Solomon's Decision (24 page)

At eight Jon came in to report that several of the hands had returned with the news
that the creeks were indeed rising. They had seen no sign of the children to the south and
west of the ranch. It was too dark to go on searching. They'd begin again at first light.
Wally Blanchett showed up about then. He stuck his head in to say hello, then followed
Jon to the barn.

Janine and Madeline traded looks. Wally wasn't one to smile much, but his
expression had been more grave than usual.

The tracker couldn't be contacted, but that wasn't surprising. The two-way radios
worked only on line-of-sight, and if he were following a trail along a canyon, he would be
completely out of touch.

Rain came again at midnight. Heavy drenching rain, accompanied by rolling
thunder and long, jagged lightning bolts. Madeline overheard Wally tell Jon that he was as
concerned with falling rocks loosened by the rain as he was with the steadily rising
streams. She contained her fear, barely. She refused to go to bed until Jon, rain dripping
from the brim of his hat and his temper short, roared at her about midnight.

"Damn it, Linnie! You're not doin' them any good stayin' up all night. Get yourself
some rest." He waved his arm toward the ranch yard where volunteers of the Mounted
Posse were setting up a communications center. "Everybody else's quitting for the night.
It's blacker than Hades out there."

"Don't you tell me what I should or shouldn't do, Jon Pierson! I'm not going to bed
until I know they're safe."

"Then stay up, dammit! Tomorrow you won't be worth the rope it'd take to hang
you, but don't blame me." He stomped toward the back door.

"Jon," Madeline called, immediately contrite. "You're right. I'll go to bed. Just
wake me if you hear anything. Please?"

He nodded before continuing outdoors.

She did sleep, although the muttering thunder and the steady drum of rain on the
roof entered into every dream she had. They were dark, terrifying dreams, filled with threat
and danger. In many, she saw her children, but they were always just out of her reach. And
always in danger.

* * * *

A secretary handed Erik a message slip as he came into the conference room. Call
Madeline? An emergency?

He went to an adjacent office to use the phone.

A woman answered and he asked for Madeline, identifying himself.

"Oh, Erik, thank heavens you called. Linnie's frantic."

He had no idea who he was talking to. Then Madeline spoke. "Erik? They're lost!"
Her anxiety came over the wires as clearly as her voice. "Jon lost their trail in the dark and
everything's flooded. You've got to come home!"

"Lost? Who's lost?" For a moment there was no answer.

"Solomon, Jon Pierson here."

Ah, Madeline's cousin. The rancher. He listened as Pierson told him that the
children--
his son
--was missing, could be in deadly danger. Could be already... No,
he wouldn't allow that thought.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," he said, interrupting Pierson's account of what was
being done to find the children. He ignored the protest and hung up. One call to the airport
and he had a plane chartered, another to the car rental company to pick up his car, and a
third to discover that a pilot in New Meadows was already on alert to fly search--as soon as
the ceiling raised enough to let him.

He didn't ask if it was all right for him to leave, even though he hadn't yet given
his expert testimony. He told, and he didn't care if he was slapped with a contempt
charge.

His children needed him.

* * * *

"Dammit, Linnie! You don't have the experience!"

"I don't care! Those are my children out there, Jon Pierson, as well as yours. I'm
going to help look for them, and you're not big enough to stop me."

"You just try it, and I'll lock you in your room," Jon said, looking worse than
fierce with two days' growth of whiskers caked with mud and his eyes bloodshot.

She wondered if he'd had any sleep at all last night.

"Now, Linnie, we need you here," Wally said, his voice mild and
non-argumentative. "Janine can't keep up with sandwiches and coffee for this crew, and it'll be
a few hours before the Posse Auxiliary gets here with the chuckwagon."

"You're joking!" Madeline couldn't remember feeling so...so insulted. "You want
me to stay here and make sandwiches while my children are out there." She waved a hand
toward the north, "Are in danger?"

"Damn straight," Jon growled, slamming his coffee cup onto the drainboard.

"I want everybody to do what he or she's suited to do best," Wally said.

