It took several minutes to reach the ski area and his heart sank within him. The entire mountainside seemed deserted. The snow whipped around him with increasing velocity as the growing darkness enveloped the hillside. Bucky stood still in the lonely twilight. “Well, that’s it,” he murmured. “We’re on our own.”
As he was turning, a fast-moving form whirled out of the blowing snow. “Watch it, kid!” Before Bucky could even think, the skier had whizzed past him.
“Wait!” Bucky shrieked in desperation. “A girl’s hurt up here! Send someone up to help us!” His voice died away. The skier was already well down the slope, out of earshot.
Bucky slammed his fist into his open palm in anger. Helplessly, he cried out again. “Help! Help!” His voice caught, and he realized that tears of frustration and fear were coursing down his cheeks. One look up the hill told him the stark truth: no one else would be coming along this trail tonight.
Numb with apprehension, he made his way cautiously back through the deep powdery snow toward the young girl.
“Did you find someone?” The hope in Bonnie’s voice knifed through him.
Bucky hesitated. “Uh huh,” he nodded at last. “I don’t know if he’ll send help or not, though,” he admitted. “He was skiing pretty fast and didn’t even stop.”
She began to cry again, great gulping sobs. “Why didn’t you stop him? You told me you’d get help.”
“Hey, don’t cry!” Bucky pleaded gently. He told her how the skier had whirled by before he could even call out. “I don’t know if he’ll tell anyone or not,” he finished. “About all we can do now is pray.”
Bonnie began to shiver violently. “I’m so cold,” she whimpered. Her teeth chattered. “Did you come skiing with anybody?”
Bucky nodded, suddenly optimistic again. “That’s right! I forgot all about Sam! He’ll send help!”
“Does he know where you are?”
Bucky stopped short. “I – I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “I went up for one more ride, but I took a different trail than the one we were on earlier. He probably would think I’m on the ridge run.”
For several minutes both young people were quiet. Bucky began to realize how desperate their situation was. He cursed himself for leaving his cell phone in Sam’s car. For a moment that morning he had toyed with the idea of tucking it inside his jacket pocket, but after not being able to get hold of his dad, he had tossed it into the backseat and left it. Now a feeling of heavy abandonment settled over the couple.
In the cold of the night, Bonnie’s circumstances were especially critical. Softly he began to pray. “Lord, I have no idea how you’re going to get us out of this mess, but we need your help real bad.”
Almost as soon as he finished praying the snowfall began to ease. As the wind died down, the cold force of the storm abated a little bit.
“Boy, thank God that wind disappeared,” Bucky said aloud. He looked over at Bonnie. She was still shivering violently.
He leaned over and examined her leg. It was bent at an awkward angle but both her skis were still attached. “I wonder if we should try to get those skis off?” he suggested. “I know your leg is hurt bad, but I think we could ease your boot out of the binding without really moving your leg at all.”
Bonnie shuddered. “Do you think we should?”
“Look,” he pointed out, “your jeans are sopping wet. You’re going to freeze if we don’t do something soon.”
She nodded. “OK, but please be careful!”
Gingerly, Bucky moved around to her good leg. Groping in the darkness, he finally located the release mechanism for the binding and tugged gently on it. In a moment, the ski fell free.
“Now comes the hard part,” he grunted. “I’m going to try to hold your leg real still and release your binding with my other hand. Let me know if it hurts.”
He held her leg just below the knee and felt for her binding. There it was! With one quick and smooth motion, he pulled the binding free.
“Easy now,” he said to himself. Then to Bonnie, “I’m going to lower your leg real slow. Here we go.”
He lowered the twisted limb an inch at a time. “How’s that?”
“Better,” she whispered. “Didn’t even hurt.”
Bucky realized that she was simply too numb to feel the pain from the fractured leg. “The hurt will probably come later,” he admitted. “After you thaw out.”
She took a deep breath. “You just get me to where we can thaw out,” she said simply. “I’ll put up with the pain then.”
