by Betsy Ashton
“I can live with that.”
He showed Alex and me how to mount, how to neck rein, and how to ask the horse to go forward by pressing boot heels to its sides. Because I’d learned to ride English, I squeezed my legs to give Cherokee a silent command to move forward. She tossed her head and danced on her toes. Johnny gave me a look.
“Does she understand leg cues?” I asked.
Johnny gaped at me.
“Leg cues. You know, pressure from my legs telling her where to go and how.”
“Where did you learn about leg cues?”
“I learned to ride English in Central Park. My step-daughter competed in dressage. She taught me how to sit still and give tiny cues either by squeezing my calves or twitching a finger. It comes natural to me.” I rode Cherokee in a circle, reversing her course by squeezing one calf or the other. I left the reins loose on her neck. “I guess she does.”
With one smooth motion, Johnny mounted his bay and led us at a walk. No way was I going to be a lump. I took hold of my horse and nudged her to follow Alex’s pony along the wide trail. I looked around and enjoyed nature’s quiet, hearing no man-made noise beyond the squeak of saddle leather and the soft jangle of bits. I listened to the movements of small animals and spotted a couple of rabbits disappear down holes.
The solitude and sun’s warmth relaxed me as I observed Johnny in his native habitat. I knew him as a businessman in Richmond and as a road engineer in Mississippi. Is this the real Johnny? The man grew up on a ranch and sat a horse as easily as I sat in a box at the Metropolitan Opera.
Cherokee sidestepped and snorted, causing me to tighten my calves. She danced forward and swung her hindquarters halfway around laying her ears back. I didn’t see anything to upset her, but she knew better. Johnny looked back when he heard the mare change her gait.
“I didn’t see anything,” I said. Of course, I was daydreaming.
“Well, she did.” Johnny grinned. “Smallish rattler about ten feet off the trail. Alex spotted it. You’d have seen it if you followed our pointing fingers.”
My grandson turned in his saddle and gloated. Gad, I have to stay alert to keep from being outdone and outmaneuvered. I patted Cherokee’s neck and stuck my tongue out at the backs of the two men who mocked me.
CHAPTER TWO
WE FOLLOWED THE trail for about two hours. I imagined Native Americans walking along it, maybe moving to new hunting grounds, maybe visiting distant family. Stone outcrops rose around us; small pines and junipers, twisted and gnarled, grew in clumps across the open landscape. The scents of chaparral and sage grew stronger as the heat intensified. Crows and hawks soared overhead. On a ridge, a mile or so distant, a coyote raised his head to smell the air and stared at us for several seconds before evaporating into a stand of greasewood.
I kept a steady tension on the reins, ready to pull the mare aside if we disturbed another snake. Since Cherokee remained steady, I assumed any rustlings meant we hadn’t startled something poisonous. I was about as far from my normal environs as I could be. Neither the constant energy of Manhattan nor the semi-isolation of the construction camp in post-Katrina Mississippi prepared me for the all-encompassing emptiness of northern New Mexico.
Alex and Johnny rode in front. Alex’s endless questions covered the gamut of the boy’s mind. “Why is Loco called a pony, not a horse? What is this buckle on the saddle for? What are those trees called? The birds? The small animals?”
Johnny answered each question patiently.
“Why did you bring a rifle?”
“I brought it in case we run into any large animals,” Johnny said. “It’s strictly for self-defense. It’ll scare them off.”
“You mean, like a mountain lion?” I didn’t need to see Alex’s face to know his eyes were round as Oreos.
“Don’t get your hopes up. If we were to see a mountain lion, it would run away rather than attack three horses and riders.”
“Have you ever shot a mountain lion?” Alex wouldn’t relinquish hope of seeing a big cat.
Johnny shook his head. “I’ve seen a couple from a distance. I leave them alone, and they leave me alone. They have their place in nature. Unless one attacks a human or livestock, most of us ranchers just let them do their thing.”
“What about coyotes?”
“Ah, coyotes are a different matter.” Johnny slowed his horse, pulled his hat off, and wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. A layer of fine grit covered our clothes and skin. After Mississippi, I no longer noticed grit, having lived in an RV in the middle of a construction zone for two years. Johnny waved his hat in a wide arc before continuing with Alex’s ecology lesson.
