“He’s sitting up now,” one of the riders answered. “But he’s bleeding. Can we get down to help him?”
“I want off the horse,” the boy’s friend called from his perch in front of his father.
“Stay put!” Kristine ordered. She held up her hand, trying to think. “Not yet. It’s too dangerous. Sit tight for a few minutes.” She shut her eyes, sorting out all she needed to do and prioritizing it. The roar of the waterfall behind her did nothing to help her plan her next move. “Brian, you got those mules up?”
“They’re on the trail, but their packs are falling off.”
“Leave them. Cut the switchbacks down to my horse and ride like hell back to the Aspens. We’re going to need a chopper for a busted leg and maybe a concussion.”
“Got it,” he hollered back.
“How far behind is your other string?” she asked Takeisha.
“He said he’d be another twenty getting the last mules ready to go.”
“Do you have any emergency training?”
“No,” Takeisha answered meekly.
“Okay. Who’s got enough of a level spot to get off their horse safely?” she called up to the riders.
“I think I could get off,” the rider at the turn of the switchback said.
Kristine went to his side and held the horse until he was off. “We need an emergency kit. I think Gloria, the woman who was lecturing you about bears, carries one. Head up to Shadow and tell the packer to get her here as quickly as he can.” He carefully inched past the horses, stopping briefly to whisper something to the crying child on the rocks before he continued up the stairs. Kristine pointed his horse down the switchback and slapped him on the rump, making him skip a switchback. She led each of the other riders to the wide section of trail and helped them off. The riders rushed to the boy and his father.
“How bad is it?” one asked. “Is he going to die?”
“He’s not going to die,” Kristine said. She thought about what they needed to do for the injured as well as the stock. “We shouldn’t move them, but it’s likely to take a while to get help in here. Some of you stay here with them, keep them talking. Takeisha, let’s go try to round up the stock, and a few of you come with us to get some food and sleeping bags.”
Two men quickly volunteered to go down the mountain and gather supplies from their bags. “Just tell us what to do. We want to help.”
Now they’re ready to listen, Kristine mused. “Yep, we’ve got this,” she mumbled under her breath, leading the way down the trail.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gloria hadn’t liked the situation at all down at Fish Creek with the bear scavenging a dead horse. As she had hiked the trail to Rosalie, she kept replaying the talk she’d tried to have with Kristine. At that point, the issue of balance had felt like the key point to her, and balance could be managed. Limit the number of trips taken into the backcountry or at least to certain sites. Control the amount of food brought in or packed in and require guests to use bear boxes. In Yosemite, her colleagues had made great progress with bear boxes in the areas most saturated with tourists. She knew they didn’t solve all of the problems, but they at least acknowledged bears as the local wildlife, acknowledged that people had a part in their own safety.
But now here at Rosalie she had a problem much bigger than the one down at Fish Creek. This group had brought another issue to light. The group that Leo had packed in was a miserable mess of chaos and overkill. Their attitude appalled her. Not only did they ignore the way their presence attracted wildlife, they insisted that the wildlife was an inconvenience. She’d highlighted Leo’s part in that by packing people in with no limitations on what they brought with them. Campers like these contributed to the problem of balance by tempting bears with an easy meal, eventually making them reliant on a diet of human food and putting campers in real danger. Once food-conditioned, bears became territorial and confrontational, learning that humans were happy to drop and abandon their food when rushed.
She’d approached the Rosalie camp with all this in mind. When she’d reached the group, the long hike had tempered her anger. Though they reported no bear visits, she camped near them, expecting to be on duty during the night when their food supply would be more vulnerable to bears. However, she still kicked herself for taking a day hike to collect evidence of bear activity in the area. She had returned to a trashed camp.
The party said the old bear had lumbered in and had not responded to their efforts to scare it away. This alarmed Gloria. Wandering around during the day wasn’t completely out of character when a bear was grazing on berries or even taking the opportunity to root around in an unsupervised campsite to bulk up on calories. But human presence should have acted as a deterrent. Even habituated to humans, unless someone was holding an item it had claimed as its own as a food-conditioned bear would, the bear should have had zero interest in the people and run when confronted. It troubled her enough that she decided to spend another day in the backcountry hoping that the bear would return.
Though the bear disappointed her, she’d been pleased to hear Kristine defend her and light a fire under the campers to clean up the area. The Kristine she’d stormed out on hadn’t seemed to care about such things. She’d been the complete opposite of the indifferent woman who’d blown off her concerns. It occurred to her that the response that had pissed her off so much was the one out of character, yet she had been too upset to discuss it with Kristine. Chagrined, she knew she owed Kristine an apology. Unfortunately, she had no time for that now. After the group finally left to return to the Lodge, she packed up her things, stringing up her large backpack from a tree limb out of reach of bears. She only needed her daypack with her while she hiked around the area to talk to other campers and see if they had encountered the animal. If there were other reports of such aggressive, atypical behavior, she’d need to talk to Scott about the possibility of relocation for the animal.
