Clint had arrived and was already rummaging through his pack in search of the only first-aid kit they’d been able to bring with them. While Lindsay continued to comfort Danny and the other boys huddled together, looking hushed and panicky, Clint and Rex arranged their medical supplies in a businesslike manner.
Rex gave Danny a sedative and waited for it to take effect, then splinted the small leg with pine boughs and bound it with rope supplied by Allan. Under Clint’s direction the boys used blankets and additional branches to rig up a makeshift hammock for Danny that they would take turns carrying between them.
The little boy was asleep by now, still deeply under the influence of the sedative, and some color was returning to his cheeks.
“But he’ll be in terrible pain when he wakes up,” Rex told Lindsay, “and we only brought one of the first-aid kits with us. I’m afraid we won’t have enough painkiller to last the trip, unless we get going right away. I want us to cover as many miles as we can before nightfall.”
While Clint organized the rest of the boys, checked their packs and arranged for transport of Danny’s litter, Lindsay saw Rex approach Jason and have an urgent whispered conversation.
Jason handed something over and Rex looked at it, frowning, then slipped it into his pocket.
Lindsay went over to him, feeling a growing alarm. “What’s going on?” she murmured. “What did Jason give you just now?”
“He gave me the compass.” Rex looked down at her, his face grim and tense. “We can never climb back up to the trail, Lin. Somehow we’re going to have to find a way out of here on our own.”
* * *
FOR LONG, exhausting hours they trudged and struggled through increasingly difficult terrain, with Rex using the compass to lead them in an easterly direction back down the mountain.
But the valley where they now found themselves was nothing like the lofty, rock-strewn trails they’d been riding on previous days. Down here the woods were deep and still. Tree branches often hid the sky so they seemed to move through a series of hushed green tunnels dappled with shifting light, and shadows that deepened as the day wore on.
The ground was littered with fallen trees and ancient uprooted stumps. Occasionally they traversed areas where springwater bubbled from the rocks and made the ground slick and treacherous.
They all took turns carrying Danny’s hammock, trying hard not to jar his pain-racked body.
“Hey, this is a lot better,” Lonnie said late in the afternoon, obviously determined to cheer Lindsay, who trudged along just ahead of him. “Down here in the trees we’re getting lots of shelter from the rain. I’m hardly wet at all.”
She turned to hug the plump boy impulsively. “You’re such a ray of sunshine, Lonnie,” she murmured. “A born optimist.”
“As long as the food supplies hold out,” he told her with a weary grin.
Rex kept them pressing onward late into the summer evening. By nightfall they were all so exhausted, the task of making camp seemed almost impossible. But Rex and Clint rallied the boys, encouraging them with promises of food and hot tea.
With a final burst of energy they all worked together, constructing three pine-bough shelters to protect them from the constant drizzle of rain that trickled from the tree branches overhead.
Lindsay boiled pots of water to make tea and soup from freeze-dried packages. They had little else except nuts, trail mix and Lonnie’s dwindling stash of granola bars, since most of the heavier supplies had been left behind at the upper camp when the horses disappeared.
She worried as she served out the rations, knowing every one of the boys could have eaten three times as much, though nobody complained. After the meal they were too tired to sit around the fire and talk. Wordlessly, the boys dispersed to their rough shelters under the trees. Lonnie shared with Clint, and Allan climbed in with Tim and Jason. Lindsay and Rex took Danny into the largest shelter, placing him carefully between Lindsay and the wall nearest the fire. They rolled up a blanket as a barrier to prevent her from inadvertently jarring his splinted leg.
Rex got up to do a final check of the camp and their supplies. Lindsay watched as he threw more wood on the fire to keep it aglow, discouraging predators. Then he came back and ducked under the pine boughs, stretching his long body out next to her.
She leaned up on one elbow, watching the glitter of his eyes in the darkness. “Rex, I’m so scared,” she whispered.
He gave her a warning glance and gestured at Danny’s still form, then gathered her into his arms and whispered in her ear.
“I’m scared too, darling. But we’re going to get ourselves out of this mess, and all the boys are going to be fine. We’ve already covered a lot of ground today, you know.”
“But it’s such rough going, and it all looks the same,” Lindsay murmured against his throat. “How can we be sure we’re not just going around in circles?”
“Because I’m following the compass. Remember when we started out the first day, and we crossed that road near the Bighorn Ranch?”
She nodded against his chest.
“Well, it runs pretty much north and south. If my calculations are right, we’ll stumble across it again tomorrow or the next day, and then we can just follow it south to the ranch.”
Lindsay thought about the rough deadfalls, crevices and bogs in the woods they were traversing. “That would be so wonderful, Rex.”
He held her gently, stroking her hair.
Lindsay smiled bitterly. “All those things I thought I wanted in my life, the goals we chase after and things we worry about...they don’t mean anything at all, do they? Right now, I’d give up everything I ever dreamed about, just to be able to walk on a road.”
