RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Rose fell to her knees beside the clear pool
of water. Almost overwhelmed with relief, she dropped her head to the cool liquid
and gulped down great mouthfuls of it. It was slightly brackish, like many
desert water holes, but she was too thirsty to care.
Once her thirst was quenched, Rose sat up,
wiping her mouth on the back of hand. For the first time, she took a good look
around her.
The pool of water was small, but clean and
fresh, perhaps twenty feet across. On the far bank, a swath of winter-brown
cattails stood, their dry leaves rustling faintly in the slight breeze. Tall
palm trees, their trunks covered by dead fronds, grew thickly in the small
canyon, as well as leafless willows, their swelling leaf buds showing that
spring was just around the corner. The hillsides above were dotted with yucca,
century plants, ocotillo, and cacti, as well as the ubiquitous creosote bush.
The tracks of animals were imprinted in the mud around the spring-fed pool.
Sitting back, Rose allowed herself to rest
for a moment, only then realizing just how exhausted she was. She hadn’t eaten
in four days, and had drunk only the juice of the cacti she had broken open.
The cut on her head, exposed to the dry air, was doing better, but she was near
her limits, and desperately needed food and rest.
Food was her first priority. Getting to her
feet, Rose made her way to the stand of cattails. Picking up a dry stick along
the way, she dug into the soft mud surrounding the plants until she had
succeeding in unearthing several of them. Rinsing them in the spring, she
cleaned away the dead leaves until she came across the fresh roots, hearts, and
young green bases of the cattails. Sitting back on her heels, she slowly ate
two of the plants, knowing that to eat quickly after going without food for so
long would probably make her sick. It didn’t take much to fill her shrunken
stomach, but she had never found the potato-flavored roots so delicious. Hunger
was an excellent seasoning.
Having eaten for the first time in days, Rose
put the remaining plants in her pockets and stumbled over to one of the palm
trees. Pulling off several fronds, she shook them to make certain no biting
insects or reptiles were concealed within them. Piling them on the ground some
distance from the water, she lay down on the soft pile, pulling two of the
larger fronds over her for protection against the growing chill of evening.
Curling up, she closed her eyes.
*****
She was awakened by the chirp of birds and
the feeling of sunlight on her face. Sitting up, she pushed the fronds off,
feeling more rested than she had in days. Slowly, she got up, yawning and
stretching, before making her way down to the pool for a drink of water. After
eating the rest of the cattail plants she had dug up, she thought about what to
do next.
She wasn’t ready to move on, that was
certain. She needed to take a few days to rest and recuperate, and to think
about what to do next. Sitting on a sun-warmed rock, she thought about what to
do.
She had seen no evidence of people anywhere
near the canyon, but there were fresh tracks of wild animals all around the
water. She was surprised that none had awakened her the night before, but she
had been so exhausted that it would have been difficult to wake her, and she
supposed that many animals might be skittish around humans. She would have been
an easy target for a hungry predator, but she had been fortunate. None had come
near her. There were no tracks around her makeshift bed of palm fronds, though
there was evidence that some small animal had been caught and eaten near the
water.
Her first concern was to treat the cut on her
head, and then to find more food. There were plenty of cattails, but they
wouldn’t sustain her—not in her weakened condition. She needed more than the
watery vegetables to survive.
Making her way to the willow trees, Rose used
the sharp rock from her pocket to cut several slender twigs. She remembered
from the book she had bought in Alaska that willows were good painkillers if
chewed or made into a tea, and they could be placed on wounds to help healing.
She didn’t have any matches, and she wasn’t
strong enough to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, so she chewed the
willow twigs, grimacing at the bitter taste. Willow had been used medicinally
for millennia, but it had been a decided improvement when the active chemical
had been isolated and made into the modern painkiller aspirin.
In spite of the bitter taste, Rose soon felt
the painkilling effects of the herb. The aching, stinging pain in the cut on
her head eased, and she put the chewed bits of willow on the rock while she
stripped off her filthy clothes and waded into the pool to bathe. She didn’t like
the idea of polluting the clean water by bathing in it, but the spring that fed
the pond was constantly washing the old water away and putting in new.
Feeling refreshed, even though the shaded
water was cold, Rose tore a strip from her shirt, washed it thoroughly, and
used it to bind the chewed willow twig poultice to the cut on her head. It was
beginning to scab over, dry scabs that precluded infection, but she wasn’t
taking any chances. It would be easy for her to die of infection out here, with
no one to help her.
That done, Rose turned to the task of washing
her filthy, blood and dirt encrusted clothes. She grimaced at the sight of the
blood on her shirt, both hers and Guerrero’s, and left it soaking in the cold
water while she cleaned her other clothes and set them out to dry. She was glad
that there was no one nearby to see her. The birds and lizards couldn’t care
less whether she was clothed or not.
