Last Chance Llama Ranch

by Hilary Fields

  Then she ran full tilt into the storm.

  I am a woman with vast experience of snow. Over the years I’ve carved it, crunched it, and cursed it by turns. I probably know more names for the stuff than your average Inuit.

  Today I just called it dangerous.

  I followed Dashie’s trail for at least a couple of miles up into the mountains abutting Dolly’s property. For a gal about eleven and a half months into an eleven-month pregnancy, she could really hoof it (I know, I know, alpacas have feet, not hooves). Up and up into the trees her two-toed tracks went, rapidly filling in with the ever-strengthening snow. Up and up into the trees I went after her, like a sweater-clad abominable snow woman. The wind was rising, and there was less light than I’d have liked, especially with the dense ponderosas towering over my head.

  In the past couple of weeks, Jane had taken me traipsing about the trails with which Aguas Milagros abounds (visitors, by the way, rhapsodize over their unspoiled beauty, so if you get a chance, and there isn’t a monster storm, I recommend hiking them), so I’d come to know my way around a little. But now everything looked unfamiliar. I’m not ashamed to say, I was a little afraid, both for the alpaca and myself. Yet there was nothing for it. Dashie had made a dash for it, and I must dash after.

  It was more luck than skill that sent me stumbling into her, in the lee of some tumbled-over trees that had formed a sort of shelter. She was down on her side, legs out, and rolling around in a way that scared me silly. I could see—and pardon me, I know this is a PG column—her vulva doing something one could only associate with imminent birth, and I thought, Oh, crap. I’m about to be an auntie.

  I ran to Dashie, who seemed reasonably glad to see me despite having absconded into the woods to avoid exactly that, and checked her breathing. Having zero veterinary training, I couldn’t say whether it was okay or not, but I was relieved to see her rise to her feet and shake the snow off her fleece. She paced around, looking at me with those limpid black eyes, and I knew…

  I could not let her down.

  * * *

  The darn creature had made a beeline for the forest as if trying as hard as she could to ditch any possible rescuers. Probably true, Merry thought as she caught up to the laboring alpaca about two miles into the trees. Didn’t cats and other prey animals tend to hide out when they were in distress, so as not to make themselves a target for predators?

  If so, Dashiell was a sterling example of her species. She was shivering in the lee of a clump of trees, breathing hard, trickles of amniotic fluid staining her back legs as she attempted to birth her cria. Merry could see a nose and two tiny forelegs sticking out already.

  “Hey there, Dashie,” Merry cooed, trying not to startle the alpaca. The cold air was scraping her laboring lungs, and her voice came out as a rasp. “Hang on, sweetie. This is no place to ‘drop cri,’ as Jane would say. Let’s find you a proper spot to have this sucker.” Merry scanned the woods. Wind and swirling snow were making it hard to see, and she was, quite frankly, cold as fuck. The layers of woolens were great, but no match for temperatures that had suddenly dipped down into the thirties, with a sharp wind dragging the chill down even further.

  Bad as it is for me, it’s worse for this poor mama. Better get her somewhere warm and out of the wind. But where? A darker area in the trees began to look familiar. I’m on the trail Jane showed me the other day, she realized. The one with that historic mine shaft…

  Mine shaft!

  * * *

  Ah, the miracle of birth.

  No, seriously, it’s a miracle anyone manages to ever get birthed. Great googly moogly, what a process. If ever I’d wondered (and I hadn’t) why they call it labor, I wondered no more. Dashie stood patiently, stamping occasionally and straining, while from forth her nether regions poked a wee nose, and then spindly little legs I was glad to see had little feltlike caps over the tiny toenails. Not having much experience with motherhood or the impending thereof, I tried to think what might be comforting, and settled upon some old campfire songs.

  It was halfway through the third rendition of “Kumbaya” that the young’un was born. A perfect little boy with darling brown curls and a neck like the stalk of a flower seeking the sun, he came sliding into the world in a slop of what I assume was normal mama-made goo, and Dashie began cleaning him almost immediately.

  Me? I began cleaning house. Er, cave.

