They heard the long drawn out cry of an eagle and looked up trying to spot it, when a gunshot rang out, forcing both of them to the ground. Lucas held on to the lines of both horses, but the shot had spooked them, and they danced around Lucas snorting and blowing loudly through their noses. It seemed to bounce from hill top to hill top, originating direction unknown.
“Lucas! Abby! Get those horses back here. We need to go.” Charlie didn’t like the idea that someone else had gotten that close to them. He couldn’t be sure that they weren’t friendly, but he didn’t want to stick around and find out. Ever since Lucas had told him he thought there was a cave at the bottom of the rocks, he’d wanted to go there. If Lucas was right and they did find a cave, it would be a good place to hole up in until he figured out what to do. He thought the single shot had come from up on top of the hill, which could mean that someone just happened to be traveling the same direction they were, or someone was deliberately following them. Charlie wanted to be in a position to see their company before they caught up.
It didn’t take long for Lucas and Charlie to lift the box and plastic container up and tie them on the harness. Abby went to work tying things on Lucas’s saddle. Within half an hour, they had packed everything and secured it on one horse or the other and were ready to leave.
Charlie took the time to spread out the rocks of the fire ring, and the only sign they had ever been there was some charred and blackened ground where the ring had been. He used his foot to cover it as best he could.
Taking Jack from Lucas, he told Abby, “Miss Abby if you would like to take the lead we’re going straight east for now.”
Abby felt like she should bow or something. No one ever called her miss, but she knew it was just Charlies way. He seemed to make everyone around him feel good about themselves, and she wondered what his boys were like.
On the valley floor there were cottonwood and some kind of aspen, or so she thought. The brush wasn’t tall, and they were able to find where the two rock walls came together. At first glance, it did look like a cave.
“Let’s tie these horses up and check it out.” They tied the horses to separate trees in the middle of a group of close-growing trees where they wouldn’t be readily detectable as long as they had food they would probably remain quiet. They were close enough to the cave entrance that if they had to, they could run back to the horses quickly.
The three stood in front of the opening. If it was a cave, it was made by a pillar of rock falling over, coming to rest against the rock wall that sat perpendicular to it.
Charlie walked closer, “I don’t think we need to worry about getting trapped inside. Look through there. It appears to not be a cave at all, but maybe a way through to the other side. I can see right through it.”
“So, which one of us is going in?” Lucas asked. Maybe one of us should stay outside just in case?”
“Just in case of what? The whole thing collapses and traps us inside it? I’ll tell you what, find a pine tree and get me a branch with lots of sap in it. I’ll make a pitch torch, and I’ll go in. The two of you can wait out here until I check out how safe it is.”
Lucas started to protest, “But, wouldn’t it be better if…”
“It would be better if I went in alone the first time. This is one of the few times I will ever pull rank on you, but there is nothing you can say to make me change my mind. If something was to go wrong, Abby would still have you out here with her.”
Lucas looked at Abby, and by his expression, she wondered if he thought that she was holding him back. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. If you were going, so was I.”
“Oh for pete's sake, as soon as I see if it’s safe, we’ll all go together.”
Lucas found a branch and Charlie made a torch out of it. He had a hard time getting it to burn bright and hoped it wouldn’t go out at an inconvenient time. He waved at the two young people as he stepped inside the gloom of the arch. Charlie was surprised when he saw how much light there was inside and he was able to navigate himself through the randomly dropped rocks and boulders. He could see the rock overhead and knew it was a new formation by the lack of stalactites or stalagmites. There was no indication that anyone else had been through. There was no garbage or human tracks of any kind, and he wondered if this had resulted from the last series of quakes. Charlie shined the light closer to the floor when he saw a shadow of something. Then he realized whatever it was, they were all over the ground. Having spent most of his life with cows, he recognized the tracks. This was why they hadn’t come across the cows yet.
Charlie shined the torch around and realized that for the cave to have been there for a while, he was sure that kids or pranksters would have spray painted their school acronyms or graffiti all over the rocks. There was nothing. His light shined off of where water trickled down in one spot, and he wondered where it came from. It appeared to Charlie as if it ran out of a crack in the rock. He figured it couldn’t have been from the creek which sat much lower on the valley floor and wondered what was on the other side of the north/south wall of rock. As he got nearer to the exit on the south side, he felt a breeze and tried to protect his light, but it went out anyhow. Looking back behind himself, Charlie could still make out Lucas and Abby standing in the entrance. He figured it couldn’t have been more than fourty or fifty yards back to the kids. The area was relatively large, and he would explore it another time when he figured out a better torch system. He thought about the coal oil lanterns they’d left in the wagon and wished he had seen a need for them when they were packing to leave. He was able to see out the smaller exit opening and what he saw took his breath away. He walked forward, not believing what was out there.
“Can we come in yet?” Abby shouted at Charlie’s back.
Lucas was starting to worry about Charlie. He stood frozen in place and hadn’t seemed to hear Abby ask about entering the cave.
Lucas watched Charlie just standing there, like a statue. He couldn’t see anything past the silhouette of Charlie standing in a circle of bright light, almost as if he were surrounded by a halo.
