Horses, after all, were prey animals. Their only defense was flight. Joe let go of the arrow shaft and held on to the saddle horn with both hands. The underbrim of his weathered Stetson caught wind and came off. He got a flash vision of how he must look from a distance, like those poor monkeys that used to “ride” greyhounds and “race” at tracks and arenas, the monkeys jerking and flopping with every stride because they were tied on.
Buddy tore across the meadow. Blue Roanie followed, hooves thundering, gear—Joe’s tent, sleeping bag, food, clothing, grain—shaking loose as the canvas panniers caught air and crashed back and emptied against the ribs of Blue Roanie.
Both animals were panicked and thundering toward the dark wall of trees to the left. Joe threw himself forward until his cheek was hard against Buddy’s neck and he reached out for a fallen strap of leather in order to try for a one-rein stop. He knew the only way to slow the gelding down was to jerk his head around hard until his nose was pointing back at Joe.
He reached for the rein and the world shot by and in his peripheral vision he saw Blue Roanie suddenly sport an arrow in his throat and go down in a massive dusty tumble of spurting blood, flashing hooves, and flying panniers.
Joe thought, This is it. They never had any intention of letting me get away after I met them and saw their camp.
And: This is not where I want to die.
JOE MANAGED TO SLOW BUDDY to a lope just before the horse entered the wall of trees on the edge of the meadow and he welcomed the plunge into shadowed darkness because he was no longer in the open. Buddy seemed to read his mind or more likely think the same thought and he continued jogging his way through the thick lodgepole pine forest, entering a stand where the trunks seemed only a few feet apart. The canopy of the trees was so thick and interlaced overhead that direct sunlight barely dappled the forest floor, which was dry and without foliage and carpeted with inches of dead orange pine needles. It smelled dank and musty inside the stand, and Buddy’s hoofprints released ripe soil odor through the crust of needles.
The shaft of the arrow jerked back on a skeletal branch that seemed to reach out and grasp it. Joe gasped from the electric jolt of pain and bangles of brilliant red and gold shimmered before his eyes. Buddy cried out and shinnied to the left and thumped hard into the trunk of a lodgepole, crushing Joe’s left leg as well. The impact sent a shower of dried pine needles that covered Joe’s bare head and shoulders.
Finally, Buddy stopped and breathed hard from exertion and pain. “It’s okay, Buddy,” Joe whispered, reaching forward and stroking Buddy’s mane. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t.
“Let’s turn around, okay, Buddy?” Joe asked. “So we can see if anyone’s following us.”
Joe pulled steadily on the right rein—the only one he’d managed to recover—until Buddy grunted and swung his big buttocks to the left and pivoted. There was barely enough room in the trees to turn.
Joe looked back at where they’d come from. He could see no pursuers. Buddy huffed mightily, and eventually his breathing slowed and became shallow.
Then, in the distance, back in the open meadow, Joe heard a whoop. They were still out there. Which meant they had no intention of retreating into the forest after the attack, which Joe had hoped.
Joe opened his eyes wide and tried to clear his head, to think. Buddy’s labored breathing calmed, but the forward angle of his ears indicated he was still on alert. Joe was thankful his horse would be able to see, hear, or smell danger before he could.
Grasping the rough shaft of the arrow in order to steady it, Joe leaned painfully forward in the saddle. His Wranglers were black with blood that filled his boot and coursed through Buddy’s coat and down his front leg to the hoof. The air smelled of it. He couldn’t tell if it was all his blood or mixed with his horse’s blood. The arrow was a replica of the one he’d found in the tree trunk the day before, a smooth unpainted length of mountain ash, fletched with wild turkey feathers. Taking a big gulp of air, Joe pulled cautiously on the arrow and was rewarded with another bolt of pain that made him instantly light-headed. Buddy crow-hopped and made an ungodly sound like the scream of a rabbit being crushed. The arrowhead was buried in the leather of saddle and Buddy’s side, and there was no give. The barbs held. Joe let go and eased back, grimacing. He hoped the brothers hadn’t heard Buddy.
He couldn’t gauge how far the arrow had penetrated Buddy’s side because he didn’t know how long it was in the first place. It was possible the point was barely under the skin. If it was buried several inches, though, there would be organ damage and internal bleeding. Buddy could die.
Joe did a quick inventory of what gear was still with him. His yellow slicker was still tied behind the saddle and his saddlebags were filled with gloves, binoculars, his Filson vest, candy bars, a packet of Flex-Cuffs, his patrol journal, a citation book. His .40 Glock semiauto was on his belt. He cursed when he reached back for the butt of his shotgun and found an empty saddle scabbard. He’d lost his weapon of choice either on the wild ride across the meadow or in the trees, where Buddy had banged through them like a pinball. He wished he hadn’t unlashed it. And if only Blue Roanie had been able to follow, he thought. His first-aid kit was in the panniers. So was his .308.
He had to get out of the saddle to assess the wounds to his horse and to his leg. The arrow wouldn’t come out as is. So he took another gulp of air, leaned forward, grasped the shaft with both hands, broke the back end off, and tossed the piece with the fletching behind him. Then grasping his own leg like he would heave a sandbag, he slid it up and off the broken shaft. The movement and the pain convulsed him when his leg came free and he tumbled off the left side of the horse onto the forest floor, out.
WHEN HE AWOKE, he was surprised it wasn’t raining because he thought he’d heard the soft patter of rain in his subconscious. But the pine needles were dry. Joe had no idea how long he’d been out, but he guessed it had been just a few minutes. The dappling of sunlight through the branches, like spots on the haunch of a fawn, were still at the same angle. He was on his side with his left arm pinned under him and his cheek on the ground. His right leg with the holes in it was now largely numb except for dull pulses of pain that came with each heartbeat. His left leg throbbed from being crushed against the tree trunks.
It came back to him: Where he was and how he had got there.
Joe groaned and propped himself up on an elbow. Buddy stood directly over him. That’s when Joe realized it wasn’t rain he’d heard, but drops of blood from his horse striking the dry forest floor.
He rose by grasping a stirrup and pulled himself up the side of his horse. He paused with both arms across the saddle as he studied the dark and silent tangle of trees they’d come through. He saw no one. Yet.
The saddle was loose due to Buddy’s exertion and it was easy to release the cinch. He stood on his horse’s right side where the arrow was and gripped the saddle horn on the front and the cantle on the back and set his feet. “I’ll make this as painless as I can, Buddy,” he said, then grunted and swung the saddle off, careful to pull it straight away from the arrow so the hole in the leather slid up the shaft and didn’t do any more side-to-side damage. Buddy didn’t scream again or rear up, and Joe was grateful.
He examined the wound and could see the back end of the flint point just below a flap of horsehide. The point wasn’t embedded deeply after all. Apparently, the leather—and Joe’s leg—had blunted the penetration. So why all the blood? Then he saw it: another arrow was deep into Buddy’s neck on the other side. So both brothers had been firing arrows at him from opposite sides of the meadow. The neck wound was severe.