  * * *

  There wasn’t much Merry could do about making the mine shaft more hospitable, but she was damn well going to try her best. After the awesome job Dashiell had just done bringing her baby into the world, there was no way she’d do less than full duty as doula. Fire was out of the question at the moment—any wood she might have been able to scrounge up would be wetter than her limited fire-making skills could overcome—but that didn’t mean their asses had to hang out in the breeze.

  Merry used a scoop made of tree bark to dig away the snow that had accumulated on the cave floor until she’d exposed enough bare earth for them to rest on. She used the snow piles she’d made to build a windbreak by the entrance, leaving room to let in light and air, but sheltering them from the worst of the weather.

  Then she set about slicing her sweater to ribbons.

  “I don’t know much about crias,” she told Dashiell as she ripped the sleeves of the Cosby sweater from their seams, “but I do know babies oughtn’t ever be cold.” The alpaca, seeming much more at ease now that she’d expelled her offspring, hummed at Merry, watching her with gentle eyes as she nuzzled her little one. The cria was struggling to rise now, wobbling adorably on twig-like legs, and Merry took the opportunity to rub its damp wool dry with one of the sleeves she’d hacked off. Then she worked the rest of the giant, rainbow-striped sweater over the new baby’s body. The cria squirmed a bit at the unaccustomed touch, but it was so woozy from its recent experience that it didn’t know up from down, let alone fashion faux pas. In moments it was engulfed in an ode to the eighties.

  “Good,” Merry pronounced, seeing the shivers start to subside. For good measure she took the remaining sleeve and slid it over the baby’s long neck like a sock. The effect was…awesome. Despite the circumstances and the biting cold, Merry smiled with delight.

  “I shall call you Bill,” she announced to the cave at large. Before it even occurred to her how ridiculous it was in this situation, she had her phone out and had snapped several pictures. Dashiell seemed to approve, crowding closer to both Merry and the babe as if wanting to star in her first proud-mama photo. Belatedly, Merry thought to check her reception. No bars, of course, and the battery was winding down fast. She’d find no help from that quarter. Nope, I think we’re stuck here ’til the weather lets up. No way Baby Bill there is gonna be able to trot down the mountain in a storm, two hours after making his first appearance on the planet.

  Merry wrapped her arms around her torso, feeling the cold keenly now that the sweater had been donated to its worthy cause. She tightened her scarf around her neck and chest, and seated her pom-pom hat more firmly on her head. “Now we just have to wait for the snow to stop,” Merry informed the beasts in a tone far heartier than she was feeling. “Or the cavalry to arrive.”

  The beast attacked at dusk.

  Merry had huddled as close to the alpacas as mama would allow, but the cold still had her in its grip, and the wet snow had dampened everything from her boots to her mittens. Her lips, she was sure, were probably blue, though the darkness would have made it impossible to tell even if she’d cared to find out for sure. Her eyes were drifting closed in any case. She’d dragged in some evergreen branches that hadn’t been too wet, and scrabbled together some pine needles and other leaves from the floor of the mine shaft, but there was barely enough greenery to insulate her from the heat-stealing ground, let alone burrow under, unless she wanted to go out foraging in the woods for more.

  Her shivers weren’t as bad as they’d been earlier, and somewhere in the back of her mind Merry knew she ought to be worried abou
t that, but right now she was too busy reenacting The Empire Strikes Back.

  She was Luke Skywalker, investigating a suspicious probe that had crashed into the ice planet Hoth. The snow was endless, and the fate of the galaxy rested on her shoulders, but she was so tired…slipping in and out of consciousness in the snow.…

  And then the ice monster reared up before her.

  The windbreak blew apart in a flurry of exploding snow, and a huge, hairy creature lumbered into the mine shaft.

  Merry screamed, or tried to scream, but her throat was so cold she could only squawk. Her torpor vanished in a puff of terrified adrenaline, and she leapt to her feet, fumbling a branch into her freezing-cold hands, trying with all her worth to whack the snow-covered Sasquatch.

  “Quit it!” yelled the yeti. “Merry. Merry! Calm down, it’s me, Sam.”

