“No, Bud!”
Ignoring her, he lunged for the snake.
“NO! Oh, dear God . . . Blake!”
Dust flew. Snarls. Snapping jaws. A pained yelp. It was over as fast as it had begun. Bud shook the dead rattler in his mouth vigorously as Blake ran up.
“Drop it, Bud.”
The dog obeyed, releasing the thick, four-foot reptile from his mouth. It flopped lifeless onto the sandy soil next to the rocks. Blake tossed it a great distance, then knelt to praise his dog for saving Cara. Bud immediately settled down from the excitement, then began to whimper.
Blake glanced up, agony in his eyes. “He’s been bitten.”
Chapter 13
Dropping to her knees in front of Bud, Cara ran her hands over his head and down his shoulders to his front legs. His pitiful whine grew louder as he took his weight off his right paw.
“The swelling has already started,” she noted, searching for the injury.
“Oh, Christ . . .” Blake’s groan was a tortured whisper of vulnerability, yet his face hardened into a determined mask. Cara was aware of how much this dog meant to him. Beneath his stoic facade, he was already grieving the inevitable loss of his companion. She couldn’t blame him. She felt much the same way.
“We have to work fast.” Cara yanked her belt from her pants, intending to use it for a makeshift tourniquet. Without the anti-venom serum of modern medicine, she had no other choice but to try an outmoded technique, praying it would work as well on a canine as on a human, and praying she didn’t have any open wounds in her mouth for the poison to seep into. She had to chance it though. For Bud, for Blake and for herself.
“What are you going to do?”
“Save his life, I hope. Get out your knife, then hold him so he can’t move,” she directed, wrapping the belt around the dog’s upper leg. Blake quickly supplied the weapon, which had been hidden beneath the leg of his trousers. He then used gentle force to lay Bud down and held him there while she cinched the belt tight. Bud struggled, crying loudly.
Cara searched for the puncture wounds beneath the black fur, soothing the Lab with her voice. “Hang on, sweetheart. This might not feel too good, but it’ll be over quick, I promise.”
Turning to give instructions to Blake, she saw her own fear reflected in his eyes. “Pin him down—he’s going to fight like hell when I cut him.”
“Are you bleeding him?”
“Not exactly.” Looking down at Bud, she saw a strange calm come over him. Though she sensed it was as much from dizziness and the drop in his blood pressure as anything else, she saw that his black canine eyes gazed back at her with complete trust. She hoped it was still there after she got finished with him.
With more conviction than she felt, she vowed, “You’re going to live, fella.”
Blake straddled his dog’s body. “I hope to God you’re right.” He took Bud’s muzzle in a firm grip to keep him from instinctively biting at the infliction of pain.
“If he starts to vomit, let go so he won’t choke on it.”
“Aye.”
Relying on gut instinct and a little luck, she cut a small incision, dropped her mouth to it and sucked.
“No, Cara! I won’t let you die for him!” Horror in his voice, he demanded that she stop. After she spat out the poison, she glanced up at him.
“Don’t shout at me! Now be quiet and let me do what I’ve got to do.” She lowered her head again and sucked on the wound.
Spit, don’t swallow. Spit, don’t swallow.
The chant stayed in her head while she worked over the suddenly frightened and squirming dog, its cries muffled. Blake fought hard to keep Bud from breaking free. Soon Cara sensed that she had done all she could, and she sat back on her heels. Blake released his hold on the dog’s muzzle, and Bud lay exhausted on his side, panting heavily.
“Stay here with him. And don’t try to stop the bleeding until I get back.” Clutching the top of her pants with one hand, Cara dashed to the stream, fell down on all fours, and washed out her mouth.
Nausea crept up into her throat as the shock of the attack began to wear off. What if she’d accidentally swallowed some venom? The best thing to do was to get rid of any possible poison that might have gotten into her system. With her stomach already churning, she put her fingers to the back of her mouth to initiate a gagging reflex.