“Coyotes kill calves and lambs. They’ve adapted to feeding off livestock rather than deer and antelope, so most ranchers kill them whenever they can.”
“Have you killed a coyote?”
“I grew up on a ranch, Alex. My brothers, sisters, and I all got rifles when we were kids. I learned to shoot before I was your age. Sure, I’ve killed coyotes.” Johnny looked at the boy riding beside him. “We only kill those that attack our herds. They’re hardly an endangered species. We never seem to run out of them.”
“What about your Glock? You didn’t bring it.”
Relentless kid, my grandson. I understood where he was coming from, though. On the job site in Mississippi, his uncle Johnny and his father wore their guns in hip holsters. We had run afoul of a gang of escaped convicts. Most of the construction crew openly carried weapons to prevent attacks. Alex thought guns on hips was the norm.
“It’s a Sig Sauer, not a Glock. Your father’s is a Glock. It’s made for shooting people. It has no use out here. Now, listen to the quiet all around us, okay?” Johnny’s tone ended the conversation, and the set of his shoulders left no opening for more pestering.
Alex dropped back and rode in silence with me for a while. I was glad for the teachable moment. I watched him use all of his senses to pay careful attention to the land around us.
We turned off the trail onto what looked like a deer trace and rode single file, the path barely two feet wide. The vegetation was greener. A stream bubbled gently up ahead. Johnny pulled up in a small clearing and dismounted in a single fluid motion. I dismounted, my motion anything but fluid. I’d stiffened up in the past hour or so. Alex jumped off and followed Johnny’s instructions, watering the horses at the stream before bringing them to a couple of pinyon pines. Johnny swapped bridles for halters and long ropes, and let the animals pick at what little grass there was.
“Time for lunch. Anyone hungry?” I shook out a blanket and spread it on the ground before opening the saddlebags and pulling out thick sandwiches, fruit, and water bottles.
“No chips?” Alex unwrapped a sandwich and took a bite.
“No chips. I left them behind because they were too bulky. You’d have had chip rubble after a few hours in the saddlebags anyway. I do have cookies, though.”
Alex ate half his sandwich before jumping up and heading toward the stream.
“Hold up, bud. Where’re you going?” Johnny called.
“I’m thirsty. I thought I’d get a drink at the creek.” He was halfway across the clearing. “It looks clean and cold.”
“Well, you thought wrong. It may look clean, but you don’t know what’s upstream. It could be a dead animal or something equally gross that pollutes the water. I don’t want you to get sick.” Johnny sipped from his water bottle.
“Gee. I thought water would taste better if it came from the ground.” Alex threw himself back on the blanket and snatched a bottle.
“It does, but all kinds of bacteria and parasites live in water, no matter how clean it looks. E. coli is one bad one. Comes from drinking water contaminated with feces, human or animal.”
“Eww. I thought only fish pooped in streams.”
“So do cattle, horses, and deer. Nearly anything that comes to a watering hole or stream to drink.” Johnny paused to finish a bite of his sandwich. “Other bad thing
s, like cholera and Giardia, give you the runs, make you puke your guts out, and make you feel like you want to die.”
I’d had enough. I didn’t need the conversation dwelling on illness or poop. I finished my apple and stood. “Can I give the core to Cherokee?”
When she heard her name, the mare raised her head and blew gently.
“She’ll love it.” Johnny leaned against a rock, his hat pulled low over his eyes. He looked for all the world like a professional cowboy in the Westerns I’d devoured with my brothers. His DNA was all ranch. His movements and general posture put him naturally in this environment. I may have grown up on an Eastern farm and knew how to kill chickens for the pot, milk cows, and help birth calves, but I would never look relaxed propped against a rock.
Alex went off to explore the rock outcropping upstream.
“Don’t climb on anything. Your new boots are too slippery. You might fall,” I called.
Johnny only moved the muscles needed to call a warning when he added, “Remember what I said about snakes. They’ll be out sunning themselves, so give them plenty of room. Go no more than half an hour up the trail, turn around, and come back. By that time, we’ll be ready to ride down to the truck.”
