They all laughed. It was a conversation Journey and Gus had every trip, and the girls knew there was no way that Journey would ever part with the old mule. He was as much a part of their family as any of them.
“Come on Gus. Show these girls how much you want to go home.” She draped the lead over his back as he climbed in and turned sideways, waiting for the door to be closed.
After they had policed the area around the truck and trailer, making sure they were not leaving anything behind, they climbed in and shut the doors.
Without giving it any thought, Gina stuck the key in and held it forward to ignite the glow plug. After a few seconds, she turned the key, waiting for the familiar rumble as the big Ford diesel started.
Gina had been looking out over the dash as she waited and looked down at her key hand in surprise. She turned it again and noticed the dash lights weren’t lit up. “What the heck?”
Her eyes met Journey’s in the rearview mirror. Journey raised her eyebrows in question. They both looked at Lucy.
“Nope. Don’t look at me. I only used them to put my wallet in the glove box. I didn’t so much as turn the key on.”
“Well, shit!” Gina turned the key to the off position and opened her door. Lucy and Journey traded looks. Gina hardly ever swore, and it was apparent to them Gina wasn’t very happy right then.
With the hood up, the girls stared at the motor with none of them having any idea what could be wrong.
Gina pulled the rubber caps off the battery terminals and tried to wiggle the wires, but it was obvious they were tight when she couldn’t turn the wing-nut. She put the covers back on and reached to close the hood. “I guess we need to get one of the cell phones out of the center console and call for a tow truck before it gets too late.”
“On it,” Lucy said as she opened the door. It was then she realized the interior lights hadn’t come on. “It has to be the battery. There are no lights.”
“And you think I’m the only blonde here?”
“Hush! You be nice!”
“I heard that!” Lucy said and turned with a cell phone in her hand. She pressed the button on the side to turn it on and waited. With a confused look on her face, Lucy pushed it again.
Eyebrows raised in confusion she said, “I guess mine is dead. I thought they were all fully charged when we turned them off.”
She laid hers on the seat and reached for one of the other two. With Gina’s in hand, she gave it to her. “You do it. I don’t want to jinx it.”
Gina took it and pressed the button and waited.
Seeing the confusion on Gina’s face while she waited, Journey crowded in past Lucy and grabbed her own and turned it on.
They stood with each of them clutching a phone, staring at their dead screens. Nothing. No bright display. No familiar jingle. No working cell phone.
“I wonder if there is enough juice in the battery to at least give one of them enough of a charge for one phone call.” Journey reached for the charger hanging out of the cigarette lighter receptacle and plugged her phone in.
As if it could help she shook her phone and peered at the black screen. “Nothing. Not even the little red charging light comes on.”
“Well, it’s getting too late to drag the horses out and ride, so let’s just fill a couple of hay nets and hang them. We can sleep in the truck tonight.”
By the time it took to fill and hang feed for the horses, it was full night, and they couldn’t find a single one of their flashlights that worked.
“This is getting weirder and weirder,” Journey said and banged her flashlight on the palm of her hand. This damn thing worked last night.”
“Nope. That was the night before. We had a full moon last night and didn’t need them.”
“Plus, we went to sleep early for the ride out today,” Gina confirmed.
“Well, I don’t need a light to grab our bedrolls.”
Journey came back with all three sleeping bags in her arms and they each rolled their own out.
“Woo hoo! For once I think I am happy about having to ride in the back,” Journey crowed.
“Well, so can I, miss smarty pants. This seat goes way back, and I can stretch out too.”
The only person who didn’t have enough room, nor could she stretch out and get comfortable, was Gina.
Since she couldn’t find any way to sleep in comfort, Gina fidgeted until her eyes grew too heavy to stay open. She dozed and woke every time one of the horses moved, shaking the trailer and truck. During her waking moments, Gina pondered their predicament.
The way she saw it, one or all of them would have to ride out and find help. They had always made it a point to stay together, so she supposed they would go together, and one of them could ride back with the tow truck to get the truck and trailer. She wondered if they would even haul the two together or would they have to make more than one trip.
Gina hoped they could pull the two out together just for the sake of their time schedule. It was only ten miles back to the main highway, but another few miles to the closest town. As much as she hated the thought of riding along the interstate, she didn’t see what other choices they had unless they could get a passing car to help them. Maybe someone with a working cell phone could call a towing service for them, and they could wait by the overpass until the mechanic showed.
Exhausted, Gina finally dropped off to sleep only to be awakened by Journey and Lucy laughing and arguing. She felt as if she had gotten no sleep at all.
“What time is it?” she croaked out.
“That’s just it. We don’t know. We were waiting for you to wake up so you could tell us.”
“The sun hasn’t been up for very long, so it’s still early,” Lucy added.
Gina pulled up the sleeve of her flannel shirt and squinted at her watch. Unconsciously she began to wind it. “It’s just after six. What’s wrong with your watches?”
“I guess the battery in mine needs replacing, because it’s stopped and Lucy’s is where it always is, on her dresser at home.”
