Janet shot her a cheeky grin, and they popped back through the French doors and out of sight.
She supposed that was what she got for taking Janet through the barn.
She would check on her livestock; that would cheer her up.
I’ve always found it’s better to keep my fingers moving, knitting always. It keeps me out of trouble
.
—
E.C.
A
bigail called Clara, who dragged herself out from behind a pile of boxes. It looked like she had been chewing a sponge. Great. Now the dog would be sick on top of everything else.
They walked out and around to the pasture. Abigail had left the door to the shed open to the field behind it. That way the animals could wander in and out at their whim, eating or drinking water, with the freedom that any alpaca deserved. Or at least, that’s what she assumed an alpaca deserved.
Tussah looked up when she opened the gate, did a small head toss, and backed up a bit. But she let Abigail approach her, not moving away as quickly as she had yesterday.
“What a good girl.” Abigail looked around. “Where’s Merino?”
He must be in the shed, perhaps taking a nap.
It was dark inside, and Abigail strained her eyes. She peered into the corners. There was a dangling lightbulb overhead, but no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see Merino.
“Tussah! Where’s Merino?” Yeah, asking the other alpaca would work.
Clara, on the other side of the fence, cocked her head to the side, watching Abigail closely.
Then she saw it. Damn.
There was a rip in the fence so big it looked like it had been cut with wire cutters—Abigail wasn’t sure if it was new or if she’d missed it. Cade had checked also, hadn’t he? Had he missed it, too?
Or had he seen it and not mentioned it? It wouldn’t bother him much if she lost the alpacas.
She didn’t quite know what to do. She’d lost cats before, but beyond searching the backyard and calling their name around the neighborhood, there wasn’t much to be done about a lost cat.
She’d had a dog run away when she was a kid, right after her mother died, and she’d had a doubly broken heart. She knew that if her mom had still been around they would have found Lucky. Mothers were good at that sort of thing. She remembered being so furious at her father for not being able to find her lost dog.
It was nice that Clara was sticking to her so closely, like a shadow most of the time, unless she was chewing on things she wasn’t supposed to, like that sponge.
But now—yeah, now she had a problem.
How to look for an alpaca.
Should she drive? Should she look for tracks first?
Yes. Wasn’t that what they did out here on the ranch? Search for the tracks? She really had no idea what to look for, but she figured an alpaca footprint couldn’t be too hard to figure out.
She ran back past a startled-looking Tussah, to where the break in the fence was. Yes, here were prints. They were distinctive and clear, narrow, notched ovals, and they were on both sides of the hole in the fence. Abigail wished Tom hadn’t left with Janet; he could have helped search.
But as she headed up the hill, following a dirt track that Merino had apparently found appealing, she thought it was just as well. Tom would tell Cade, who would get a huge laugh at her expense. They’d sit around all guy-like and chortle. Probably spit off the porch.
No, she’d do this by herself.
It was a gorgeous, cool, foggy day. The ground was still slightly wet. Thank God. Merino wasn’t proving hard to track at all.
Or maybe she was just good at this. Sure, she was a city slicker, or at least not a country girl, but these tracks were easy. They seemed purposeful—Merino was headed in one direction with what seemed like intent. He didn’t veer from the track he was on. His clear footprints led her forward, to a stand of oak trees.
Once in the trees, it got a little harder to follow him. Her newfound confidence didn’t flag, though, and she was prouder by the moment each time she found the disturbed place in the leaves that signaled where her animal had stepped.
The oak leaves crunched under her feet as she went, and looking back she realized that even her own footprints were evident, now that she was trying.
She glanced up between footsteps to survey the land around her. She wasn’t even sure this was still Cade’s property, although since she hadn’t had to climb over a fence, she assumed so.
The track veered now to the left, going a bit downhill. Abigail skidded on some leaves and almost fell.
Easy. This was no place to fall.
The signs were harder to find now. She struggled, taking minutes at a time between track identifications. There were other markings now, and she had no idea what kind of animals they belonged to. She hoped they were nothing that liked alpacas for dinner, though. Did mountain lions live up here?
Then she lost Merino’s tracks entirely. They were suddenly gone, the earth too hard or the leaves too thick for her to pick anything up.
She sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She’d probably been following a deer for the last half mile, anyway.
Now, to figure out which way was back to the cottage.
She stood in one spot, then headed a little bit uphill.
Yes, this was the way she had come.
But she hadn’t noticed that stump with the red paint before, and surely she would have, right? Why would a stump be painted red, all the way out here? She turned again, looking behind her.
She couldn’t identify anything.
This was ridiculous.
She walked farther. She kept walking, clambering over fallen logs, praying that she was avoiding the poison oak she knew was all around. Nothing looked familiar in the slightest. But why would it? Trees looked like trees, and she hadn’t been paying any attention at all to the land around her while she was tracking Merino—her head had been down, eyes focused only on the ground.
Maybe it might help orient her if she went uphill. She had gone downhill, after all, for quite a while, and if she got up high enough, maybe she’d be able to see the cottage or the ranch—anything.
Panting, legs burning, she climbed up. At the top of a hill, she turned all the way around, but the trees still blocked her view.
Nope. No earthly idea where she was. And she knew that Cade’s land was bordered to the north by conservation land, which could stretch on forever.
She might die in this forest.
Okay, she could admit it wasn’t really forest. At all. It was rolling hills thick with live oaks and eucalyptus.
The redwoods! She remembered that there was a stand of redwoods to one side of Cade’s ranch, and those should be easy enough to spot if she got high up enough. If she climbed one of the trees…
One oak had low, spreading limbs, and it looked like the kind of tree she had loved to climb when she was a kid. Of course, that had been years and years ago. But wasn’t it like riding a bike?
It had been years since she’d ridden a bike, too.
