Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (22 page)

“Thanks,” Ethan said.

Ethan raised it to his lips to drink. And stopped.

On the other side of the lake, maybe a hundred feet away, a movement caught his eye. It was not the first time on this trip that a movement had caught his eye. And each time, his heart had missed a beat, then jumped, then hammered nearly hard enough to kill him. At least, from the feel of it. Because each time he had expected it to be a bear.

This time it was.

A dark-coated bear with a lighter brown muzzle was winding its way to the lake with two cubs in tow. Hadn’t Ethan read that a mother bear with cubs was the most dangerous of all?

He opened his mouth to shout to the others, but nothing happened. No sound emerged. Ethan had lost the use of his voice again.

He reined Dora around and kicked her desperately, and she trotted ashore.

“Hey!” Sam called to him. “Hey! Where ya going in such a hurry?”

Ethan gathered himself to speak. In his panic he put enough pressure behind the words—hopefully—to break the dam.

“Bear!” he shouted.

He put his heels to Dora’s sides again. But the mule only laid her comical ears back along her neck in displeasure and stood her ground. She was a herd animal, Dora, a member of a pack team. She did not care to ride away alone.

Only then did Ethan realize he was trying to ride off without his dog. And that his dog might be about to go after the bears. Was Rufus really simple enough to make a mistake like that twice?

“Sam!” he bellowed, amazed at how much voice he had just rediscovered. “Get the dog! Don’t let the dog go after the bears!”

Ethan looked around desperately for Rufus. He found the dog chest-deep in the lake, drinking. Then he drummed on Dora’s sides again. But the mule only kicked out with her back legs in irritation, her ears more tightly pinned along her neck.

Jone rode up beside Ethan and reached over and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Shoot it!” Ethan screamed. “Shoot the bear if you have to! You have your rifle, right? Where’s your rifle? If it comes any closer you’ll shoot it, right?”

He could feel himself still wildly drumming his heels against the mule’s sides, trying to get her to move. She did not move. It reminded Ethan of one of those terrible dreams. The ones in which you need to run away from something horrible but your legs won’t receive the signal.

“It’s right here,” she said, touching the stock of the rifle.

It was tucked into a leather scabbard attached to the breast collar of her horse’s saddle. It made Ethan feel a tiny bit better to see that she had her hand on it. But in his panic he needed more.

“But I’m not going to shoot anything,” she said. “That’s just a black bear.”

“So? It’s still a bear!”

“Black bears don’t go after humans unless they’re startled. Or feel cornered. Or they’re protecting their young. They’re not so dangerous like a grizzly. Look.”

Ethan stopped kicking his mule and looked over his shoulder.

Across the lake, the bears lowered their heads to drink, undeterred by the humans and equines on the other side. At least, now that the spooky little human had stopped shouting.

“Oh,” Ethan said, wondering if he could calm his heart before it killed him. His voice sounded breathless. “I guess I overreacted.”

“I guess,” she said. “Still think I should shoot that nice family in the middle of their outing? Or just the mom, because she’s big? And then what are the babies supposed to do without her? You don’t really think it has to come down to that, now, do you?”

“Guess not,” Ethan said. “But I really, really think we need to ride away now. Like, right now.”

“I’ll ride over the pass with you,” she said. “Sam can catch up.”

“Wait. We have to bring the dog.”

“Sam’s got him on a rope.”

“But if he’s going with Sam he’s too close to Rebar.”

“I’ll go get him,” she said, and reined her horse around and rode back into the lake.

Meanwhile Ethan wondered how long he could shake so hard and so deeply without falling off a mule.

“Something you should know about your dog,” Jone said.

She was holding the end of Rufus’s long rope leash, and he was limping along beside the chestnut horse. They rode together across the ridgeline between one mountain and the next, still waiting for Sam to catch up. Puffy clouds had blown in, starkly white against the navy-blue sky. Ethan thought this place they were riding might be the highest trail point in the wilderness. He could see higher, snowcapped peaks, but he was pretty sure they were suited only for technical climbing. In any direction Ethan looked he saw a wilderness of mountains and valleys and green lake-filled meadows all the way to the horizon. Like the running wolves, it was scary but beautiful.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “What about him?”

“He’s leaving blood on the rocks everywhere he walks.”

Ethan pulled the mule to a halt. Then he just sat there in the saddle, unsure what to do. A situation needed his attention, but he had no remedy that he could think of. His head was mostly full of the truth that Jone had warned him about this. That he had been ill-advised to bring the dog, and he’d known it. And now it was coming back to bite him.

“Let’s take a break and wait for Sam,” she said.

She swung down off her horse and led him around close to Dora and held the mule’s reins so Ethan could dismount safely.

Ethan eased his right leg out of the stirrup and tried to swing it over the mule’s rump. But it barely lifted, and he ended up kicking the mule on the back behind her saddle. She surged forward, and only Jone’s strong hand on the rein prevented catastrophe.

“Stiffened up a little, did you?” she asked, tugging the reins sharply to insist that Dora hold still.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Then he slowly and gently dragged his leg across her rump and down onto the left side of the saddle.