She’d been on the trail about a half hour, stopping to question the campers along the way, when she heard thunderous hoofbeats approaching. She couldn’t remember hearing an animal moving on the trail so quickly and stepped off it to avoid a collision. The rider, one of the men from the team that packed the group from hell out that morning, slid to a stop in front of her.
“Gloria?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, confused.
“We’ve got a situation on the switchback below Shadow. Some riders went down. They sent someone up saying they need first aid. Teeny thought you might have a first-aid kit.”
“How serious is it?”
“Don’t know. The guy said a kid took a tumble, and his dad’s got a nasty fracture.”
Gloria quickly shrugged out of her pack and pulled out her radio. “Glad I’ve been lugging this around,” she said, hoping Scott was right about the radio being able to bounce off a repeater and reach the office in Mammoth. “Scott, it’s Gloria,” she said, relieved when he answered. “There’s an accident on the switchbacks below Shadow. All I’ve got right now is possible concussion and a fractured leg.”
“Any idea how bad the break is?” he asked.
“No. The rider from the Lodge who found me was already relaying a message.”
“How long until you can assess yourself?”
“I’m probably…” She directed her question to the rider. “How long till we can get to them?”
“Twenty, thirty minutes.”
“I’m a half hour from the scene,” Gloria said.
“I’m going to go ahead and radio for a chopper, but update me once you’re there.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m Judd,” the cowboy said. “Hop aboard. I’ll get you down there in no time.”
Gloria stared at him. “It sounds like that’s the thinking that got everyone into this mess.”
“Look, ma’am. I’m a professional. I can get you there safely and in half the time.”
She would have trusted Kristine’s word more, but Kristine
wasn’t in front of her. Judd was. She stowed the radio back into her daypack. Judd hung the backpack from the horn of his saddle, gave her his left stirrup and showed her how to link her elbow through his to swing aboard. As soon as she had her arms around his waist, they were moving down the trail.
Her mind jumped back four years, hearing her father’s voice full of fear, urging her to come home as soon as possible. Her mother was in the hospital with complications from her last treatment. He’d called Gloria in Tennessee where she had picked up a research opportunity in the Smoky Mountains. Hours had already passed when she returned to her camper to find the message. All of the unknowns had crunched her stomach into a knot as she put herself into motion to get home. She’d worried the entire time that she wouldn’t make it. The drive to the airport, the flight, getting a car to make it home…she was suspended in time, as she was now on the trail, at the mercy of the transportation to deliver her but void of control of the situation, at the mercy of what she would find when she arrived. That trip had indirectly brought her here to the High Sierras. The thought of arriving home to find her mother already gone drove her to select her next projects more conservatively.
Judd let her off at the crest of the waterfall. Running down the switchback stairs, she quickly spotted the fallen riders. Her brain tried to unscramble the words she heard them hollering. Then she realized they were not calling her. They were letting Kristine know she’d arrived.
Gloria reached the boy first. He sat in another rider’s lap resting against the man’s chest.
“I hope it’s okay that we moved him. He seems mostly scared. I couldn’t let him sit on the rocks any longer.”
“Should be fine. What’s your name?” She asked the shaggy-haired boy. He grimaced, and his recently-cut adult teeth that pinched his lower lip accentuated how small his face was.
“Sammy. I want to see my dad. They won’t let me go see my dad.”
“It’s important we know you’re okay first. Can you follow my finger?” she asked, moving it from side to side in front of him. His eyes tracked her finger, and his pupils dilated. She felt his hands and asked the man holding him to lift the shirt that he held to the boy’s head. Blood matted the boy’s head but the pressure seemed to have stopped active bleeding. “Looks like they’ve taken really good care of you. Now let me check on your dad, okay? Sit tight for just a minute longer.”
She found Kristine standing on the trail. Those eyes catching her off guard again. No matter what her expression, Kristine always managed to give Gloria pause. Gone were the indifference, anger and hesitation. The woman looking at her was fully in her element, calm and in control.
“We did okay by him?” Kristine’s eyes darted to the boy.
“Yes, he’ll be fine. His father’s in worse shape?”
“That’s where we need your help. He was bleeding pretty badly out of his thigh. I’ve got his buddy applying pressure up in his groin. I’m so glad you got here as fast as you did.” Kristine cut the switchback, and Gloria did the same.
“Good chance he’s in shock,” Gloria said, settling next to him, taking in his pale coloring. “Smart to cover up the wound. What did it look like before you started applying pressure?”
“Like I said, he was bleeding. I saw bone but still figured we needed to try to stop the blood loss.”
“Are we talking bright red spurting blood or darker, seeping blood?” Gloria asked quietly.
“I’d say seeping.”
“Let’s have a look, then.” She nodded at the man applying pressure, and he sat back, giving Gloria access. As she peeled away the towel, her patient wailed in pain. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know it hurts, but I’ve got to have a look before I radio the Forest Service.” She nodded as she examined the wound. “Well, the good news is the blood isn’t from a major artery, so we’ll just need to stabilize the leg to travel.”
