and before she could move back the ground collapsed under her. Gina jumped and scrambled and managed to keep her feet under herself until she hit the water. She plunked down on her butt. Gus came wading toward her.
“Gus, shame on you. How did you get yourself in this pickle?” He let out a loud bray and Sailor answered him.
“Are you okay down there?”
Gina stood up, rinsed the mud off her hands and looked up, “Yeah, just a little wet. I’m going to have to find better ground to climb out of here, though.”
“How the hell did he get down there?”
“Probably the same way that I did. A better question is how did he get here? He is supposed to be with John. The last time I saw him, Matt was dragging him off.”
As she looked up the river bed, she could see where Gus had tried many times to climb out, but every time the bank had collapsed. She saw his marks on both sides of the river.
“I can throw you a rope and pull you up.”
“See if you dig out one of those halters we got and a lead line. Have Olivia get them. I’m sure she knows where she put them.”
Beyond the New Horizon (Book 3): Living on the Edge Page 16