Charlie left Lucas with the two horses and went to look the wagon over. After studying the position of the wheels and the depth of the mud and dirt surrounding the wagon, he told John, “We’ll have to pull it out backward and dig out the bank some. I don’t have the same traction on my wheels, and the horses are pulling against the bank of mud. I’m not sure the tractor could even pull it up there without using a shovel first.”
“Lucas, go unhook the trailer and drop it where you stopped. Bring it back down here, but you’re going to have to…never mind. Help Charlie get those horses unhitched. I’ll get the tractor.”
By the time Charlie and Lucas had the big horses standing off to the side, John was back with the tractor. He came down the hill front end forward rather than backing down as he’d said to Lucas. When he got to the front of the box, Charlie had pulled some pins and dropped the pole on the ground. Now there was nothing to prevent John from driving right up to the box. John pulled a round nosed shovel out from beside the fender and tossed it in Lucas’s direction.
“Dig out the front of the box so I can see the edge of it.”
Lucas looked at the shovel stuck in the mud and waded in to get it. He felt the water ooze down into the top of his boots, and he hoped it was only water and not mud too. Once he had cleared enough away, John put the edge of the bucket against the box and pushed it back. The wagon rolled easily with the weight of the tractor behind it. When he had it clear of the mud, he stopped and climbed down.
John walked around the front of it and stood with his hands on his hips, looking. He turned and looked at the opposite bank, which now instead of having a gradual slope was straight up and down, gouged out by the front of the wagon. The horse's feet had turned the ground into a deep muddy mess. He chewed his lip while he studied the situation.
By the time John had looked at it from every angle, he was shaking his head. He sighed, “We’ll have to find another way around. I can’t see how we’re going to get over that first hump.”
“We could build a ramp. We cut up a few of these fallen trees we could use them to bridge the gap.”
Mark pulled his chainsaw out of his wagon and set to work. He cut logs the width of the wagon wheels, and they began filling the space between them. By the time they were finished, they had lost a couple of hours and gallons of sweat. The girls, Mary and Evelyn, carried the cut limbs and filled in the gaps.
Lucas’s feet were beginning to itch, and his boots squeezed water out with every step. He knew they would dry eventually. He had sized them with water when they were new to form them to his feet. Then, he had soaked them and left them on until they dried, but there hadn’t been any mud used in the process like there was this day.
While Mary and Evelyn fixed them sandwiches from tortillas, Lucas walked up the creek, not only to wash the mud away from his clothes but to see what was up there. He was surprised when he found a path that had obviously been used for a hiking trail, and while it was narrow, he thought the wagon could have passed between the brush and tree trunks. Behind him, Lucas could see where the trail continued back to the north and wondered why his father hadn’t looked for a different crossing rather than spend hours building a ramp. He shook his head and walked back to the wagon. He wasn’t going to say a word about the crossing. If Charlie had had to use the horses, he would have, but seeing his father hooking a chain to the front of the wagon, he was determined to keep his knowledge to himself.
As he walked the water flow was almost at a standstill and looking at the edges of it, he realized it was a new creek. Under the water, he could see where the grass was bent in the direction of the flow. He thought it had begun to rain when the surface began to jump up and down as if being pelted with raindrops. The ground shifted under his feet, and he stumbled. “Dang!” He jogged back to the others who were holding on to the sides of the wagon. Charlies draft horses were snorting and stamping, pulling back from the trees they were tied too. He saw Charlie stumble his way to one of them and Lucas headed for the other. The horse calmed as soon as Lucas put his hands on him. Lucas rubbed and spoke to the big horse trying to calm him. He looked and saw the grateful expression on Charlie's face, and Lucas knew how much Charlie cared for his animals. To Luca’s way of thinking, how a man cared for his animals said a lot about his values and Lucas was reminded of the jenny and Matts horse. They were gone because of Matt’s and his bad decision. He felt sad for the loss and for something he felt he and his father had lost. He wasn’t sure what it was, but when he thought about it, Lucas realized his Uncle Sam treated him more like a thinking adult even with the errors in his judgment. “But he ain’t my father,” he reminded himself and wondered if maybe that wasn’t the difference.
“Lucas, leave that damn horse alone and get over here. I need you to get down there and wrap this chain around the front axle.”
“I’ll do it. That boy has done enough,” Charlie said, as he walked over to the wagon.
“He can do it. No sense all of us getting dirty.”
Lucas could feel the friction between the two men and knew he didn’t want to be the cause of disharmony in their group. Sam had already explained to all of the kids how they would be asked to take on more of the responsibilities now that their lives had changed, and he’d stressed how they all needed to get along and not complain.
