by Laura Crum
"He's doing okay," he said. "We'll get to the island. Don't worry."
I let my feet slip out of the stirrups and my legs float to the surface, clinging to Gunner by his mane.
"Don't let go," Blue warned.
"I won't."
The island was distinctly closer. We'll make it, I told myself. "Come on, boy," I urged Gunner. I doubt he heard me. The splashing hooves and the now-audible roar of the fire drowned out all but yells.
"The beach is on the far side," Blue shouted.
I could see only rocks, steep and precipitous, but I obediently steered Gunner to the left, following Blue's lead. In a moment, a small shelving, pebbly bank came into view. Must be what he meant.
Aiming for the so-called beach, I prayed silently that we would make it, we would all be okay. The two dogs still followed, Freckles swimming steadily at the rear.
The beach was close now. Suddenly I could feel Gunner's hooves touching bottom, the lift of his body under me as he picked up his own weight again. I reached my legs down his sides and clung with my knees and calves as he heaved himself out of the water, as anxious to be on solid ground as I was.
I could see Dunny scrambling ashore next to me, the two pack horses following in our wake. I looked back just as Roey made a landing; a minute later Freckles touched ground, looking scared, but all in one piece.
Suddenly Gunner shook himself, a vigorous, rattling motion that made me gasp and grab his mane. I could feel Blue looking at me.
When I met his eyes, he smiled. "I hate it when they do that," he said. "I once fell off a horse when I was a little kid because he shook like that. I've never forgotten."
"Uh-huh." I said it absently; I was staring back at the fire. The little forest by the meadow was alight and burning, by the look of it. It was hard to tell because of the smoke.
I turned back to Blue. He was slowly lowering himself off Dunny, protecting his right arm as much as possible. Despite the pain he was undoubtedly in, not to mention our current predicament, his face remained detached. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything that could rattle this guy.
Dismounting, I looked around for a place to tie my horses. Choices were few. Half a dozen small pines formed a grove near the pebbly beach. Beside them was a fire ring-which looked as if it had only been used once or twice. As for feed, there were enough scrubby tufts of grass to give each horse a few mouthfuls, that was it.
Thanking God they'd filled up this morning, I tied Gunner and Plumber to the pines and walked over to a large rock that faced back toward the beach and our former campsite.
I sat down, soaking wet and beginning to shiver. Smoke filled the air, thick and smoggy as L.A. on a bad day. I couldn't even see the mountains that ringed the lake. All the beauty of the Sierras disappeared in an ugly haze.
Roey sat down next to me and I hugged her wet body to my side, feeling forlorn.
Oppressive and ominous, the smoke made me claustrophobic, even though I supposed we were perfectly safe here. But I was trapped, stuck on an island in the middle of Benson Lake, a long day's ride from any help.
Not for the first time, I wondered what in the hell I was doing here. Smoke seemed to press down on me like a gigantic hand. Life had never seemed grimmer. Some vacation.
TWENTY-THREE
Blue came and sat beside me. Seeming to guess at my thoughts, he put his good arm around my shoulders. "We'll be okay," he said.
"Will we?" I knew I sounded pathetic.
"Sure we will. We'll spend the night out here. By tomorrow that fire will have spent itself. The meadow's too wet to burn anyway. We'll swim back across, let the horses eat, and have a look around, see what's what."
"See what's what?" I asked him.
He turned his head away. "Find the best route out, I guess," he said noncommittally.
"What do you mean?"
He looked back at me for a long second, as if weighing what to say.
"What are you thinking?" I demanded.
More silence on Blue's part.
"Come on."
"Do you think this fire just happened by accident?" he said at last.
I gazed at the shore of Benson Lake, almost hidden now by a heavy curtain of smoke.
"Do you think it was set deliberately?" I asked him.
"I wonder. It's too early in the year and we're too high up for a fire to be very likely. There hasn't been any lightning. If it was a runaway campfire, where were they camped? There aren't any good campsites in that canyon."
"Oh." More silence while I took this in, wondering how it all fit into the complex and disjointed sequence of current events.
