Chapter 110
They fled the draw at a gallop that the terrain barely allowed. Gunfire cracked behind them, bullets striking rock and kicking dirt near the horses’ hooves, and Charlotte kept the mare’s head low as she pushed through the gap between two boulders with Mason and the gelding close behind.
The bullet caught the gelding in the left hindquarter as they cleared the draw’s western exit.
Charlotte heard the wet impact, saw the animal falter, and felt something cold settle in her chest. The gelding recovered its stride for three more steps, then the leg began to drag.
She reined the mare around. Mason was still mounted, his face set with the controlled fear of a child who understood that stopping meant danger, but so did continuing.
“We need to get off the open ground,” Charlotte said. “Now.”
They found shelter in the lee of a granite outcropping half a mile north. It wasn’t a cave but a recess where the stone had sheared away from the hillside, creating a shallow overhang deep enough to conceal the horses and high enough that the entrance wasn’t visible from the plateau below.
Charlotte helped Mason down first, then dismounted and ran her hands over the gelding’s hindquarters.
The bullet had torn a groove along the muscle, deep enough to bleed steadily but not deep enough to hit bone.
The horse stood, its weight shifted to the right, watching.
She worked quickly. The medical kit from the military camp included antiseptic, gauze, and a topical antibiotic safe for horses, all in measured doses.
She cleaned the wound, packed it with gauze, and secured a bandage with tape from her own supplies.
The gelding tolerated it without protest.
“It’ll heal, but he can’t carry weight for at least three days. Probably more.”
Mason stood beside the horse with one hand on its neck. He’d been watching Charlotte’s hands as she worked, the way he watched everything now, with the focused attention of a child assembling the world from adult actions. “They’re still out there,” he said.
“I know they are.”
“How long do we stay?”
“Until he can walk without opening the wound. However long that takes.”
She set up camp beneath the overhang with methodical care.
The horses were positioned where the rock broke the wind, and Jack settled against Mason’s leg with his ears alert.
The first day passed in near silence. Charlotte changed the gelding’s bandage morning and evening.
Mason gathered dry grass for the horses and filtered water from a seep twenty yards down the slope.
On the second morning, Charlotte unpacked the Walkman and a new set of batteries.
She fitted the headphones over her ears and pressed play on the first tape, the one marked for beginners.
The voice was female and measured, with the careful enunciation of an educational recording.
It began with a formal greeting, then a simple question about how someone was doing, each phrase repeated in a patient sequence for memorization through exposure.
She listened for an hour. The language arranged itself in her mind as sound patterns first and the meaning second.
She repeated phrases quietly, feeling the unfamiliar shapes in her mouth.
Mason sat cross-legged with Jack’s head in his lap, shelling pine nuts they’d gathered from a nearby stand, and watched her lips as she formed the Russian sounds.
“Can I try?” he asked on the third morning.
She handed him the headphones. He settled them over his ears, pressed rewind on the cassette, and listened. His facility was immediate. By midday, he was repeating phrases with an accent cleaner than Charlotte’s, and by evening, he had memorized the first lesson through repetition.
They took turns. One would listen and repeat, then teach the other what they’d learned.
It became a game with rules they invented as they went: no English during practice, points for remembering the longest phrase, and a point deducted for laughing at your own mistakes.
On the fourth day, as Charlotte changed the gelding’s bandage for the eighth time, Mason spoke to her in Russian from where he sat cleaning the rifle they’d taken from the soldier.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” Charlotte replied.
“How are you?”
“I’m all right. And you?”
“I’m tired,” he said. Then he corrected his pronunciation and repeated the phrase.
“I understand,” Charlotte said.
They continued in Russian. Mason asked about the horses.
Charlotte described the bandage change simply.
They discussed the weather, the food, and Jack’s behavior.
It wasn’t fluent or even coherent by any standard measure.
Still, it was complete, a back-and-forth exchange in a tongue neither of them had spoken two weeks earlier.
When they finished, Mason set down the Walkman and looked at Charlotte.
“We just talked in Russian,” he said.
“We did,” Charlotte said.
He smiled. It was small, careful, and genuine—the first real smile she’d seen from him since the farm. The gelding nosed Mason’s shoulder. The wound had closed to a pink line beneath fresh bandages, and the horse stood with its weight evenly distributed, ears forward, ready to move when they were.
“Tomorrow,” Mason said in Russian.
“Tomorrow,” Charlotte agreed.
They packed camp that evening. As the light faded, Charlotte sat beside Mason beneath the overhang and watched the plateau turn gold in the late sun. His hands rested on his knees, and the tremor was gone, replaced by the steady readiness of a child who had endured and was still enduring.