Far Country (63 page)

           
“Just about. Are you still cold?”

           
“
Mmm
. A bit,” Kelly admitted.

           
Steve shifted the foil emergency blanket higher, so it covered Kelly’s
shoulders more completely.  “Good thing that you held on to that duffle
bag when we jumped. These blankets may have saved our lives.”

           
“Guess it was all part of God’s plan, forcing you to leave it at the top of the
cliff last week,” she commented with a weak smile.

           
Her stomach growled loudly. “Did He think to pack us breakfast, too?” She asked
without much hope. “I’m starving.”

           
“Actually…” Steve reached behind his head and rifled his hand through a side
pocket in the bag. “How about a couple of energy bars?” He offered.

           
Kelly ripped off the wrapper and took a big bite. She groaned in pleasure, and
a smile of contentment spread across her battered face.  “I do love the
way God works,” she sighed. “A very real help in times of trouble,” she quoted,
taking another bite.

           
“Yeah,” Steve agreed, half grimacing, “if you’ve got the faith to obey.
Personally, I would have questioned the idea of falling two stories and
spending the night stranded in this bird’s nest.”

           
“Do you suppose that’s why God gave me the dream, instead of you?” She pondered
between bites. “I didn’t think, I just –  did.”

           
 Steve shrugged. “That just goes to prove it was God leading you. If you’d
asked my opinion last night, I’d have told you we stood a better chance of
surviving multiple gunshot wounds over jumping off a hundred foot cliff.”

           
Kelly touched the torn and bloody sleeve of his shirt. “So now you can say that
you survived both yesterday.”

           
Steve looked at the dried blood with detached interest.  “I’d almost
forgotten about that – I’ve got about a hundred other places that hurt worse…”
He grinned. “Guess it was…
nuthin
’ but a flesh wound.”
He rumbled in his best John Wayne accent, and then he shrugged at Kelly’s
startled look. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

           
Kelly rolled her eyes and fell back against his other shoulder. “Just don’t
start calling me your ‘little lady’,” she warned him. 

           
She took another bite of her energy bar and chewed it pensively.  “What
are we going to do now?” She asked at last. “You don’t think that he’s still at
the top waiting for us, do you?” She wondered a little nervously.

           
Steve was silent for a moment, and then he shifted uncomfortably. “No, I’m
pretty sure he’s not.”

           
Kelly’s eyes wandered uncertainly up the side of the cliff. “But how can you be
sure?”

           
“David’s allergic to bee stings,” Steve told her bleakly. “From the look of
you, the entire hive swarmed again last night, and as the only living thing
moving up there, I expect that at least a few of them found him. If he didn’t
get medical attention pretty quick, he wouldn’t have had much of a
chance…”  Steve’s voice trailed off. Even now, the thought of deliberately
luring David into the path of a hornet’s nest sickened him. It would be an ugly
way to die!

           
Kelly’s eyes widened in comprehension as Steve’s desperate plan finally became
clear to her. He had been willing to sacrifice himself to lure David close
enough to the hive so that she would have a chance to escape. She touched his
face, and her voice was soft and understanding. “Don’t think about it right
now,” she told him gently. “You did what you had to. He didn’t leave you much
choice.”

           
Steve took a big breath and let it out slowly. He nodded. Kelly was right. He
hadn’t had many choices left, and right now was not the time to indulge in
regret over a decision he’d made in desperation. Still, he didn’t know how he
would be able to look into Lee Ann Bolton’s eyes, knowing that he’d caused the
death of both her children…and possibly Richard Bolton’s death as well.

           
Don’t think about that now!
He told himself firmly.

Instead,
Steve stretched his arms and winced, finally aware of the path the bullet had
traveled across his bicep. “Other than this little nick,” he said in a
determinedly upbeat tone, “we’re in pretty good shape, really. Neither of us
seems to have broken anything, thanks to all this mud. That’s a huge blessing
right there!”

           
“But nobody knows
were
we are!” Kelly reminded him.
“We could be here for hours - maybe even
days
before somebody finds us!”

           
“Well, once again, thanks to God’s provision and your good sense, we have the
duffle bag.  And in the duffle bag is a harness, and all the tools we’ll
need to climb out of here.”

           
“Except a rope,” she pointed out dryly.

           
“That’s because.” Steve told her as he struggled to his knees. “It’s already in
position.  Pete anchored the rope himself, right over there, just before
the yellow jackets attacked us.” Steve said sadly, pointing to the mud caked
chords snaking up the ravine only a few feet from their ledge.

           
Kelly stared at it for a moment, suddenly unable to swallow the lump in her
throat as once again she remembered the look of surprise on Pete’s face as he
slowly collapsed beside his bride. “I still can’t believe that David just shot
him like that,” she whispered as tears blurred her vision.  “And why,” she
asked in bewilderment, “would God allow someone like Pete to be killed on his
wedding day? I don’t understand why He would make provision to save us, and not
Pete, too.”

           
Steve was quiet for a long time. “That’s the sort of question we can’t always
know the reason for. All we can do is believe that God will use this tragedy
for good purposes. Reverend Graham always told me that the darkness cannot
overcome the light.”  He shrugged.  “Maybe someday, we’ll
understand.” 

           
Kelly drew a ragged breath.  Tears welled in her eyes, and Steve realized
that tears were beginning to blur his vision as well. But he did not dare to
give into the grief yet.  They were still stranded down here. He ran his
muddy sleeve across his moist eyes and stood up. Every inch of his body
protested as he stretched and shook himself to loosen up the frozen joints and
muscles.  “We can’t think about it right now,” he reminded her roughly.
“We still have to get out of here.  As you pointed out, I don’t think that
anyone has a clue where we are, so it’s up to us.”