“I’ll do it,” he said and took the end of the chain and dragged it under the wagon. With it wrapped around the axle several times, he hung the hook over the main part of the chain securing it. He had tried to stay out of the water, but for some reason, the flow had increased and looked at the wagon wheels; the depth had increased by several inches. Lucas glanced up the waterway and saw that where the water had almost lain in slow moving pools, now had small ripples as if the flow had increased.
He stood up and nodded at his father. He thought he saw something on his father's face he couldn’t identify. The way he wouldn’t meet Luca’s eyes made him wonder if the expression could be shame. His look had reflected what Lucas felt inside every time his dad had brought up the loss of Carlos’s jenny. Lucas could see no way to replace her and tried to compensate by doing more and working harder without be told.
“You want to make camp here for the night?” Mark asked, looking up at the sky.
“Nope. We can get through this and maybe a couple more miles before stopping,” John said as he walked to where the tractor sat. “Lucas, when I get close, hook the end of that chain around the weights.”
Lucas sighed and picked up the coil of chain. He was surprised when Mark came over and took the chain from him. “I’ll do it. I think you’ve paid penance enough for today.”
Lucas released the chain to Mark and went to stand by Charlie. “What you did for old Walker sure did help me. Settled that horse right down. I’m thinking you might want to learn to drive them.”
Lucas opened his eyes wide, “Really?” Realizing how much he sounded like a little kid he wiped the grin from his face and followed with, “That would be great Mr. McGrubber. I’d like that.”
Charlie laughed at the change of expressions on Luca's face, “Son, as of this minute, I am Charlie to you. No more of this mister stuff. I’ve watched you all day bend over backward to help, and I think you should be thanked for everything, including getting down in that muddy water to rescue my wagon.”
The boy and the man watched as John backed up taking the wagon with him. It bumped and rocked going over the temporary ramp, but John safely made it to the top.
The people waded through the now dirty water and climbed the bank. At the top, Lucas and Charlie turned when they heard the sound of rushing water and watched as a four-foot wave cascaded by, pushing their stacked brush and logs in front of it.
“Wow! What caused that? I thought the water was getting deeper when the trembling started, but that is ridiculous.”
Charlie watched the debris from their impromptu ramp settle on the ground downstream, “I guess maybe it might have been dammed up somewhere
upstream and that little shaker knocked it loose. Just glad we got up there when we did. Now, if you want to get Walker and bring him up to the top, I’ll take Jack up.”
As Charlie started to walk toward one of the draft horses, Lucas asked,“Are they whiskey?”
He saw Charlie's shoulders moving and thought the man was laughing. When he turned with the lead line in hand, his grin answered Luca’s question. “My two favorite beverages. Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels.”
Lucas smiled in return, but he didn’t understand how anyone could drink whiskey. It burned going down, made your eyes water and made you cough and the next day it burned coming back up. He felt the saliva pool in his mouth at the only memory he had of drinking. He vowed right then kneeling in front of the toilet never to drink anything that would make him feel that badly the next day. The subsequent whipping he’d gotten later that day for stealing the bottle from the liquor cabinet had reaffirmed his oath to himself.
Once the trailer and horses had been hooked back up, John stood to wait for Lucas at the wheel of the tractor. “Charlie says he needs help with those horses of his. I don’t understand why, but he wants you to learn to drive them. So get on back there.”
Of everything that Lucas could have thought why his father was standing waiting on him, and then to be told to do something that he was dying to do, was not it.
“Yes sir!” he said and walked quickly back to the wagon. He wanted to get away before his dad changed his mind and had him do something irrelevant like holding the brush back so they could pass through it without getting smacked in the face by the loose branches. That had been his earlier chore, and while he didn’t mind walking, he didn’t understand the necessity of holding branches away.
Lucas was surprised when he got to the wagon and Charlie was sitting on the passenger side of the wooden seat, “Get on up here Lucas. You may as well let your learning begin right here.”
Lucas was only too happy to oblige. Charlie showed him how to separate and hold the lines. He shook them like he’d seen Charlie do and called, Gee Haw,” to the team. They didn’t move. He looked at Charlie, and he was laughing, his face turning red from holding it in.
“Put some muscle into those arms and some thunder into your voice,” he told Lucas.
Lucas slapped the reins hard, “Gee Haw!” he yelled as he slapped the reins on their backs again. The big horses started to move one foot at a time.
Lucas grinned at Charlie when he heard, “Now you’ve got it.”
