Perseverance

by Scott B. Williams

  As she approached the tethered animals, all three of them seemed to recognize her. Tucker, in particular, was excited to see her. She whispered his name and talked to all of them in a soothing voice, telling them she was happy they were back as she untied the reins. But another glance in Brett’s direction revealed that he was up and running into the barn now that she was much farther away. She hoped like hell there wasn’t another gun in there, and she didn’t waste any time waiting to find out. Vicky grabbed Tucker’s mane and pulled herself onto his bare back. She regretted for a moment that she didn’t make an effort to get one of the saddles while she had Brett on the ground. It had crossed her mind, but it seemed too risky and would take too much time. She could get them later after Eric returned. She planned to take it slow anyway, so she didn’t see why she couldn’t ride Tucker bareback, no farther than she planned to go. She wheeled him around and nudged him with her heels and leading the other two with their reins in one hand, headed out through the ponderosas to the west at a trot. Now that she was riding, she knew where she wanted to go, but first, she needed to make a big circle around the open pasture, keeping far enough within the trees to stay out of sight in case Gareth and Jeremy returned early. Vicky smiled as she thought of the look that would be on Gareth’s face when he came back and found out what happened. A part of her wished she could be there to see it, but the wiser part knew she needed to be long gone before then.

  She was still within sight of the barn when the first gunshot rang out. A glance in that direction revealed Brett standing at the doorway aiming a handgun at her. The second shot hit one of the other two horses, and all hell broke loose when it jumped and tore away from her, causing all three animals to take off at a dead run. Vicky dropped the reins of the other one too and clung to Tucker’s mane for her life, keeping her head low as he galloped away through the trees. Brett fired several more shots, but Vicky wasn’t counting. She didn’t know what kind of gun he had or how many rounds it had, but it could have been her grandpa’s .44 Magnum, another of his guns they’d stolen. She’d made a huge mistake in hoping Brett didn’t have another weapon, and she knew now she could have paid for it with her life. It was awful that one of the other horses had been hit, and she had no idea how bad it was because both of them had bolted in another direction and there was no telling how far they would run. She couldn’t risk going back to look for them not knowing how much ammo Brett had or whether or not he would try to follow her. The one thing she did know was that he’d fired at her from way out of normal handgun range and he probably didn’t care if he hit the horses or not. If she gave him another chance, he might get lucky next time despite the odds. By the time she managed to bring Tucker under control again, slowing him to a walk before she fell off, she’d created more than enough distance to be safe for the moment, as she was well out of sight of the barn and pasture. There was nothing to do now but press on and find a place to hole up, so she urged Tucker ahead while trying to bring her heart rate and breathing back under control. Shooting Brett while she had the chance would have been the smart thing to do, but she’d never even pointed a gun at another person before today. Vicky couldn’t have killed him in cold blood, not then anyway. But after what had just happened, she made up her mind she would do what was necessary next time.

  The destination she had in mind was a steep, rocky canyon only a couple of miles to the south. It was far enough away that Gareth and his friends wouldn’t likely look there that afternoon, even if they began a diligent search for her. Vicky knew that it would take her another hour to reach it, considering the roundabout way that she had to go to get there, but it was the best option she knew of in the area for both a hideout and shelter. There were piles of truck-sized boulders in the bottom of the canyon, and a small stream that ran among them. The cave-like spaces between and underneath some of them would give her some options for getting out of the wind and building a small fire that couldn’t be seen from afar. She reached down and felt the reassuring shape of the butane lighter in the front pocket of her jeans. It was the last one she had, but it was nearly full of fluid and she’d gotten pretty good at preparing her fire materials so that she needed only a couple of seconds to get the flames going. Out here tonight with nothing but the clothes she was wearing, a fire would be crucial.