A wave of one hand told me that Alex had heard Johnny’s instructions but made no promise to follow them. I wandered around the clearing and picked up a handful of small, pale-yellow seeds that looked somewhat familiar. I brought them to Johnny, who peeled one eye open.
“Pine nuts.”
“Like those I buy in the store and pay a fortune for?”
Johnny nodded. “We’ve had a decent snow pack for the past couple of years, so the Native Americans are harvesting bumper crops. Also explains the hawks.”
“How so?”
“Small rodents eat pine nuts, and the hawks eat rodents. Classic food chain. That’s why we saw so many today. Lots of food.”
With Alex off exploring, Johnny pulled me down to lean on him in companionable silence. I squirmed until I made a groove for my hip in the dirt under the blanket, and then I snuggled against his shoulder. He smelled of horse, dust, and sweat. We napped. After almost an hour, Johnny sat up, checked the sun’s position, and said we should head home. He wanted to get to the ranch before dark.
“You’ll be surprised how quickly the temperature drops up here. We’re a hell of a lot higher than we were in Mississippi.”
“Alex is late. He should have been back by now,” I said. “I’ll go find him.”
While Johnny tightened the horses’ cinches, swapped halters for bridles, and watered them one more time, I hiked up the trail and looked for Alex. I didn’t see him, so I followed his footprints. I saw where he’d stopped and disturbed the dirt as if digging something up. He left a hole behind.
“Alex. Time to leave.”
I assumed he was hiding, waiting to jump out and scare the bejeezus out of me. I braced myself for his holy-crap-boy-child sneak attack. I turned a bend, heard pebbles fall from a rock ledge about fifty yards off, and looked up. Alex balanced on a narrow ledge, thirty feet above the main trail, waving his arms at me.
Didn’t Johnny warn him about staying off the rocks? His new leather soles weren’t broken in enough for him to be climbing ledges and hiking nearly non-existent trails.
He saw me and yelled, “Hey, Mad Max. Look what I found.”
“Alex! Get down from there before you fall.”
I took a step toward him. Alex lost his balance and tumbled off the ledge. He bounced off the rock face before landing behind a boulder. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him land.
Snap.
Oh, shit! I knew that sound. Broken bones.
“Johnny!”
CHAPTER THREE
MY PULSE GALLOPED in my throat. Alex lay face-down in a dusty heap, his right leg twisted unnaturally underneath him. I didn’t see blood. I placed two fingers on his neck, over the carotid artery. Strong. Maybe he had the wind knocked out. Maybe he didn’t break his leg. Maybe that crack I heard was his head hitting the boulder. Maybe he has a concussion.
I knelt next to him and rolled him over, careful to support his head and not jostle him. His face was covered in scratches and dirt. His eyelids quivered. One eye peeled open.
Where the hell is Johnny?
I opened my mouth to yell again when Johnny materialized beside me and pushed me out of the way. He squatted in the dirt and ran his hands over my grandson’s torso, feeling for injuries. With little warning, Alex gulped air and coughed violently. He tried to sit up. Johnny held him down.
“Easy there, pal. Don’t move.”
“It hurts.” Alex coughed again and drew in several shaky breaths.
“Where? Your head? Your chest?” Johnny lifted each eyelid. I’d seen enough television to know he was checking for signs of a concussion.
“My chest. It hurts when I breathe.” Alex proved his point by taking another quick breath and coughing. He groaned.
“What about your head? Do you think you hit it? Does it hurt?” Johnny ran his hands around the back of Alex’s head, but he wouldn’t find any blood—I’d already looked.
“You probably have a broken rib or two.” Johnny turned his attention to Alex’s legs. “Your dad and I have had several. The bad news is, you’ll hurt like hell for a couple of weeks. You won’t want to cough, sneeze, or laugh.”
I moved to Alex and brushed bits of dirt and small rocks from his face and hair.
“Don’t let Em near me. She’ll tease me to death.” Alex sneezed and groaned. He was right about his sister. Emilie had honed teasing into a fine art form.
“Where else do you hurt?” Johnny felt along Alex’s left leg.