“What? But didn’t we just go to Walmart and didn’t you just get a new one put in?”
Journey made sure the little button was pushed all of the way in and stared at the face of hers. “We did the day before we left, but it doesn’t work.”
Gina sighed and sat her seat up. “Well, let’s get these guys out of the trailer and tacked up. Lucy why don’t you find us something for breakfast while Journey and I unload them.” She threw the keys to Lucy to unlock the tack room.
She and Journey unloaded Gus and then the three horses and tied them to the sides of the trailer. Gina changed out Gus’s lead line for a short one that was only long enough to grab hold of and turned him loose to munch the grass. He wouldn’t wander far from the trailer, and she hoped they wouldn’t be gone long. She knew at the bottom of the draw, there was a running stream so he would be okay until they got back. If it was one thing Gus was good at, it was finding his own food and water.
Journey hung each horse a bucket of pellets to eat while the girls got the tack ready and ate their own breakfast.
Lucy handed each of them a breakfast bar and a bottle of water and walked to the back of the pickup and dropped the tailgate.
They sat side by side to eat. The birds were just starting to chirp when Gina spoke. “Does anyone not think we should all ride out? I mean, we haven’t seen anyone this whole three weeks, so I don’t suppose anyone would bother our things.”
“I think we should stay together. It won’t take that long to get to the highway. What is it, about seven or eight miles?”
“Further than that. I think it’s about ten miles.” Lucy was watching Gus graze with his head down. He’d snatch a few blades and then walk a few steps and nibble a few more. He’d turn to look at them between bites. “What about Gus?”
“I put the short lead on him so we can leave him here. One of us will come back up with the tow truck and load him then. He’ll be fine unless one of you wants to
drag him out of here.”
Lucy and Journey shared a glance, and both shook their heads no. “He’ll be okay until we get back. Maybe by then he’ll even be glad to be going home,” Journey told them, as she slid off the tailgate. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
When they were all ready to go, and the area cleaned up around the trailer she saw that both Journey and Lucy had strapped on their gun belts. They had a policy of never riding unarmed. They each carried a handgun and Gina had a 30.30 in her scabbard.
“I think we should lock the guns up in the trailer. Someone might get the wrong idea when we come riding out of the woods fully armed.”
“It’s not like they’re concealed or anything.”
“True, but would you stop to help someone who you could see was armed?”
Journey frowned, “Gina’s right. I sure wouldn’t.”
Lucy laughed, “Especially if they smelled as badly as we do.”
Gina gathered the firearms and locked them back in the small gun safe under the spare trailer tire and locked the tack room door.
Chapter three…………Finding Help
Gina was surprised how the leaves had turned color since they had driven in. While the evenings had been chilly, the days had warmed up to shirt sleeve weather. They hadn’t had any frost yet, but the nip in the air said it wasn’t going to be many more days before they did. She was grateful their vacation had turned out as well as it had.
“This would have been the best camp trip yet if the darn truck had of started,” Journey said as she rode up beside her. “When are you going to get rid of that old truck and get a new one?”
“I wasn’t planning on it. That truck still has a lot of miles left in it. So until the wheels all fall off it is here to stay.”
“Yeah Journey, why don’t you trade in that thing you call a car and buy a new truck?” Lucy said from close behind them.
“It’s not a thing. It’s a BMW, and we don’t need another truck, we just need the one we do have, to run.”
Except for the creak of saddle leather, the jingle of bits and the sounds of hooves on rocks, they rode the next few miles in silence.
The farther down the trail, they rode, the more the air warmed up. Gina had unzipped her vest and rolled up her sleeves. She was still thinking about her truck not starting.
“Does anyone else smell smoke?”
The three reined in their mounts and sat twisting in their saddles, sniffing the air in every direction.
“Not wood smoke, though,” Journey said and kicked her horse into a jog.
Gina and Lucy followed at a trot. They were almost back down to the highway, and the slope of the road had leveled out. They rounded a corner, and if they had not been watching, they would have plowed right into Journey and Bess who were standing crossways in the road.
“Whoa!” Lucy hollered, “Geez, why not say you were…What the heck?
Gina and Lucy were trying to take in what Journey was staring at. The horizon was filled with black smoke. It couldn’t have come from the burned-out cars crumpled in the median because they had already stopped smoking. The trees were between them and whatever was on fire.
“Holy crap,” Gina breathed out. “Oh my God.” She took off the rest of the way down the hill with Lucy and Journey right behind her.
In the dirt and gravel parking lot, Gina and Journey flung themselves down to the ground throwing Lucy their reins.
“Lucy wait here with the horses!”
They ran to the two cars that had apparently hit the cement barrier hard and for some reason had burned. As they got close, they could see that people had died in both cars. Charred bones rested where the seats used to be.
There was the back end of another vehicle sitting off the highway embedded with two fir trees. As they got close, they could see a body hanging through the front windshield. The amount of blood on the hood did not bode well for the driver.