"You think whoever shot at us and booby-trapped the trail tracked us here and set that fire, hoping to kill us," I said at last. "You think whoever it is is after us specifically. Or you. Or me specifically."
Blue considered this statement. "Yes, I guess I do. That fire is just too unlikely."
"I see." He still had his arm around me, and I leaned into him as the breeze riffled sharply across the lake, causing me to shiver. "Do you have any ideas who's after us, or which one of us they're after?"
Silence again. I waited. I was learning that this man didn't care for ill-considered replies.
"No, I guess not," he said finally.
"You're wondering about something, though."
"Well, it's also a question of who could have done it. Who's in the mountains right now. Who has a reason to know where either one of us is."
"Dan Jacobi," I said. "But why?"
I could feel his body shrug. "I don't know. Like you said, he's not going to kill me over a horse."
"And he's got no reason at all to kill me."
We were both quiet. I stared through the smoke haze glumly.
This whole deal was a miserable, surreal farce. What possible reason could Dan Jacobi have to stalk either one of us through the mountains?
And then I remembered the dead man in Deadman Meadow. Once again, he'd slipped my mind, a seemingly unimportant detail in this cascade of unlikely catastrophes. But surely he was the wild card-the unexplained and unexpected event that might have precipitated the chain. But how and why?
I looked over at Blue's remote face. I was growing used to his expression-reserved, aloof, still. It no longer connoted unfriendliness to me. But I still wasn't sure where I was permitted to tread.
"Bill Evans killed himself the night before you rode in," I said. "Maybe that was the trigger." I hesitated. ''Ted said you used to live with Bill's wife."
Silence and smoke in the air. I coughed. Blue let his arm drop from around me. I could feel my shirt drying rapidly in the breeze.
"Is there anything about Bill Evans or his ex that could be causing ... all this?" I waved a hand at the smoke-filled sky.
As I expected, a long pause. Then, "I wouldn't know what it would be."
"Whatever happened to her? Ted said her name, but I can't remember it."
"Katie." Blue smiled quietly. "Ted spent a little time with her, too. I bet he didn't mention that."
"No. He sure didn't."
"Katie was on the rebound, I guess. She wanted away from Bill and his drinking. I should have known better. I ran into her up at Crazy Horse Creek-it must be three summers ago. She was a pretty thing."
"Ted told me she lived with you awhile and then went back to Bill," I said diffidently.
More quiet. I was beginning to think Blue wouldn't reply to this sally when he seemed to rouse himself. "She left me; I don't think she stayed with me longer than six months. She got bored of me, I guess. I don't make a lot of money, unlike her veterinarian husband. I couldn't keep her entertained."
"So she went back to Bill."
"I don't think she had any idea where else to go. She left him again pretty fast. And that time she spent a little while with Ted."
"You're right about Ted not mentioning that." But some-how I wasn't surprised. If Katie was "a pretty thing," it would have been like Ted to try and get her into bed.<
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"Did Bill Evans know about Katie and Ted?" I asked Blue.
"He must have. Everybody knew. But by all accounts, he didn't hold it against Ted the way he did against me. I didn't know the man, but a couple of guys told me he'd threatened to come kill me."
Well. If Bill Evans were only alive, we'd have a motive. But he wasn't. Once again, I wondered what Bill and Ted had really had words about the night before Bill shot himself. Had they talked about Katie? Was that why Ted had been so anxious to know what Bill had said to me?
Or ... and then a very bad thought struck me. I held it in my mind, turning it this way and that, almost afraid to speak it out loud.
The silence grew and Blue turned his head to face me. "What are you thinking?" he asked.
I still didn't want to say it.
"Come on. We need to pool our resources here."
I stared at his face, but I wasn't seeing him. "I heard that Ted threw Bill out of the bar the night before Bill shot himself," I said. "And Ted was really anxious to find out what Bill said to me before he died. What if ..." I could hardly bring myself to say it. It was ridiculous, I told myself.
"Go on," Blue said.