As they rolled along Lucas didn’t have to do anything. The horses were following behind Marks wagon and when Mark slowed so did they. When Mark stopped for a second so did they. He looked over at Charlie and saw the man’s chin was resting on his chest. He appeared to be asleep. His body moved with the motion of the wagon, but he didn’t wake up.
As Lucas drove along, he had a chance to study the trees and terrain around them. The hillside on their right rose steeply up, and for the trees, he couldn’t see the top of the hill. On his left, he was careful to leave plenty of space between them and the drop-off. It was only nine or ten feet down, but he didn’t want to take the chance of the ground giving way under the wheels.
He noticed the lack of the wind and the new leaves hung limp and he wondered how confused the trees must be with the change if their weather pattern. Every other year, the limbs would have been bare of foliage and heavy with snow. He had never left the ranch except to go to school and winters were the worst. The stock had to be tended to, no matter how cold it was outside. Pipes had to be thawed out, and ice broken in the water troughs. The winter before one of his added jobs was riding one of the four wheelers to each one of them and breaking the ice and making sure the float was working. It was those times that made him wish for summer until he remembered how hot it got and how many bales of hay he had to lift. Lucas wiggled his shoulders with the memory of the chaff that always found its way down inside his shirt and bucking bales with no shirt on was out of the question. The kids in school used to always tease him about his lack of a suntan at the end of summer and tell him he had a farmers tan, but Lucas knew it was a ranchers tan because he wasn’t no farmer.
The wagon bumped something bringing his attention back to what was going on in front of him. He saw a rock roll across the road narrowly missing the back of Marks wagon. He looked right and saw the trees begin to move. It started as a shaking and quickly turned into the earth moving down the side of the hill. He heard Mark holler, and Charlie woke up. As soon as Mark began moving faster, Lucas slapped the already spooked horses into a jog.
“Hit them again Lucas, the whole damn thing is coming down!”
Lucas did and saw a tree sliding down the hillside root ball first and knew if he didn’t move the horses faster, the tree was going to hit them. He began slapping and yelling to urge them forward and watched as the road in front of them began to disintegrate. Cracks in the roadway formed and opened up as they flew over them, the wagon bucking and jumping as they were pelted by rocks and clods of flying dirt.
Wishing he could close his eyes and not see the end coming, Lucas slapped the horses continuously, and he never stopped yelling. Even over his own voice he heard the cracking as trees split in two and the rumble and groan as the hill collapsed behind them.
Jack, the horse on the right, swerved when the roots of a large tree slid directly at him frightening the horse. Lucas fought to keep the wagon upright. He didn’t give himself time to worry about going over the edge and reacted to the bolting horse. He pulled hard on the right rein and steered Walker into Jack, forcing him ahead. The wagon bounced and jumped over debris as it landed in front of them and then under their wheels. At one point he thought Charlie wanted to take the reins, but Lucas held on, and Charlie's hands closed on the side rail of the seat.
When the force of dirt, slewed the back of the wagon sideways and Lucas felt it begin to sink away, Lucas knew they were going over, and he slapped the horses as hard as he could. A miracle happened right then when the big animals managed to drag the sideways wagon back into a straight line. The two Percheron’s thundered on over the ground and Lucas was sure he could feel their big hooves as they slammed down adding to the chaos.
He heard Charlie bellow and glanced his way, what had Charlie screaming was a car-sized rock picking up speed as it thundered toward them bouncing and rolling, smashing everything in its path. Lucas felt the blood leave his brain and whipped both horses into a frenzy.
The end of Chapter One.
I hoped you enjoyed it enough to look for book four of the - Beyond the New Horizon series; Darkest Times. Yes, After writing the first chapter, I did come up with a name, and I am sure that it will be a fitting title.
Table of Contents
Chapter One; Icing on the cake
Chapter Two; Who’s fault is this?
Chapter Three; Are we at risk?
Chapter Four; Accident or what?
Chapter Five; One man’s family
Chapter Six; Turncoat!
Chapter Seven; Ready for the move
Chapter Eight; Caravan of vehicles
Chapter Nine; Staying behind
Chapter Ten; Buggies and wagons
Chapter Eleven; Old friends
Chapter Twelve; Someone has shot Gus!
Chapter Thirteen; Looking for problems.
Chapter Fourteen; Girls and planes!
Chapter Fifteen; Play on words
Chapter Sixteen; Better things ahead
Chapter Seventeen; The disappearance
Chapter One; Darkest Times
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Beyond the New Horizon (Book 3): Living on the Edge Page 29