“What do you need?” Kristine asked. “A belt? Boards?”
“Let me call Scott and see what the EMTs recommend doing. For now, keeping him still should be enough.”
“Could we move his son down here? They’ve both been asking to see the other.”
“The boy can come down here for the time being.” Instead of calling to one of the guests, Kristine cut the switchback again, climbing to the boy. Gloria saw another side of Kristine as she bent over him. He listened attentively to whatever it was she said, nodding in agreement when she sat back with her hand on his shoulder. She swept him up in her arms and carried him down the trail, setting him gently by his father who immediately wrapped his arms around his boy.
Her eyes went to the father and son and then returned to Kristine. “You’re good with kids. What were you saying to him?”
“Just some stuff about helping his dad out.”
Knowing how upset Kristine had been with the party, Gloria was surprised by the gestures that went beyond managing the crisis. Kristine’s tenderness made Gloria want to wrap her arms around her. However, she reminded herself that they were professionals and there were still a lot of things to address before they could evacuate.
“The boy’ll be okay to ride, won’t he?” Kristine asked.
“I expect so. My guess is that they won’t take him out by air,” Gloria answered.
“You know what they say about getting back on the horse.”
“Why do you cowboys make such a big deal out of that, anyway?”
“Keeps him from associating riding with falling. Always stop on the positive.”
Gloria saw Kristine retreat into the thoughts that so often distracted her and realized that she was probably thinking about how she’d left the Lodge on a negative. She wanted to ask about it, but Kristine had already pushed the thought away, telling Gloria to let her know when the boy was ready to travel, her mind back on the task at hand.
Gloria nodded, and as she put in the call to Scott, she watched Kristine coordinate a crew to gather the dunnage spilled in the fall. She admired how Kristine controlled the scene and knew that her calm had been a big part of managing what could have been chaos. That she did so without letting the past distract her impressed her even more.
“You two work together a lot?” the wounded man’s friend asked when Gloria ended the call.
“No. We’ve crossed paths a few times this summer, but we’re not colleagues.”
He looked puzzled. “The way you work together, it seems like you’ve done this before.”
Gloria smiled. “I’m just following Kristine’s lead like the rest of you.”
“Well, we would have been sunk without you two.” He nodded from Gloria to Kristine, who stood catching her breath from hiking back up the trail.
“Do we need boards to make a brace?”
“No. Scott says we don’t want to risk nicking the femoral artery, so we’ll just bind the broken leg to the good to keep it stable. A few belts will do the trick.”
“You heard her. We need some belts here,” Kristine said with authority. Gloria enjoyed watching the guests scramble to comply.
Gloria accepted the belts and snugly bound the legs just above and below the protruding bone.
“Can I snag some of your gauze?” Kristine asked when she’d finished. “One of the mules has a nasty gash I need to wrap before he can travel.”
“Make sure the injured guy stays still. Give a holler if the wound starts bleeding again or he passes out.” Standing, she said to Kristine, “Let’s see how good I am at doctoring a mule.”
“Thank you for helping us out,” Kristine said when they reached the stock. “The way you talked about the Lodge before, I wasn’t sure…”
Gloria waved off Kristine’s thanks.
“What?” Kristine asked.
“You’re here,” she pointed out. “What makes any part of this mess your deal?”
“I’m just doing what needs to be done,” Kristine answered.
“Cleaning up a mess very similar to Fish Creek?” Gloria ventured.
Kr
istine ducked her head, the brim of her hat hiding her face. “I’m surprised you weren’t ahead of the party this morning on your way to chew Leo out again.”
“Good thing I wasn’t ahead of you.”
“And now you’ve got more to add to the mile-long list you had this morning,” Kristine tossed over her shoulder as she tromped down the trail.
“That so?” Gloria smirked, trailing the clink of Kristine’s spurs. She wondered what Kristine would think of her original litany of worries about the bear. Though the accident had taken precedence, that problem still weighed heavily. She had been planning what to say to Leo, and thought again about how much Kristine’s blowing her off had bothered her. She’d anticipated Leo’s response but had thought she would have had Kristine’s support.
“That’s so,” Kristine said. She met Gloria’s eyes. The challenge she’d had when they’d spoken about Fish Creek two nights ago was gone. Gloria hadn’t even felt like Kristine had seen her during that conversation. This time, Gloria’s body flushed hot under the intense stare. “And this time, I’ve got a few things to add.”
Gloria read so many things in Kristine’s eyes, apology, anger and frustration. But now she knew that they were on the same side, angry for the same reason. “It’s a good thing you sent me out, though.”
“Lucky,” Kristine said, continuing down the hill.
Gloria considered her words. It didn’t feel like luck. It felt like fate. Fear for her mother had brought her back to California. But fear of death had kept her away from home. Anger at Leo and Kristine had pushed her away from them into the backcountry. And now she followed Kristine, unable to peel her eyes away from the way Kristine’s chaps highlighted her ass.
Take Only Pictures Page 17