"What if they were fighting about Katie? What if ..." An-other thought, more fantastic than the last, struck me. "Whatever happened to Katie?" I asked him.
"I don't know. She disappeared. I never heard where she went to."
"She just disappeared, huh?"
Blue stared at me. "What are you thinking?" he said again.
"I don't like to say it," I told him. "It sounds ridiculous and I can't believe it myself."
"Go ahead." I coughed and brushed ashes off my arm. "It's just that Ted was so anxious to know what Bill said."
"Wait a minute," Blue interrupted. "What do you mean, 'what Bill said'?”
"Oh. I guess you don't know. I found Bill Evans out in Deadman Meadow. He'd shot himself in the chest, but he was still alive. He told me he wanted to die ... stuff like that. By the time Lonny and Ted and the rest of them got there, he was unconscious, and he died on the way to the hospital."
"So you're the only one who knows what he said."
We looked at each other.
"Yeah," I said. "And Ted was really anxious to find out what it was. And he'd gotten in a fight with Bill the night before. I keep wondering if it could be possible that they fought about Katie, say. And," I looked over at him, "I know this sounds unbelievable, but what if Ted shot Bill?"
"Why would he?"
"Over Katie."
"But she's long gone."
"I know. Where did she go? What if Ted, say, killed her, for reasons that we don't know, and Bill found out about it. Maybe Bill threatened to turn Ted in."
Blue took this all in and shook his head. "Then why didn't Bill Evans tell you that Ted shot him?"
"I don't know. Covering up for some reason. But the thing is," I looked at Blue again, "Ted's in the mountains, too. Right now."
"He is?"
"Yes, he is. Dan Jacobi told me. Looking for a crippled mule. At least that's what he said. But there's a way that Ted, unlike Dan, could know which way I'm going. Lonny knew, and I'm sure he would have told Ted if Ted asked."
Blue looked out over the lake and appeared to ponder.
I watched him and another thought came. Insidious as smoke, doubt crept into my mind once again. The motive I'd assigned to Ted could be Blue's motive, too. What if Blue had killed Katie, and killed Bill Evans because he found out? Suddenly I did not want to be stuck on this island with this man.
I stood and he looked up at me. His eyes, for all their stillness, had an earnest quality to them, reminding me of a young boy anxious to do the right thing. I simply had a hard time thinking evil of him.
And again, I told myself, why would Bill Evans cover up for Blue Winter, or for that matter, for Ted Reiter or anyone else? Knowing he was dying, or believing so, anyway, why on earth would he shield his murderer? It didn't make sense.
Surely Bill Evans had shot himself, just as he said. I only wished I knew why. I had the stubborn conviction that his suicide and my current predicament were somehow connected, but I sure as hell didn't know how.
"I'm going to unsaddle the horses," I told Blue.
“All right."
He remained seated as I took the gear off the saddle horses and turned Dunny loose. I left the others tied up, more out of a disinclination to deal with the confusion of four loose horses in such a small space than for any other reason.
"I'll let them all loose one at a time, so they can have a bite and get a drink," I offered.
''That's fine." Blue remained seated, staring in the direction of the beach, not that the beach was visible anymore. Heavy smoke obscured everything but the lake immediately surrounding us. Fortunately we were far enough away from the fire that no large sparks carried our way. Just a steady dusting of ash.
I began gathering firewood, more out of a need for something to do than any real reason. By my reckoning it was now mid-afternoon. If we were spending the night here, we might as well have a fire.
We wouldn't be having much to eat. I had a few more granola bars and some hard candy in my saddlebags. That was it. That and the gun, my veterinary and medical kits, my rain gear, my map, a water bottle, and one EZ Boot. I wondered what Blue had in his.
What else did I have? In my pockets were the waterproof container of matches, my knife, and the little flashlight, which probably wouldn't work after its soaking. Camp was going to be pretty sparse tonight.
Blue still sat and stared; I had no idea what was going through his mind. Belatedly it occurred to me that his arm might be starting to ache again; the shot would be wearing off. I had hoped we would get out today. At this rate, I would run out of shots to give him.