Bucky stood up. “Now the tricky part,” he said lightly. “You’re going to wear my snow pants. They’re dry.”
“What about you?”
He grinned. “I got my long johns on, and I can move around a little bit better than you can. I’ll be fine.”
“OK. What do we do?”
“Well,” he said, thinking aloud, “we better not try slipping your jeans off your hurt leg, even if it’s too cold to feel any pain. I could really mess something up if I did that. I’m going to try cutting them along the seam with my jackknife.”
She nodded without speaking.
Bucky dug around in his pocket for the small pen knife. Carefully, he cut at the threads along the seam. After a minute or two of work the outer seam began to tear loose easily.
“Here we go,” he grunted. Working quickly, he cut the seam along the thigh. “That ought to do it. I think we can work these off without taking off that ski boot.”
In just a few minutes, the delicate operation was completed. Bonnie rested more easily now with Bucky’s loose snow pants protecting her legs from the cold.
“I feel kinda silly out here in my long underwear,” Bucky laughed in mock embarrassment, trying to put Bonnie at ease.
“Well, you saw a good deal of me just then, too,” she retorted, showing a little spirit even though her voice was still weak.
Bucky grinned. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “Let’s just concentrate on getting to the bottom of this mountain so we can tell someone about it.”
She looked over at her torn-up wet jeans lying on a nearby rock. “Forty-dollar pants,” she mumbled ruefully. “Ruined.”
Some time went by. Slowly. By now it was completely dark. The snow was falling very lightly now, and far in the distance the bright neon lights of the Nevada border twinkled.
So near and yet so far away, Bucky thought to himself, as he jogged in place, trying to stay warm. His unprotected thighs and shins ached with the cold. He glanced at his watch. Seven forty-five. We’ve got to get out of here, he repeated to himself over and over.
Turning to look across the snowy valley, his ear caught a faint sound.
Chapter Thirteen: Helicopter Search
Down at the main lodge a small knot of men were consulting together, concern written on their faces.
“Show me on this map, kid, where you think your friend is,” one of them said, pointing a gloved hand at the large trail map spread out on the lodge’s dining table.
Sam examined the long red lines carefully. “He went up this main lift right here. We’d gone down this run three times together, and he said he wanted one more ride. That’s got to be where he is.”
“What time did he head up?”
Sam pondered for a minute. “I came in around 4:15. The lift closes at half past, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard the lift operator telling everyone it was the last ride down, so that had to be about what time it was.”
The older man sat for a moment, considering. “Are you sure he didn’t get a ride home with someone else? You here with anybody?”
Sam shook his head. “We’re staying overnight and skiing tomorrow, too. And he’s with me; he wouldn’t have had a ride.”
Someone chuckled. “Maybe he met some little honey and went home with her!”
Sam’s temper flared. “You guys keep joking and my friend’s stuck up there on the mountain.”
“Take it easy.” The ski instructor scratched his head. “And he doesn’t have a cell phone with him?” He shrugged, thinking. “Obviously, you’d have tried that hours ago.”
“We both left our cells in the car,” Sam admitted. “I know. Stupid.”
“Could your friend have gotten lost?”
“I suppose. But Bucky’s not really that adventuresome. He always sticks to the trail —never goes off into the powder.”
“I don’t know.” The older man was beginning to sound worried now. “Snowfall was pretty heavy up there around that time. But we haven’t had any reports from other skiers. And our own patrol members went up right at quitting time and came down all the runs. And didn’t see anything.”
Sam shivered involuntarily. “I’m telling you, he’s up there. I don’t know why, but he is. He must have fallen somewhere and hurt himself and your patrol guys didn’t see him. I don’t know . . .” His voice trailed off in desperation. “He’s been up there for three hours!”
“We’ll send the helicopter up,” the instructor decided at last. “Maybe they’ll find something.” He pointed at the huge ski map once more. “You’re sure it was this trail?”
“He went up to that trail,” Sam insisted. “I don’t know for sure which one he came down, even though it was this one here that we’d been doing all afternoon.”
