Desert Rose

by Victoria Hardesty

  She saw nothing but dust blowing across the desert from the occasional summertime hot wind gusts. Not one other thing on the property moved, and she heard no sound from the cabin, barn or main house. By late evening she felt a new sensation in her belly. It was empty, and water didn’t fill it for long. It was uncomfortable but not painful, but it caused her concern. She hoped to see John or Rhonda soon. She drank more water and finally slept a few hours on her feet, locking three legs at a time at the knee or hock for support. She woke often and exchanged legs to rest one at a time and kept watching the house. Nothing moved.

  ****

  Nobody called the cell phone. Merle drove to the nearest town and spent more of the money the four men pooled together on food and drinks, charging the cell phone during the drive in and back. Nobody called! Nobody called that entire day, or the next one either. By the evening of the third day, the four men were anxious and tired of hiding from their hostages and sharing their meager food supply with them. They were also getting low on hay for the horse. They’d expected to be on their way back to Texas by now with a hundred thousand dollars to spend.

  ****

  Rosie had never gone without food. By the third day, she was feeling faint from lack of food, and she was alarmed. “Mom, do you think something happened to John and Rhonda. I know they wouldn’t go away and leave us here to starve?” she asked her mother.

  “I don’t know,” her mother said. “John and Rhonda are not the kind of people who would abandon us. Something must have happened to them. Cutter is gone too. It must have been him getting into the horse trailer that night. I’m afraid you could be right.”

  “We need to think positive! Someone will come. Someone will bring us food. We just need to hang in there a little while longer. Let’s drink more water,” Rosie tried to assure her mother.

  The water buckets on the fence were empty. There was a coating of desert dust in the bottom of each one. The only water left for the horses was the large pasture water tank with the automatic filler. One of the geldings in the pasture, probably Cash, played with the float in the tank and broke it off. The automatic filler was no longer working. During the heat of the day, water evaporated from the surface of the tank. The horses drinking more than usual was depleting the water supply even further. The water level was dropping rapidly. Rosie wondered what would become of her and her mother and their companions once the water was gone. She didn’t want to watch her mother die. She didn’t want to die and have her mother see that. She was very worried but felt it was important to keep their spirits up if she could.

  CHAPTER | SEVEN

  John and Rhonda spent every day in the filthy bedroom with the door shut and the windows closed tightly. Neither of them could reach a window to open one. The high temperature of the day was oppressive. They lay on the bed and sweated in the stifling heat.

  They often talked about the five horses left at the ranch. They knew the Garcia family was out of the country and there was little likelihood of someone stopping by. They hoped their current situation would be solved so they could get back to the ranch and take care of the horses. The longer their captivity lasted, the more deeply they worried about the horses left without any source of food on the ranch in Apple Valley.

  They were escorted at gunpoint to the bathroom twice each day. That was their only time out of the bedroom. The bathroom was closed up tightly. Breathing the foul air nearly overpowered them each time they went to it. There was no running water in there so no way to clean themselves up either.

  ****

  Maryann thought about her conversation with Brody. Something about the look on his face when he talked about Desert Rose proved to her he loved that horse and missed her terribly. She remembered him telling her he didn’t feel right about asking Aunt Ginny and Uncle Mike for his own horse after all they’d done for him. Now she knew what they’d done. They took him in as their own after his family was killed and even adopted him, so he had parents again. But she thought Aunt Ginny and Uncle Mike would never hesitate to give Brody his own horse if he asked them. She called her friend Becky Howard to talk to her about it. Becky was Brody’s friend too.

  “Didn’t you know about Brody?” Becky asked when Maryann told her about his opening up to her. “I thought you’d know since you live up there. The accident was so awful. I just assumed the locals would have heard about it.”

  “No I never heard the story, and it happened a long time ago. I asked Brody why he didn’t live with his parents out of curiosity. I know that sometimes happens for different reasons,” Maryann answered. She went on to relate his story about Desert Rose. “I know he loved that horse. I’d like to see if it is possible to get her back for him. What do you think?”