“Ow,” he said out loud.

He leaned on the saddle and kicked out of the left stirrup, then dropped to the ground.

“Ow,” he said again.

“Why are we stopping?” Sam’s voice asked.

Ethan looked up to see him ride up on the big bay, towing Rebar, whose ears were laid back, and who looked as though he’d had more than enough of this adventure. Ethan knew exactly how he felt.

“The dog needs attention,” Jone said. “He’s leaving blood on the trail.”

“Oh, dear,” Sam said. He swung down. Lifted the reins over the bay’s head and dropped them in the dirt. “Hey, boy,” he said, approaching the dog. Sam got down on one knee and lifted Rufus’s paws, one by one, and looked at the pads on the bottom of each. “Yeah. His pads are bleeding. This rough shale is hard on them. It’s wearing the tough outers of them right through.”

He straightened up, stretching his apparently sore back.

We all hurt,
Ethan thought.
And it’s only day two out here. Not even very deep into day two.

Sam rummaged around in the canvas packs on Rebar’s sides and came up with a bright-red first-aid kit in a soft nylon pouch.

“Ethan,” he said, “how many pairs of clean socks you got left?”

“Just one more pair for tomorrow. After that I’ll have to rinse out a pair, I guess.”

“No, tonight you’ll have to rinse out a pair for tomorrow. And so will I. We’re both donating our last clean pair to the dog. Damn him for having four feet, right?”

He unzipped the first-aid kit and settled stiffly on a rock, pulling the dog close by his rope.

Sam pulled a full filter bottle of water out of the pocket of his light jacket. Ethan recognized it by its purple color as the one Ethan had been holding when he saw the black bears. Apparently he’d dropped it again without even realizing. Sam lifted the dog’s left front paw and rinsed it in a thin stream of the filtered water. He shook it off and held it up out of the dirt while he unscrewed the cap on a tube of ointment, which he slathered thickly on the pads of the clean paw. Then he wrapped the paw loosely from a roll of gauze bandage.

Sam looked up at Ethan.

“Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Cough up the socks.”

When all four of the dog’s paws had been cleaned, slathered in ointment, bandaged, and covered with socks—held in place with a strong wrap of adhesive tape—Ethan asked the question he’d been dreading asking.

“Can he walk on those?”

“If he has to,” Sam said. “Less he has to walk on them, the better.”

“Well,” Ethan said. “Maybe it’ll discourage him from chasing bears.”

He’d meant it to lighten the mood, but it fell flat.

Sam just smiled sadly.

“Get back up on your mule,” he said. “We need to move on.”

Ethan walked to Dora, still not knowing how the dog was supposed to move on with them, and afraid to ask. Jone was holding the mule’s reins for him.

He grabbed hold of the saddle horn and tried to mount. And failed miserably. He couldn’t even lift his left leg up to the stirrup. It felt dead. Disconnected. He let go of the horn and held his left leg with both hands, just above the knee. He physically lifted it to the stirrup. Then he grabbed the horn again and tried to swing over. He managed to lift himself a foot off the ground, if that. Then his upward motion lost power and stalled, and he landed on the ground again.

“Ow,” he said.

“Here,” Jone said. She moved around to the left side of the mule, one arm hooked through the reins. She laced her hands together and offered them to Ethan. “Put your knee there. A little below the knee, actually. Put your shin there.”

Ethan did as he was told.

“One,” Jone said, and Ethan feared the moment she got to three. “Two. Three.”

He jumped as best he could, and Jone used the strength of her arms and back to launch him, and he landed in the saddle. Too heavily, and he kicked poor Dora again on the way over, hard, but he got there. And she didn’t bolt. She must have expected it by then.

“Ow,” he said. Then, when the mule had stopped fidgeting, he patted her dirty neck and said, “Sorry.”

Ethan sat up straight again, and looked around for his dog. He still had no idea what they were going to do about his dog. He found Rufus in Sam’s arms, just inches from Dora’s saddle.

“Here,” Sam said. “He’s all yours.” And he set Rufus across Ethan’s legs.

Rufus scrambled for purchase and balance, but his sock-covered paws only slipped off the saddle leather again. Ethan used his arms to adjust the dog into a steadier position. But no position was quite steady enough. Rufus was uneasily perched there on the saddle at best. Ethan would have to hold him as they rode. There was no other way this could go.

“Let’s make some miles,” Sam said. “We haven’t covered much ground so far today.”

They rode on.

Not five minutes into the uncomfortable ride, Marcus’s predictions began to take shape. Sam and Jone had a decision to make. And they couldn’t see eye to eye. And they had begun bickering.

Ethan was bringing up the rear, and his mule kept falling behind, so he couldn’t hear every word they said. But from what he could gather, there was a trail intersection coming up. One direction took them deeper into the wilderness. The other looped them around toward home.

Sam thought they should go deeper in.

Jone thought they’d already gone farther than a person could have gone on foot, considering he’d only planned a day trip.