  Merry flailed about for another minute, the fading light and the wild hair in her eyes not helping matters. She squinted, pushing her hat back from her forehead. “Sam?” she croaked.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Wookiee.” He stripped off his gloves with his teeth, and a second later, warm hands were cupping her face, turning it so he could see her in the waning light. She gasped at the contrast of his hot palms against her cold cheeks. “Jesus, you’re whiter than milk.”

  And my eyes won’t seem to focus, Merry thought. Maybe they’re frozen too. Because, right now, Sam Cassidy looked every bit the dashing romantic hero. Dressed in a long shearling coat and a wide-brimmed leather hat, bandana shrouding half his wind-chapped face, he was the ultimate mountain man. Merry wobbled on her feet.

  “Hey! You’re wearing shoes,” she observed. A dopey smile crept across her face.

  “Of course I’m wearing shoes,” said Sam, as if this was in no way remarkable. “There’s two feet of snow out there.”

  “Bah,” she said. “That? That’s barely a dusting. You should see the gnar pow in Portillo this time of year.” She tried to snap her fingers, but they wouldn’t cooperate.

  Sam took her hands into his own, and started to chafe the blood back into them. “Christ, you’re frozen half to death. What were you thinking, running out into a snowstorm without a coat?”

  “I had a coat. Well, a sweater anyway,” she amended.

  “Then why the hell aren’t you wearing it?”

  “Because he is.”

  Sam followed her gaze, squinting further into the mine shaft. His eyes widened at the sight of the tiny cria cuddled into its customized outerwear. He left her for a moment, just long enough to ascertain that mama and baby were okay. “Well, if that doesn’t beat all,” he murmured, shaking his head. A grudging grin tugged at his rough-hewn features. He returned to her side, shrugging off his coat and draping it around Merry’s shoulders. Even tall as she was, the garment hung generously about her narrower frame.

  Thank the gods, it was warm. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she chattered. Her knees seemed unable to take the added weight of the sheepskin, and they buckled, sending her into a sprawl on the cold ground.

  Sam followed her down, kneeling at her side. “Don’t thank me yet,” he told her, running his hands up and down her legs to chafe some life into them. “When I saw the note you left Dolly, I ran out here like some greenhorn without grabbing anything useful. Goddamn it! Of all the rookie mistakes, this has to take the biscuit.”

  * * *

  Sam’s the guy you want to be holed up in a cave with in the dead of winter…

  Suddenly, Jane’s casual words in the yarn shop seemed prophetic.

  She’d gathered a pile of dry leaves for tinder as Sam had instructed—growled, more like—and was back to huddling inside his coat now, trying to stop her entire body from convulsing with shivers. She’d warmed up just enough to understand how close she’d been to being cold permanently. Her dreamy state had vanished, and she was back to seeing Sam for what he was…one grumpy-ass, unpredictable troll.

  Who, as she recalled, had no great love for her. And now here they were, trapped together for God knew how long.

  “How did you find us?” she asked between chatters. “I’d have thought the snow would have covered our footprints a long time ago.”

  Sam was checking on the alpacas again, making sure mother and babe had a cozy spot in which to kush, out of the wind and wet snow. Seeming content with the nest he’d arranged for them, he looked over at Merry. “It did. If you hadn’t stacked up those rock cairns along the way as you went up, I doubt I’d have found you until morning,” he admitted. “The giant X shape you built with those boughs outside the cave didn’t hurt either.” In the dim glow of her phone’s flashlight, Merry saw a reluctant smile crease his features. “Guess you did listen to some of the survival lessons I taught the kids.”

  Merry forbore to mention that she’d learned this not from him, but from her first ski instructor, after he’d determined Merry could not be convinced to stay on the tame runs most other kids were content with. Rescue 101, he’d called it.

  She could use rescue 102 right now. But Sam was disappearing on her…toward the back of the mine shaft. She’d given it only a cursory exam earlier, and hadn’t found anything that seemed useful. “Where are you going?” she asked, a bit more shrilly than she liked.