  “Brody would be so much fun as a competitor! I’ve seen him ride when I visited Aunt Ginny’s place. He would have whipped butt at the Nationals if he had his own horse. Yeah, I’d love to help with that. What are you thinking?”

  “Brody told me the Garcias own the horse and they live down in San Juan Capistrano. He says Mr. Garcia is a wealthy businessman, so your folks probably know him. We need to talk to him and see if he’d be willing to sell Desert Rose. What do you think? I can talk to Grandpa about raising the money. After all Brody did while we were stuck in that canyon during the fire, I’m sure Grandpa would help,” Maryann explained.

  “Yeah, he was the only one that could figure out how to use that satellite phone. If he hadn’t we might still be there,” Becky said. “I can talk to my dad and see if he would be willing to help with the money too. I think I may know Mr. Garcia’s son, Stevie. He volunteers at the Therapeutic Riding Center where I volunteer here in town. I see him there sometimes. He’s got the cutest accent. I think Mr. Garcia is part of the local Rotary Club with my dad. Maybe we can get his phone number that way.”

  “Great idea! Maybe we can call Mr. Garcia first and see if he’s even willing to sell Rosie before we start asking for the money. What do you think?”

  “My dad has the Rotary Club roster in his office here at the house. I’ll see if I can find it and get the Garcia’s phone number. I’ll call and see if he will talk to me about it and I’ll let you know what he says, okay?” Becky asked.

  “That would be great!” Maryann said. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed. I know Brody would be so happy to have his Rosie back.”

  Becky did as promised. She found her dad’s Rotary Club roster on his desk and copied the phone number for Mr. Estaban Garcia. She tried calling the number for three days at different times of the day and got no answer at all. She was puzzled. When she thought about it, she realized she had not seen Stevie at the stable for a while either. Were they out of town, on vacation, or did something happen to them she’d not heard about? She asked her dad over dinner that night if he knew anything about the Garcias and had he seen Mr. Garcia lately. Her dad scratched his head and had to admit he hadn’t seen him around for a while. He promised to check with his Rotary friends and let her know in a couple of days.

  Becky called Maryann that night and told her how she’d been unsuccessful in reaching Mr. Garcia. “They may not be in town,” she suggested. “My dad is going to check around and let me know. Do you know if you can get the phone number for their Hacienda Rancho out in the desert? Maybe they are there for a vacation.”

  “I can probably get a phone number from Aunt Ginny’s office,” Maryann suggested. “I don’t want them to know what we’re doing so I’ll have to wait for an opportunity to sneak into her office in the barn. I know she keeps most of her ranch records there.”

  “Great. I’ll let you know what my dad finds out. Let me know if you can reach anyone by phone up there,” Becky said. “This is quite a mystery. People don’t generally fall off the face of the planet without telling someone.”

  CHAPTER | EIGHT

  On the fourth morning after stealing Cutter from the Hacienda Rancho, the cell phone had not rung one time. The four men were getting antsy. “What do we do if he do
esn’t call us?” Wayne whined. “We’re stuck with two hostages and a darned horse we can’t take back to Texas with us, for heaven’s sake. Handling those hostages is a problem. We take a risk they’ll see something they can identify every time we feed them or take them to the bathroom. Maybe we shoulda done like Pat suggested and just get rid of them and dump the bodies down an old mine shaft. They’re eating us out of house and home, and we’re almost broke. We gotta keep gas money, or we can’t get back home either.”

  “I didn’t sign up for no killin’ so stop talking crud, will ya,” Dave yelled at Wayne. “We’re not goin’ to kill anyone. Maybe we should send him a ransom note in the mail.”

  Merle looked at the others. “Lay your cash on the table.” He pulled his own money, including change, from his pocket and plunked it down on the folding table. The other three men followed his lead. Merle took the money and added it up, including all the change laying there.