"But I--"

"But you've never spent the hours in the saddle that these folks have," Wally said,
jerking his chin to indicate the members of the Mounted Posse who were unloading horses
in the ranch yard. "And you don't know these hills like they do." He paused. "Do
you?"

She had to admit he was right. "I just want to help," she said, feeling so helpless,
so useless.

"Believe me, Linnie, you'll be doing your share, keeping this crew fed," Wally
said. "Let's go, Jon. I think I hear the radio."

The two men left the kitchen. Madeline looked at the empty plates, the pile of
coffee cups on the counter. Jon was right, although she hated to admit it. She didn't have
the experience or the stamina to help with the search.

Damn!

"Good morning, Linnie."

She almost dropped the pile of plates she was taking to the dishwasher.
"Amelia!"

"I must be gettin' old," Amelia said, slipping out of a bright blue slicker. "I just
don't feel up to spending the day in a wet saddle, so I figured I'd help you and Janine with
the food and let the menfolk do the dirty work." She put her arms around Madeline.
"They'll be all right, hon. Believe me."

"I keep telling myself that," Madeline whispered, knowing her voice would
tremble if she spoke aloud, "but I don't really believe it."

"You've got to. Otherwise you'll fall apart." She patted Madeline's back several
times, then released her. "Now, since I'm in here to help, not to fool around, what can I
do?"

Swallowing hard, Madeline found that Amelia's briskness gave her strength that
Janine's shared apprehension hadn't. "You can load the dishwasher, for a start. I swear,
those men took a clean cup every time they came in, all night long."

"Wouldn't surprise me," Amelia agreed, tying an apron around her middle.

"They found Bob Wolfe," Janine said, coming in with a basket full of
freshly-gathered eggs.

"Found him? I though he was following the children's trail?" Madeline's fear,
contained for a while, burst forth with renewed force.

Janine set the basket on the counter and began sorting the eggs. "I guess you were
asleep when his horse came in, about four," she said. "He had a couple of long scratches on
one shoulder, looked like he'd hit a sharp rock pretty hard."

"How is Bob?" Amelia said.

"Broken leg," Jon said from the door, "and exposure. He laid out in the rain for
about fifteen hours. Linnie, can you set up the big coffeepot out by the radio van? We'll
stretch a tarp and set up a table." He was gone again before she could even answer.

"He found the children's tracks before his horse fell with him," Janine said. "They
seemed to be headed for Wounded Bear Meadow, all right."

"Then the men will go up there right away?" Surely if they knew where the
children were, it was only a matter of hours.

"Some of 'em will, but they're not writing off the other trails up that
direction."

Janine brought the fifty-cup percolator out of the basement, and Madeline set
about filling it. Perhaps time would go faster if she kept busy.

Erik wished he could get out and push. The small jet he'd chartered seemed
interminably slow. It gave him too much time to think.

Was this how his mother had felt when they told her Gail had drowned? Had her
chest felt empty, as if the heart had been torn right out of it?

From what he remembered of her, he had trouble believing she had ever felt any
intense emotion other than resentment.

He'd never known he was capable, either.

For the past few days he'd deliberately not thought of his newly discovered
fatherhood. It confused him, because he wasn't sure how he really felt about having a
child.

Children. No matter how scared he was of the awesome responsibility, he couldn't
deny he had two children.

He just wasn't sure he had the ability to love both of them equally. His mother
hadn't. He didn't believe, to this day, that she'd had the ability to love even one child. But if
she had, it was her daughter, not her son.

She had said, so many times, "I didn't want boys, never should have had a son.
God knows, I don't know what to do with you. Wild and noisy and rowdy. Not like your
sister, so sweet and quiet."

Gail had been quiet, all right, but never sweet. She'd been as bad a hellion as he,
only with the sense not to misbehave when their mother could catch her at it. He'd heard
someone say, once, that So-and-So had been born civilized. That was Gail. She learned
from others' mistakes, knew when to be quiet and ladylike, and slipped through life as
slickly as soap under a wet foot.