“Cara?” came Blake’s concerned voice from behind her. Leaning over the stream, she impatiently waved him away. This unpleasant task wasn’t something she wanted to do, especially in front of Blake, but it had to be done. When it was all over, she hung her head between her shoulders for a moment, feeling like a wrung-out wet rag. She felt his hand rest on her back, then slide to the nape of her neck.
“Cara?” he repeated with worry. His tender touch conveyed his unspoken anguish that she had deliberately poisoned herself in order to save Bud.
Despite her fatigue, she reassured him, “I’ll be okay.” After rinsing her mouth again, she asked Blake to go back to Bud, check the wound, wrap it if necessary, and bring him to the stream. “He’s going to be thirsty so we need to have him near water.”
Several minutes later, Cara looked up to see Blake, his torn shirttail flapping in the breeze. With her belt dangling from one hand, he carried the bandaged dog down to the sandy bank and lowered him to the ground next to Cara. She cupped her hands and scooped up some water, offering it to Bud. As some dribbled through her fingers, he took a few halfhearted laps. She repeated the procedure several times before he brought most of it back up again.
“It was bound to happen,” she explained sadly to Blake. “That’s why we’ve got to keep him hydrated . . . that is, give him plenty of water.”
Blake sat down on the other side of his dog, petting him in slow, methodical strokes. “Do you really believe he will live?”
Mustering a weak smile of encouragement, she said honestly, “I can’t be sure I got enough of the poison out of him.”
“How could you risk your life that way?” His deep-blue eyes were filled with awe.
“I couldn’t let him die.”
“But what about you? What if the poison—”
“Don’t say it.” She looked down at the dog. “I did what I had to do. And I don’t regret it.”
“How long until we know if he will live?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t think we should move him any farther until morning.” Intuition told her to keep his heart rate down so the remaining poison would not circulate as quickly in his bloodstream. “We need to keep him as still as possible.”
“If we stay here, we will have coyotes to deal with come nightfall. We’ll need shelter and a fire.”
Cara considered the uneven terrain they’d covered during the day, recalling nothing that could provide shelter.
Blake offered to scout around the immediate area for a safer place to wait out the night. “I’ll gather some firewood as well.”
She was more than willing to let him, preferring to lie down with Bud and rest a while.
“Don’t go too far,” she said, the warmth of the late-afternoon sun adding to her lethargy. “And watch out for rattlesnakes.”
A hundred yards down the dry wash, Blake came across a shallow cave high on a steep embankment near a bend in the stream. Crouching low, he brought out his knife and cautiously entered through the opening between two large boulders. The interior dimensions were sparse but sufficient for protection from predators. The low ceiling would allow for sitting up, with enough headroom to be comfortable rather than feeling claustrophobic.
Noting the stony ground, he gathered a few pebbles into his hand and bounced them in his palm, taking into account that his injured dog would have to lie on the rocks all night. Tossing the pea-size pebbles like a pair of dice, he turned and left the cave. After several trips back with armloads of long green shoots of grass, he managed to cover the floor of the small cave with a thick, sweet-smelling bed.
For Bud, he told himself.
Yet he knew very well that he had gone to a great deal of effort to soften the hard, rocky ground for Cara as much as for his dog. It was the least he could do after she had risked her life to draw the venom out with her own mouth. Looking back at the tense moments when she’d worked over Bud, he was truly amazed by her presence of mind to act so quickly and efficiently.
Hardly the presence of mind of a crazed woman.
And where had she learned such a technique?
True, he could not deny his growing admiration of her, even though it did conflict with his determination to leave her behind.
Returning to the site where he’d left Cara with Bud, he found them both sleeping on the bank of the stream. Cara had stretched out behind Bud, her right arm tucked under her head as a pillow and her left draped over the dog. As he drew nearer, his boot heel landed upon a dry twig. Her eyes flew open.
