Chapter Sixteen: Walls and Trust

Nathaniel

Steven is back on his horse and appears uninjured. I’m unsure whether it’s a good thing or not that Chris is no longer with Steven and Dominic. I make note of their direction and do a scan of sky and landscape for memorable markers. I leave again to find Chris. If they killed Chris, I may kill them. Their idea of horse raiding for power and camaraderie is past the point of forgiveness.

Luckily, I find Chris sitting with hands tied behind his back. His feet are bound with leather bridle reins and one eye is swollen shut.

“Do you have any broken bones?” I ask as I untie him.

“My ribs,” he says through clenched teeth.

“Your father is headed this way. Can you walk?”

“Maybe.” I help him to his feet.

“The truck is over that way.” I point southwest. “The stolen horses are a few hundred yards over there.” I point northeast. “Head back to the truck. We won’t leave you behind.”

I don’t wait for any response before I leave to have a talk with my client.

“We’re going back for Arrio,” Steven says to Dominic. “I know they’re following us. We’ll loop around and pick him up, then head straight north.”

“Arrio’s a goner. We have to keep increasing our distance between us and them,” Dominic hisses in the dark.

Tall pines and squat cedar trees dot a landscape covered with rock outcroppings, fallen logs, and the ever-present underbrush. The dense foliage makes it harder to see and the group moves at a slower pace because of it. The horses are dragging, tired, scared, and agitated. I’m feeling strong empathy with Juliana right now for her love of animals and how they’re treated. The horses need a break.

“That old shaman is a crazy son-of-a-bitch. Everything bad has happened since we raided his house. Maybe we screwed up this time. Did you see what they did to Pip?”

“It’s too late for regrets, bro. But we can get our brother back and get out of here.”

“I don’t like it,” Dominic says.

“Neither do I,” I say as I step in front of Dominic’s horse.

His animal rears. Dominic manages to hang on, but the horse tied behind him bucks and kicks in protest. Steven takes the opportunity to run off and hide. I don’t agree with Dominic’s ability to hang onto his horse, so I appear on the back of his mount and push Dominic out of the saddle. His scream must echo from Colorado to Mexico and I enjoy every decibel of it. The pandemonium isn’t nearly as satisfying as I hoped it would be. I use my energy to calm the panicked horse. She settles enough to stop bucking and kicking. Unfortunately, Steven’s sense of kinship and honor sends him galloping back to Dominic.

I rein my newly acquired horse around to face the thieves.

As soon as Steven sees me, he dismounts and places his body in front of his friends.

“Go back where you came from and leave us alone!”

Dominic scrapes himself off the ground and rises to stand with his friend.

Steven says, “Go, Dominic. He’s here because of me.”

“No, man. We’re together in this,” Dominic says, and he tries to step up to Steven’s side, but nearly falls down again. He hops on one foot. He’s injured, but I can’t tell if it’s his ankle, knee, or leg. The arm in the sling has to be hurting something fierce as well.

Steven readies an arrow onto his bow.

“Do you think an arrow is going to do anything to me?”

“I’m willing to find out.”

“Walk away now, Steven. It’s over.”

“Dominic, get out of here,” he says again. “Take my fucking horse, dude. You can’t even stand.”

“No,” Dominic says, and crumples to the ground with a yelp.

“You’re pissing me off. Go! I’ll find you,” Steven says.

Dominic glances between us then moves to the stirrups of the horse standing behind Steven. Between his shot arm and his newly injured leg, I don’t know how he’s able to drag his sorry ass into the saddle, but he manages. Dominic guides the horse past the trees and out of sight.

Steven braces his bow against his body and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his lighter and flicks the thumbwheel. The flame becomes a beacon, silently commanding my full attention. In the glow of the firelight, I see his hand quiver as he brings it to the tip of his arrow.

It had escaped me till now, but I can clearly see the end of the arrow is wrapped with cloth.

“We’re out of here and if you or anyone tries to follow us,” he pauses his threat to touch the flame to the end of the arrow. “I’ll burn this entire desert to ashes.”

“You know why I’m here, Steven. It’s not that simple.”

His bow is in position, but his entire body trembles, and I’m afraid he’s going to let it fly by accident. I calculate my chances of disarming Steven and extinguishing the fire before he can do something stupid.

“You’re the Devil, aren’t you?” He begins to back away. His voice is ragged with nerves as he says, “My stepmother always told me that evil was guiding me.”

I shake my head at him, denying his accusation, but also with sadness. “Not even close.”

“How can I believe you? The Devil lies.”

“Think for yourself, Steven,” I say, feeling overwhelmed and exasperated. “Do you want to hurt yourself or someone else with this insane plan?”