  Merle looked at the cash laying there and thought for a minute. “We’ve got enough together to get us through another six days and still have gas money to get us to Prescott, Arizona. If we don’t hear something before then, I think we should head for Prescott. They’re having a big rodeo there, and between the four of us, we can make a good chunk of money from bronc and bull riding. We always do. That’ll get us back home. I’m going to send the ransom demand in the mail today and give it four more days. If we still haven’t heard anything from the owner, we have to give up and leave.”

  Merle sat at the table and printed the ransom note out carefully in plain block letters, stuck it in an envelope, addressed it to Mr. Esteban Garcia at his home address in San Juan Capistrano. He took it to the post office in Ridgecrest, California, the nearest town to the old mobile home they were squatting in. The clerk told him it would take two days to get there.

  “What are we going to do with the hostages and the horse?” Pat asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should just leave them where they are,” Merle said. “We could call from Arizona and let someone know to look for them.”

  “I’m not going just to leave them here to die like that,” Dave said in disgust. “I don’t want no part of no killin’!”

  “Didn’t you just hear me say we can call and let someone know where to find them?” Merle shouted. “If we could find this place, I can tell someone else how to find it again after we leave!”

  Merle didn’t know the last person who took food to the hostages in the bedroom forgot to shut the door when he left the room. John and Rhonda heard the whole conversation. Rhonda began to cry again. She reached her one hand across the bed to John’s and held it tightly as she looked into her husband’s eyes. This was it! They were going to leave them handcuffed to the bed to starve to death. She never thought her life would end this way. She wanted to raise two children and see them grow up and get married themselves. She wanted to spoil her grandchildren. She didn’t want to die in some forsaken old mobile home in the desert. They had to do something.

  That’s when she felt it. Something scratched the back of her arm. She lifted her arm and saw it. It was a hairpin that fell out of her hair. She remembered tucking her hair up before going to bed the last night at the ranch. Here was something they might be able to use to open the handcuffs if they were lucky. She showed it to John. She had to move her arm and her body a bit for him to use his right hand and pick it up. He smiled at her. It might work.

  John and Rhonda struggled the balance of the day to insert the hairpin in the handcuff on his wrist. She had to stretch her right arm to the point of pain and lay nearly on top of John to reach his left handcuff with her left hand. It was awkward. Rhonda began to lose hope again. John had faith they could get that hairpin to work and remove the cuffs. Just what they would do when they were free, he hadn’t worked out yet. But he would think of something. All the while they had to keep an ear out for the sound of someone coming and catching them. It was exhausting.

  For two full days after Merle mailed the ransom note to San Juan Capistrano, the four men got along pretty well, playing poker in the evenings for a while before turning in. The third and fourth day didn’t go so well. The longer the cell phone did not ring, the more agitated they became. The evening of the third night, Merle had to come between two of them before they came to blows over an issue of no consequence.

  “Knock it off, you two,” he shouted at both of them. “We said we would wait six days and we’re only halfway there now. Don’t go getting stupid on me. Calm down!”

  CHAPTER | NINE

  The five horses abandoned at the Hacienda Rancho were getting frantic. Nobody came with feed. They had plenty of shade in the large enclosure. Mr. Garcia had seen to that when he built the place. The water level in the tank was dropping daily at an alarming rate. The horses could survive for a while without food, but without water in the heat of the desert, they would not survive long at all.

  “Mother, I don’t feel well. I’m not hungry anymore, but my body aches and I don’t want to move, and my ears are ringing” Rosie told her mother.

  “Rosie, we all feel that same way. I’m just hoping someone will come and find us before it is too late for us.” Her mother said with sadness. She felt in her heart they had been abandoned. She knew it was just a matter of time and they would start to die in this heat.

  “Mom, we can’t give up. What is the best thing for us to do until they come?” Rosie asked.

  “In this heat, we should probably all stick together and stay in the shade. Moving around is painful and uses more energy. We should conserve what we have,” her mother explained.

