Rider’s Block

19. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter nineteen

“Bye-Bye,” Jo Dee Messina

T he hiss of the rattle is the first thing I register. I landed on my back, so it took a while for me to catch my breath. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I register pain on the side of my head, but that pain takes the back burner when I see the pit I’ve landed in. Four snakes are in their coiled-up, ready to strike position, and there are a few more surrounding them. I’m trapped. There’s no opening for me to escape, and with the way I currently can’t breathe, both from impact and fear, I wouldn’t make it very far anyways.

Somewhere in the distance I hear Eric let out a string of colorful curses. First at Roper—who’s so far gone he’s barely a blip on the horizon—then a new set of curses when he sees where I am.

“Don’t move, Mia.” Out of the corner of my eye I see him sling over Star and reach into one of the saddlebags, but I don’t want to take my gaze away from the beady eyes that are tracking my every movement. I hope none of them bit Roper.

I stay stiff as a board, not wanting to risk angering any of the snakes surrounding me. I have no idea how to deal with this, and my heart rate is through the roof.

One of the snakes starts to wiggle closer to my right foot, and instinctively I tuck it in closer to myself right as another snake strikes at my left foot. I let out a shriek from the impact and surprise, but my boots did their job, I didn’t feel a thing.

Before I can let even a shred of relief sink in, I hear the sharp cut in the air of four sequential shots of gunfire. The last thing I register before the adrenaline takes over is the four snakes around me are blasted to bits—and then I black out.

***

When my eyes crack open, I see dusk has finally set in, and the stars are making their way to the forefront of view. I try to sit up to register my surroundings, but a firm hand lands on my shoulder, setting me back down.

“Easy there, Mia.” Eric’s rough voice cuts through my confusion. “What hurts?”

I try to say a simple “Everything” to efficiently sum up the current state of my body, but even that hurts and I wince before I can get the word out.

“You landed pretty hard on your back, and then you passed out before I could make sure you didn’t hurt anything. Did you hurt anything?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can feel your legs alright?”

“Yes.”

“And your arms?”

I lift one of my arms up off of lying on my stomach, and it’s then that I notice my head is in Eric’s lap. I don’t know why it took me so long to register this; you’d think I’d notice my head being in such a nice lap. But now that I have noticed I try to sit up again, and this time he lets me.

“All limbs seem to be just fine.” I wince again at the pain in my back. I was already sore, so this is just a small addition to the party.

“I saw one of them strike but couldn’t find the bite, did he get you?”

My head snaps over to the boot one of the snakes got a hold of. I draw my foot closer, and Eric is up and by my side in a second as I examine my left boot. Right at the top of where my ankle would have been exposed in any other shoe are two little puncture marks. They don’t go through the leather, just poke it enough to leave an indentation.

The sigh out of Eric’s mouth brushes against my hair with a force that’s surprising, but he doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he pats my shoulder twice, helps me to my feet, and sets to work. He leads the remaining two horses to the bank of the river and spends the next hour setting up a fire, pitching the tent, and pulling out supplies for dinner. I offer to help where I can, but he simply grunts for me to remain where I am and stay put.

It’s then that I realize Roper is not around.

“Is Roper okay? Do we need to go find him?” I try not to let the panic show in my voice, but Eric replaces my worry with my irritation quickly.

“No, the dumb ass is barn sour and just took off toward home. He’ll be there by morning before anyone wakes up.”

“Oh, that’s good… I guess. I didn’t want him to be lost.”

“Roper knows his way home.”

“Are we going back to get him?”

“We just crossed into the Wyoming side of the ranch, and with the rodeo this weekend we don’t have time to backtrack and try again. We made too much progress today, and the important stuff is on Denis anyways. I tried to text Dean, but there’s no service out here.”

I try not to think about the fact that all of my belongings are gone. I mean, I made a big deal about needing two pairs of jeans, but I’ll be careful. And I can brush my teeth with my finger. It’ll be fine. No need to freak out. No need to freak out.

But there’s one tent. One. And my sleeping bag….it’s gone. At least I put my puffer on when the temperatures started to lower. Maybe I’ll just sleep by the fire…

“Can I help you set up anything?” I just need to busy myself. Sitting around doing nothing gives me space to overthink.

“No.” That’s it. No elaboration. No coddling. He’s off fiddle-farting around with something again. “Fiddle-farting” has never been part of my vernacular, but Dean said it the other day and it’s been stuck in my head ever since, and there’s no better way to describe the act of doing random things to avoid the person next to you than the term “fiddle-farting.” Respectively speaking.

But I mean, of course! This is the time for the grump to show up, not the friendly, bear-hugging Eric I’ve gotten to know the past week. Nope. Just the rough-and-tough, all-business cowboy who is wildly inconvenienced by my presence. Which is a good thing. Yeah. Totally a good thing. I don’t even want him to want me, so why on earth am I disappointed in the turn of his mood?

