Dario dropped three feet before the rope stopped his fall, swinging him across the shaft opening and into the wall below Hunter. Adan swung in space because Dario’s sudden drop knocked him off his perch. Hunter said, “Hold on, I’m pulling Dario up first.”
Hunter had her heels braced against a short ridge of stone near the mine opening, and her rear was low so she could use maximum leg power. Dario was lighter than she expected, but was still a hundred pounds to lift, and with no pulley, just strength, needed to go straight up the mine wall. Her hands burned, but the gloves helped, and her back and legs began quivering when he came up fifteen of the twenty feet. The last five feet had her huffing and straining, but she got his body over the lip and positioned him face up on the stone floor.
Her legs felt like jelly as she stood and moved to help Adan up from his rope. Adan could assist so it didn’t take as much effort, but at the end, Hunter felt drained. She knew she would recover soon, but the need to get Dario somewhere for medical attention pressed her mind with urgency.
She said to Adan, “Get behind him and prop him up against you. I need to get some water in him.”
Adan moved above Dario’s head and sat with his legs wide, leaving the injured boy’s head between his thighs. He reached under the boy’s armpits, lifting and scooting him up while he leaned back, until Dario’s limp head was only a few inches lower than his own, with the back of his head lolling against his friend’s chest.
He looks bad, Hunter thought. She brought the water to him and put several drops on his lips. Dario responded, and she added more. His eyes opened and she held up the canteen. He nodded yes. She fed him small sips for the next ten minutes, until he recovered enough to speak, “My back really hurts.”
She said, “We’ll turn you over, and I’ll put some medicine on it.”
He nodded, and Adan and Hunter turned him on his side, so that he was three-quarters over, but not face down. She glanced at Adan’s shirt and saw it red and sticky with blood. A good amount of blood. She motioned for the medicine kit. She stripped off her gloves and opened the canvas bag, taking out a rolled pair of pale blue nitrile gloves and slipping them on. She pulled out several items and turned to Dario’s back. She took the canteen and poured water into and around the wound. It made Dario hiss through his teeth, and squeeze Adan’s hand, but he didn’t say a word. She looked at the wound, using the flashlight beam to check for any grit or dirt or iron residue still there, but the wound looked clean. It was bruised but free of debris.
She next took a tube of Neosporin with pain reliever in it and squeezed the entire tube into the wound, then folded the flaps of skin down so it held the medicine. She covered the wound with two, four-by-four telfa pads, which she taped down, and for extra measure wrapped Dario’s chest and the wound with an ace bandage to anchor it all in place. “Okay,” she said, and rose to her feet. Pulling off the blue latex gloves left her hands feeling sweaty, so she wiped them on her pants and said to Adan, “We need to get him to the vehicle, then to a medical facility.”
Dario surprised them both by struggling to stand, and they stood on both sides and helped him to his feet. He was wobbly, but tough, and the three of them walked out of the mine and the shed to the pickup on the slope. Dario got in the back seat and lay on his side. Hunter used a seatbelt to strap across him.
Adan glanced over his shoulder at his friend, and said to Hunter, “He looks better after the water.”
“The hospital in Ojinaga is on the Avenida Cuautemoc, so we can get there fast because it is a wide road.” She turned the pickup around and drove off the hill, with rocks and talus banging into the undercarriage as she maneuvered on the primitive road. She caught a quick wink of light on a nearby hill and studied the area, but didn’t make out anyone. Probably an old bottle, she thought. Hunter turned her focus on the road and the race to get her little friend to some help.
Ellis pulled his binoculars down and watched the Border Patrol Agent drive like a crazy person down the hill, and on to more level roads that would lead her to Camino 160, and from there to Ojinaga. He called from the top of the hill, and although reception was scratchy, got old man Hart on the line.
“You find them?”
“Yeah, been watching them for over an hour. They went to the mine.”
“And?”
“Two went in, and three came out. The kid went to the truck once for some supplies. A canteen and a canvas bag. She parked the pickup in some cedars which half-blocked my line of sight.”
“Nothing else?”
“I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll call you back when I get through.”
“Make it tomorrow, I have two state representatives coming out in a few minutes to socialize and talk over some matters.”
“They coming by copter?”
“Of course. I had my pilot pick them up.”
“Talk to you tomorrow.” Ellis hung up and drove toward the mine, thinking all the while about Hart, and the old journal he’d found twenty years ago, the one from the original patriarch of the hart clan, from 1850, when he first came to the Big Bend area with nefarious scalphunter and sadistic killer John Glanton. In his journal he’d been eloquent, a good speller, and an arrogant, evil sonofabitch. The thought made Ellis smile.
He followed behind Hunter’s pickup at a distance, being careful not to get close and raise her suspicion. Ellis let his imagination wander, and thought what that fine, fine woman looked like out of uniform, and buck naked on a bed. He might just find out, and sometime soon. Some itches had to be scratched.
His first had been when he was thirteen, under some thin trees on a rock-covered rise near Blackwell, Texas. She was willing at first, even started it by wanting to see his “thing”, but then, when they both had their clothes off and he was on top of her, she grew reluctant. She fought him and cried when it was done. That would have been the end of it but she threatened him through her tears, saying “I’m going to tell my momma and daddy what you did.”
He didn’t remember picking up the sharp-edged rock the size of a softball, but it was in his hand, and bloody, as he looked down at the girl’s body on the ground. She didn’t move, other than to let out one last rattling gasp. He pulled her into the brush and found a shallow trench where he put her, then covered her with dirt and stones and old leaves and twigs.
There’s been more since then. And a lot more when he worked in El Salvador and Nicaragua with the Sandinistas, He’d had all the women he wanted. But sometimes, he needed the extra thrill, and had some that he killed right after he finished. It was like an adrenaline rush, every time. Never any witnesses, no sir. So maybe, he’d do the same thing with this Hunter Kincaid, after finishing some more things for the Harts. Have to be careful with her, though. The woman was a federal agent, and was said to be a good shot.
But then again, he was better than good, and he’d had his way with the ones he wounded, too. A bullet low in the spine stopped them every time. They were alive but couldn’t run, or fight very well. The thoughts made a pleasant drive back to Ojinaga.
Hunter sped into Ojinaga and got on the Avenida, then in minutes she was at the hospital and pulling into the emergency parking area. Nurses and a physician came out and took Dario on a stretcher as Hunter explained what had happened. She left off the part where Ellis pushed Dario into the mine, otherwise the police would be involved and she would never get away from here. Adan backed up her story, saying that he and Dario were looking around when his friend stumbled and fell into the abandoned mine, and he had panicked, not knowing what to do at first, and then remembering he’d seen his friend, Hunter Kincaid nearby, and ran to her for help. Together they rescued Dario and drove him to Ojinaga’s great hospital. The doctors weren’t positive they were hearing the total truth, but they were busy, so let Hunter and Adan go.