****
After several more long minutes of dodging trees, ferns taller than herself, car-sized boulders and basement-deep gullies, Elizabeth stopped. It was useless. She had no remaining sense of direction, and could tell nothing from her surroundings. She tried to judge by looking at the sun, but upper layers of fir and mid-level layers of hemlock and cedar, strung with vines and moss, cut off any direct sunlight too far above, while hills, boulders, ferns and bushes, and tree trunks obscured any general lay of the land. Moss grow on all sides of the great trees that surrounded her. She called Johnny’s name several more times, her voice seeming tiny among the forest giants that swayed in the breeze above her, but only the wind and the birds answered.
Then she heard muffled human voices, moving towards her. She walked towards the growing sound, and soon saw more than a dozen braves as well as Johnny, walking towards her in a strangely compact group and jointly carrying something large over their heads. Most were shirtless in the chill of morning. Black Hawk led the group, and occasionally muttered a few sharp words in Indian that Elizabeth could only assume were instructions on how to navigate over and around forest obstacles.
The rest of the group was strangely silent, but their stern faces registered overwhelming shock, pain and anger. Tears streamed from the eyes of many of them, as they glanced nervously at the surrounding trees and then at the large object that they carried, as though guarding it.
On their shoulders they carried a makeshift stretcher of branches joined together with belts and knotted shirts, on which lay what appeared to be a great pile of rags. It was a body, Elizabeth realized with a shock, the body of a huge man covered with the shirts of many braves to keep him warm against the morning chill.
Johnny, also shirtless, walked with his fellow Tribe-brothers beside the stretcher, one hand and shoulder helping to hold up the stretcher, and the other tightly grasping the unconscious man’s huge hand, which hung down limply next to him. Elizabeth couldn’t help noticing that Johnny was built like a ballet dancer, with lithe muscles rippled smoothly as he walked. Johnny looked straight ahead, apparently in deep concentration and paying more attention to the hand he grasped than to his hike through the forest. She soon realized that the immense dangling hand and arm could only belong to one man.
“Two Bears,” Elizabeth muttered. She stepped towards Johnny, as though to help, but Johnny shook his head no.
“Stay back, Elizabeth. I need to concentrate alone,” explained Johnny.
“Should I call an ambulance? I left my cell phone at the cabin but I can go get it.”
“No ambulances, no police. Run ahead to meet Mary White Dove and bring her back to us quickly.”
Elizabeth turned and ran, her heart pounding, her mind numb. She felt that she was retracing her path back towards the cabin, but after a while wasn’t sure. She shouted Mary’s name a few times and was immensely relieved when she saw her friend walking rapidly towards her through the forest from the direction she was headed. When she told her about Two Bears and what was being done, the Indian woman’s face contorted in grief. Then she was running so swiftly through the forest that Elizabeth could hardly keep up with her.
When they reached the Two Bears entourage, Elizabeth was surprised to see that Johnny was now riding on the stretcher next to Two Bears, his head bowed and eyes closed in concentration.
“It is good to see you, White Wolf,” Mary said, as the braves lowered the stretcher to the ground for her access.
The hint of a smile flashed over Johnny’s face when his eyes opened and met Mary’s, but was quickly overcome with pain as they both looked at Two Bears. “And you, my big sister,” he replied.
But this was not the occasion for reunion small talk. Mary knelt, placed her hand on the wounds, and closed her eyes for a full minute before opening them again. “He lives but barely,” she proclaimed, “but only through Johnny’s efforts.”
“I don’t understand,” said Elizabeth. “Johnny’s only holding his hand.”
“This is Tribal business Elizabeth,” said Mary, surprising her friend with her words and her sudden stern tone. “We are grateful for your help but perhaps you should leave us now.”
“Yes,” agreed Black Hawk. “She should leave us now.”
“No,” said Johnny, not opening his eyes, “I will take responsibility for her staying with us.”
Black Hawk shrugged.
“Very well, White Wolf,” said Mary. “This is no time for arguments, and you are the Goth.” She turned to face Elizabeth. “You can watch and must do as we say, but we have no time for explanations. Save your questions for later.” At that, Mary closed her eyes again.