She took off her shoes—she’d always been better at climbing in her bare feet—and started up the trunk.
The hardest part was the first bit—jumping up to grab the lowest branch, swinging her feet up onto it at the trunk. But it got easier after that, as if her body remembered just what to do, how to lean to the next branch, to trust it would hold her weight. In what felt like no time, she had scaled her way to the top of the tree, to the highest limb that she had determined would have the best, most unimpeded view.
And there, down and to her right as the crow flew, were the redwood trees.
Thank God, she knew which way to go. She breathed a sigh of relief and started climbing down.
She slipped.
Her foot skidded off the branch she stood on. Bark peeled off in strips. Both hands tightened around the limb she was holding on to, but she couldn’t balance herself, and then she was hanging on to the limb with both hands, her feet flailing below her. She couldn’t reach with her feet the branches closest to her—all were just a few inches too far in front or behind her. She couldn’t fall—there was a limb below her that she’d break something on if she fell, not to mention the fact that the ground was still ten feet below that.
She tried to bring her foot back up on the branch that she’d slipped off, but the little jump she’d made had been too much, and the branch broke under her weight, dropping to the ground.
Now she was dangling. Abgail was going to have to fall, but she had to do her best to avoid the limb directly below her. Her heart was racing, and she threw her fear into motion—swinging with all her strength, as she had on the jungle gym as a child. As her legs flew out far enough, she gave a high scream and let herself sail.
It was a split-second’s relief as she cleared the branch below, and then she was hitting the ground, letting her knees bend as she hit, going down on her side, and rolling, rolling, until she came to a painful stop.
Abigail lay on her back, looking up at the blue sky through the oak leaves, taking assessment.
Her neck wasn’t broken; that was good. Her spine appeared to be intact. Her hands were skinned from clutching the branch, but she could wiggle her fingers.
The part she really didn’t want to think about was her left foot.
She moves her toes and gasped. Well, at least she could control them. But she couldn’t bend the ankle at all, and sitting up slowly, she reached for her foot.
It wasn’t at a funny angle, and she could press the bones with her fingers although she gasped from the pain. It was most likely a good old-fashioned ankle sprain.
But she was really damn far from the house now.
She stood, using her right leg and foot, placing no weight on her left, and took a step, placing the slightest bit of pressure on her left ankle.
She almost wept with the instant rush of pain. The shock of it was already wearing off, and the throbbing was moving in.
But she could handle it. She was strong. She was tough. She had endured worse than this before.
She took another few steps.
No, she was wrong. This
was
the worst pain she’d ever felt. She sat for a moment and let the sharpness of it subside to a dull thudding, and then stood again.
She wasn’t going to make it.
Thank God Janet was with Tom. That made it all so much simpler. She got out her cell phone; four bars of reception, even up here. God bless technology.
“Darling!” Janet answered on the first ring. “I’m sorry we’re still out, do you want us to bring you back a doggie bag?”
“I need help. I’ve hurt myself, up in the hills above the ranch. I need to be picked up—I need Tom to drive up here or something and get me.” She could barely keep the sob out of her voice. She would not cry.
Abigail heard a shuffling noise and then Tom was on the line.
“You’re hurt?” His voice was tinny in her ear. “How bad? Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
“No, I think it’s just a bad sprain, but I can’t walk on it.”
“Are you sure? We could get the air ambulance started your way…”
“A what? Do you mean a helicopter? No way in hell. Just come get me, can’t you?”
“Where are you, exactly?”
“Um. I’m above the ranch.”
“What does that mean?”
“I climbed a tree because I was lost, and all I can tell you is that if you leave the back kitchen door and climb straight up from the house into the trees, I’m somewhere in there.”
“Don’t suppose you have any better description?”
“I’m on the top of one of the rises. A lot of oak. Less eucalyptus on this hill than the others.”
“All right. I’m too far away, but I’ll call Cade and send him.”
“No!”
“Don’t you worry. He’ll find you.”
Tom dropped the line, leaving her phone quiet and dark.
God, if there was any way now she could get up and hobble, even hop out of here, she would. But every time the ankle moved, even the slightest bit, she felt queasy and the pain went straight to the top of her head.
Two minutes later, her cell rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but she knew who it was.
“No, I don’t know where I am.”
“Sounds pretty stupid to me. How did you manage this one?”
“Sheer talent.”
“Tell me how to find you.”
“Leave the house through the kitchen door, and go out in the hills. Go straight up from there.”
“Straight up how? North? Northwest? Northeast?”
“Oh, let me get a compass. Hang on for a really long time while I make one from these leaves.”
“Okay, smart-ass. Tom said you’re on the top of a rise?”
“Yes.”
“Are there any hills higher than yours?”
“I’m below the trees right now. I can’t see.”
“But when you climbed the tree, bring it back into your mind. Was there anything around you?”
“Trees. Trees were around me. Oh, yeah, I passed a red stump. So I guess I’m not lost.”
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that? Think about it. Did you see a radio tower? Mowry’s cell site? Any redwoods?”
She was quiet while she tried to remember. “I could see the redwoods by the house. And I think, to my left, there were a couple more, very tall, maybe a quarter mile away. And to my right, kind of between the ranch and the cut in the hills where you can see the ocean, I could see a metal tower, but I’m not sure if it was radio or cell.”
“Tall and triangular?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming. Sit tight.”
With little else she could do, Abigail scooted backwards until she could rest her back against the offending tree. She stuck her tongue out at it and felt immediately stupid. She was glad no one could see her.
No one could see her and she guessed it was all right if she had a little cry. Just a quick one.
She let the tears come, hot and fast. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d only been looking for her lost alpaca, and climbing the tree had been a good idea. Coming down was the hard part, that was all. That hadn’t really figured into her thought processes while going up.