He drew her closer. “What have you dreamed about, Lin? And what kind of things make you worry? I want to know everything.”
Even under these harsh and exhausting conditions, footsore and dirty and aching from hunger, Lindsay felt her body begin to respond to him. She sighed, imagining what it would be like to be back in civilization with a bathtub, a comfy warm bed, a kitchen stocked with food.
And Rex there with her...
“If we were alone together somewhere more comfortable,” she whispered against his cheek, “we’d never get a single thing done. We’d just be all over each other from morning to night.”
He chuckled, a warm sound in the stillness of the night. “You know what? That’s called a honeymoon, darling. And I think we’d better go on one right away, don’t you?”
“Rex...”
“Marry me, Lin,” he said, his voice husky.
He began to kiss her, his lips moving over her eyelids and cheeks, her mouth and throat and into the opening of her shirt.
Lindsay lay tensely, holding him, feeling the softness of his hair as it brushed against her breasts.
“Say yes,” he urged in a muffled voice, his breath warm against her skin. “Tell me you’ll marry me as soon as we get out of here. If you’d say it, Lin, I’d be so strong, I could carry Danny and all the supplies and the rest of the boys on my back, too, if I had to. Just tell me you love me.”
She was silent. Tears burned in her eyes and began to trickle down her cheeks, but Rex didn’t notice. He was still intent on kissing her breasts.
At a sudden sound from Danny, she sat up and leaned to touch the little boy’s forehead, then turned back to Rex in alarm. “He seems to be getting warmer,” she whispered. “I’m afraid he may be getting a fever, Rex.”
Rex reached across her body to touch the little boy’s face and neck. Lindsay could see him frowning in the dim flickering glow of the campfire.
“You could be right,” he muttered, “but it doesn’t seem bad to me. At least he hasn’t gone into shock, and that’s what I was most afraid of. We’ll take his temperature in the morning and give him some aspirin alo
ng with the painkiller if we need to.”
“Do we have aspirin?”
“A bit,” he said grimly. “Not very damned much. I hope none of the other boys get sick on us, or we’ll be in big trouble.”
They settled back into their embrace, huddling close together for warmth.
“Do you think any of the horses could be back to the ranch by now?” she asked. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours since they ran away.”
“I think a few of them could probably start to straggle in tomorrow, if they’ve kept up a steady pace. They’ll be cold and hungry, anxious to get home. But like we told Clint, that’s not going to help us much even when they start sending out search parties.”
“Because Sam will think we’re farther north on the lower slopes?” she asked.
“Well, he sure wouldn’t expect that we’d be riding straight west into the mountains. And even if they do fly over us, how could we signal? Most of the time this tree cover’s so heavy, they’d never see us down here.”
Lindsay frowned, thinking. “But once we get lower and come out onto some of the open slopes, we’ll be a lot easier to see, even if we are on the wrong trail.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.” He stretched his long body, still holding her in the crook of his arm. “I only hope Danny can hold on till then.”
As if in response to his name, the little boy stirred and muttered something. Lindsay watched him in concern but he settled almost at once, his face twisting and grimacing occasionally with pain.
“Poor little sweetheart.” She kissed him and felt the tears begin to gather in her eyes again. “He’s being so brave.”
Rex continued to hold her with one arm, staring up at the interlaced boughs above their heads. “Lindsay,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“Why do you keep dodging the issue whenever I talk about our future?”
She felt a rising panic. “Rex, this is pretty sudden, you know. Up until a few weeks ago, we’d never even considered such a thing. Now you want an answer from me right away?”
“It’s hardly as if we just met on a blind date,” he said quietly. “We’ve been friends for more than twenty years. I love you, and there’s nothing about your life or background I don’t know.”
The words echoed hollowly in her mind.
There’s nothing about your life or background I don’t know....
Lindsay shivered and gripped her arms tightly. She could feel him watching her.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Look, that’s not so much to ask,” Rex said in a reasonable tone, though she could hear the tightly suppressed emotion behind his words. “Last night, I got the impression you had a lot of feeling for me. I’m pretty sure you weren’t faking it. I just want to know for sure how you feel.”
“I...” Her voice caught, and she swallowed hard.
“Say it,” he urged.
“I love you, Rex,” she whispered. “I really do love you.”
The words released a floodgate of emotion. She ached to hold him, to nestle close and feel the comfort of his naked body against hers, to make love so he could fill and soothe and protect her. She wanted to tell him what she feared the most.
But she wrestled her feelings under control and lay stiff in his arms, gazing miserably at the fire beyond their shelter.
“Then will you marry me?” he asked again. She could hear the caution in his voice, and knew that he already sensed something was wrong.
Rex had always understood her so well.
“No,” she said, choking on her tears. “No, Rex, I won’t marry you.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head in despair. “I can’t talk about it while Danny’s here with us,” she said at last.
“He’s sound asleep.”
“I still can’t. Tomorrow,” she promised. “Somewhere on the trail, come and walk with me for a while and I’ll tell you everything. It’s a horrible story, Rex. You’ll hate me after I’ve told you.”