“We’ll try that one first.”
Slowly the time dragged by. In the clear night air the distant sound of the chopper could be heard as the air patrol squad searched the hillside.
A quarter of a mile away, Bucky watched the helicopter’s powerful searchlight probe the darkness. “I knew it!” he burst out in frustration. “Sam must have told them I was over on the ridge!”
Bucky seized Bonnie’s wet blue jeans and waved them frantically over his head. “Over here! Over here!” he shouted, his voice choked with fatigue.
He sat down abruptly. “It’s no use. There’s no way they can see us way over here in this darkness.”
Almost as he spoke, the small helicopter swung away sharply and began heading toward the main lodge.
“They’re leaving.” Bucky beat his fists against his cold legs in disappointment. He felt the optimism draining from him. Quickly, he breathed another prayer.
He looked over at Bonnie. He had to be optimistic for her sake. “You better get some rest,” he said, trying to sound calm. “Sam’ll be sure to send that chopper up again until they’ve tried all the runs.”
The minutes ticked by. Clad only in his thermal underwear, Bucky could feel the numbness growing dangerously acute.
A half hour later he heard the familiar sound again. Over a nearby hill, the dark shape of the helicopter appeared once more, this time flooding the nearby hillside with the light.
“This is it!” Bucky exulted. “Come on!” He began to wave furiously. But once again the chopper’s floodlights were lighting up only the groomed trail. Bucky realized with dismay that he and Bonnie were a good hundred yards out of the pilot’s range of vision.
“We’ve got to do something,” he said in desperation. “We’ve got to do something! Jesus, help me! What can I do?”
Suddenly it came to him. “A fire!” His breath came in short gasps. “I’ve got to start a fire!”
Frantically, he looked around him. A nearby tree had some dead branches that looked relatively dry. Now, how to start a fire? A faint memory stirred in his mind. Something he had noticed when first bending over to reassure Bonnie.
“She smokes,” he breathed to himself. “A pack of cigarettes in her jacket pocket, so she’s got to have matches!” He bent over the sleeping girl, reaching carefully into her jacket pocket. He tossed the half-used pack aside and dug deeper. Empty! Fumbling in his eagerness, he explored the left pocket as well. Also empty.
“Bonnie, wake up!” he urged. “Wake up!”
She stirred. “What is it?”
“Your matches!” he exclaimed. “You smoke, don’t you? I gotta have your matches. To start a fire.”
“Matches?” Her voice was thick, drowsy. “I don’t have any matches.”
Bucky bowed his head in despair. “I have to start a fire! What do you mean, you don’t have any matches?”
She looked at him curiously, fully awake now. “No matches.” Then she smiled. “I have a cigarette lighter. In my jeans.”
“In your jeans!” Again hope surged in Bucky’s heart. The cold forgotten now, he hiked anxiously over to the overhanging rock, bouncing clumsily in his ski boots. There, right in the front pocket of the clammy jeans, was the small lighter.
Grabbing desperately at small twigs on the branches of the low tree, Bucky quickly built a small mound and tried to light it. But the wood stubbornly refused to light.
Still the helicopter hovered nearby, its spotlight tantalizingly near.
“Come on! Burn!” he whispered, willing the fire to catch. “Jesus, help me,” he implored. All at once an idea came. Peeling off his jacket, he wiggled out of the dry turtleneck sweater he was wearing underneath. He shivered as the icy wind hit his unprotected skin, and the chill reminded him that two lives now were hanging in the balance of this impulsive gamble.
“This’ll light!” he exulted, whispering yet another prayer. Once again he flicked the switch on the tiny lighter and watched as the fabric of the sweater quickly blazed.
“Thank you, Jesus,” he said aloud as the fire grew. Carefully, he piled twigs onto the growing flames.
“Now, Lord,” he prayed once again, “help that pilot to notice us!”
The chopper’s engine whined as it banked and headed straight for Bucky, its spotlight swinging crazily as it probed the mountainside. Then its welcome beam locked onto the young couple.
