When Sam got closer, she could see how angry he was by the way he moved and how upset he was by his glassy eyes. Sam cared about the horses, and like her, it would drive him crazy by the treatment they were getting. She knew how he must have felt to have to shoot an animal and then knowing that Carlos’s jenny had died as well was going to weigh heavy on his mind.
He looked from Gina to Matt, “Is he going to make it? I didn’t know what to do for him.”
Gina nodded, “He has a pretty nasty scalp wound, and his leg is broken. I’m going to need your help before I can set it.”
Sam nodded and looked at Lucas, “Get the saddle off this horse and rub him down. You have any water?”
Lucas knew he was in big trouble by the clipped cadence of Sams words. “Yes sir, in my saddle bag.”
“Find something to give this horse a drink in. Don’t give him all you have, because there are two more horses who need water too.”
“Yes sir!” Lucas hastened to do what he’d been told.
Sam came over to Gina, “Let’s get this done. I need to figure out how we’re going to get the other two horses over here.”
Gina put her hand on his arm. He turned and faced her. She slipped both of her arms around his waist and pulled him to her. She felt him resist and then relax and his arms finally circled her body. They stood like that drawing strength from each other for several minutes.
When Sam’s breathing had returned to normal, Gina squeezed him tight, “Okay. One thing at a time. I need you to stabilize his leg while I realign it and put a splint on. Come on, I’ll show you how.”
By the time they had the bones aligned as best as Gina could tell, just by feel, and then wrapped the splints on both sides as Lucas had done, Sam was acting almost normal.
“Sam. What’re we going to do? He can’t ride out of here, and he’ll probably be out for a while, at least for his sake I hope he is. I don’t think it’s safe to stay here either. You’re right, without much provocation, this hillside could slide on down the mountain with the next aftershock.”
“We can’t leave the horse here, and we can’t take him back the way you and I came, so while Lucas finds some poles long enough to make a stretcher out of, I’m going to find us the best way out.”
“What about…”
“Don’t worry about them for now. As soon as I see if we can get back to solid ground from here, I’ll go and get them.”
Gina chuckled, “I was going to say what about the extra saddle and bags from the jenny.”
Instantly, Sam’s face turned to granite. He glared in the direction of the two boys. “Do you understand how pissed I am right now? I’d like to take a horse whip to them both for putting us in this predicament. Completely irresponsible behavior.”
“Don’t get yourself all upset. It won’t do anyone any good. You and I most of all, are partially to blame. We should have told Matt that his Dad was gone and that we buried him and left it at that. We didn’t have to say how, just that we found them. So, lighten up.”
Sam deflated, “I know that, and I wish we had but, we need to have a new set of rules for leaving the ranch. Look at the damage resulting from two people acting without thought. John is injured, we lost a good horse and mule, Matt…well, I guess he’s probably paid a high enough price for his foolishness.”
“That he has and I expect it will weigh heavily on both boys for a long time to come.”
“Okay. I’ll let it go for now. But later we’re going to have a talk.”
“Did you talk to Lucas at all and find out how far they made it?”
“Nope. I was probably too mad to process anything he had to say when I found them. You’ve been a party to any conversation we’ve had up to this point.”
“But don’t you think…”
“Not right now I don’t. Right now I need to scout us out a way out of here. Just standing here, whether it’s my imagination or not, to me the ground feels like Jello, or when you stand on the beach when the tides coming in and if you stand in one spot too long; your feet sink. I just want to get all of us away from here and on firmer ground.”
“What about going back the way we came? We have to get the horses anyhow?”
“You two make a stretcher, and I’ll find us a way.”
Gina nodded. She turned to ask him what they could use to cut the poles with, but he was gone from sight.
She wondered how she could make a stretcher when she had no way to cut trees down and nothing to make the bed from. Gina felt her throat tighten and knew her tears were not far behind unless she quit feeling sorry for herself and came up with a plan.