“I’m ending this right now. Tell your friends this night is over.”

“I can tell them without the threat of that.” I point at his weapon.

“I don’t believe you anymore.”

“Please, put it out before one of us gets hurt. I promise, they won’t follow you or Dominic.”

“Your promises don’t mean shit to me.”

He’s far enough back that I only see the outline of his body behind the flickering orange glow.

“I make no promises!” White Wolf cries as he gallops straight toward my client.

Steven’s knee jerk reaction is obvious. His trigger finger is guided by his heightened fear and is all too willing to let loose.

I move with a speed I believed was only imaginary. Letting go of my physical body, moving to the bow, and pulling enough energy to myself to redirect the arrow takes one millisecond too long.

The shot goes wild and with little force behind it. The arrow misses White Wolf and his horse but lands in the brush.

My sense of responsibility and duty pulls me in two directions at once. I see the long bludgeoning weapon in White Wolf’s hand as he raises it to strike my client. I’m also acutely aware of the small fire starting to burn in the brush.

Steven cowers and tries to run, but White Wolf is riding fast. Fully in my body once again, I rise just in time to block Steven from the blow of a brutal wood handle.

White Wolf’s battle cry pierces the heart of the desert and rips through my core. My arm would have probably shattered, but spirits aren’t broken like bodies are. Steven scrambles away as White Wolf lopes passed us. We stare in each other’s eyes and know the mistake is my own for putting myself in harm’s way. I’m not hurt, but I couldn’t let Steven take such a vicious hit.

“Let this end, Wolf! Let him go. There’s a fire!” I yell and run after Steven.

I want this to end. I want Steven to have a chance at getting out of here. He’s a decent person who needs to turn his life around.

White Wolf notices the glow of the small fire behind us. Another horse and rider are heading toward the flames. Forgetting Steven, I’m next to Juliana and Vannah a second later. Vannah backs away from the burning brush and Juliana jumps off. I catch her as she stumbles and trips over a rock. She whimpers in my arms, but breaks free of my grasp and begins kicking and throwing dirt on the fire. We have mere seconds to figure out if we can control this fire or not.

“You stay on this side and I’ll work on the other,” I say, as my mind attempts to put order to the chaos before us.

White Wolf rides up behind us and dismounts. The two horses, Vannah and his mare, snort and prance, but stay close.

White Wolf says, “We want a fire line on the east side.”

“Start digging!” I say.

The fire devours dry grass and the summer’s crispy vegetation like a glutton. It’s nighttime, the sky is overcast, and the breeze is almost nonexistent. All these elements should be on our side, but it’s as if the fire has its own desire and what it wants most is to be fed.

“It’s not helping,” Jules cries as she scoops the sandy soil with bare hands. She alternates throwing and kicking the dirt onto the fire, but her efforts are so miniscule I start to feel her hopelessness. White wolf uses his hatchet to chop at the ground and create a line. Then he uses his boot to scrape and clear a firebreak.

The sagebrush and scraggly ground cover’s determination to burn is stronger than our will to stop it. Heat rises into our face. A breeze picks up and swirls the small flames. Like tickling a child, the fire giggles, squirms, and reaches for more fuel. Smoke circles around our group and Juliana coughs.

Frantic to stop the spreading fire, I do everything I can to help White Wolf with the fire line. I’m able to move four times faster than Juliana and Wolf, but a higher power must be controlling this event. A shift in the breeze lifts a burning ember into the air. It floats on the draft and lands in a dead shrub.

“Stomp it out!” Juliana screams.

I’m already on top of it when a crackle and a snap from the center of the fire sends a shower of sparks onto Juliana and a swag of grass near her hiking boots.

She smacks at her clothes to extinguish the glowing sparks. The grass alights. White Wolf runs to her aid and begins hacking the ground around the new flare up. Juliana begins to cough in earnest from the increase of smoke and I realize they’ve been breathing it in for too long already.

Burning grass crawls eastward over the ground and White Wolf and I move with it. As we extinguish, creeping fingers of heat reach in every other direction. I stomp out one branch of fire as another dips over the edge of a ditch. The ditches and arroyos are usually rocky and sandy and I let myself believe for a brief moment that the arroyo will make a sufficient fire break. It’s false hope and faulty assumption when I realize the fire is headed toward a group of scrub oaks. The burning grass meets the dry tinder of the leaf mulch beneath the oaks and I know we have to get out here.

“Come on!” I yell and back track to Juliana.

Tears stream down her face, either from the smoke or fear. I’m not sure which, but her tears flood my heart. Juliana doesn’t struggle as I take her arm and lead her to Vannah. She wipes dirt stained fists over her eyes.

