Chapter 13
When Bonnie ran off into the darkness after Robert’s horse, she had no idea how hard it would be to find the animal with only starlight to see by.
It hadn’t seemed like such a gargantuan task when she’d considered it briefly; however, as she ran through the grass, stumbling and falling, she realized that as a city girl, she was ill-suited to life out here.
How was she going to find the horse and then find Unity in the middle of all this nothing? She hadn’t even seen which way they had come since she was covered in the tarpaulin on the back of the cart.
“Well, this is one big mess you’ve landed yourself in, Bonnie,” she said when she couldn’t run anymore and was forced to walk. Hopefully she was far enough away from the bandit camp.
She came to a rise, and at the top of it, she stood looking out over the black and featureless landscape. Darn it! She had hoped to see light or something nearby, a farm or anything that looked like civilization.
Nothing.
With a heavy sigh, she made her way down the other side of the rise, slipping and sliding when the gradient turned out to be steeper than she had thought in the dark.
Now, it was possible to get lost back home in New York. It was possible to get lost anywhere. But there, she had always had an idea of which way to go to find her bearings again. Out here in the dark, she was lost, like a babe in the woods. Except there was mostly grass and no woods.
After a while of walking, Bonnie decided to give up.
It was pointless in the dark. She had no idea where she was going, and for all she knew, she had been turned around and was heading back to the bandits’ camp.
She did not want that. So, she found a solitary tree on a little rise and sat down with her back to it.
All around her, the night creatures whooped and howled and rustled and chittered, clicked and chirruped.
It was terrifying. After a couple of minutes of watching eyes that glowed in the dark move around her, she inspected the tree.
It had branches she could reach, so she hauled herself up into them and spent the rest of the night aloft.
It was easier to think in her safe little nook, and now the doubt came creeping in.
Should she have run off, or should she have tried to help Jeff and the others?
What could she have done? Maybe unfastened their bonds when the bandits were asleep?
Maybe rescued them, and they could all be on their way home right now instead of her trying to sleep in a tree?
Bonnie considered going back, but which way was that exactly? She had no idea and decided that there was nothing to be done but wait for dawn. Perhaps Jeff wasn’t having too bad a night of it, and she could still get to Unity and get help before he was hurt or worse.
She consoled herself with a promise that she made to him and herself.
She would make up for running off blindly into the dark, which she was convinced had been the wrong thing to do.
She would get help in whatever form it took, and she would find Jeff and the others and save them.
El Aguila wouldn’t win because she was a silly city girl who didn’t know the first thing about getting around out here.
No matter what it took, she was going to get her husband and his friends back.
When dawn came, spreading its warmth and very welcome light over the world, Bonnie climbed down from her perch in the tree to find a welcome sight. Robert’s horse was just down the rise, cropping the grass.
“Well, hello there,” she said to the stallion.
He whinnied and let her rub his nose. Perhaps he remembered her smell.
“Okay, I’m not the world’s greatest rider, but I think together we can make this work,” Bonnie said.
Taking a deep breath, she put her foot in the stirrup and tried to get herself in the saddle. The stirrup was too long, being set for Robert, and she couldn’t get herself high enough to get her other leg over. She landed on the ground with one foot still stuck in the stirrup.
The horse took a step to the side.
“Hey! Whoa!” she said firmly.
Pulling her foot free, she spent a moment working out how to shorten the stirrups. That took a little while, but once she was done, she climbed laboriously into the saddle. With the reins in her hands, she flicked them, and the horse began to walk.
And now came the question of which way to go. Bonnie had no idea.
“So, boy, which way? Take me home,” she said to him.
The horse might have understood her or not, but he chose a direction and set off.
At first Bonnie felt wonderful. She was on the move with a creature that no doubt had a much better sense of direction than she did, and she might get back to town before too much time had passed.
Jeff and the others needed her to go and get help.
That was definite. She doubted that they would get out of this on their own. They were too outnumbered.
For most of the day, getting hungrier and thirstier, Bonnie rode on the stallion’s back. He was in no particular hurry to get back, but as the afternoon wore on, the animal seemed to feel some sense of urgency, or perhaps he smelled something familiar on the air.
