27. Still Here #2
Yesterday, the words had meant proof. Today they felt like something Harris needed to keep hearing.
Nearly an hour later, a horse called somewhere beyond the smoke.
Harris stopped so abruptly Jay nearly walked into him and stood listening until the sound came again, faint but unmistakable.
Rain. He was moving before he consciously decided to, following the call through scorched timber until they emerged into one of the surviving sections of the old burn.
Rain stood near the far edge, soot streaking her pale coat and several inches of mane singed rough along one side.
Red was farther back near a slab of granite.
The sight of both horses standing hit Harris hard enough that he stopped for a second before Rain saw him and started toward him.
He met her halfway and put both hands against her face, barely registering the pain that tore through his burned palm when she pushed her nose into his chest.
“Hey, pretty girl.”
His voice didn’t work properly. Harris closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers, remembering how much force it had taken to strike her and send her away when every instinct in him had wanted to follow.
He had promised Nell he would keep Rain safe, and last night keeping that promise had required him to do the one thing that felt most like breaking it: let her go somewhere he couldn’t protect her.
Rain had known what to do without him. She had survived.
When Harris finally lifted his head, Jay was already beside Red. He had crouched near the gelding’s left hind leg, and something about the way he was studying it made Harris cross the distance quickly.
“What?”
“His leg.”
Now that Harris was looking for it, Red was favoring the left hind badly.
The leg had swollen from the hock down, and a long raw strip ran along the outside where hair and skin had been scraped away, with dried blood darkening the lower edge.
Harris ran a careful hand down the uninjured side, then asked him to take a few steps.
Red obeyed but shortened the stride sharply and shifted weight off the leg as soon as he stopped.
Jay watched Harris’s face. “How bad?”
“Could be worse.”
“That answer has lost considerable value since yesterday.”
Nothing felt obviously broken, and Red could walk, but there was enough swelling and pain that Harris wasn’t willing to put a rider on him. “He can follow. Nobody’s getting on him.”
Jay glanced toward Rain and then back at Harris, already looking suspicious.
“You are.”
“Harris—”
“You almost went down ten minutes ago.”
“And you have one functioning hand and possibly broken ribs.”
“I can walk.”
“That remains an extremely low standard.”
The argument ended when a cough bent Jay forward. Harris waited while he braced both hands against his knees and fought his way through it, and by the time Jay straightened again his face had gone pale beneath the soot.
“You’re riding Rain.”
Jay looked toward the mare. “We don’t have a bridle.”
“Don’t need one. She’ll stay with me.”
Rain had already drifted back to Harris’s shoulder, as if interested in demonstrating the point herself. Jay looked between them and managed a tired, “Of course she will.”
Harris helped him mount from Rain’s left side, doing most of the lifting with his unburned arm and regretting it immediately when the movement pulled at his ribs. Jay got one leg over and settled bareback, both hands disappearing into Rain’s mane while he found his balance.
“You staying on?”
“Probably.”
“Good enough.”
Harris started east, and Rain simply came with him.
There was no rope between them and no need for one.
She stayed near his shoulder as they worked their way across the burned ground, occasionally moving ahead when deadfall forced them into single file and then slowing until Harris caught up.
Jay sat forward over her neck, conserving whatever energy he had left, while Red followed several yards behind.
His injured leg made his stride stiff and uneven, but he continued bearing enough weight to move without being driven.
Their pace was slow, though Harris had stopped caring much about speed.
Rain found routes around smoking roots and damaged timber before he did, and Harris let her choose whenever her judgment looked better than his own.
He checked Red’s gait often and Jay’s condition even more often, trying unsuccessfully to keep the latter from becoming obvious.
Eventually Jay looked down at him. “Still here.”
“I know.”
Harris faced forward again and kept walking. He didn’t need the words to carry anything larger than what they meant. Jay was awake, breathing, and sitting on Rain beside him. After the night they had survived, that was enough information.
They reached the Forest Service road shortly before eleven. Fresh tire tracks crossed the ash, and Harris stopped long enough to try the radio. This time a fragment of speech surfaced beneath the static—something about units searching north—before disappearing again.
Jay lifted his head. “They’re looking for us?”
“Could be.”
Harris keyed the radio. “Harris Shaw. North Ridge, upper Forest Service road east of the old lookout. Two people, two horses. Anybody copy?”
Static swallowed the response. He tried once more before clipping the radio back to his belt and starting south again.
The road made the footing easier, but by noon every step was pulling harder at Harris’s ribs and his burned hand had swollen enough inside the dressing that he had stopped trying to flex it.
Jay looked worse. His shoulders sagged with Rain’s movement, and whenever her gait stayed steady for too long, his eyes began to close.
“Jay.”
His eyes opened.
Several minutes later Harris had to say his name again, and this time Jay looked down at him with faint irritation. “This is getting repetitive.”
Good. Harris would take irritated.
“Stay awake.”
Jay gave him a look that required more energy than anything else he had done in the past hour, then faced forward again.
A shadow crossed the road not long afterward, followed almost immediately by the heavy chop of helicopter blades somewhere above the smoke.
Jay lifted one arm while Harris pulled the radio free again and called their position.
They shouted even though the aircraft remained invisible, and Jay kept waving until the motion sent him sideways on Rain.
Harris caught his leg. “Easy.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure.”
Jay looked down at him, apparently too exhausted to think of a reply. The helicopter continued east and faded, leaving them with the road and the smoke and no choice except to keep moving.
The road bent around the shoulder of the ridge, and something red appeared between the burned trees ahead. Harris stared at it for a second before his mind made sense of the shape: an engine, with two firefighters already climbing out.
One of them started toward them. “Shaw?”
“Yup.”
“Jesus Christ. We’ve got half the county looking for you.”
Harris barely heard the rest. “Ranch?”
“Main structures are standing.”
Not everything, maybe, but enough that the place still existed.
“Family at the evac center?”
“Everybody’s accounted for.”
Harris closed his eyes briefly as Della, Walt, Evan, Elise, Willa and June moved through his mind one after another, all of them alive somewhere beyond the mountain. Beside him, Jay let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
The firefighter looked past them toward the horses. “Those yours?”
“Yeah. Red needs a vet as soon as you can get one up here. Call Claire Shaw—she knows the horses.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
Only then did Harris look up at Jay. Staying on Rain seemed to have used whatever remained of him; his face had gone gray beneath the soot, and when he started to dismount, his first foot reached the road before the rest of his body followed too quickly.
Harris caught him around the waist. Pain pulled viciously beneath his ribs, but he kept Jay upright until his weight settled against him.
“I’ve got you.”
“I know.”
By the time the firefighter reached them, Jay was still leaning heavily into Harris’s side. “He took a lot of smoke,” Harris said. “Lost consciousness last night. Was confused after. Still dizzy and coughing.”
Jay lifted his head. “He got hit by a tree.”
Harris looked at him.
“And burned his hand.”
The firefighter’s attention shifted immediately. “You coughing too?”
Harris glared at Jay. “Some.”
“You’re both getting checked.”
Harris had no energy left for an argument he clearly wasn’t going to win. Another firefighter went toward Red while Rain remained loose beside them, exactly where she had chosen to stay, and Jay sagged a little more heavily against Harris.
Harris adjusted his arm around him and felt the solid warmth of Jay’s body, the movement of his breathing, the fact that when Harris shifted his grip Jay shifted with him.
Still here.
For now, that was enough.