           
Kelly nodded, knowing that Steve was right. Dismally, she got to her knees,
folded the foil blankets and pulled the duffle bag closer, searching for the
storage packet. Where the bag had been sitting, though, she noticed a filthy,
faded blue nylon day pack, half buried in the muck and debris that had washed
off of the side of the ravine. Muddy and torn, it had obviously been there a
long time. Gingerly, Kelly held it up for Steve to see.

           
“I think that this is the pack that Alyssa was wearing when she fell!” Kelly
told him in surprise.

           
Steve nodded. “Must be,” he agreed, wondering guiltily if he should tell Kelly
about what Alyssa had done.

           
Kelly saw the look on his face and smiled.  “It’s okay,” she reassured
him. “Alyssa ‘
fessed
up during our last trip up here
about the money she took.  “She also told me that you had blessed her out
good for going behind the barrier, too.  Thank you for giving her some
good advice.”  Kelly laid the pack inside the duffle bag.

           
Steve couldn’t stand it.  “Aren’t you going to even check to see if the
money’s still there?” He asked.

           
She shook her head.  “It can wait…” suddenly, she looked up at Steve, comprehension
dawning on her face. She looked up at the dangling rope and back at the day
pack.  “You were trying to find it for her, weren’t you?” She
exclaimed.  “That’s the reason you and Pete were here last week!

           
Steve shrugged in answer. “That’s what I thought, but I think God had another
purpose. Anyway, I’m glad that Alyssa told you the truth at last.”

           
  He picked up a branch and swiped at the rope that dangled a few feet
beyond his reach.

           
“Careful,” Kelly breathed as Steve stretched dangerously far over the edge
toward  the rope.

           
Steve hooked the rope safely and drew it back toward their ledge. His eyes
widened in disbelief as he got a better look at their location in the ravine.
He shook his head in wonder. “Kelly, I don’t think that you appreciate just how
precise your leap of faith was last night. You need to really take a look at
where we are and where we could have ended
up.”           
            The pale shadows
of dawn had faded and the sun had risen, shining its light around them. 
For the first time really, Kelly stared up, and up even higher, trying to trace
the way they had fallen in the dark.  She inched forward to the edge of
their little pocket in the cliff side, looking up and then down, realizing just
how huge a miracle it was that they had escaped death. On either side of the
tiny ledge where they had spent the night, the sides of the ravine fell away in
a nearly vertical drop.  Nowhere else was there so much as a handhold for
a person to cling to on the sheer cliff wall.    

           
“Dear God,” she breathed, awed that somehow God had guided her forward charge
to the exact coordinates of this ten foot wide cradle of safety in an otherwise
vertical terrain.
Still
…

           
“Steve?” She asked in a small voice, as she watched him sort through the gear
in the duffle bag. “You know that I don’t know how to rock climb, and….” She
gulped. “I’m pretty much terrified of heights.”

           
Steve paused and stared at her incredulously.  ‘Kelly, you jumped off of a
cliff in the dark at a dead run without a rope! How can you say that you’re
afraid of heights?”

           
She smiled weakly.  “That was pretty much a God thing,” she pointed out.
“I can’t take much credit for it.  Normally, I’m quite content to simply
look at the view from a safe perch.”

           
“So,” Steve asked her skeptically, taking her hands. “Are you telling me that
you’d rather stay down here?”  

           
“No!” She said emphatically. “I want to go home! –and I want a bath!” She
muttered. “A hot one with lots of bubbles.”  And then as an afterthought
she added, “A cup of coffee and a stack of pancakes would be pretty nice right
now, too.”

           
Steve chuckled. “Just keep telling yourself that,” he said with a smile. “It’s
a simple equation.  If you don’t want to stay, then one way or another,
you will have to climb up.”

           
“But what if – I can’t?” She asked helplessly in a weak voice.

           
“Fortunately for you, I’m a natural at this,” He told her, smiling. “Pete told
me so, and he never lied to me. He stayed with me until I got my own nerve
back, and I’ll be here with you, too, Kelly.  I’ll show you everything
that you need to do. It will be all right.”

           
She nodded, trying to feel comforted by his words.

           
Steve sat back and pulled out the spare nylon harness and
carabiner
. 
“Now, I need to explain to you how to use these. I’m going up first. Then, I’ll
drop this over the side, and you will need to be able to put this on correctly.
Once you’re harnessed, then I can pull you up.”

           
She looked at him doubtfully. “You’ll pull me up all by yourself?”

           
He held out a handful of spikes. “I’ll set these as I climb. You can use them as
handholds and that will help me to pull you up.”

           
Kelly nodded, but her face had gone pale with dread.

           
Steve sighed at the sight of her. “Kelly, God didn’t direct our feet to this
aerie last night just to let us fall to our deaths this morning. That’s not how
He works!” 

           
She chewed on her lip and finally nodded. Slowly she exhaled. “You’re right. I
trusted Him to save us last night in the dark. I’ll trust him again in the
daylight to see us safely back to the top.”

           
Steve smiled in approval. “Good girl. Now this is what you’re going to do…”

           
It was late morning when the police car pulled up to the Emergency Room
entrance, its lights flashing in warning, but without the accompaniment of a
siren.  Two hospital attendants waited by the door with wheelchairs,
flanked on either side by a group of reporters, who were poised to engulf the
occupants of the back seat as soon as their feet touched the pavement.

           
Kelly and Steve kept their heads down, avoiding the questions and wincing as
the cameras flashed like a
lightening
storm around
them. They were too exhausted to try to pose for any pictures, too heartsick
over the fate of their friends to even try to be courteous to the mob.
 They fell into the wheelchairs, and the attendants whisked them through
the emergency room ward and into the examination rooms, while the two police
officers held the reporters off at the doors.