Chapter XV
The horses splashed across the creek, the bottom was crystal clear with flat rocks and fat trout lying somnolent in deep pools. Willows hung over the banks with pine trees behind them in quiet groves. Birds hummed lazily in the crisp air.
They were coming onto the boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It skirted the perimeter fence that stated it was Parkland and not open to hunting or trapping.
“We’ve got to be careful here,” he warned them. “We’re close to a town and other people. There are always campers out this way but we got to go through the Gap to Lilacville. Kyle’s got a car and will meet us there.”
“What about the horses?”
“We’ll leave them at the Park stables. The Ranger is a cousin of ours.” He followed the fence and found a gate within a few yards and they rode through onto a park road that was well maintained and well used. They heard the boy’s horse bolt forward and Beebe Junior twisted, thinking that his horse had taken off but the boy was leaning forward digging in his heels and kicking the gelding into a gallop. He aimed for Junior’s horse and knocked him right out of the saddle, and then pulled up. He looked down at Beebe sprawled on the ground, his face wore a puzzled look that slowly changed to one of shock. Beebe stood up and stared. A foot and a half of arrow stuck out of the boy’s chest and back, a thin trickle of blood ran from his mouth.
“Cassie!” He yelled, threw himself up onto the boy’s horse and took off. He reached around and grabbed the reins running flat out. “Cale, you saved my life, you took that arrow that was meant for me. Hang on, we’ll get you help.”
“Barton,” she yelled, riding next to him. She tried to see but they were twisting and ducking through the woods attempting to put distance between them and the shooter. The boy sagged in Barton’s arms, coughing up blood and gasping for breath.
“Aunt Cassie, we have to stop!” He cried. “We need to take care of him!”
“How far to the stables?”
“Another mile!”
“Go on! Head for it!” An arrow whistled past them and they saw the figure with the bow on the four wheeler.
“You shot the wrong one, you bastard!” She yelled. The horses’ hooves clattered on the wooden bridge as they galloped into the courtyard of the stable complex and Beebe pulled up the horse so hard that it left its feet in the air as the gelding slid to a stop. Cassie wasn’t far behind and the two pulled off the unconscious child. They laid him on the ground, and tore off his shirt to expose the arrow through his chest and lung.
“Give me your knife,” she said tersely and he handed over the wickedly sharp blade. “Hold the shaft,” she ordered and he gripped the fiberglass rod. She sawed on the piece a couple of inches from the exit wound, rolled him over on his side and did the same in the back. She threw the bloody pieces to the side. In her backpack, she dug out the med kit and wrapped gauze around the boy, padding the arrow with extra gauze and stabilizing it. She injected him with morphine, pulled back his eyelids and checked his breathing which was labored. “Lungs are filling with blood, probably lungs collapsed. Best to get your rifle, Bart. They’ll be coming for us.”
“Uncle Kyle gave me his sat-phone. We can call for help.”
“Pick him up. Let’s get him inside.” They carried him into the barn and inside the tack room, placing him on the couch. He was cold and clammy, breathing in obvious distress.
“Aunt Cassie, he pushed me out of the way to take that arrow for me.”
“I know. He probably saw it happen in a vision before it did, Bart.”
He picked up the Sig Sauer, pulled back the clip and checked that it was fully loaded with two extra clips. He handed her the gun and took the rifle and a box of shells.
“Cassie!” A voice shouted. “Come out! We’ll take care of the boy!”
“Is that you, Billy Trask?” She yelled back out the door into the aisle. “Come on in. I got a 2 ounce piece of copper and steel with your name on it!”
“Cassie, don’t let the boy die,” he begged. “Bring him out and let us take him to the doctor.”
“Bart, give me the phone,” she decided and the teenager passed it over. She dialed the number she had memorized from the boy’s wristband and spoke quickly. “I’m Cassie Elkins of Sprig’s Hollow, Tennessee. I found Cale Snowdon and he’s been with me for two weeks. This isn’t a hoax, I’ve removed stitches from his wrists, and there were 48 on each one. We’re at the Ranger stables in Smoky Mountain National Park near Lilacville. Cale is hurt. We need you. Now.”
“We’re on the way,” he tersely replied.
“How long?”
“Within a half-hour,” he promised. He hesitated. “Do you have that long?”
“No. Get here as fast as you can.”
“How bad is he?”
“He has an arrow through his lungs.”
“And the people who shot him, they are there?”
“Right outside the door.”
“Can you hold until we get there?”
“For a while. Probably longer than Cale has.”
“We’re on the way, I’ve got a Marine chopper.” He hung up. She turned to Barton Junior.
“Help me sit him up and go keep watch on the driveway. They won’t rush us, he’ll be afraid to hit Cale again. We got to hold them off till help gets here. They’ll kill us both, nephew but what they’ll do to him, he’ll never recover.”
“First, he has to survive this.”
“Yes,” she sighed, looking at him. They pulled him up into a sitting position and the bluish tint left his face. “He needs a drain tube in his lung but I’m afraid to try that,” she said. “But if I don’t, he’ll drown in his own blood.”
She went to the med kit and pulled on the latex gloves, scrubbed his side with Betadine and tore off the wrapping from the scalpel. She counted down to his third rib, worked the blade between the bones and stuck her fingers into the hole. “Look for a stomach tube, you know, one they used to worm a horse,” she said. “Something we can stick in here.”