“My—my right leg. I think I broke it.” Alex sucked in air and screwed up his face, close to crying.
How can Johnny be so damned calm? I wanted to scream even though I knew that wouldn’t help. I opened my mouth, but Johnny cut me off. He looked at the twisted leg.
“Max, will you go back to my horse and bring my saddlebags? I need my first-aid kit,” he said calmly.
I ran down the deer trail, damning the slippery soles of my new boots. What I wouldn’t give for sneakers. I remembered to slow before I rounded the last bend, so as not to spook the horses. Cherokee nickered and stamped a hoof. I patted her neck in passing before I untied the saddlebags on Belle and rushed back. I heard Johnny’s voice before I reached the scene of the accident.
“Yes, about ten miles up the old Thomas Mine road.”
Johnny fell silent. He was on his cell. At least we had coverage here. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my phone. Two bars. I needed to call Whip, Alex’s father, but he’d ask questions I couldn’t yet answer. Better to wait. After all, what he didn’t know at that moment wasn’t causing him any worries.
“I left my truck and horse trailer at the trailhead . . . You can get an ambulance that far, but we rode two hours up to Navajo Springs. We’re probably half a mile north of that now.”
Silence.
“That’s the one. Our horses are at the spring.”
Silence.
“He fell about thirty feet off a rock ledge, knocked the wind out of him. Right leg’s broken.”
Silence.
“Multiple fractures of the lower right leg. The tibia erupted through the skin.”
Silence.
“That’s what I said. Open fracture of the tibia.”
I listened with one ear and looked at Alex’s legs. Johnny had pulled off the new boots and used the knife from his belt to slit Alex’s new jeans, exposing a bloody tear in the skin.
What does Johnny mean about an open fracture? Then I saw it. A jagged piece of bloody bone poked through Alex’s shin. I gulped, determined not to be sick.
“I have a first-aid kit,” Johnny said. I held out the bags. He motioned for me to set them on a flat rock next to his hat. “Yes, I can sterilize the skin break and put on a splint.”
Beneath layers of dust, Alex’s face was pal
e, his breathing rapid and shallow. Shock. I took off my jacket and draped it over his chest to keep him warm. I wished I’d thought to bring the blanket. The sun was hot, but Alex fell in the cool shade. His teeth chattered.
“No, that’ll take too long. He’s going into shock, but I don’t think he has life-threatening injuries.” Johnny listened again.
“You can cry if you want,” I whispered as I brushed hair from his forehead.
The head under my hand moved from side to side. Alex didn’t say a word. He caught a lip between his teeth and bit it hard. A single tear escaped and left a muddy track to his hairline.
I reached for the backpack, found the first-aid kit, and pulled out a gauze pad, which I slipped between Alex’s teeth. “Bite on this. It won’t bleed like your lip will.”
“Great. That’s even better. I’ll watch for it.” Johnny flipped his phone closed.
“EMS?”
“They know roughly where we are and will be here as soon as they can. I don’t want to move Alex.” Johnny reached for the kit, ripped open a couple of sanitary wipes, and scrubbed his hands. “I need your help, Max. We have to stabilize the leg while we wait for the cavalry.”
I didn’t have time to think about what Johnny was getting ready to do. I’d never been good around blood, and Alex’s leg was bleeding freely.
Johnny spoke to us both at the same time. The more we knew about what was going to happen, the better prepared we’d be to help. “We’re going to take care of your broken leg so that you don’t get an infection.” He nodded to me and at the leg. “Max, I want you to hold Alex’s knee while I pull on his foot. I have to get that bone under the skin.”
While he was talking, Johnny put on Latex gloves and swabbed the wound with alcohol. “Alex, this is going to hurt like hell. I can’t help it. Yell all you want. Heck, I’d be screaming if I broke my leg like you did.”
Alex shook his head again. I’d never seen him so stoic. No, he’s not being stoic. He’s scared speechless. I wished I could hold him in my arms, but neither Johnny nor I wanted to lift him until a doctor checked him for head injuries. Right now, we could work on the leg, nothing else. I gripped Alex’s knee like a vice. No way was that leg going to move.