  Vicky found her way to the lower reaches of the creek after taking a circuitous route around the ranch pastures. She still proceeded slowly, knowing Gareth and Jeremy were out there somewhere, but she assumed they weren’t anywhere nearby when she finally reached the mouth of the rocky canyon and turned into it. But she had barely gone a quarter mile in before a rifle shot rang out from somewhere quite close on the timbered ridge above. Convinced that she was the target, Vicky urged Tucker onward as fast as he could go up the rocky creek bed, just as a big mule deer buck coming from the other way splashed across the stream directly in front of her. There was a second rifle shot, and she heard a bullet ricochet off the rocks behind the running animal. Then she heard a shouted curse from the same direction as the gunshot when the buck disappeared into the brush. Vicky realized then that the shooter had been aiming at the deer and that she and Tucker must have startled it and frightened it away, causing the shot to miss. The shooter had to be Gareth or Jeremy, and she wondered if they had spotted her too. When she heard him yell again, she got her answer:

  “HEY! STOP! THAT’S MY HORSE!”

  It was Gareth! Vicky recognized his voice now without a doubt. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly where he was, but apparently, he could see her, and she knew she needed to get out of the open fast. Vicky turned Tucker into the brush the way the deer had gone, frantic to duck out of Gareth’s view before he could get his sights on her. She was glad she did when she heard him fire again. She doubted he could see her under the canopy of the trees, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She urged Tucker on, deeper into the cover and up the slope away from the creek, knowing that staying out of sight and creating distance was the only thing keeping her alive.

  Four

  GARETH MABRY WAS HAVING a bad day, but that was nothing new. He’d had a whole string of bad days in a row, but he’d really been looking forward to a break from it when he and Jeremy and Brett finally made their way back to the Singleton ranch. He knew full well that the old man would be pissed that they’d taken some of his horses, guns, and other stuff they needed, but he was going to make it up to him. He would explain why they did it—to try and save Megan from her own stupidity—and then he would apologize and admit that it was a mistake. Gareth had since come to realize that laying low in a place like that isolated ranch wasn’t such a bad idea after all. It had seemed like a waste of time before, but he now realized that the situation everywhere had gotten so out of control that it was best just to focus on survival for now, especially since he didn’t know where to find another resistance group to join. The ranch offered a better possibility of avoiding trouble than any place else he’d been since leaving Boulder, so after what happened to Colleen, Gareth decided to cut his losses and come back. Further searching for Megan seemed futile, and while he’d really been into her at first, and thought she saw things his way, as time went by that proved not to be the case. She wasn’t interested in helping bring about change, and like her roommate, Vicky, all she was thinking about was finding a place to hide out and running home to family. The idea of it made Gareth sick at first but seeing how everybody else at the resistance campsite had scattered too, he went along with them at the time. There would have been enough of them to hold out and fight if everyone was committed, but sadly, that wasn’t the case.

  Gareth had learned a lot from the Indian dude, Aaron, but like Megan and Vicky, Aaron wanted to avoid confrontation. He left the campus because he knew staying there wouldn’t end well, and he’d only come to the resistance camp in the first place because the girls invited him. Gareth had only met him once or twice before that, and he soon found out that Aaron wasn’t down for helping the struggle either, even though he
was descended from tough people with a history of standing up to the same government. Gareth thought that Aaron would be eager to help bring it down now, but it turned out he was weak and wasn’t a fighter. He wanted to get back to the traditional lands of his people where he had relatives, so he could hide out and pretend none of this was happening. He claimed to be like his ancestors, but he wasn’t a warrior. The only thing he had in common with the Apaches of old was his love of the outdoors. Gareth saw early on after the resistance camp was routed that Aaron was very comfortable with backcountry travel and living off the land, much more so than anyone else in their small group, and without his help, they probably wouldn’t have made it there at all. While they still went hungry much of the time along the way, what little they did have to eat was the direct result of Aaron’s hunting skills. Gareth learned what he could from him, but the two of them were still at odds from the beginning. It was obvious that Aaron was becoming infatuated with Megan, and the more time they spent together, the more she seemed to enjoy his attention. If she’d simply broken up with him for some other reason, Gareth wouldn’t have been so bothered by it. But as it was, he felt Aaron had deliberately stolen her away by making her promises that he couldn’t keep. Vicky seemed content enough to stay at the ranch with her grandparents, as she was close to them anyway and knew getting to Portland wasn’t happening. Megan, however, was restless there, and felt compelled to try and make it home to Florida no matter how difficult it might be to get there. Heading south to the lands of Aaron’s people in New Mexico was a step in the right direction in her mind, and so she’d simply left with him, no doubt believing whatever BS he told her about helping her get home from there.