I get up to help anyways. I refuse to be a lump. I’ve pitched a tent before, so what’s stopping me from doing it now?

The supplies are easily located so I get to work putting everything together. I get the first steps done, no issues in the slightest. I even feel like I picked an advantageous spot—next to a tree, close to the fire but not too close, within sight of the horses but again, not too close—the base is set and all I’ve got to do is get these particularly pliant poles through the loops and in the cloth, and I’ll get this thing up and done before grumpy gills gets back from whatever task he’s currently doing.

But that is where I vastly, vastly overestimated my skills.

I’ve got the tip of one pole precariously placed on one end trying to secure the other… when the damn thing whips back at a speed that seems unlikely and smacks me right across my left eye.

“Son of a BITCH. Jesus! Mary! and Joseph— ”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell are you doing, Red?” My eyes are cinched shut, trying to prevent the precipitation that’s currently leaking and threatening to make me look like a blubbering fool. I feel Eric’s calloused hands bracket my face, trying to move my own hands back. “Mia, drop your hands and let me look at this.”

At his firm tone I do what he says and take my hands away. I expect to see them covered in blood, but there’s only a little trickle at my fingertips that still manages to make my stomach a little woozy. I can’t look Eric in the eyes, I’m too ashamed…and also my left eye feels like it might be a little puffier than usual.

“How many times are you going to give me a heart attack in one day? I don’t think I’ll survive another one, Red. You could have lost an eye.”

“I was just trying to help…” I can’t prevent the droop in my shoulders. In normal circumstances I am a very competent human being. My taxes are paid on time, I eat most (…most…) of my groceries before they expire, my car back home gets regular oil changes. But no. The minute my flight touched down in Colorado I’ve continued to make a fool of myself.

“Let’s clean up that cut. It could have been a lot worse, which is the story of the day, I guess. But we still need to wash it out.” Eric lets go of my face and walks toward the packs by the fire, and I miss the sturdiness of him immediately.

If I’m being honest, I miss him, friendly Eric. I don’t know why he’s taken an abrupt U-turn, but I wish I could figure out how to get him to come back. Maybe I should take Dean’s advice and give him a chance, if only for the week, to see if I can liven him up a bit.

He’s pulling out a basic first aid kit when he sees me approach, patting the log next to him with his free hand. I don’t argue as I take a seat. Without warning he’s dabbing something that sets my skin on fire directly on top of the cut.

“Is that hydrogen peroxide?” I hiss through my teeth, trying not to be more of a wimp than I already am.

“Uh…well, no. It’s whiskey.”

“Whiskey?”

“Pendleton, to be specific.”

“You’re wasting God’s golden gift to this part of the country on a cut? Stings like hell, in case you were wondering.”

That earns a small chuckle that I am wildly proud of. “It’s not a waste. It’s all I’ve got, and I’m not going to risk infection.”

Feeling a little bold, I, as casually as I can, toss out, “Can you stand the smell of it? After last time? I’ve heard people have a hard time stomaching the last drink that did them in.”

Shouldn’t have gone down that road. Big mistake. I watch that wall, for the second time today, go up immediately.

Eric grunts out an “it’s fine” and continues to dress my wound in silence.

I’m left with a butterfly Band-Aid along my eyebrow, puffy eyelids, and a sour face as I slowly roast tonight’s dinner over the fire while he fixes the rest of the tent. After a lengthy, heated debate, it’s determined that I’m sleeping in the tent while he’s out by the fire. That’s all fine and dandy, but he also tried to get me to take the sleeping bag as well, which I thought was extremely unfair.

In the end he finally relented, and I bundled up further in his Carhartt (which smells like him and I’m intentionally trying not to draw too much comfort from it) and one of the saddle blankets. This is sufficient for the first two hours, but with each hour of night that passes, and the temperature drops further, I can feel my body constricting with chills I’m not willing to acknowledge.

The next morning it’s more than obvious who got the better sleep.

I emerge from the tent ready to be the grumpy bear I feel entitled to be, but the sight of a cowboy making skillet coffee by the campfire against a ridiculously gorgeous sunrise mutes the curt greeting I had every intention of delivering.

Silently sitting down by the fire, I grab a cup and wait for the coffee to be ready. Eric apologizes for the strength of the coffee, and I try not to roll my eyes. I could have ten cups and it wouldn’t be enough for all the lack of sleep I had the night before.

It takes all of an hour to pack up camp and hit the trail again, and that’s where the last part of the equation of Roper not being here sets in.

“So, am I riding Denis or…”

At my attempt at a joke, Eric looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Absolutely not. You’re um, well, you’re just going to ride with me—”

“ With you? That was a joke! I thought you would ride Denis.”

“He can’t carry me and the equipment, and he’s not safe to ride. And he doesn’t have a saddle, so—”

“So I’m supposed to ride with you…like on the same saddle?”

“Yes.” It’s almost offensive how uncomfortable he looks about the situation. “It’s only a half day ride today. We’ll play the rest by ear.”