Mary White Dove had many experiences healing minor accident injuries and diseases, but had never encountered a medical emergency as immediate or severe as this. Besides a heart that was half blown away, there was extensive damage to muscle, ribs, the left lung, and even the spine. Complete healing by her, if it was possible, would at best take several days, even in the Holy Forest.
But they didn’t have several days. There were immediate, temporary repairs that had to be made, as Johnny continued pumping blood through the heart cavity, or Two Bears wouldn’t last an hour. She could sense Johnny’s strong presence, and marveled at what the young man had been able to do, even though he had been separated from the Tribe and Goth Mountain for fourteen years. How long could he keep it up?
“We should first remove the bullets, Johnny,” she said. “I have healing skills, but not the ability to move objects. Can you do it? While still continuing blood flow?”
“I will try,” Johnny replied. Indeed, it was much harder than he expected. The bullets had burst apart on impact, so that the pieces could do more terrible damage. There were over a dozen shards of deadly metal scattered through the big man’s chest and back. Each was a continuing source of irritation to Two Bears’ ailing body, such that Johnny had no trouble locating them by attuning his thoughts to the living system of Two Bears.
The trick was removing them in a way that minimized further damage to the shaman. Johnny carefully removed the pieces one at a time, reversing their path through torn flesh. One by one they emerged from Two Bears’ wounds, bit by bloody bit. Johnny could feel Mary following his every move, focusing her healing powers to quickly undo any additional damage he did that couldn’t be helped.
Elizabeth and the gathered tribesmen watched in awe as bloody bits of ragged metal emerged from the two wounds, floated through the air a few inches, and then dropped next to Two Bears. The tribesmen whispered to each other. Elizabeth was too astonished to do anything but watch.
At last only one piece remained, a jagged strip of metal that was deeply imbedded in the spine of the big shaman. Johnny realized that if he pulled it out it could act like a saw blade and sever much more of the spinal cord.
He mentally withdrew from his bullet removal task.
“One more piece remains, Johnny,” noted Mary.
Johnny opened his eyes for a few moments and glanced up at Elizabeth. “Elizabeth, I need the plastic cap to your pen,” he instructed. “Place it near the wounds.”
Elizabeth indeed had a pen in her pocket. How Johnny knew that she couldn’t imagine; she had totally forgotten about it. She removed the cap and placed the small blue plastic item on Two Bears’ chest as directed, though she couldn’t comprehend why Johnny needed it. A moment later she gasped, as animated by unseen forces, it slowly moved to one of the bullet wounds and disappeared into it.
Perhaps two minutes later two objects emerged from the same wound, a half-sized portion of the original plastic cap, and a second smaller piece of smooth, blue plastic. Curious, Elizabeth picked them up in her hand and examined them. The pen cap looked shriveled, and much smaller than it had originally been. The second piece was actually mostly metal, completely covered by a smooth plastic coating of the cap-plastic material. Johnny had used his mental powers to somehow coat the final, jagged bullet fragment with sm
ooth plastic from her pen!
For thirty minutes more Mary and Johnny sat over Two Bears, as Mary made emergency repairs and Johnny continued pumping the shaman’s blood. When at last Mary stood, she wavered dizzily as though she would fall down, but Black Hawk and Elizabeth steadied her.
“I’m alright now,” she said, after a few minutes, during which all the men knelt around Two Bears and happily confirmed for themselves that their shaman was indeed breathing. “Temporary repairs are complete such that he won’t bleed to death or have a stroke. He should now be carried to the Holy Forest.”
Black Hawk was soon again leading the group towards the cabin, the foremost of ten strong men carrying both Two Bears and Johnny on the makeshift stretcher. Elizabeth and Mary followed behind them.
“Johnny is placing great trust in you, Elizabeth,” confided Mary quietly.
“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt the Tribe Mary, you know that.”
“Yes, I believe that, but I know you very well; most of the Tribe does not. Yet for now they are accepting you, mostly because of Johnny.”
“A man they haven’t seen in fourteen years. Why do you all trust him?”