  Gareth was sick of hanging around the ranch anyway, as were Brett and Jeremy, and Jeremy’s girlfriend, Colleen. Going after Megan and Aaron would give them a change of scenery, but more than anything, Gareth wanted to make him pay and make her realize what a loser Aaron was. The old man had given Megan and Aaron horses, but he had plenty more, so he wouldn’t miss the ones Gareth and his friends needed, so they left before dawn a couple days later, leaving Vicky behind there with her grandma and grandpa. He had no reason to doubt that the three of them would still be there when he returned today with Jeremy and Brett. The ranch was sufficiently remote that only a couple of the old man’s friends had stopped by during all the weeks they’d all been there together, so Gareth had no reason to expect what they found today when they rode in. It came as a total shock, both to him and to his companions.

  It wasn’t like he had a lot of sympathy for the old man and his wife though. In his conversations with them while he’d been here before, Gareth gleaned that they were supporters of all the things the resistance was fighting to bring down. He didn’t bother to argue or tell them anything of his own opinions because he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Vicky had already warned them to keep quiet about any involvement with that before they got there, but Gareth figured she probably ran her mouth afterward and really made him out to be a total bad guy when he and his friends took the horses and guns. He’d expected to have some explaining to do when he came back if he hoped to get any more supplies from the ranch or stay there again, but he hadn’t expected to find two graves and a burned down house. But as soon as he read the marker between the graves, he felt sure that Vicky must have somehow survived, he just wasn’t sure she was still around. Finding military rations in the barn didn’t lead him to believe she was the one using them, because it was the first time he’d seen anything like that around there. Vicky’s grandparents instead had more traditional stockpiles of canned goods and other non-perishable foods; enough, in fact, that if this hadn’t happened, the supplies on hand would have nearly been enough to see all of them through the winter, especially if they could supplement it with an occasional deer or elk kill. Gareth didn’t quite know what to make of finding those MREs in the barn, but Jeremy suggested they might have been left there by soldiers that attacked the place and killed the Singletons. Gareth thought the only reason they would do something like that though was if they somehow found out the old rancher was harboring members of the resistance.

  “With the way Megan and Vicky were running their mouths to all their friends about coming here, that’s got to be it. The goons got word that a bunch of college kids were heading up here to hole up, so they sent their thugs up here to wipe it off the map. Probably figured the old man was complicit with the cause.”

  “That sounds about right,” Jeremy had agreed. “It might explain why Vicky’s missing too. If they didn’t kill her outright, they probably took her in for interrogation if they suspected her of terrorism.”

  “Yeah, but who would have dug those graves?” Brett had wondered.

  None of them had a good answer for that, but they had come all the way back here and they had nowhere else to go, so Gareth thought they ought to at least hang around until they could come up with a new plan. After moving their stuff into the barn and resting a while, he was ready to go out and have a look around the property and see if he could find more clues as to what may have happened there. Jeremy went with him, and like always these days, they had their weapons in hand, both for defense against whoever they might encounter and for taking a shot at any game animal that might present itself.

