Cowgirl Thrillers by Barbara Neville

Wolf has finished breakfast and hung the food out of the reach of bears. He has also bundled the bedding, tack and such under the tarpaulins and put them up in the crotch of a big willow tree. He leads us to where he scouted, out into an area on the backside of camp.

  “Here, by the crick, one print, go into water,” he says. “Likely Buzz. But only one hoof print show, hard to tell.”

  I look and agree, “Same size hoof as Buzz’ horse.”

  “All we got to go by,” says Spud.

  We head out. Wolf is afoot and closest to the water, on the far side from where the tracks went into the crick. Spud is on the west side. I am farther out from Wolf, on the east side of the crick looking fer sign leaving the water.

  “Three loose horses and Buzz riding the fourth, gotta be tracks. Unless they flew,” I say.

  Wolf looks blandly at me.

  “Can Bãngh fly?”

  He shrugs.

  “Yeah, no. Hell, Buzz wouldn’t of blew up nothin’ in the fire.” I say, “My reasoning makes no sense.”

  “Mm-hm. Maybe alien crazy, like Wolf say.”

  “Yeah, and the loose horses likely went another way. We just missed the sign in the grass. Long walk home fer Spud,” I say.

  “Annie not notice? Wolf walking. Spud ride Wolf horse. Cowboy never walk,” Wolf says and smiles at his own joke.

  “You two are somethin’,” I say.

  Indian summer, just as Wolf predicted, is hard upon us. The day is warming to extry hot and the crick is arisin’ fast.

  “Woo ta,” says Wolf as he jumps out of the way of a six-inch wall of water plowing its way down the draw.

  “That ‘un snuck up behind ya,” I say, laughing.

  We are heading downstream on the crick, below the beaver dam, about four miles below by now.

  I say, “Still no sign of the tracks leavin’ the water. Did we miss ‘em?”

  “Wolf hear big water ahead, could be a swim in this weather,” says Wolf, then he squats down. “Ho. Here on bank. Big foot tracks here, same tread as in Buffalo Spirit Cave. Man get off horse. Pee on bush here. Small print here, woman. Squat here, pee. Ride horse double. They remount and continue toward river. Horse have big hooves.”

  I ride over and look at the sign. “Alright. Now, we are gettin’ somewheres.”

  We move on, food fer thought there. Beaver Crick is still rising. As the day gets progressively warmer, more snow melts into it.

  We get to where the crick joins a large roiling river. It is swollen to flood stage with the snowmelt and running with debris. Some huge logs are heading past as we pull up to near the edge.

  I look back at the racing water. Time to turn back.

  “Whoop,” yells Spud. We look across the crick. He is waving his arms and pointing. There is a body on one of the logs on the far side of the channel.

  “Is that Buzz?” I ask, kicking Joe over to the river’s edge.

  “It is someone,” says Wolf.

  We all boil in at the same time. Wolf swims by, faster than Joe. Spud, on Scout, is ahead of us both, as he started in across the crick, downstream from us. But now Scout is floundering, so Spud slips off and grabs his tail. Takes a horse but a few paddles to learn to swim, but the current and floating debris complicate things. Another log goes past me. Downstream, it knocks Spud loose from Scout. I am still aboard Joe, but have lost sight of the log with the body.

  Joe hits a shallow bar, finds his footing and stands up for a few seconds. I have a quick bird’s eye view. I can see Wolf swimming strongly for the body, which is still lying across the log. Joe slips off the roiling sand bar and we head downstream toward Wolf. I didn’t have time to spot Spud.

  I see Wolf pull up out of the water midstream. Is he on a rock? No, Scout’s head bobs up. Wolf is in the saddle.

  Joe slows suddenly and pins his ears, looking back past me.

  I start to look back to see what is going on, just as Spud says, “Easy, Joe, just me hitchin’ a ride.”

  Horses are not real fond of having their tails pulled upon without warning. Fortunately, Joe doesn’t kick him.

  We are beset by jagged tree limbs, flotsam and other things I don’t even want to identify. Spud is safer now with Joe in front of him, breaking a water trail. The current is so strong we are mostly being pushed downstream by the roiling water. We are not making much headway getting across. It will take quite a while to reach the other shore. As we round a bend, the riverbed drops and we are in a small rapids.

  I hear a cough and look to the right.