“Oh, it’s only you.” She relaxed with a long exhale.
“I didn’t mean to awaken you.”
“I was only catnapping.” Rising up on her elbow, she gazed down at the sleeping canine, her palm resting on his chest. “His heart’s racing.”
“Is that bad or good?”
“It’s one of the symptoms. I don’t like it, but if that’s all he does, we’ll be lucky.” She didn’t want to tell him about the possibility of convulsions.
Blake stroked Bud’s head. “I found a place for the night.”
“Near the stream?”
“Close enough.”
Blake and Cara lifted the limp dog. Supporting Bud’s head, Cara walked alongside him until the gully narrowed and she was forced to walk behind. Walls of dirt and rock grew higher, nearly ten feet in some places.
When they reached the curve in the stream, the sides of the wash opened wide again into tall, sloped banks. Blake nodded toward the mouth of the cave about four feet up the embankment. Nearby sat a pile of dried and broken branches that he’d collected to make a fire. He watched her eyes gauging the distance to the water and noting the awkward climb to the entrance.
To set her mind at ease, he explained, “I’ll bring his water up in my boot.”
After struggling up the incline with the dog, Blake placed Bud on the grass-covered floor just inside the opening, leaving enough room for Cara to get around him. She sat down behind the dog, studying the canine for signs of decline or improvement. With a solemn shake of her head and a heavy sigh, she didn’t give Blake much hope.
As he sat down at the lip of the cave to remove his boot, Cara stopped him. “Take my shoe. Then you won’t have to climb across those stones with bare feet.”
“My boot would hold more water.”
“Then take both of mine,” she insisted, handing them over to him across the prone body of his dog. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Very well, then.”
He came back with the two shoes filled. Together, they dribbled some of the water down Bud’s throat. The process was tediously slow, making it necessary to allow only short periods of rest between the sessions. Fortunately, Bud seemed to have a few lucid moments when he could lap the water if they held his head up.
As the afternoon wore into evening, Blake saw no change in his dog’s condition. He shouldn’t have gotten so attached to a dumb animal, he told himself, despite his sure knowledge of the intelligence that this canine possessed.
The agonizing wait drove him to distraction. He was in no mood to talk, so he wasn’t good company for Cara. After whittling down five twigs into a pile of curled shavings, he sheathed the knife. “I am going to go for a walk.”
“Watch out for snakes.”
“Are you going to say that every time?”
“The rest of my life, no doubt.” She offered him a sad smile.
“If you do have this gift, as you claim, why did you not know about the danger?”
“It doesn’t work that way, Blake. Sometimes I learn things ahead of time. Sometimes I don’t.”
“Yet you knew I carried a weapon.”
“I don’t need a sixth sense to know you wouldn’t walk around this godforsaken country without something to protect you. You even pointed out the dangers when we were on the beach.”
“Dangers to you.”
“You could just as easily be robbed and killed,” she said before her stomach rumbled loudly enough for both of them to hear in the small cave. “Sorry.”
“I should have gone to the village for food.”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Tell that to your belly.”
“I will.” As she rubbed her stomach, he found himself wishing his own hand was stroking her in much the same way, but not for the same reasons. Mentally chiding himself for his wayward thoughts, he turned and went out into the twilight of early evening.
The temperature had dropped with the setting sun. His invigorating walk in the cool, damp air did not alleviate his worries over Bud as he’d hoped. Instead, he grew more concerned that the dog might take a turn for the worse and he wouldn’t be there. On his way back to their little camp, he passed the spot where the attack had occurred. His mind relived it, compounding his guilt at not having been able to intervene.
Arriving at the cave, he first checked with Cara about Bud’s condition, then collected the wood shavings to start the fire at the base of the embankment. Once it was burning nicely, he hunkered down on the slope, his back to the cave. Using his knife, he shaved a long stick into a pointed skewer.