“Lucas, do you have a machete or knife or anything I can cut a tree down with?”
Lucas jumped to his feet, eager to please. “We have a hatchet in Bessie’s…in the saddle bag.”
While Lucas got the ax, Gina looked around for anything she could cut down that would be long enough and sturdy enough, but not too heavy to carry. If she was making a travois the options were plenty with the uprooted trees, but they needed to be able to carry Matt, and she was confident that for now, a travois wouldn’t work. She shuddered when she remembered the terrain they had come through just to get where they were.
“Do you want me to chop something down?” Lucas was standing in front of her, and she hadn’t noticed him until he spoke.
Gina looked again and still saw nothing she thought would carry Matt’s weight.
“Are we going to make a stretcher for Matt?”
Gina nodded, unable to speak. The ground trembled, and she was afraid to move. Gina reached for Lucas’s arm and held on. She heard the crack of splintering wood and the sound of rocks rolling, but nothing moved where they were.
“We need to find something to carry him on.”
“What about that?” Lucas asked and pulled his arm away from Gina.
He massaged his arm where Gina had gripped it, and she realized how tightly she had held on. He stepped out of her reach, and Gina thought it was to avoid her if she reached again.
“Sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them. Now, which were you talking about?”
Lucas went to a tree with many trunks growing out of what appeared to be the same base. To Gina, they didn’t look strong enough to carry a man.
“I don’t think that will work. We need something stronger.”
“Vine Maple is strong and springy when it’s green and really strong if you let it dry before you cut it. Can I see the ax and I’ll show you.”
Gina went over to check on Matt while Lucas cut his tree down. She was skeptical but would let him convince her of his choice. She knew nothing about trees or their properties other than if they would burn well or not.
With every tremble of the earth, Gina waited for the hillside to begin sliding. She had moved Lucas’s gelding as far away as she dared. It was also as far away as she could get him without chopping down some trees. She had no idea how she would move Matt if the ground did begin to shift. It seemed to her as if Sam had been gone for a long time. His absence was working on her nerves.
“How are these?” Lucas dragged two eight foot lengths of Vine Maple and laid them beside Matt. The trunks were no more than three inches in diameter and Gina couldn’t see how they could possibly carry Matt’s weight.
She walked over to him shaking her head, “Those are not strong enough. We need to be able to carry Matt on them. As soon as we…wait. We don’t have anything to make a webbing or something to lay him in. I’m sure those are too weak.”
“No. Wait here. I have the end I cut off. You’ll see, they are strong enough.”
Gina mentally went through their possessions trying to think of what they could use. They had lead lines for the horses, but none of them were long enough. Even tied together, she couldn’t see how they would be enough.
Lucas came running back dragging a length of the branch. It was not as thick as the two that he had cut for the stretcher.
“Watch.” Lucas
stabbed one end into the dirt and hung his weight off of it. It bent, and Gina was prepared for it to snap in two, but it just bent. When Lucas backed his weight off it, it straightened up. He then put one end under a tree trunk and pried up on it, again it only bent and didn’t break. “It’s really hard to break it.”
“I see that. But we don’t have anything to make a webbing out of. With the travois, we wove rope between the two poles, but we don’t have any. The two lead lines we have aren’t long enough.”
Lucas stood frowning, then his popped wide open. “Does it matter how thick it is? The rope?”
Gina chuckled, “I just wished we had some binder twine. So no, I guess it doesn’t matter if it’s long enough.”
“Got just the thing,” he said and went to where his gelding was tied. His bridle was hanging off the saddle horn. He took it down, unsnapped his reins. Holding them aloft he, crowed, “How about this?”
Gina saw that they were a nicely hand braided cord of some kind, but the reins weren’t any longer than the lead lines. She wondered if they would be forced to use them for lack of anything better.
“Too short.”
He brought them to her. “No. When I made them, I only used four pieces of parachute cord. If I take them apart, there’s like two hundred feet of line. All we have to do is cut one end off and untie them.”
