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After one last breathy stop halfway up the wooded hill, we finally reached the plateau where a log cabin sat in front of a stony creek. Fortunately, it was well hidden amongst the pines clustered around it. Unfortunately, there was no road of any kind that I could see. Not good, if an emergency vehicle was to make its way here.
“You’re place?”
“It is,” Bryant weakly confirmed.
“Great, let’s get you inside.”
We reached the threshold just in time before Bryant let out an animalistic groan and dropped to his knees.
“No, don’t you dare die on me now!” I ground out as I frantically lifted him back up and inside the one-room cabin.
By some miracle, I managed to drag him over to the corner bed where he fully collapsed onto the quilted mattress. Another wave of pain racked him, and Bryant arched his back and groaned loudly, his eyes flashing a blue glow that made me yelp and jump back.
My first instinct was to run, but when Bryant squeezed his eyes shut and moaned again, another primal instinct to stay and fight for him took over. Then my logical brain reasoned that the glow of his eyes was just some weird optical illusion caused by the sun shining through the window or my own warped vision playing tricks on me due to my splitting head injury.
“Where’s your phone?” I asked, getting back to business.
Bryant only groaned and arched his back against another wave of agony. He was getting much worse and very fast.
I looked around the one-room cabin. Dang it all, no phone anywhere. Or electricity of any kind, for that matter. Which meant no C.B.’s or any other forms of communication to the outside world.
Of course, not. My luck just wasn’t that good today.
“How far is Silver Falls from here?” I asked him. “Bryant! Bryant, how far?”
He cracked his eyes open, rasping, “Eight.”
“Eight? Eight miles?”
He managed a weak nod.
Eight miles through the wooded mountains on foot?
No way. Not that my own swollen ankle could manage one. Or even half that.
It didn’t matter either way. Seeing the orange-amber sunbeams lower from the kitchen window, it would be dark very shortly. I would never make it to town without either getting utterly lost in the dark woods, or fall off some cliff or into a ravine to my death, or being picked off by nighttime predators.
There was nothing for it then. I would just have to try and help this man myself.
Somehow.
“Holy guacamole,” I muttered.
Bracing myself, I unlaced the front leather ties of his buckskin shirt, then carefully worked it off his torso and gently peeled the saturated compress off his sticky skin.
“Oh, God,” I moaned, forcing down my rising gorge at the horrific sight and strange metallic smell.
The blood seemed to have coagulated, but now there were angry, blue lightning streaks snaking all around the gaping bullet hole itself. I had been trained in basic first-aid, but was ill equipped to deal with something as egregious as this. Bryant needed true medical help, a hospital, a surgeon.
God, this man was going to die because I can’t help him.
“Bryant, I...I don’t know...”
He pressed the wound with his own palm. “So-kay. Get...”
“What? What do I get?”
“Top shelf. Bottle.”