Gina ran to the car and checked for a pulse just the same. Feeling the side of his neck, she shook her head at Journey. They could see where another vehicle had left the roadway completely, leaving only skid marks in the shoulder gravel. Journey ran to the shoulder and leaned out over the destroyed guardrail. Far down below amidst the rocks, pieces of a car were strewn clear to the bottom.
Journey turned to face Gina, “What happened? How could these cars wreck at the same time? What about those ones and that truck? How come they aren’t wrecked?”
Gina looked down the hill, and sure enough, Journey was right. There were several cars pulled off on the shoulder and two semi-trucks.
She looked back to where Lucy was standing with the horses. “There’s nothing we can do for these people and we have no way to call for help either.”
“Well, crap! I’ll be right back.” Journey took off at a run back to where the car was buried in the tree trunks.
Journey leaned through the driver’s window, reaching for something and soon held her hand up in triumph. In her hands, she held what Gina suspected was a cell phone.
She was puzzled when Journey stopped running and then her shoulders seemed to slump in defeat. She just stood there playing with the phone and then turned and threw it as hard as she could over the edge.
“Come on back Journey. We’ll figure it out.”
Journey ran slowly back to where Gina had joined Lucy. She had tears in her eyes and shook her head.
“That one didn’t work either.” She went and wrapped her arms around her horse’s neck and buried her face in Bess’s mane.
“Does anyone else find it strange that the whole time we’ve been here, there hasn’t been any traffic? I’ve been listening while you two were looking and I haven’t heard a motorized vehicle of any kind.”
Journey stepped away from Bess and mindlessly scratched the horse's neck. “She’s right. You would think there would be some traffic.”
“What I do find strange is these cars have been here for a while. The ones that burned are cold to the touch, so it happened last night or yesterday even. There’s really no way to tell how long. My question is, why are they still here?”
The three exchanged glances and shrugged their shoulders. It was clear neither of them had an answer.
“Could the road be blocked, preventing traffic from getting through?”
Lucy looked at Journey and rolled her eyes, “Blocked both directions? Not likely, but I guess that’s one explanation.”
“I think I wish we had remained armed. Something’s not right, and we need to find out what it is.” Gina wasn’t whispering, not really, but she hesitated to speak too loudly in case they were being watched by someone they couldn’t see.
She had seen the semi-trucks, and while they didn’t appear to be damaged in any way, she had to wonder where the drivers had gone.
“You may not know it, but Journey and I get really worried when you talk like that. That tone of voice is always a precursor to something bad happening, so can you rephrase that and sound less foreboding please?”
“And why does it have to be us who has to find out? We should just ride until we find a phone that works. Let the authorities know what we found and let them deal with it.”
Gina stumbled forward when Sailor nudged her from behind. She turned and placed her hand on the soft part of Sailor’s muzzle. Her fingers massaged him while her brain worked out what to do.
“Journey is right. Riding is the only option we have right now. I think two of us should go back to the truck, and only one of us go. We’d attract less attention that way.”
“Like a woman riding down the interstate isn’t going to draw attention, whether there are one of us or three? I vote we all stick together.”
“I’m voting with Journey. We all go back to the truck or we all ride down the hill. We don’t separate for any reason.”
Gina looked at both of her friends. She saw the determination they both held in their stance and expressions. They were both as stubborn as she was and in her heart,
she knew they should stick together.
“Okay, I’ll lead, and you two keep your eyes open. We don’t know what happened to the drivers who drove those other vehicles. We’re not taking any chances here.”
They would have to ride down the westbound lanes or find somewhere to cross over that didn’t have the cement barricade. All three horses were capable of clearing it under normal circumstances, but to jump the cement divider and land on the pavement was an accident waiting to happen.
Gina climbed aboard and reached for her 30/30. When it cleared the scabbard, she checked to make sure it was loaded. She knew that in the bottom of her saddle bag was another full box of shells and whatever was left from loading the rifle the last time.
While the 30/30 may not have been the most practical rifle to carry, it had saved their lives when they had been stalked by the cougar. That was when they had decided it wouldn’t hurt for her and Journey to get safety training and carry permits.
They hadn’t let Lucy have a carry permit, because of her previous health issues, but that didn’t stop Lucy from wearing her revolver when they were in the woods. Lucy was by far the best shot among them, and while it had taken some time, they did arm Lucy with an unregistered handgun.
They agreed that it was better to be judged by twelve than carried by six. They hadn’t understood the policy of being denied if you had previous mental health issues, but Lucy’s problems had more to do with thinking her life was over rather than of shooting someone else.
Both Gina and Journey knew the incident had been a one-time thing and that Lucy would never harm herself or put them in jeopardy by her actions.
She had felt abandoned by her peers when they had discharged her because of the loss of her limb. She had wanted to retrain and continue her career, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. The Army had been her whole life and to have the rug jerked out from under her and to be stuck in a rehab facility where no one cared if she had a life or not, was more than she could bear.
Looking back at her mounted friends, Gina nodded, “Let’s do this. Keep an eye out behind us just in case.”
Beyond the New Horizon Page 2