Gina saw exactly what he was talking about. It would be more than enough to weave back and forth between the two poles.
They each sat with one rein and began to untie the intricate knots that Lucas had put in the reins. By the time they were finished dismantling the reins, they both had blisters on their fingers from sliding the long lengths through the knots.
“I think I had more fun braiding these than taking them apart,” he declared as he wound his lengths into balls for easier handling.
They laid the poles out side by side and Gina tied the first piece of cord on. Lucas looked at her handiwork and shook his head.
He pulled on it, and it slipped right out of the knot. He held it up for Gina to see. “You need to put a bowline in it so it can’t come untied,” he said and quickly tied a knot that Gina hadn’t seen before.
“Do we have to do that every time?”
“Nope, just this first one and the last one. We use a clove hitch around the poles. When we have to tie two of the lines together, we’ll use a double fisherman's knot.” He looked up with a grin and saw her frown. “Boy Scouts. They taught us all kinds of knots and survival tricks.
Lucas was just finishing the last knot when they heard someone coming through the trees toward them.
Gina put her finger to her lips and waved him toward Matt. She pulled her 357 from her waist and crouched down in front of the boys. Gina would have thought that Sam would have hollered or given some indication he was there. She saw Lucas’s gelding pick his head up, his ears twitching. His nostrils inflated, and he blew out hard followed by a whiny. When Sam didn’t holler and say it was only him, Gina held the Taurus up in front of her aimed in the direction she wanted to fire. She kept her finger on the side of the trigger guard and prayed for the strength to shoot if she had to. Her hand was shaking, and she couldn’t stop it.
At last, she saw the brush begin to tremble and shake as something or someone passed by it. Breath held, anticipating letting it out when she fired, she waited.
Just as the brush closest to their small clearing began to move, Lucas shouted, “Nooo!”
Chapter Twenty
Gina dropped her arm and fell to her knees, completely. She hung her head and let the tears roll. She had almost shot Gus. When she felt she had enough strength to rise she called to him, “You ornery old mule, where on earth did you come from? You scared me half to death.”
Gus let out one of his famous hee-haws and jogged to her and buried his head in her arms. He was obviously as glad to see her when he nuzzled her repeatedly. He wiped mud and sweat all over the front of her, but Gina didn’t care.
“Luca, you have any more of that water?”
“Oh man, did he ever scare me. When Uncle Sam didn’t call out, I thought it was the guys chasing Matt and me. They said they were going to kill us and we believed them.”
Gina felt her heart skip a beat at the thought of someone chasing the boys to kill them. Gina was too shaken up right then to hear the story. “Don’t say anything more until Sam gets back. He’ll want to hear this too.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He held up two water bottles, “should I give him both of them?”
“How many do you have in there?”
He looked, and she could see his head bob as he counted. He shuffled his hand around inside of the pack and looked up. “There’s seven more.”
“Just give him one. We don’t know where the next water is and we still have two other horses who have been without water all day.”
Gus nudged her again as if he needed more attention and while Lucas shook open a canvas bucket to water the mule, Gina took an inventory. His bags were hanging off his side as if he’d hung them up on something, but they hadn’t come off. Gus had no halter on, and she wondered how he’d gotten it off. She always did it up one hole tighter than she liked because he was an escape artist. Gus was covered in mud. Some of it was dried, and some of it was fresh, but from his knees down, his legs were clean and wet. Not dripping, but with the amount of mud, he was covered in he had to have crossed water somewhere to wash his legs clean.
Gus threw his head in the air and let loose with another bray. Both ears stood straight up as if he’d heard something and was waiting. He was rewarded when Sailor neighed back.
Gus didn’t even sniff the canvas bucket that Lucas offered him, and before Gina could put her arms around his neck to stop him, he was gone. She heard brush breaking and rocks skitter down the hill. She heard the contended bray as he reached his goal. He had found Sailor.
