Chapter 45 Red
Red came to in front of the ranch house.
Bucky was bending over him and he could see his friend’s mouth move, but he couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in his ears. He sat up, rubbing his face to get his senses back.
“—are you okay?” Red heard his friend’s voice as if far away.
“Yeah.” He made his mouth work. He remembered the telephone. Claire and Jenny. The dam. How was he going to get word into the canyon?
Wormsbecker stood over him, looking at the ranch house.
It hadn’t fared as well as Red had. The front half was gone, and fire lit the broken-out windows.
“Spent a fortune getting ready for the A-bomb,” Wormsbecker complained, “and here my place gets destroyed by a quake.” He glanced over at Ernie and Sam, sitting on the top rail of the pasture fence as if they were watching a rodeo.
“You two,” he snarled, “get off my fence. Start bringing horses out of the barn before the whole thing comes down.” He scowled at Endicott, who was holding Bridget’s handkerchief over his wounded arm and looking green around the gills.
Red scrambled up to standing. “Do you have a radio in the bunker?”
Wormsbecker gave him a withering look. “’Course I do, what do you take me for, some kind of idiot?” He got up and limped through the compound. Red followed on his heels with Bridget coming after.
“I’ve got everything down here.” Wormsbecker stopped at a steel door set in the ground. He pulled it up to reveal a set of stairs, then pulled a switch and lights came on. “Battery operated,” he explained. “Got a generator, too.” He leaned heavily on a steel railing as they went down the stairs.
Red had heard Wormsbecker talk about the bunker—his shelter in case of an attack by the Russians.
He figured there were a lot of things to worry about in this world, but an atomic bomb dropped on western Montana didn’t top his list. At the bottom of the steps, a room about fifteen by fifteen feet was lined with shelves of canned goods, books, and labeled boxes.
On the wall opposite the stairs was an Army cot and a desk.
Wormsbecker pointed to a box labeled with a red cross.
“Take care of Bucky and Endicott,” he ordered Bridget.
“Get out of my way,” he barked at Red, before pulling the plastic dust cover off a shiny ham radio set.
He sat down heavily at the desk and put on a set of earphones.
“If anybody knows anything, they’ll be relaying it here.
” He jabbed at a button and twisted a couple of knobs.
A meter came to life, its gauge swinging wildly.
Red watched Wormsbecker fiddle, impatience flooding through him. “Can you get ahold of the Forest Service? Or anybody in the canyon? We have to warn them about the—”
Wormsbecker held up a hand to silence him.
Red heard a crackle and a tinny voice coming from the headphones, but he couldn’t make out the words. “It’s Warren Russell over in West,” Wormsbecker said, then listened intently.
“Ask him about the dam,” Red said.
Wormsbecker gave him an irritated look, but he spoke into the microphone.
“Warren, any word on Hebgen Dam?” He was silent.
“Warren?” He pulled off the headphones. “I lost him. But he said the fire department contacted Civil Defense in Helena, and Fish and Game will fly over at first light to see the damage.”
First light? Red felt a surge of frustration. “That’s six hours from now.” By then the dam might be gone—or it could be already. He needed to get to Claire and Jenny, Beth and Frannie—not to mention all the campers in the canyon and the people farther downstream in Ennis.
A shudder rocked the room, shaking the shelves of food and sending a coffee cup skittering across the desk and shattering on the floor. Red grabbed the desk to keep from toppling over.
“Aftershocks,” Wormsbecker said unnecessarily. “This is the safest place to stay the night.”
Red wasn’t staying the night anywhere. He examined the map of Gallatin County on the wall beside the desk, tracing Hebgen Lake Road along the northern edge of the lake. “Here’s where the road fell in,” he said, more to himself than to Wormsbecker.
He couldn’t get to the canyon by that road.
He considered the southern route—driving back to West Yellowstone and taking highway 20 along the south side of the lake, then looping up on highway 287.
That route would take over an hour at the best of times.
With the damage he’d seen, his chances of making a fifty-mile trip with no scarps or slides blocking the road were unlikely.