  “Here,” says a voice. Wolf is just downstream in the eddy.

  Spud swims up on Joe’s right side and pulls his head over to help him turn upstream toward Wolf.

  “Don’t try to climb up on me, pal,” he says.

  I direct rein to the right, pulling Joe’s head around, to help steer. I also frog kick with my left leg.

  “If we can get over...” I start to say.

  A standing wave drops a big gulp right in my kisser. I kick, cough and steer my damndest. The current pushes us farther and farther down the river. I slip out of the saddle and try floating free on Joe’s left side, pushing on the saddle horn and kicking with both legs. This seems to work the best.

  Spud, Joe and I are putting all the push we can into it. Joe is the main propulsion. He wants, more than anything, to get over to his equine companion.

  Finally, Spud gets to a sandbar and stands up, still holding onto Joe’s headstall. Joe’s butt swings out into the current. I just manage to hang on to the horn as his barrel tries to mow me under. His big horse butt swings on around toward me. He ends up ass end downstream on the edge of the quiet water.

  I can finally stand, too, in the neutral zone between the current and the eddy. We are among massive swirls of debris. Spud pulls us on into the upstream trending eddy. Wolf is there. He has his rope on the log. Scout is doing his roping horse best to hold it in place as the current tries to swing the log back out into the river. Wolf is at last getting close enough to grab the body. Spud and Joe, with me back aboard, swim over to help.

  “Here.” I toss my rope to Spud. He wraps the loop over the fat end of the log. I take a dally on the saddle horn and Joe pulls it toward shore. Spud gets himself over to Wolf. The two of them grab the body and take it to the riverbank. I undo my rope and Spud goes back out and frees Scout’s rope just before the current grabs the log and pulls it back out into the raging torrent.

  We stumble into shore, slogging through mud and debris.

  Wolf is doing mouth to mouth on the body, so I guess he is at least close to being alive.

  “You need help?” Spud asks. Wolf, mouth busy, waves him away.

  Spud and I drop the shivering horse’s reins and get busy gathering anything dry enough to burn. You ever been in a snowmelt river? Not warm and comfy at all.

  I walk over by Wolf with a pile of dry needles and grass, along with a few tiny sticks.

  I kneel by him saying, “I carry steel wool in my saddle bags fer just such an occasion.” A match lights the fine waterproof steel quickly. It’s high heat gets our wood slivers lit and they warm the damp kindling.

  Wolf just keeps working.

  Spud walks up with some bigger wood and soon, hellza poppin’. We take off our wet clothes and do some jumping jacks to get the blood flowing. We jog in place, rubbing our hands over our arms, before the growing fire.

  I look at Spud, “How is he?”

  He shrugs his shoulders and says, “Pretty beat up.”

  He is covered in goose bumps. I look down. Oh. Yeah. So am I. Shivering, too.

  As soon as we can take it, we run out for more wood. The sun is still warm, which is an immense help.

  Once the flames are about three feet high, I go to see if I can do anything to help Wolf. Spud runs out for more wood. We will need a big pile to get us thoroughly dry.

  The two horses have spread out to graze. We can deal with them later. They, being much larger and tougher, are easily w
armed by the sun. We do need to get the tack off them and dry the saddle blankets to use for our own warmth.

  Wolf is still bent over the body doing something.

  I lean down and ask, “Is he breathing?”

  “No,” says Wolf.

  “Fuck.”

  Wolf continues, “She is breathing.”

  “She?”

  “Girl.”

  “Not Buzz then.”

  “No. Not Buzz. Small girl.”

  “Oh, okay. Someone you know?”

  “Stranger.”

  “What can I do? Do we need to get her over by the fire?”

  “Fire?” Wolf asks and looks around. His was completely engrossed with saving the girl. “Oh. Yes.”

  I grab her feet, Wolf her shoulders and we carry her closer. Her face is blue from the cold, also badly swollen and bruised. There is a rasping breathy rhythm of air flowing in and out of her lungs. Spud walks up with our dusters, which were rolled inside the rain slickers. They are wet around the edges, but have some dry area in the middle. I pull the soaked clothes off of the girl and we put the driest of the dusters over the girl, on the side away from the blaze.

  After a few more minutes, Spud says, “We got enough coals now. Let’s make a second fire behind, then we will be warmed by both.”