Even as she said the words, Lindsay felt a sickening wave of reluctance. She could hardly imagine herself telling him all the things that would need to be said, letting him know just what a wretched coward she’d been.
But Rex was entitled to the truth. Even if he wanted nothing to do with her afterward, it was no more than she deserved. At least he would know, and then there’d be an end to all this sweet teasing and talk of love and marriage.
“Let’s get to sleep,” she said, turning her back on him. “We’ve got another horrible day ahead of us tomorrow. We need some rest if we’re going to get through it.”
“Sleep,” he muttered bitterly. “You think I’m going to be able to sleep after what you just said?”
“You have to.”
“Tell me now, Lin,” he whispered, gripping her shoulder. “You’ll feel better, and we’ll both be able to sleep.”
“I’ve had to live with this for four long years,” she said, staring at the glimmer of firelight on Danny’s bright curls. “So what’s one more night?”
“Lindsay, sweetheart...”
But she ignored him, pulling the blanket up tight around her shoulders and pretending to sleep. Silence fell in their little shelter, broken only by distant sounds of rustling trees and animal cries.
In spite of her bone weariness, it was a long time before Lindsay could get to sleep. And even as she drifted off, she was conscious of Rex still moving and turning restlessly beside her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MIDAFTERNOON ON the following day, Sam pulled his blue pickup through the Bighorn Ranch gates at the base of the mountains, his hands tight on the wheel, feeling sick with tension.
He parked near the corrals where a group of men stood on one of the lower rails, looking at a milling group of wet, muddy horses. Then he hurried across the damp grass and climbed onto the rail next to the other cowboys.
“You’ve got some more of them here now?” he asked in alarm.
Karl Fuller nodded. “That’s six altogether. The first one got here about an hour after lunch, and I phoned you right away. Another three wandered up half an hour later, and two more just came in out of the trees a few minutes ago.”
Sam looked at the knot of horses drinking thirstily at an open trough. “They’re ours, all right,” he said grimly. “Which one got here first?”
“That big roan mare over there,” the rancher said, pointing.
“That’s old Duchess.” Sam looked at the mare with narrowed eyes. “She must have brought all the others home. Duchess has been circling these same trails for twenty years.”
He studied the horses, feeling puzzlement and a growing worry.
“One of them was still dragging broken hobbles,” a cowboy said. “We took them off.”
“A horse in hobbles?” Sam turned to stare at the man. “Then they must have run off during the night. I wonder how far they’ve come.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to find your boys,” the rancher said. “We know which trails they were using, and we have a pretty good idea where they planned to be camping every night.”
Sam continued to stare at the little herd of horses. “I don’t like this,” he muttered. “I don’t like it one bit. Why aren’t the...”
Before he could finish his thought, there was a shout from one of the men.
Four more horses straggled in from the line of trees bordering the meadow. When they saw the corral and the other horses, they nickered joyously and began to canter though the damp swaying grass.
One of the cowboys climbed down from the fence and opened a rail gate to let the newcomers into the corral, where they crowded their way to the trough and began to drink thirstily.
“More of ou
rs,” Sam said, watching the new arrivals. “And there’s another one in broken hobbles.”
“That’s ten altogether,” the rancher said. “How many horses did they take?”
“Fourteen.” Sam was still examining the herd, trying to remember something. “They had eight riding horses and six under pack.”
“So now they’ve got four horses for eight people?” one of the cowboys muttered.
“Four horses.” Sam looked at the milling animals. “But which ones?”
The rancher stared at him. “Sam, I never thought there was an animal that left Lost Springs Ranch without your approval.”
Sam shifted uneasily on the corral rail. “I’ve been...sort of busy lately,” he muttered. “Didn’t pay much attention to their plans for this trail ride.”
“Something’s real strange here,” one of the cowboys said. “I’m wondering about those hobbles.”
“What’s funny about hobbles?” the rancher asked. “They were staked out overnight when something scared them. Likely it was a bear, and then the horses all ran off together.”
“Except for four,” the cowboy said.
“Maybe the kids caught those four, or else they didn’t run away in the first place. Or it could be they’ll wander in later.”
“But we don’t know how long these horses have been traveling,” the cowboy pointed out. “If they just ran off last night, they wouldn’t have been able to make it back here already. And if they got away one of the other nights...”
He didn’t finish his statement, but the other men stared at each other anxiously.
“If they got away on one of the earlier nights,” Sam said at last, breaking the uneasy silence, “then those poor kids have already been on foot in the rain for a long time.”
“Here comes Jerry,” the rancher said, turning to point at a light plane that circled above the ranch and swooped in for a landing on the private airstrip beyond the corrals. A stocky man climbed out of the cockpit and came hurrying toward them, heedless of the rain that pattered on his sheepskin coat.
“Hi, Sam,” he said, then nodded to the other rancher and the silent cowboys.
Best Man in Wyoming Page 18