He got up and searched through the tack room, found a box labeled vet supplies and pulled out an 8 foot coil of stiff plastic hose used to insert oil and medicine through the horse’s nose and into the gut. She cut off a foot-long piece, flattened and notched the end, and then scrubbed it with alcohol and Betadine. The boy jerked when she inserted it into the hole in his side and she pushed until she felt the mushiness of slight resistance. Blood pulsed down and his breathing eased, the blue left his lips and nails. She found Vet-wrap and tucked it around him, holding the drain tube in place. Shivers wracked his skinny frame. “He’s going into shock. We need to get him warm and raise up his feet.”
Beebe Junior grabbed an armful of horse blankets and made a mound under his feet, raising them above his head. Others he tucked atop him. The smell of horse was strong.
“We’ll worry about hair and dirt later,” Cassie said. “Right now it’s more important to keep him warm. Best go check on our guests. Take the rifle, better range.
“Yes’m,” he hesitated. “Aunt Cassie…”
“I know, Barton Lewis. I love you, too. Be careful.” He slipped out the sliding door and climbed aloft to the hay door where he could see the approach down the drive to the barn. If they came through the woods, he would not be able to see them once they were close.
“Miz Cassie, come on out. You ain’t got a lot of time to dicker with. If the boy dies, you ain’t got no leverage and I’m going to be plumb pissed at losing $150,000,” Trask yelled.
“Billy Trask, you’re lowlife scum. Trafficking in human lives is bad enough but children?”
“It’s a whole new marketplace, Cassie. People pay big bucks to have their fantasies fulfilled. A million kids disappear every year. No one misses half of them.”
“I hope you rot in hell,” she muttered and the first of the shots went off. She heard the flat report of the 30-30 and then Beebe’s surprised cry of pain, the noise as his body fell from the loft to the ground outside.
She stood at the double Dutch doors with the Sig Sauer, shot two of them and then retreated to the stall. She picked up the boy and ran with him down the aisle and out the back towards the corrals.
The bullet hit her between the shoulder blades and through the heart. They saw her stop, turn around to stare at the sheriff. She laid the boy down tenderly and then cursed them all in ringing tones. She fell over like a giant tree collapses in the woods after a storm, slowly at first and then with growing momentum.
They all knew that a dead woman had cursed them, that it was a spirit that had put the boy down and faced them. She had died the instant the rifle bullet had shattered her heart but her body did not know it. Several of the men crossed themselves and made the sign against the evil eye.
Sheriff Trask ignored her, bent over the boy and checked his pulse. “Barely there. Got to get him to doc. Jerry, go roust out the van, and bring it up here. Have the ambulance crew meet us at the junction. She done what we could have for him. Speed’s what we need now.”
He picked the boy up and they headed back down across the bridge to meet with the vehicles, loaded the child in the back and held him as the driver pushed the van on the dirt roads as fast as he dared.
They heard helicopters in the distance. The Sheriff’s lips thinned but he said nothing. He looked at the boy, pulled back his eyelids but all he could see were the whites, bluish and streaked with swollen veins. He kept his hand on the boy’s pulse and barely felt the weak and thready fluttering.
“Don’t you goddamn die, boy. Got a man will pay anything for you. Name your price, he said. Money’s no object.”
“Shouldn’t you take it out?” One of the men asked staring at the obscene objects through the pale flesh.
“No! It plugs the hole, remove it and he bleeds to death, loses the ability to breathe. Never remove an impaled object.” He braced himself as they rounded a corner and came out on blacktop at 85 mph.
In four minutes, they were at the junction of SR 35 and 46 when the ambulance crew from Sprigg’s Hollow met them and took over. They had the boy on IVs, oxygen, took his vitals and re-did his chest tube. “He needs immediate surgery, Chief. Memphis General or Charity?”
“Take us to the doc.”
“But–” They looked at his face and nodded. He rode with them in the ambulance and had his men follow to the retired surgeon’s house on the outskirts of town. They carried him into the small clinic where the Doctor had set up a free clinic to treat the locals who couldn’t afford insurance. They woke the older man out of a deep sleep.
In his late 70s, he was still tall and straight with dexterous hands and a gentle bedside manner. He also liked little boys which is why he made no demur when Trask explained the situation. “His blood type is B+,” the sheriff said. “So is Burns’. If you need any, take it from him.”
“Of course we need blood. Go get some from the bank in town. At least 12 units. Get your ass back here STAT. Alice, Simon,” he addressed the two EMTs. “Scrub up in the bathroom, I’ll need you to assist. The rest of you, get out.”
They laid the boy on the table and transferred the IV to the hanging pole as the Doctor prepped for surgery. He put him under with anesthetic and had the female EMT monitor his heart rate and respirations while he carefully scrubbed the boy down with Betadine, exposing the foot of arrow still left inside. He took x-rays and they showed exactly where the shaft hit into the pleural cavity, just missing the heart and the great veins. “Another inch and we wouldn’t be here,” he muttered. He was at it for two hours before he sutured the twin hole shut and tied off the last stitch on the drain tube. “Blood pressure is still low. He lost about a third of his blood volume. The lung collapsed.” He looked up. “These are suicide attempts on his wrists.”
“You got to watch him for that,” the sheriff said from the doorway. “He will die before he lets you use him.”
“He won’t be doing much of anything for a while. Watch him here until he recovers.”
“He won’t speak a word or acknowledge you when he does wake. He’s…”
“Autistic?”
“Catatonic.”
“Huh.” He looked thoughtful and the look in his eye turned lustful.
“Doc, you touch him in any way like that and I’ll cut off your balls. He ain’t for you. Not unless you got $150,000?”
“Be about two hours coming out of anesthesia,” he said gruffly, pulling off his gloves. “Monitor his vitals. Any problems, call me. I’m going to get coffee.” They watched him leave.