He looked at the red pushpin that marked Sunnyslope Ranch.
Did a quick measure of the distance to the canyon as the crow flew.
He was so close. He squinted at the map.
Despite what Wormsbecker said, there was a way to get to the canyon tonight.
Red took the stairs out of the bunker two at a time. He needed to talk to Bucky.
Smoke drifted over the ranch yard, and small fires crackled and popped in the remains of the house.
Bridget was checking Bucky’s pulse. Endicott was on the grass, his injured arm swathed in a gauze wrap.
“That was a five-thousand-dollar Cadillac,” he complained when he saw Red, as if Red was the one who ran it off the scarp.
Red ignored him.
“You’re most likely concussed,” Bridget was telling Bucky. “You’ll need to take it easy for a few days.”
“Bucky,” Red said as he reached them. “I need a horse.”
Bucky peered up at him. “You’re going into the canyon.” It wasn’t a question.
Red gave a nod. “If the dam goes—or if it already went—”
“Wilder, don’t be an idiot.” Wormsbecker hobbled up. “You can’t ride into the canyon in the dark—not with these aftershocks. And you’re not risking my horses.”
Red turned on Wormsbecker. “Beth is in the canyon.”
The mention of his niece stopped Wormsbecker’s bluster. “My Beth?”
Bridget answered. “She’s with Claire. And she’s pregnant.”
Wormsbecker scowled.
“It might work,” Bucky said. “If you take the trail around Mount Hebgen to Kirkwood ridge, then follow the creek downstream, that would get you pretty close to the dam.”
“Even if you can get in there,” Wormsbecker protested, “what help can you be?”
Red had already asked himself that. Claire might not be there, or maybe he wouldn’t find her. But Red had failed Claire when he left her to go to Libby, and he wouldn’t take a chance that he might fail her again. He gave Wormsbecker a hard stare. “I’m going. And I need a horse.”
Bucky wobbled to his feet. “We could move pretty fast and get there in a few hours.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Bridget said, pushing Bucky back down to sitting. “You’re likely to fall right out of the saddle.”
Red agreed with Bridget, Bucky didn’t look up to par. “She’s right, Buck. And you need to take care of Queenie.” He jerked his head toward the gray mare.
Bucky wasn’t easily dissuaded. “You can’t go on your own. What if you get hurt out there?”
Red would take that chance. He had to.
“He won’t be on his own,” Bridget said, standing up. “I’m going with him.”
Red thought maybe his hearing was going again, but Bridget was looking at him in a stubborn way that reminded him a lot of Claire. “No,” he said. Absolutely not. He couldn’t be slowed down by an inexperienced rider. Not with so much at stake. “You hate horses.” He strode toward the pasture.
Bridget trotted after him and grabbed his arm, swinging him around and pinning him with a glare. “What if Claire needs me—if she or Jenny are hurt?”
Red gritted his teeth, but she had a point. Claire and Jenny—or others—might need medical help. “Pack some supplies and send them with me, but you are staying here.”
Bucky walked a crooked line toward them.
“We need clean water, and whatever you can find for first aid,” Bridget told him. She looked down at her nurse’s uniform, smeared with dirt and Endicott’s blood. “And I need some clothes.”
“Wait a minute,” Red sputtered. Hadn’t Bridget heard what he just said?
Bucky was already following Bridget’s orders and even Wormsbecker was going to find supplies.
Red had lost the fight. He was stuck with an inexperienced rider tagging along on a trip even he wasn’t sure was doable.
If they made it—and that was a big if—he didn’t know what they’d be facing.
Maybe it would be a good idea to have someone with medical knowledge, but did it have to be Bridget?
He walked to the back pasture where the horses milled nervously.
He’d need a good trail horse—one he could trust not to bolt at the first tremor.
And a dependable mount for Bridget. As he approached the fence, his heart lifted.
His first good luck of the night—and maybe a small nod from the Lord that he was doing the right thing.
A horse was standing beside the fence as if waiting just for him, her golden coat shining in the moonlight.
Marigold whinnied. She sounded as glad to see him as he was to see her.