One Step Too Far (Frankie Elkin #2)(75)

CHAPTER 30





We move fast. Bob and Miggy need to make adjustments to the travois to prepare it for a steep descent. Notching poles, adding a crossbar, creating a rope system to help lower it down from above, as it will be too much weight for two people to try to control from the bottom.

I start out as errand girl, riffling through Martin’s tent for any and all available rope. I grab a roll of duct tape, then any empty water containers. Once Bob and Miggy have what they need for their engineering project, I join Scott in disguising our camp. We roll up dirty clothes and stuff them into the sleeping bags in some close approximation of human forms.

I feel my fake campers are superior to Scott’s in every way, but then I logged a lot of hours perfecting such skills during my misspent youth.

Next up, Neil. The tent reeks of vomit. He really doesn’t look good, his skin color somewhere between ashen and pallid. He’s only semiconscious, enough to regard us through heavy-lidded eyes as we lift the edges of his sleeping bag and wiggle him out of the tent as carefully as possible.

I inspect the back of his head. The wound is no longer weeping, but there is one hell of a lump. I worry about swelling inside his skull but don’t magically have any more medical knowledge than I did a minute ago. Water for the patient, ice for the head injury. No ibuprofen, as it’s also a blood thinner and could increase bleeding. That’s it, all I know, and I’m not even sure how I know that much.

Scott and I exchange nervous glances. He’s also pale and sweaty, but he’s clearly resolved not to repeat the mistakes of five years ago by leaving a buddy behind. And maybe equally determined to get himself to his new wife and soon-to-be baby. Love and regret. Can’t get much more powerful motivation than that.

Bob lifts Neil into the new and improved travois, lashing the man to the carrier, sleeping bag and all. Final look around, conscious that our hunter could appear anytime, that maybe we are already standing in the crosshairs of a rifle scope . . .

Miggy tends the fire, trying to bank it just enough to still look good, while reducing the risk of it flaring up and out of control. It’s a huge violation of sound woodland practices to leave a fire burning unattended. But given the imminent danger to our own lives, it’s a risk we gotta take.

We load the last of the boiled water into our thermoses. I dump the final bit of lake water into the cooking pot, which Miggy leaves strung across the low flames. Look at this active campsite, where dinner prep is already underway!

Then the hard part. Miggy and Bob assume the position, one at each of the forward poles of the travois. Count of three, they lift the front, Neil’s head coming up, his feet remaining down low, to reduce the pressure on his skull.

Scott takes point, mostly because we need to keep his feverish form in sight. Which puts me, the weakest hiker, as sweeper. I would laugh if I wasn’t so terrified.

Our humble party of five. One injured but at least vertical. One completely incapacitated. Two who must now shoulder the load of carting that one around. And me.

Miggy had thought we could make it one mile. I hope he’s right.

So many things I didn’t know about true wilderness hiking that I now wish I still didn’t know. For all the muscle-burning, heart-racing, chest-heaving pain ascending this impossibly steep section caused me, going down is worse.

Footing is lousy. Little pebbles and loose dirt breaking free beneath our feet, till we slide more than we step. Awkward for me and Scott, dangerous as hell for Bob and Miggy trying to manage the travois.

Short, sharp declines turn out to be the easiest. Bob jumps down first. Then, given his superior height, he can pull the front of the travois nearly onto his shoulders, while Scott, Miggy, and I scramble to assist with the back end. It’s excruciating given our fatigued muscles, but at least it’s a quick burst of pain.

Whereas the incredibly long steep sections, where we once had to scramble up hand over foot . . . Now I understand the logic behind the modifications. Bob has a rope system forming a triangle at the top of the travois. The rope extends from the tip of the triangle back to Bob, where he gets to form a human anchor point, slowly unspooling the rope through gloved hands. For the truly extended segments, he recruits a nearby tree to help him bear the weight. But either way, it is painfully slow, muscle-straining, teeth-clenching work as Neil is lowered on the travois feetfirst. Miggy and I are in charge of catching the end poles, one of us on each side trying frantically to buffer the descent. It’s made even worse by my significantly smaller height, which tilts the travois dangerously to one side. After the first section, Scott takes my place. But the first real impact of the carrier’s descending weight sends him to his knees.

By the time we hit the third sharply plummeting stretch of trail, I’m ready to cry from exhaustion, while Neil is moaning softly from all the bumping and banging. I doubt we’ve made it even a quarter of a mile. No way we can keep this up much longer.

Scott is on his knees, head hanging down, either trying to regain his breath or trying not to vomit, or both.

Miggy is standing, but clearly strained. Even Bob looks haggard, having borne the brunt of our exertions this entire way.

“Leave . . . me,” Neil gasps out. “Just, stick me . . . aside.”

“No,” Miggy states sharply.

“When help . . . comes. They can . . . retrieve me.”

“No,” Scott groans.