"How about a codeine tablet?" I asked him.
"I think I'd rather have a drink." He turned his head my way and smiled.
"Sounds good. Where are we gonna get it?"
"Out of my saddlebags."
I walked over and picked them up and brought them to him.
He fished a tequila bottle out of the right-hand bag with his good arm.
"Tequila?" I said.
"My favorite. Care for a drink?" He produced a lime and a salt shaker out of the saddlebag.
I laughed. "Not yet. You go right ahead." I hesitated. The island was small enough that privacy would be difficult. ''I'd like to get these wet jeans off and hang them up so they dry before dark, if you don't mind."
"I don't mind at all." Blue tipped the tequila bottle back and took a long swallow.
"Okay." It was easier to say than do, though. I felt uncomfortable undressing in front of a stranger. But my heavy jeans were damp and clammy. What the hell.
I walked around a rock, sat down and took off my boots, then stepped out of my jeans. My underwear was more discreet than most bikinis, I told myself. Plain red cotton underwear-no lace, no thong.
Draping my jeans, long-sleeved shirt, and socks over a rock to dry, I walked down to the shore of the island wearing my tank top and panties. I sat on a log and wrapped my arms around my knees. Blue could see me from where he was, but at least I wasn't right in his face.
I stared out at the pall of smoke and thought about the things we'd said. Nothing really connected, and yet I sensed the connection was there, somewhere.
Two hours later, the sun was starting to lower itself toward the western ridge, and I was no closer to an answer. I'd turned each horse loose to pick at grass for a while and get a drink, then tied them each back up. The pickings were pretty slim on this little rock outcropping. The horses would be hungry in the morning.
Us, too. My jeans and shirt were reasonably dry and I put them back on. Dug around in my saddlebags for the last couple of granola bars.
Blue lay on his back, head propped on the seat of his saddle, hat tipped over his eyes. I had no idea how much tequila he'd consumed.
"Hungry?" I asked.
"A little." He didn't
move.
"We've got a couple of granola bars."
"Oh boy."
"Better than nothing. Did you save any tequila for me?"
"Yes, ma'am, I sure did." Blue pushed his hat back and sat up, very slowly and stiffly. "How about another shot of that torbu stuff?" he asked.
"We've got three more left," I said.
''I'd better have one."
"Okay." I got the syringe and torbugesic out of my saddle-bags and filled the shot. Blue rolled his sleeve back.
Once again I took hold of his forearm and felt for the vein. His skin was freckled with red-gold flecks. My eyes moved to his face. Mustache, eyelashes-all that fiery shade.
Blue raised his eyes to meet my gaze as I injected the shot. For a long moment we stared at each other. What in the world did I look like, I wondered. Best not to think about it.
Once again I saw the tiny relaxation of Blue's facial muscles, the curve of his mouth into the start of a smile. Torbugesic was doing its job.
"Thanks, Florence," Blue said.
"Any time. Feel better?"
"Yes, ma'am. How about we get a fire going before the sun goes down and then I'll make you a drink before dinner."
"Before my granola bar, you mean." I smiled at him.
"Right." Blue got to his feet and smiled back down at me. "Let's build a fire," he said.
TWENTY-FOUR
I put everything on hold. All my suspicions, all my ideas, all my worries. I didn't think about them. Instead, I drank tequila. I will admit that initially the thought crossed my mind: Is this wise? But it went away after a couple of shots. As if we had made an agreement, Blue and I tacitly avoided all mention of the fire, of Bill Evans, of saboteurs and snipers. We talked of horses and dogs and our lives back in Santa Cruz County.
The fire flickered; darkness hid the smoky sky. Orange glows along the shore of Benson Lake marked smoldering trees. Our dogs lay close to us, and we all moved closer to the campfire as the night grew colder.
I took another small swig of tequila and a squeeze of lime. "So just what do you do for a living?" I asked Blue.
''I'm a greenhouse manager and a plant breeder. I grow roses."
"Roses?" I'm not sure why I was surprised.