“Just a minute. I’ll be right out,” Charlie finally answered. He stepped closer to the mouth of the cave and peered out. Charlie was afraid to step out from the opening in case the vision disappeared. He couldn’t find a logical explanation for what he was looking at. The valley outside the cavern had to be an illusion.
While Lucas and Abby waited, Lucas had walked up and down outside the cave trying to figure out where the giant pillars of rock had come from. The only explanation that either of them could see was they rose straight up from the ground. He didn’t think it had happened during the last few earthquakes because there was already sparse greenery growing in crevasses and on any sort of plateau, even a few inches across had whiskers of new grass. For the most part, the perpendicular rock surfaces seemed to be washed clean, and they hadn’t had any rainfall at all for several weeks. They decided the pillars had to be a result of the first big quake when John had said the mountains were all changing.
“I wonder what’s on the other side?”
“Lucas, come and look at this.”
Through the brush, Lucas turned to see Abby scraping her toe in the dirt. He couldn’t imagine what she had found that was so interesting in the soil. It was after all, just dirt. “What?” He asked as walked toward her.
“Look at this. This looks like pavement under the dirt. It’s too flat to be a rock.” She continued to uncover a spot with her toe.
Lucas dropped to his knees and using both hands be cleared off the dirt and pebbles, “Dang! I think you’re right.” He looked up and around them, but didn’t see a road of any kind, or anyplace where a road could have been. He cleaned the ground further until he came to a faded white strip of old paint. He looked in the same direction as the paint ran and realized if he drew a mental line following the paint strip, it would disappear into the rock wall. Puzzled by his find, he walked a mental line to the edge of the pillar and dro
pped down. He began clearing off the small chunks of rock and dirt until he found broken blacktop. Small slabs of it sat perpendicular to the pillar as if the rock had been forced up through the blacktop. He got up and dusted himself off. He tried to think of what he knew about the area and roads, but he had nothing. His dad had talked about an east/west road between Couer d’Alene and St. Regis, but how could this be a part of it? “It has to be an old forgotten road,” he muttered. He wondered about it being part of the old highway. He knew several roads had been abandoned when the interstate had gone in, and maybe this was one of those. As near as he could figure, it had to be the explanation.
“Thought you guys were so eager to see what was in there?” Charlie had come out and stood with his hands on his hips watching them.
Lucas stood up, the road forgotten and jogged over to Charlie with Abby close behind.
“What’s on the other side? Is it safe to go in?”
Charlie nodded, “Once you stand and let your eyes adjust you can even see in there. At least good enough to get through. I don’t know rock at all, but it seems to be made of some kind of granite or maybe marble. I’d sure like to have a flashlight of some sort. Guess those would have come in handy after all.”
“We didn’t have batteries remember? What did you see in there?’
“Well, Miss Abby, it’s not what I saw inside that’s important but what’s on the other side. I’m not going to explain it, but let’s get the horses to go through. I guess it’s safe enough. There’s not even small rocks on the ground to trip you up. There’s a couple of large ones, but you can see them well enough to maneuver around them.”
Charlie’s eyes sparkled like he had something he was dying to talk about, but wasn’t going to. He shook his head and started to where the horses were. He untied Jack and waited patiently for Abby and Lucas. He knew his words would never capture the scene out the other side of the cavern and he wanted the kids to see it for themselves. He had read stories about Shangri-La and the garden of Eden, but he had never thought to see it for himself. The only explanation that Charlie could come up with was that someone had taken all of the good and placed it within the walls of the canyon on the other side. Charlie could see the rock formations seemed to have no breaks down either side and he thought there was another wall of granite across the other end, but it would take some investigation to check it out. He figured it had to be more than a mile to the other end. To his way of thinking this seemed to be a box canyon, and it could either be their salvation or their demise. He couldn’t wait to check it out.
Chapter Nine
With the non-essential items placed inside what was left of the box and covered with limbs and brush and the rest divided between the remaining horse and improvised packs, they started down the trail. Occasionally they came across hoof prints in the dirt and John was sure that it had to be Charlie because of the size of the tracks. The Percheron’s hooves were twice the size of an ordinary horse, and they felt sure there couldn’t be two sets of draught horses in the mountains right then.
Just before they reached the bottom of the hill, they heard distant gunshots. Mark thought they came from the west, but it was hard to tell. They weren’t close, and for them, that was an important fact. John hoped to catch up to the other three before the day was out.
“They were here!” Mary said excitedly. “This is where they had their fire.” She was standing pointing at a couple of rocks of the same size and shape that were strewn around as if someone had chosen to disguise where they’d stopped. The only problem was the rocks all had a black side to them from the campfire smoke.
When they heard brush breaking and the sound of something big coming through it, as one, they ducked behind whatever cover was nearest to them. Mary pulled Maggie down beside her with her finger to her lips. Sherry hid behind her father waiting.
When Clyde crashed through the brush and stopped in front of them, John let out a sigh of relief. “Dammit Clyde, I should have put a bell on you.” He walked over, happy to see the horse had made it down the hill. Before John could get to him, the horse threw his head in the air and let out a loud whinny. His ears were pointed forward, and the rock wall in front of them held his attention. He whinnied again before John could put his hand over his nose to stop him.