  Sam was rummaging in the rafters. “To save our asses, unless you’d rather freeze all night. I may not have brought anything useful with me today, but fortunately I’m not always this big of an idiot.” He dragged down a bundle that had been stashed up there. “Fatwood,” he said, holding up a cord of resin-impregnated kindling. “And firewood.” He started tossing down some logs that had been tucked up in the support beams as well. Soon he had a pile sufficient to keep a fire going several hours. “Always keep it high and dry, out of the wet.”

  It would have been nice to know about that three hours ago, Merry thought. “Isn’t that cheating?” she chattered. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to, like, start the fire with the power of your studliness?”

  Sam snorted. “I save my studliness for special occasions. Times like these, I prefer my trusty Zippo.” He fished around in the back pocket of his jeans, coming up with a worn silver lighter. In moments he’d dug a fire pit, fashioned a bundle out of the tinder she’d gathered, and arranged the fatwood and logs atop it in some arcane arrangement clearly designed for maximum ignition potential. Another moment, and he had a decent fire going. It wasn’t doing much to heat the place—and wouldn’t until they got a nice base of coals going—but the light was enough to allow Merry to turn off her phone’s flashlight.

  “Lucky thing you left all that stuff up there,” she said, pocketing the phone. She shuddered to think what might have happened if he had not. Then again, right now shuddering was about all she could do.

  “I always leave caches of supplies around natural shelters in case of emergency. I’ve got about six others stashed around these trails.”

  “Ah.” Of course he did. “I don’t suppose snacks are included?” Merry hadn’t eaten since the night before, and she was hungry enough that she’d begun to wonder if Dashie had a little milk to spare.

  “Wouldn’t be much of a cache without them,” Sam said. He rummaged some more, then held up a rectangle that crinkled with a distinctive candy-wrapper sound. “PowerBars,” he said, and tossed one at Merry, who caught it gratefully.

  “Now eat up, and let’s get naked.”

  I suppose you’ll want me to be the back spoon,” Merry said through clenched teeth. Despite his high-handed command, they weren’t clenched in annoyance, but to keep them from clacking violently together. Even in his coat, even with the fire crackling in the pit he’d dug for it, she couldn’t seem to generate enough heat to bring up her core temperature. She knew this was unavoidable—she’d had enough avalanche and snow rescue training to understand that much—but she didn’t have to like it.

  I’d like it a whole lot better if the man I’m about to suck body heat from didn’t despise me, she thought.

  Sam sighed, arrang
ing the pine boughs he’d gathered into an impromptu pallet for them to share, with a second pile ready to do duty as a cover. “Just get down on the ground and strip.”

  Under other circumstances—with a different man—the command would have been kinda hot. But Merry was too cold—and too nervous—for cheap thrills. “Fine. But just so you know, this is totally going to be way sexier on my blog.”

  “I thought you were calling it a column?” Sam’s tone was dry.

  “Whatever.” She started to unbutton the coat and unwind the scarf Sage had made her.

  “Did I say strip, then lie down?” Sam said sharply.

  “What’s the difference?” she half chattered, half hissed.

  “About three degrees of lost body heat. You’re halfway into an epic case of hypothermia already. You want it to get worse? Stand around bare-assed in the breeze arguing. You want to get warm, you get on top of those boughs with me and then we’ll worry about stripping off.”

  “Yes, sir.” She aimed an ironic salute at him. But Merry was secretly relieved she wouldn’t have to face Sam’s gaze on her mangled body. His body on her mangled body was going to be bad enough. As best she could, she crawled atop the layer of prickly branches Sam had arranged. At least they smelled good, which was more than she could say for herself, after today’s adventures. Or Sam, most likely. Not that she planned on sniffing him.

  “Now take off the coat and lay it like a blanket over you.”

  Merry complied.

  “Sorry it’s not a Beautyrest,” he said as he climbed under the coat with her. Even with their clothes still in place, the effect was immediate. The man was a furnace. She felt him wriggle and rustle as he loaded their bier with the second bunch of branches atop the coat. Then the air between them got even hotter as he shed his shirt. His pants, thankfully, seemed to be staying in place. “I couldn’t find any pillow-top mattress trees in this neck of the woods.”