“He is more than he seems.”
“So are you.”
“I am on the Tribal Council and a Healer, but there are many things that I do not know and can not do. I tell you as a friend, the less you know, the better off all of us are, including especially you. That is a lesson that all of us of the Tribe learn at an early age. Only the Shaman and the Goth know all.”
“Johnny knows all?”
“Not yet, I’m afraid.”
“Losing both Mort and Two Bears is a huge disaster then?”
“Yes, the major parts of a very difficult situation. And I fear that you may be regarded as yet another problem.”
“Me?”
“You have become one more thing for us to worry about.”
“Nobody has to worry about me!”
“Another thing we of the Tribe learn early is to always worry. The Tribal Council will have to wrestle with the entire situation.” She cocked her head as though she had heard something. “Small Bear comes now.”
Sure enough, the Tribe Police Chief soon quietly emerged from the forest to join Mary and Elizabeth. He looked very puzzled to see Johnny and Two Bears being carried together. “What does Goth do?” he asked Mary.
“He keeps Two Bears alive, cousin.”
“Uncle lives? Impossible.”
“Johnny is the Goth.”
“But Uncle is unconscious?”
“Yes, very.”
“But he will recover?”
“He has but a chance, if Johnny can keep his blood flowing long enough for me to heal him.”
“How long?”
“Only the Maker knows. Probably it will be several days before he regains consciousness. If and when he regains consciousness, any remaining healing will be swiftly done by him. What about the shooter?”
“One trail led towards the village, the other circled back to the place of the shooting.”
“You are saying that one of the men carrying Two Bears now may have shot him? A man of the Tribe?”
“It looks that way. What about her?” He nodded towards Elizabeth.
“She has the Goth’s permission to be with us. What we do, she will hear and see, by his leave.”
“A mistake, cousin. Were the bullets removed from Two Bears?”
“Yes, by Johnny. The fragments are wrapped in the red shirt next to him.”
Elizabeth watched as Small Bear caught up with the stretcher and retrieved the only red shirt among the many blue, green, tan and gray ones that formed the stretcher. It was tied into a tight ball. Kneeling, he sat it on the ground and carefully unwrapped it. The stretcher never even slowed down and moved away from them.
“Is this the right shirt?” he asked, as Mary and Elizabeth approached him.
“Yes. In the pocket,” stated Mary.
“I looked in the pocket. Nothing.”
Mary quickly looked herself, and also found nothing.
“Could they have fallen out?” Elizabeth asked.
“No,” said Mary. “I wrapped them in there myself, tight.”
“Yet they are gone,” said Small Bear. “It must have been the shooter, removing evidence.” He glanced towards the receding stretcher party. They were almost out of sight.
“The life of Two Bears is more important than your evidence now,” said Mary, standing up. She handed the shirt back to Small Bear, than jogged to catch up with the stretcher. Elizabeth and Small Bear walked behind.
“I don’t understand,” said Small Bear to Elizabeth.
“What?”
“What does any of this have to do with you, Miss Winters. Why are you involved?”
“I got caught up in it; I didn’t plan to.”
“This is dangerous business, and you could just walk away. What do you get from it? A big story for your reporter friends?”
Elizabeth was beginning to not like this man. “Of course not.”
“What then? Payoff from Fenster?”
“You have a twisted mind.”
“Part of the job.”
“Shouldn’t you be watching Two Bears, if the man that shot him is helping to carry him?”
“There are a dozen men watching him.”
“Why not search them all? The one with the bits of bullet is the assassin.”
“A waste of time. He would have surely thrown them into the woods by now. They will never be found, I am sure. I will have to rely on other evidence.”
“Such as asking Two Bears, when he wakes up.”
“If he wakes up.”
She didn’t like his attitude. Two Bears would live; he had too! From the cold way Small Bear talked of him, it was hard to believe that the two men were related. She picked up her walking pace to catch up with the stretcher. Small Bear lagged behind, which didn’t bother her in the least. She glanced back a minute later and found that he had again disappeared into the forest. That didn’t bother her either.
****
Secrets of Goth Mountain Page 18