In the distance a coyote yipped. Another answered. Closer still, an owl hooted. The nocturnal sounds seemed to signal the start of a very long night.
Cara looked up when Blake entered the cave, blocking the minimal amount of firelight from below. It looked as if he had something in his hand, possibly a stick. But she couldn’t be sure. Then a delicious smell reached her.
“I brought something for you to eat. And for Bud, if he can manage it.”
“We can try to feed him. I don’t know if he’ll keep it down.”
“Here,” he offered, thrusting a warm piece of meat into her mouth. Her muffled protest prompted his quick apology. “My eyes haven’t adjusted to the darkness.”
“You’re lucky it tastes good.”
“And if it hadn’t?”
“You’d be wearing it”
“I guess I am lucky, at that. Have another.” This time he was more careful, giving it to her gingerly. Her lips closed around the meat, brushing the tips of his fingers, distracting her terribly.
“Thank you.” Her voice sounded too breathless, too husky.
Bud stirred beside her. His panting started again.
“Should we give him some of this?” asked Blake.
“Maybe it’s not such a good idea yet.” She reached for her shoe. Realizing the last of the water had seeped out, she asked Blake if he would fetch more. He took the shoe and started to leave. “And more of that—What kind of meat is it?”
Just before he slipped out, he answered, “Rattlesnake.”
“What?”
Her raised voice brought Bud’s wobbly head up. When she touched him reassuringly, he lay back down. She swore under her breath, ready to strangle Blake as soon as he crawled back inside the cave. Of all the dirty, rotten, low-down tricks to play on somebody! If she hadn’t been so distracted by his finger feeding, she might have realized exactly what he’d been serving her. And she certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as she had.
She recalled a wilderness adventure in the Mojave Desert when Mark had tried to coax her into trying snake meat. He’d warned her there might come a day when she would be forced to rely on whatever the land could provide, be it insects or worms or, if she was lucky enough, rattlesnakes. A shudder of disgust rippled through her. Lucky! Ha!
Tastes like chicken, he’d told her. Everything tasted like chicken to him, including the fried frog’s legs he’d ordered in a restaurant. As far as she was concerned, amphibians and reptiles simply were not in the food chain for human consumption. Not like ch
ickens, anyway.
But then again . . . If she had to admit it—which she would never do—the roasted meat wasn’t half bad. And since she’d lost her lunch over that damn rattlesnake, it almost seemed like poetic justice to have it served up for dinner. Almost.
In the dim flicker of indirect light, she stroked Bud’s black coat. A moment later, Blake came back into the cave with the water. Putting aside her remaining pique over his mean trick, she helped him urge the dog to drink.
“He should be moved farther inside for the night,” Blake suggested. “That way I will be near the opening in the event we should have any unwelcome visitors.”
Cara agreed and helped Blake lift the weakened Lab, placing him on his side with his legs toward the back wall. By the time Bud went back to sleep, the small fire had died down considerably, leaving them in darkness.
“I hope he makes it,” he said with tender sadness. His hand accidentally bumped hers as they both petted the panting dog. Through his touch, she felt the depth of his emotions.
“I know how hard it is to watch someone in pain, whether it’s a person or an animal.” Her remark was met with his silence. “He’ll pull through, Blake. I believe it.”
“But do you know it?”
“Right now, I can’t say for sure, one way or the other. Which is why I have to rely on faith that Bud will live.
Sometimes believing is the only thing you have.”
“For you, perhaps. Not for me,” he said bitterly. “I do not assume that everything will work out well if only I believe it will. That’s rubbish.”
“You have every right to feel the way you do. Especially after what happened to you—”
“Don’t bring up my forgotten past again, Cara. At least not tonight.”
“I understand.”
The awkwardness between them was palpable. She needed an excuse to put some distance between them. Groping in the dark for her soggy shoes, she found one and put it on.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to get my shoes so I can go outside one last time before calling it a night.”
Mystic Memories Page 18