  “Okay, let’s do that. Promise me you won’t give up!” Rosie begged.

  ****

  What no one in California knew at the time was that the Garcia’s maid asked for and was granted two weeks vacation to visit her mother in Salinas, California. The house was spotless. There had been no one home for weeks, and it didn’t look like the Garcias would be home any time soon. She locked up the house and left the morning Cutter was abducted from the Hacienda Rancho in the desert. There was no one home to answer the phone or take a message.

  The day the ransom letter was received at the post office, it was put neatly in a box with other mail received that day. It would remain in that box for another 29 days. Mr. Garcia arranged to have his mail shipped to him once a month to his mother-in-law’s address in Spain. The last monthly box left the post office by International Priority Mail the day before.

  ****

  The four cowboys sat in the living room of the mobile home playing cards most of the day. They repeated stories they’d told a million times over about that certain horse in the bronc riding event in Wyoming, that certain young lady in Dallas, and that certain bull in Montana from their days on the rodeo circuit. None of them ever made the top. They didn’t have the skill or the brains for it. But they did make money just often enough to keep them hoping for that one big pot they’d win so they could have it all, all the money, all the pretty women, all the new trucks, all the big spread ranches. That dream just kept pulling them along. And they never realized how intoxicating it was. This short stopover into criminal behavior was the first on this scale for any of them. They justified it to themselves. “We’re just borrowing the horse for a few days.” “We’ll give him back.” “Nobody’s going to get hurt.” “We just need a little cash for seed money until we hit it big.”

  In the bedroom, Rhonda and John worked to get her hairpin in the cuff on either of them, working to exhaustion on first one, then the other. They thought they heard a slight click and caught their breath, refusing to move for a few seconds before they realized it was not the sound of the cuff opening. Rhonda was most affected. Tears streamed down her cheeks when she realized they had not unlocked the handcuff after all. John held her with his free arm. “Honey, it’s okay. We’re going to get these off, I promise you. And we’re going to get out of here. Just let’s keep on working at it. We’ll get there!” He held her as
close as he could for a few more minutes and began working with the hairpin again.

  ****

  Maryann thought about her conversation with Becky and found the perfect time to sneak into Aunt Ginny’s office in the barn. Brody was working on the far side of the ranch with his Uncle Mike, and Aunt Ginny ran to town on errands. Grandpa dropped her off at the ranch and had to run an errand himself. He was due back within the hour.

  Maryann poked through the file folders until she found one with the Garcia name on it. She pulled it from the cabinet and began looking through the papers inside. She found the address and the phone number for the Hacienda Rancho in Apple Valley. She jotted the information down on a scrap of paper and shoved it deep in her pocket. She neatly put the papers back in their folder and replaced the folder in the cabinet. It had only taken her five minutes. She walked out into the barn aisle and directly to La Duquesa’s stall. She and Quesa put in a good thirty-minute workout then Maryann bathed her and brushed her down. She put her in her stall and fed her the treats she’d brought from home. Grandpa arrived at Hartley Ranch just as she finished up.

  During the ride back home, Maryann asked, “Grandpa, if you had a good friend and knew they wanted something very much, would you help them get it?”

  “That depends. Is it legal?” Grandpa laughed.

  Maryann smiled at him across the center console in his Jeep. “Yes, of course!”

  “How good a friend might this be?” he asked her.

  “A very good friend,” she answered.

  “I’d say, if this is a very good friend and there’s something they would like to have that is legal, then it would be okay to help them get it as long as you are not hurting someone else.”

  “Thanks, Grandpa.” Maryann sat thinking about Desert Rose and Brody the rest of the way home. She sort of had permission to work on this project from her grandfather, whose opinion she valued. She felt a little guilty sneaking into Aunt Ginny’s office, but she didn’t take anything but a little information. And she put everything back right where she found it. She couldn’t wait to call the Hacienda Rancho and talk to Mr. Garcia.