Within seconds of the second whiny, they heard an answering one, that seemed to be cut off mid-whiny as if someone had stifled it.
John nodded. “Okay then. It seems we’ve found the rest of our family.”
“How do you know it’s them? It could be anyone with a horse.”
“Nope! That’s Jinx. He’s the best friend that Clyde has outside of Sham. In the pasture, those three were inseparable and were very vocal when they were. Let’s go people.”
John shouldered his sleeping bag full of the possessions he carried and set off toward the wall of rock. He didn’t know where exactly the others were, but he felt sure they were about to find out. He felt sure that Lucas would have recognized Clyde answering Jinx and meet them somewhere. He would walk until they did. The brush was barely head high, and John didn’t have far to walk before he found where someone had cleared a patch of dirt.
“What do you suppose that is? Some kind of a sign?” Mark asked and walked over to where John stood looking down. Someone had cleared a portion of blacktop. He saw the snippet of a white line and followed it with his eyes. If they were to follow the direction the line ran, they would be headed either east or west.
“Thinks it’s a message? The direction we’re supposed to go?”
John searched until he found the tracks. “Nope, I sure don’t. We need to cut a couple of branches and obliterate our tracks from here on. Sherry take your horse and lead him through there, maybe Clyde will follow. He looked around to see where his horse was and saw him hobbling off toward the rock wall. “On second thought just follow him, he seems to already have a destination in mind.”
He watched Mary, Evelyn and Maggie set off behind Sherry and Clyde. “Mark, we’ll leave the cleared pavement in case someone else thinks like you did and follows the direction of the line. Let’s wipe out tracks as best as we can. They spent a few minutes tidying up the dirt and hoped any wind would do the rest. They took their branches with them until they were close to the mouth of a cave.
Clyde didn’t hesitate but walked right in. The opening was tall enough as the big horse didn’t have to drop his head, but whinnied and in a limping gait hurried through the dark opening.
Sherry stood in front of the opening hesitant to follow Clyde alone and waited for the others to catch up. When the gelding began pulling and dancing around, she was tempted to turn him loose rather than have her toes trampled on.
*****
“That’s Clyde! Other than Sham, he’s the only one that Jinx would answer to” Lucas said as he turned back to the smaller opening into the valley. He watched the buckskin limp through and waited for whoever had brought him.
“Let’s not be too hasty. Step over behind that tree until we’re sure.”
Lucas looked and couldn’t see either Abby or Charlie and realized that Charlie was right. He couldn’t be certain who the horse had led them to. From behind his tree, he saw Abby holding all three horses and Charlie with his Taurus resting on a low branch pointing at the opening.
He was pretty sure that they were too far away from the entrance to the cave for Charlie's gun to be effective, especially if he had loaded it with the 410 shells, but the sound of it would put the fear into anyone brave enough to stick their head out.
Lucas saw when Charlie relaxed his stance and turned to see his Dad and Mark exit the dark shadow. They stood and looked around. Lucas could imagine their awe as they saw for the first time, what he had seen. Abby had already named the valley ‘Sanctuary.’ He hoped she was right.
“John Akins?” Charlie bellowed. When Lucas looked at him, Charlie shrugged, “How else should I have done it? At least they know it’s us.”
Lucas stepped fro
m behind his tree so his father and the others could see him and raised his arm. When they all began to wave back, his Mom dropped a bundle she’d been carrying and ran toward him. Lucas met her somewhere in the middle. Abby and Charlie followed, but at a slower pace.
Mary wrapped Lucas up in her arms, “Oh my God. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I was so mad at your Dad for leaving the three of you behind.”
She cupped his face in her two hands, and when Lucas thought she was going to pinch his cheeks, he stepped back, “Mom, it’s okay. We’re all fine, in fact take a look around, and you’ll see that we’re better than fine.”
Abby stood back watching and felt a stab of jealousy. Not that she didn’t begrudge Lucas having his family back, she just wished her Dad and Lucy had been with them. When John walked up and shook Lucas’s hand, Abby saw the pride on John’s face and knew he was looking at his son in a new light.
Abby was surprised when John left Lucas and walked to stand in front of her. Gathering her courage Abby met John’s gaze head on. She felt sure that he had something to say about her previous insubordination, but she wasn’t about to back down in the face of adversity. After reading her father's note, Abby knew she had taken the correct action by staying with Charlie and Lucas.
“I’m sorry,” he held out his hand, “I didn’t realize what an ass I was being, and I’m glad you had the conviction to stay behind. Your father would be proud of you.”
When Abby held her hand out she didn’t know what to say in return. Does a person thank someone for an apology even if you realize that that person was probably right in the first place? She was pretty sure that had John used different language, she would have stayed behind. It was her fight or flight reflex kicking in and more than once in the short time she’d known her, Lucy had compared her stubbornness to the same level as Gus’s.
As soon as John took her hand, he pulled her in close and held her for just an instant. Abby thought to struggle, but relaxed. “It’s okay,” she mumbled.
Beyond the New Horizon (Book 4): Dark Times Page 12