Whatever the reason, by the time the sun was beginning to set, Bonnie reached something that looked like the beginning of civilization. She reached a log cabin that looked out onto a wide stretch of green grass dotted with cows.
“Bonnie?”
Looking around, she saw a man who looked familiar, although she couldn’t quite place him.
“It’s me, Kyle,” the man said, walking up to the horse. “What are you doing on Trojan?”
“Is that his name?” Bonnie asked. “I didn’t know what to call him.”
Kyle took Trojan by the bridle and patted the horse’s neck. “Where is Robert? Where are the others?”
“I need to speak to Andrew and Michael right away,” she said. The desire to get immediate help for Jeff was tempered by the awareness that she was dangerously in need of water first, or she might faint and be unconscious for who knows how long. “But first, I really need something to drink.”
Kyle helped her down from the saddle. Her backside was so sore, but sitting on a padded stool was quite pleasant. He gave her some water, bread, and cold meat with fresh-cut tomatoes and slices of cheese. Bonnie wolfed it all down as she told Kyle the whole story of what had happened.
When she was feeling less lightheaded and he’d fed and watered Trojan, they hurried up the street in the fading light to Michael’s house.
“It’s closer than Andrew’s place,” Kyle said as he knocked on the door.
It was opened a moment later by Emily and Michael, both standing in the entrance hall.
“Oh, my goodness!” Emily exclaimed when she saw the state Bonnie was in.
Bonnie tried to pat her hair down and pull some of the leaves and twigs and things from her clothing.
“What happened? Where is Jeff?” Michael asked.
“They’re in trouble,” Kyle said.
What followed was a lot of explaining. Bonnie had expected there would be some of that at least, but she had thought things would progress faster.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have let Kyle give her water and food.
Perhaps she should have run up the street straight away, yelling until people came to her aid.
But she’d been so weak. And she suspected that things here took as long as they did, no matter how the news was delivered.
Once Michael knew the story, people gathered at his house and a kind of committee meeting started. Plans were made and dashed and made again. It was crazy to Bonnie, who could only think of one approach, mainly grabbing lanterns and horses and riding out to find the men.
She was asked to describe where she had been over and over.
The men consulted maps and jabbed them with their fingers, pointing out possible locations.
The ridge she had climbed, and the rocky outcroppings and the creek seemed to be landmarks they could work with but still left them with at least three or four possible places where the bandits could be hiding.
Emily brought them all dinner as they talked about plans and options. Then she took Bonnie away with her to the kitchen.
“they’ll still be at it for at least another hour if I’m any judge,” she said. “But you look exhausted and as though you’ve been rolling around in the dirt.”
“I fell a lot,” Bonnie said by way of explanation.
“Take a nice bath; nothing will happen until the morning,” Emily said.
Bonnie wasn’t happy with that, but what could she do? Finding her way in the dark hadn’t been easy, and she suspected that the men wouldn’t go rushing all over the place with nothing but lantern light to guide them.
As she undressed and sank into the water Emily had warmed for her in the tub, she realized that there were two forces at play here.
There was the emotional panic that threatened to overwhelm her, making her want to run out into the night, screaming for Jeff to come home.
There was also the logical, more rational force that said to wait for morning.
Jeff could hopefully hold on for a night.
When Bonnie was clean and dried and in some fresh clothes that Emily had fetched from her house, she went back to the meeting.
“Ah, Bonnie,” Michael said with a big smile. “You’ll be happy to know that we will be leaving at first light to get Jeff and the others back. You’ve provided some wonderful information about where they are. We’ll bring them home.”
“I’m coming too,” Bonnie said hastily.
“I don’t think you need to,” Michael said.
“But I do,” she insisted.
“Michael, Jeff is her husband. We wouldn’t even have known what happened if not for her. If she wants to come, let her,” Andrew said. Then he turned to Bonnie. “You can hang back while we deal with the bandits. Tell me, can you shoot a gun?”
“Oh sure,” she said. She had been forced to learn when the trouble started in her neighborhood. Uncle Leo had insisted, for her own safety. “I can handle a pistol.”