She'd fooled his mother, that was certain. After her death, he'd heard, over and
over, "She was such a good child, like all little girls. Why can't you be sweet and gentle
like she was?"

There were other kinds of child abuse than physical.

Intellectually he now knew his mother had been mentally ill. Emotionally he was
still fighting her lingering influence on his reaction to little girls. He could admire them
from afar--they were one of nature's miracles--but he simply could not interact with them.
His body's reaction was peculiarly similar to an animal's fight or flee dilemma in a
dangerous situation.

Look how uncomfortable he'd been when he'd met his own daughter for the first
time. He'd been virtually tongue-tied, until he deliberately ignored her and spoke only to
Kyle.

That's why he would be doing the right thing by leaving Ginger to her mother's
care, assuming he obtained shared custody of Kyle. No little girl deserved the kind of unfit
parent he might be. He would explain. Surely he could make her understand it wasn't that
her father didn't love her, but that he. He just didn't believe he could be a good parent to
her.

He looked at his watch again. Couldn't damned plane could go any faster?

The helicopter was fueled and ready at McCall. Erik held little hope that they'd be
able to fly in to Garnet Falls, let alone get up into the mountains where the search was
going on. The cloud layer was as thick as any he could remember seeing. He'd had to bribe
the charter pilot to land.

"We wait," the middle-aged helicopter pilot said, confirming Erik's suspicion. "I
checked with the weather service while you were landing. They said it'd start clearing
sometime this afternoon."

At least the rain had stopped, although the full roadside ditches and flooded fields
told of hours of heavy precipitation. Erik checked his watch. Noon, and the clouds looked
awfully permanent. "Maybe I should rent a car," he said, thinking out loud.

"Already checked that too. There aren't any available." His cigar, which Erik had
never seen lit, shifted from one side of his mouth to the other. "If it keeps lifting like it has
been, we should be able to get to Garnet Falls by following along the highway in an hour
or so. My fuel truck's already on the way. You had lunch?"

Erik couldn't even remember having breakfast. "I could use some coffee," he
admitted, feeling spent. He probably should eat a sandwich, too. Falling on his face was no
way to help search for the children.

To his surprise, the clouds did thin while they were eating. The pilot decided to try
to make it to Garnet Falls and immediately went into his preflight. Erik stood watching,
wishing he could help, just for something to do. Idle, all he could do was imagine the
worst.

As a hydrologist, he was intimately aware of what a heavy rain could mean in the
mountains. Every stream would be in flood, rocks would be rolling down steep hillsides,
and mudslides might even be blocking trails. And there were five children out there, God
only knew where.

They managed to get to Garnet Falls, although Erik suspected his pilot was relying
on memory more than landmarks when he took them over the divide between Payette Lake
and Goose Creek. Instead of setting down on the landing strip east of town, they swooped
over the low ridge and headed out along Skunk Creek Road. Not too much later the Double
J ranch buildings came into view. Erik could see a number of pickups, some of them
attached to horse trailers, parked in the space between house and barn.

Several people waved as they circled and one man pointed toward a corral behind
the barn. Another ran in that direction. Soon they were sitting in the corral, the helicopter's
blades still turning as Wally Blanchett bent low to approach the cockpit.

"Good thing you made it," he shouted. "The creek's got the canyon blocked and
the trail over the ridge isn't passable."

"Which ridge?" the pilot yelled back.

"That one Wounded Bear Creek cuts through. We're pretty sure the kids are up
there somewhere. I've got some men trying to get in from Jethro's, but you know how
rough that country is."

Just then another uniformed man came up with a bundle of blankets.

"Out you go, Solomon," Blanchett said, gesturing.

"I'm paying for this helicopter and I intend to be on it when we find them." Erik
took the blankets and stowed them behind his seat. "Let's not waste any more time."

The pilot shrugged, obviously not caring who his passenger would be. The sheriff
glared, his eyes narrowed as if he were measuring Erik's competence and stubbornness.
Finally he too shrugged. "We'll keep trying to get a team in there over the ridge. Don't take
any stupid chances."