“I’ve seen this in my vision. It’s going to be bad,” she says.

White Wolf rushes past us, places his boot in the stirrup, and swings his leg over the saddle of his mare.

“We’re going back to the truck right now,” I say.

“There are three horses out there. I have to get them or they’ll die,” she says.

I grit my teeth and refrain from yelling at her to get out of here. “I’ll find the horses. They can’t be too far.”

Behind us, a flare up in one of the scrub oaks lights the sky. As if Vannah concurs with finding the other horses, she bellows a long, rumbling whinny into the night. An answering neigh calls back to us. Juliana coughs hard into her elbow in an attempt to filter some of the smoke.

“They’re right over there somewhere.” She points across the night landscape.

Unfortunately, the neighing came out of the east. The same direction the fire is headed.

“You don’t understand. I have to be with them,” she says.

“I will help by traveling with them. I can make the horses come to us,” White Wolf says.

“Good idea.” She nods to White Wolf, but I’m not sure what he means.

“If we’re committing suicide tonight, let’s do it quick,” I say.

The fire mostly spreads north and east and is moving uphill. The flames crawl south along the shallow arroyo. We turn to the southeast and I leave Juliana and White Wolf behind to locate the three missing horses. We have to assume Dominic is on the fourth horse and he’s relatively safe. There’s no telling where Steven is, but maybe he’s with the horses.

I’m relieved beyond words to find the horses have stayed together. However, Steven isn’t with them. Dealing with one nightmare at a time is all I’m capable of. One of the horses keeps nudging the other two and appears to block the horses from moving uphill. I form my body so I can retie their dragging ropes and ride them back to the trailer before the entire slope is covered in flames.

When I near one of the horses, it shies away from me and won’t let me touch it. The horse who keeps pawing the ground and blocking the other two runs up to me and stops. I grab its bridle, but the horse lowers his head and stares into my eyes. White Wolf’s black eyes send a clear message of his intent and I understand his statement about traveling with the horses and making them come with us. He snorts and turns back to the other two who have now made an arc around us and are trotting up the hill.

Repositioning, I try another tactic and work with White Wolf to herd the horses down the hill. Juliana promised she wouldn’t follow me up here and would wait at the base of the slope outside the grove of pines trees. In literally the spur of the moment, our goal was to get the horses to channel down to where she would wait and then all of us make a straight run to the truck.

I appear out of nowhere waving my arms and screaming at the lead horse. White Wolf, inside the body of a chestnut colored horse, blocks the other horse and then all three begin heading south and west.

I follow above in my spirit form, flying over their heads to keep an eye on their direction. What I couldn’t calculate ahead of time is a standing dead pine tree bursting into flames as we approach. The horses stampede through billowing smoke, but when they see the flare up from the dead tree, they veer into the ditch rather than head west. Panic intensifies as they near the hot spots, but their momentum keeps them barreling forward, straight into the fire zone.

With the cool temperatures of night, the higher flames are only as tall as the shrubs and grass, except for the dead pine tree. A crying whinny slashes the night from Vannah and I look for her through the layers of smoke. One of the runners calls back to her and even to my untrained ears its whinny is anguished and full of fear.

Through the wafting screen of smoke, I see the horses move closer to the fire. I’m about to turn them around and send them back up the hill for their own safety when I notice Juliana readying herself for an act of recklessness.

“They’re almost here,” she calls out.

“Where’s White Wolf?”

“His body is over there.” She gestures to the west. “His spirit is inside a horse — I hope.”

The outline of a horse and rider stands a dozen yards away from the spreading fire. I refocus on Juliana.

“It’s too rocky for them to run over the hillside at night. They’ll break their legs,” she says.

Her and Vannah pace in front of a line of smoldering brush and grass. The smoke blows away from them and allows her a closer proximity than I’m comfortable with. The determination in the stiffness of her spine and the grim expression on her face is powerful and wild.

“I want to turn the horses around and send them north and then west. They got spooked when that damned tree lit up.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but you have to trust me right now.”

“Whatever you’re about to do, just let it go.”

“I can’t!” she says. She turns Vannah around and starts trotting along the line of fire again.

“Fine!” I yell. “How can I help?”

She doesn’t shrivel back, but the look she throws my way tells me that yelling in anger isn’t the best thing I can do in this already tense situation.

“Ride one out. You won’t burn, will you?”

“Of course, I won’t.”

She’s breathing hard and Vannah shivers with agitation. Juliana stares right into me and says, “I love you, Nathaniel! Darn it! Now, follow me and keep the horses close together. Give them your energy. It’ll help.” Her eyes flash as she takes one last look at me before kicking Vannah’s side and jumping straight over a burning bush.

“Blasted woman!”