“Lucas, go ahead and give that water to your horse and put two bottles in the bucket when it’s empty. I’m going to go and see how Gus got to them. It seemed like the ground was more stable over there and when Sam gets back, maybe we can move over there. Clyde and Sailor have been tied there all this time, and they could probably use a drink too.”
“You think a bottle each is going to be all they want?”
Gina laughed softly, “No. But it’s better than what they have now. They aren’t far from here as you probably heard, it was just difficult getting here.”
“Didn’t sound like Gus had much trouble getting to them.” He stood, letting his horse drink from the bucket and looked over his shoulder at her. “Where did Gus come from? I mean, how did he get here? Was he with you guys?”
Gina sighed, she had just begun to wonder the same thing. How had Gus found them? John and Andy should have been well on their way to the ranch. She and Sam had spent most of the day going a short distance to the east, but the going home should have been a little easier because John and Andy at least had their back-trail to follow.
“I’m not quite sure how he came to be here because your Dad and Andy were taking him back to the ranch.”
“My Dad? He’s here too?” Lucas’s shoulders slumped as if he just then realized how much trouble he was going to be in.
“No, he’s not. We had a problem too, and he and Andy were headed back to the ranch. I’m just trying to figure out how and why Gus is here.”
“Is my Dad okay?”
“He got bruised up pretty good when he fell, but he’ll be okay. His shoulder was injured, but I fixed it good enough to get him home.”
Gina looked at Lucas and saw the worry on his face. He sank down beside Matt, and she saw tears on his cheeks. She didn’t want to embarrass him further by making a big deal out of it, but she thought he needed a hug. She set the bucket down, knelt at his side and put her arms around him and squeezed. She felt him sag against her, Gina rested her chin on the top of his head and sat like that for several minutes until she heard him sniff.
“You going to be okay
with Matt for a few minutes?”
He didn’t look at her but nodded yes. She thought the magnitude of everything that had happened to them was finally sinking in. As sorry as she found herself feeling, when she thought of the tragedy that had followed the boys on their mission, it made her angry because none of it should have happened, had she and Sam been honest with Matt.
Matt had done what any son would have. He’d set out to find the father he thought might be stranded on the side of the road somewhere. It didn’t matter that it had been months, he needed to find out for himself. John had raised a good son who had wanted to help his friend. She was pretty sure that the anticipated excitement of getting to see the unknown had played a small part in the adventure for both boys. She wondered when they found out it wasn’t as easy as playing a video game. Playing a video game, you didn’t end up dead if you missed the guy shooting at you. There was nothing about their present situation that bore any close resemblance to a game of any kind.
Gina stood up from crawling under a massive pine trunk when her toe caught on something, and she took a half step to avoid falling. She thought it was a tuft of grass, but on closer inspection, she saw the tuft grew from a clump of asphalt. Gina picked it up and wondered how it had gotten so far away from the roadway. She threw it to the side. She needed to concentrate on following Gus’s tracks instead of worrying about why the boys had done it or what had happened to them or why a chunk of the highway was here where she was.
Gus’s tracks passed the slope where she and Sam had climbed up, but she could see him standing down below, right next to Sailor. All three heads were looking up at her. She thought of whistling to Sailor but thought how it would upset him not to be able to come as she’d trained him to do. She worked her way through some sparse brush and saw where Gus had turned down the hill. His shorter height had let him go under a pine tree that would block the way for a taller horse. Gina studied it for a minute and thought the hatchet, even as small as it was could be used to chop through the trunk.
She slid down a short rise and came to level ground. She could see the horses through the leafless brush. Sailor nickered when he saw her. She dumped both bottles of water and gave each of the horses a drink. They had cleaned up all of the yellowed grass they could reach, and Gina felt bad they would have to stay tied a while longer, at least until Sam got back.
Beyond the New Horizon (Book 2): Desperate Times Page 25