  They had wandered quite far afield and were up on the ridge above the opening of the large canyon south of the ranch pasturelands when he spotted the big mule deer buck some 300 yards below, walking towards the little creek winding through the bottom. It was a long shot, but Gareth wasn’t going to pass up the chance at getting that much meat. He whispered to Jeremy to wait while he slipped down a little closer to try and close the gap. But the buck had not quite reached the stream when something startled it and it suddenly bolted across. Gareth squeezed off a round from the .308 and saw his bullet kick up dust where it hit the rocks; a clean miss. He levered another round into the Winchester and fired a second shot, only to miss again. When he yelled out in fury at his bad luck another movement just downstream caught his eye. There was someone on horseback down there, probably only a hundred feet from where the buck had been standing when he missed his shot! The rider had spurred the horse into a run, heading into cover behind the fleeing deer. Gareth swept the riflescope across the horse and rider before they disappeared and confirmed without a doubt what he already thought he saw: It was Tucker! The same Appaloosa he’d rode in on that very morning! He tried to focus on the rider before he lost sight of them. He was sure it wasn’t Brett though, because whoever it was, they were much smaller, and riding bareback, something Brett, who could barely ride at all, would never attempt.

  His first impression was confirmed when the rider turned and looked back just before the horse entered the woods.

  Gareth was almost certain it was a girl or woman, and he yelled for her to stop, but his shouts went unheeded. He fired a wild shot into the trees to vent his frustration, but the horse and rider were already gone.

  “What in the hell?” Jeremy asked, as he came rushing down to where Gareth was to see what was going on.

  “Someone’s stolen my horse! I think it was Vicky, but I couldn’t tell for sure!”

  “But how would she? Brett was watching the horses!”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going after her. Go back and get Brett and the other two horses if they’re still there! She can’t get out of this canyon on that horse. It’s way too steep farther up. If I follow her right now, she won’t be able to circle back around the way she came in, but I’ll need you and Brett to help me keep her boxed in until we catch her. So hurry!”

  “Got it! I just hope Brett’s still there when I get there. I don’t know how she could have gotten Tucker right out from under his nose like that!”

  “Because Brett’s an idiot! He was probably asleep or else had his mind on Colleen like always and wasn’t paying attention. We’ll find out what happened later. Just go!”

  * * *

  Jeremy worked his way back down t
he steep, wooded ridge and then took off at a run as soon as he reached the open pasturelands. The whole time he ran he wondered how Brett could have been so careless that Vicky could steal one of those horses with him so close by. He hoped Gareth was right when he said there wasn’t another way out of that canyon, because if there was, he would never catch up to her on foot. He wondered now if she’d been there all along, watching them since they arrived, and he figured that yes, that had to be it. She’d waited until he and Gareth left and then taken Tucker when Brett wasn’t looking. This really sucked, because if Gareth didn’t get that horse back, one of them was going to be without a ride. Jeremy didn’t even consider the possibility that all of them might be, at least not until he finally caught sight of the barn and house site and saw there were no horses tied to the hitching post at all.

  Jeremy stopped running and made a cautious approach to the barn, wondering now if something may have happened to Brett too. When he got to the gate, he saw that the saddles were still inside, but there was no sign of Brett. He continued on out to the hitching post and then down the drive towards the road. It was there that he spotted Brett making his way through the woods just west of the drive. When Brett saw him, he quickly ran back to meet him. Brett was out of breath, frustrated and angry.

  “I’ve been trying to catch the other two horses! That bitch, Vicky, took Tucker! I tried to stop her, but I missed.”

  “I know. Gareth saw her! He’s going after her now. She’s in that canyon a couple of miles to the south. Gareth said there’s no other way out, but we need to get back there in case she tries to slip around him. Do you know where the other two horses are?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been trying to catch them! I was close, but right before you got here, they just ran up the road a short distance and went back into the woods. I think I might have accidentally hit one of them when I was shooting at her, but it must not have been all that bad, because they were both still running. Vicky had all three of them when she left. She was leading the other two, but she let go of them when I shot at her. Come on! Let’s go down to the road and see if we can spot them. We may be able to split up or something and round them up.”