As she went to retrieve her shirt, Rose
looked into a clear section of the pond with sunlight slanting over it.
Examining her face, she saw that she had lost weight and was sunburned, her
eyes sunken into her reddened face. Her hair was matted, and there were dark
circles under her eyes in spite of the rest she had had the night before. She
still felt tired, but there were things she had to do before she could rest
again.
Retrieving her torn shirt from where she had
left it to soak, Rose knelt down at the edge of the pond and began to rub the
bloodstains with sand. She had no soap or bluing, but sand was also useful for
cleaning. The bloodstains didn’t completely come out, but the shirt was cleaner
than it had been, and she put it back on, ignoring its damp, tattered
condition. She had no other shirt, and she couldn’t walk around searching for
food without it.
As soon as she was dressed, Rose looked
around, considering what kind of food might be found. What she needed most was
meat, but that would have to wait until she could pounce upon some unsuspecting
animal. She had no gun, and her aim with rocks at a moving target was poor, to
say the least. The animals would come to the pond to drink at night, and she
could try to catch one then. In the meantime, she needed to explore any other
resources.
There were no fish in the pond, but she went
back to the stand of cattails and dug up a dozen more, stripping them down and
wrapping the edible portions in the dead leaves. Looking around, she realized
that the ground was littered with berries from the palm trees. She had heard
that palm fruits were edible; they were called dates, she remembered.
The fruits on the ground were well-trampled
by the wildlife, and many of them had been eaten with only the seeds remaining,
but there were a number of strings of berries still hanging from the trees.
Fetching several rocks from the hillside, Rose flung them at the strings of
fruit, cheering to herself when a stone found its target and a cluster of fruit
fell to the ground. She might not be able to hit moving targets with a thrown
rock, but the stationary clusters of dates were another matter.
Adding them to her small hoard of food, she
looked around, wondering what else in this watered spot might prove edible.
Walking slowly down the canyon, she knocked several dried cactus fruits to the
ground, placing them on a plate made from the stem of a palm frond. Checking
the dried pods of the yuccas, she recalled being told that the seeds could
eaten, and shook them out, filling one pocket with the dry seeds.
Making her way back to the pond, Rose looked
at what she had collected and began to sort it out, determination replacing her
earlier despair. She would survive, whatever happened.
When the food she had gathered was arranged
on several sections of palm frond, she took a thick section of frond stem and a
dry cattail stem and attempted to make a fire. She had never made a fire by
rubbing two pieces of wood together, but she was willing to try.
After about half an hour, Rose admitted that
her attempt at fire building wasn’t working. She had cleared a space, to
prevent a fire from getting out of control and ravaging the area, and had
collected the necessary materials, but thus far none of her attempts at
spinning the cattail stick against the palm wood had done more than create a
slight warmth.
She was getting frustrated when an idea
occurred to her. Taking the sharp rock, she dug a small depression in the palm
wood, then inserted the cattail stick, holding it in place. She was still tired
and weak, but this time her attempt was successful. After about twenty minutes
of intense spinning, the wood finally smoked, then formed a hot coal that
burned through the palm stem into the pile of dry tinder below.
Blowing on it, Rose added more bits of dry
grass and leaves, then larger twigs, and finally some of the pieces of wood she
had collected. None of the pieces of fuel were very large, so she had to feed
the fire often, or bank it, but it was a source of warmth and protection.
Waiting for sunset, Rose skewered the dried
cactus fruits on a green willow stick, burning off the spines before eating them.
Once the burned outsides were cooled and the charcoal scraped off, they were a
concentrated, sweet source of food. She ate the seeds, too, parching them on a
flat rock heated by the fire.
At sunset, Rose banked her fire and crept
into a hidden spot beneath the willow brush to wait. The animals would come to
drink soon, and, while she certainly couldn’t run fast enough to catch one, if
she had the element of surprise she might be able to grab an unwary creature,
preferably not one with a poisonous bite, though at this point a rattlesnake
was beginning to sound good so long as she could kill it without being bitten.
She didn’t have long to wait. Several
rabbits, lured by the water, came close. They hesitated, noses twitching at her
scent, but with water so scarce in the desert they had little choice but to
drink. Rose watched them closely, waiting for one to come closer, waiting for
one of them to let its guard down. She especially kept an eye on a scraggly,
weak-looking animal.
When the rabbit ventured close to her hiding
place, she pounced. She caught hold of the rabbit, but it struggled, and she
lost her grip, dropping it into the pond. As the animal struggled to get out of
the water, she grabbed it again, this time getting a firmer hold on the wet animal.
As the rabbit kicked and made a high-pitched squealing noise, frightening the
other rabbits away, she dashed its head against a rock, ending its struggles.