  He grabs two green sticks and using them like chopsticks picks up coals and makes a new fire base on the other side of our patient. I pull some big half burned branches out and move them across, too.

  Wolf says, “Annie, lay by her. Share warmth.”

  I lie down and wrap my arms around her. Feeling her various parts to be sure the fire don’t barbecue nothing important.

  “Lucky to be alive,” I say.

  Wolf looks up from disrobing and nods. He is busy struggling out of his dripping, clinging clothes.

  Spud has gotten the horses. He leads them over, unsaddles and turns them loose. He unties the saddle strings and lays out all the stuff, emptying the saddlebags also. Then, he stretches a rope between two trees and hangs coats, saddle blankets and such on it to dry. Wolf carries in a big flat rock for a makeshift cook’s table. He lays it with the flat surface angling toward the fire and spreads the food on its surface to dry.

  After he finishes, Spud comes over to look at our nearly drowned rat. He squints and even turns ther head a bit to try different angles.

  “Damn it, she’s a mess,” he says, and looks at me. “Her face is terrible swole’ up already. Looks like she’s been through hell.”

  “Yeah. And, man was she cold. Must have been out there a long time, getting tumbled in all that flotsam.”

  Spud spears some more sticks into the ground, tying them together to make tripods. He hangs our coats and clothes closer to the fire. They will continue to dry as the sun gets lower and the cold starts to creep in. The girl and I are getting slowly warmer. I am getting bored though, laying still and cuddling with our hypothermic friend.

  So I natter.

  “Shit, Spud, you look as much like Buzz as any of us. You Bãngh?” I ask to entertain myself

  “Damned if I know. Wouldn’t mind havin’ some of them powers.” Spud is still jumpin’ and huggin’ himself between chores trying to stop his shivers. “Right now, the power to stay warm would be awesome.”

  “What exactly are these powers ever’one talks about?”

  “Hells bells girl, if I was Bãngh, I reckon I would know, right? Can ya have powers and not know it? ‘Sides, we all think you are the one who is the Bãngha,” Spud adds jokingly.

  “Mebbe so. Now, if I had powers what would I go fer?” I figger fer a bit. “Oh. Yeah, I got one. Beamin’. I could transport myself to a warm dry cabin.”

  “Yep,” says Spud. “I’d go fer that.”

  I sober and say, “I wonder how long this poor lady was in the river?”

  “Almost too long.”

  “True. Where did Wolf get to?”

  “He run off a bit ago. Gettin’ his blood flowin’, I’m thinkin’,” says Spud as he throws more logs on the fires.

  I spot Wolf coming around a tree and point with my chin, saying, “There he is.”

  Wolf is heading toward us, running. He stops and picks something up.

  “Sucker’s gatherin’ dinner,” says Spud. “I’d best go he’p.”

  Wolf is rustling us up some wild food. He is impressive, running between edible plants, picking our dinner as he dries off. Spud appears off to the right, doing the same. The amazing survival brothers.

  I am still cuddling with the nearly drowned girl and rubbing circulation back into her limbs. Occasionally I get up to rearrange the drying saddle blankets, and clothes. And to stoke the fire. Finally, I have an actual dry warm blanket. I cover our foundling with it to hold her body heat in.

  Wolf walks in with a bundle of greens and such.

  “Ain’t much,” he says.

  “We got jerky and pemmican from our saddle bags. Likely wet after our swim. Needs to be dried out or eaten.”

  “Some dried apricots on Scout, too.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I feel lucky to’ve survived that ‘un.”

  “‘Twas a good day to die,” says Wolf, “but a day of big challenges is an even better day to live.”

  Spud comes in and adds his treasures to our pile.

  “Acorns,” he says, cracking one and handing it to me.

  We three sit between the two fires and eat our jerky, raw greens and acorns. For dessert, we have the sweet pemmican and apricots.

  The girl is much warmer but still unconscious as we settle down between the long beds of coals to rest ourselves.

  We have stockpiled wood on each end of the fires, to add during the night. Plus, all our clothes and coats on, although they are also not totally dry yet. Our body heat plus the fires will finish the job. We will be warm enough.

  By bedtime, we’re feeling very lucky to have even one newly dry saddle blanket apiece. Sleeping two abreast helps us share heat and save firewood.

  “Mm.” I say as I lay an odoriferous saddle blanket over myself. “I fucking love the smell of horseflesh at bedtime.”

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