Chapter Fourteen: Rescue!
“We found ‘em!” The chopper pilot’s intercom crackled. “The boy – and a girl, too. Looks like an injury.” He hit the external speaker switch. “Are you Bucky Stone?”
“Yes! Yes!” Bucky jumped up and down, the cold forgotten.
“Is the girl injured?” The voice on the loudspeaker echoed over the whirring of the heavy chopper blades.
Bucky nodded. “Can you pick us up?” His voice was lost in the roar of the chopper.
The pilot spoke over the speaker again. “I’m sending for a ski team. They’ll be up in about ten minutes. I’ll stay right here to help them find you.”
Bucky waved exultantly, showing he understood. “They’re coming to get us!” he exclaimed to Bonnie.
“Good,” she replied, her voice filled with gratitude.
He strained to make himself heard over the chopper’s whine. “I wish they could pick us up in the helicopter, but it looks too small for that. Plus, I’m sure it’d be dangerous to move you that way with your leg being how it is.”
In a few minutes the team of expert ski patrol members arrived. “Bucky? You OK?” the lead man inquired.
“Boy, am I glad to see you guys!”
“How’s the girl?”
“She’s fine. But her leg’s broken.”
The patrol leader examined her leg briefly. “She’ll be OK. It looks like a pretty simple break. But it’s a good thing we found you kids. I don’t think she’d have made it until morning.”
“God answered our prayers,” Bucky said simply.
Carefully the team loaded Bonnie onto a sled and wrapped her securely. “Bonnie, we’re going to take you down nice and slow,” the leader explained. “We’ve secured your leg real tight and we’ll try to be as careful as we can. OK?”
The girl nodded, her pale face tight with exhausted relief. “I’ll be all right.”
“How about you?” He looked at Bucky quizzically. “Can you ski down with us or would you rather ride?”
Bucky shook his head. At that moment he realized how tired he was, but felt sure he could make it. “I can ski.”
“Hey!” one of the team members suddenly noticed. “You haven’t got any pants on!”
Bucky
grinned. “I loaned ‘em to her.”
The leader clapped a big hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “You probably saved her life, son.” He squeezed him warmly. “Well, if you can ski for about ten minutes in your long johns, let’s move out!”
With their powerful flashlights illuminating the way, the line of skiers made their way back to the main trail and down toward the warm lodge.
Sam was waiting anxiously at the bottom of the hill. When he saw Bucky his face split into a wide grin. “You made it!” he yelled, clapping his friend on the back. “Man, I thought you were a goner.” Both boys had tears in their eyes.
Bucky rubbed at his frozen cheeks. “You sent that chopper up, didn’t you?”
Sam nodded. “I kept telling them that my friend was up there someplace. They just kept looking until they finally found you.” He looked over at the sled. “Who’s the girl?”
Briefly, Bucky explained what had happened. Sam grew sober. “Wow. You realize what might have happened if you hadn’t helped her?”
Bucky nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He was silent for a moment. “Just like you helped me, dude.”
Minutes later, in the comfort of the lodge, the boys sipped hot chocolate. Bucky, wrapped in a huge ski patrol blanket, leaned back and closed his eyes, savoring the warmth that was slowly creeping back into his legs.
“Bucky Stone?”
“Yeah.” Bucky opened his eyes and looked up. A tall police officer was standing over him. He struggled to stand up.
“No, don’t get up,” the officer insisted. “I’m Bob Stanley. I just wanted to tell you that the young lady, Bonnie, is on her way to the hospital. It looks like she’s going to be fine.”
Bucky sighed in relief. “That’s great. How’d she come to be all by herself, though? How come nobody missed her?”
“That happens up here more than you’d think,” Officer Stanley explained. “Kids come up in two groups – seven or eight of them. And as the day wears on, people end up losing each other on the slopes. At quitting time, both carloads thought she was with the other group. That’s as far as I can dope it out.”
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 9