The rabbit went limp, dead from the blow, its eyes still open and appearing to
stare at her accusingly.
Rose could hardly bring herself to cook and
eat the animal, but she needed meat, and after going to the trouble to kill the
creature, she wasn’t very well going to leave it to rot or be eaten by
predators. Using her sharp stone, which she had accidentally improved by
dropping it and breaking a sharp piece off, she hacked at the skin. She knew
how to skin an animal, of course, but it was much harder with a rock than with
a steel knife, and she had butchered a good part of the skin as well as the meat
before she had succeeded at skinning the rabbit and gutting it.
Stuffing the edible innards back into the
animal, as well as some pieces of the cattail plants, Rose raked away the ashes
and placed the rabbit directly on the coals, using two green sticks to turn it
every so often. It seemed to take forever for the meat to cook, and she finally
used her sticks to rake some coals over it, cooking it more quickly.
As she watched it cook, she remembered when
had learned many of these survival skills in Alaska. The desert was a much
different environment, but some things were the same. Meat could be cooked on
coals equally well in Alaska and Mexico, and while the plants were different,
edible parts could still be collected and eaten. Indeed, she had known just how
to prepare the rabbit because they existed in both places, as did cattails and
willows.
Finally, the meat was cooked. The coals had
burned it black on the outside, but the inside was warm and juicy, the
vegetables and organs she had stuffed inside cooked to perfection. It had been
a long time since she had eaten rabbit, and her guilt over killing the animal
didn’t lessen her enjoyment of her meal. She had been starving for days, and it
surprised her when she was able to eat the entire rabbit and pick the bits of
meat from the bones. She wrapped the bones and leftover innards in the skin and
crept into the brush some distance from her camp, leaving the skin lying open.
Some coyote or bobcat would undoubtedly clean up the remains.
Wrapping up her remaining supplies of fruits,
vegetables, and seeds, Rose tucked them under her frond bed and lay down,
staring at the faint glow of coals from the banked fire. She was tired, but
sleep did not come as easily as she had expected.
Her mind was racing. What would she do next?
She had decided to stay at the oasis for a few days, until the cut on her head
was healed and she had had a chance to collect a little food to take with her.
The swelling buds on the willow told her that spring was coming, and the
landscape to the north had a large number of cacti, so she shouldn’t have much
trouble surviving.
The United States was only two or three days
journey away at most. She had seen a familiar range of mountains to the north
while searching for food that day, and if she headed northwest, she would
eventually arrive in a populated area of California, and undoubtedly run across
some populated areas of Mexico on the way. She knew that her bedraggled
appearance would put people off, but she would probably be able to get food and
water, even if she had to steal it. The question was, what would she do once
she returned to the United States?
Staying in Mexico was out of the question,
obviously. She didn’t know anyone except her kidnappers, and she really didn’t
want to meet them again. She could be in trouble with the law if they had
reported her for killing Guerrero, and didn’t think she would last long if they
found her again. The chances of their finding her in the vast desert were
remote, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The chances of a plane being shot
down by bandits were also remote, but it had happened. She was lucky to be
alive.
In addition to not wanting to meet her
captors again, she didn’t speak much Spanish. As much as she dreaded going back
to the United States and admitting that she had failed to bring Will back,
there was nothing for her in Mexico. She doubted that Esther was still alive—it
had been a good month since she had left on her search for the old woman’s
grandson—but she didn’t want to think about how she would break the news to her
if she was alive.
Rose lay back in her pile of fronds,
wondering how she had gotten herself into this mess. A month ago, she had set
out to find Esther’s grandson and bring him back to claim his inheritance. Now,
the grandson was dead, and she herself was running for her life through the
forbidding desert. She had killed another person and had sold herself in
exchange for survival.
Curling up, Rose wrapped her arms around her
legs, sickened at the thought of what she had done. It had been necessary for
her survival, but she didn’t feel any better about it. She hated killing, hated
playing the whore. Guerrero’s face haunted her, as did Marietta’s, and she
would never be able to forget either of them. She dreaded returning to the United
States, fearing that she would have to tell Esther about Will’s death, though
the chances of the sick woman still being alive were very slim.
Looking up at the sky, Rose focused her gaze
on the brilliant stars overhead. Nearby, at the pond, she could hear the sounds
of animals coming to drink, the sounds of other animals stalking them. Few
predators would come close to her with the fire, but she still curled up
tighter, praying that they would not consider her to be an easy meal. She had
no weapon but her stone knife, and at that moment she desperately wished that
she had the faithful Tripper at her side, ready to defend her.
The hours passed, and at last Rose slept, but
it was an uneasy sleep, with her memories of the past and her fears about the
future impinging upon her dreams.