Aaron Elkins - Make No Bones

“Don’t worry,” Gideon had said, “she already knows.”

Loose rocks now made the footing going up the grade unstable, and several times the horses slipped, bringing a few sudden intakes of breath from the less self-possessed riders, Gideon included. But only Callie’s horse gave anything like trouble, skittering abruptly sidewise at one point so that Callie’s leg barely missed scraping heavily against a tree trunk. Callie, who hadn’t looked very comfortable on a horse to begin with, laughed it off, but seemed shakier and more tentative than ever in the saddle.

At the top of the grade Tracy called for their attention again.

“All right, everybody, now comes the tricky part.”

“I thought that was the tricky part,” Gideon said.

Julie laughed. “Relax, you’re doing fine.”

“What we’ve got here,” Tracy continued from her saddle, “is a spot where the trail is sort of, uh, washed away for a few yards, so it’s only a couple, three feet wide, and not too level, right along the edge, with a rock wall on the other side that sort of, uh, crowds you a little-”

“Wonderful,” Gideon muttered.

“Don’t worry so much,” Julie said. “You really are getting the hang of it, I can tell.”

“-but take my word for it, it just looks hard because you’re not a horse. I’ve seen five-year-old kids do it with no problem. If we just take the ledge one by one-”

“Ledge?” somebody exclaimed.

“Well, path,” Tracy said. “If we take it one by one, and you just let your mounts do all the work, we’ll do just fine-close your eyes if it bothers you-and I’ll have you back at the lodge in less than ten minutes.”

Tracy went first, presumably to show that it could be done, and then the others began, one at a time. The trail, about fifty feet above the stream, was not so much a ledge as an ill-defined shelf in a curving wall of loose, purplish volcanic gravel. Again the hooves slipped on the loose stones, but the slope itself wasn’t steep enough to frighten any but the most timid riders, and the first dozen or so crossed easily. Then there was a lull.

“Come on, people, let’s get it on,” Tracy called from the other side. She pointed at Callie. “Next, please, ma’am.”

“Oh!” Callie shook her head. “I’m not…I don’t think I’m ready yet. My horse is still a little jumpy.”

Tracy shrugged and pointed to Gideon. “You, please.”

“Come on, Rosebud,” he said, and nudged her gingerly with his heels. Deep in his heart he assumed she would ignore this irresolute request, but with something like a sigh she abandoned the shrub she’d been chewing and started obediently forward. Pleased, he straightened his back and settled more solidly, more commandingly into the saddle. Julie was right. Controlling a horse wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as people made it out to be. It was, after all, just a question of letting it know who was boss.

“Atta girl,” he said with masterful approval as they moved out from under the trees into the sun and Rosebud began to pick her slow way along the gravel. He leaned forward to pat the moist, muscular neck, wanting to keep her in motion. He didn’t want to have to start her up again if he could help it, not being sure of just how long he was going to be in charge.

There was a commotion behind him, from the group still waiting to cross. A horse snorted; another whinnied. Someone yelled “Shit!” Hooves scraped agitatedly. There were shouts of warning. Gideon turned in the saddle to see Callie’s horse lurching toward him, its big brown head twisting and heaving. Callie was standing rigidly in the stirrups, her face white and strained, twisting the reins. “Stop! Stop!” she was screaming at it.

“Callie-” he said.

There wasn’t time for anything else. She had managed to drag her horse away from the outer edge of the trail, so that when it bucketed wildly into Gideon’s, it was on the inside, against the rock wall. Rosebud, forced to the outside, whinnied and kicked at the other animal, at the same time frantically trying to keep her footing on the loose rocks. Gideon, his feet jarred out of the stirrups by the impact, was already beginning to tip helplessly forward out of the saddle and over her left side. He managed somehow to grab the saddle horn with one hand, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from tipping further, in what seemed weirdly like slow motion. Her mane whipped his mouth. He had a vivid impression of one wild, chestnut-colored eye a few inches from his face, rolling and showing white, and then he was turning over in the air, wondering immaterially if he still had the reins in his other hand.

He hit on his left side and shoulder, in the dusty purple gravel of the slope, and tumbled downhill, literally heels over head, seeing his legs and feet-one shoe was gone-whipping over him against a hot blue sky. On his back again he continued sliding headfirst down the slope, grabbing at the dry soil with his fingers. To his horror, Rosebud was slipping down the hillside after him in an immense fall of purple gravel. She was sliding on her rear end in a posture straight out of a kids’ Saturday-morning cartoon, down on her hindquarters like a sitting dog, her forelegs propped stiffly in front of her in a frantic effort to stop the slide. But down she came anyway, showering him with pebbles and dust, gaining rapidly on him, blocking out the sun.

All thousand pounds of her.

“Where am I?”

“Now wouldn’t you think they only said that in books?” a cheery male voice wondered. “But, no, they always do it.”

Gideon pressed his eyes more tightly shut. The sun was sharp against his lids. There was sweat on his forehead. He was lying on his back, on an uncomfortably rough surface. Somebody was pressing on his ribs.

“What happened?” he said. There was dust in his mouth.

“Yes, they say that too. When you think about it, it’s fascinating how banal people’s remarks are in situations of-”

“Gideon, you’re all right.” Julie’s voice, frightened but trying to be reassuring. “You had a fall.”

“A f-?”

Abruptly, he remembered. He tried opening his eyes but winced at the light. Julie shaded his face with her hand so he could open them again. He was still on the slope, head slightly downhill. Above, on the trail, he could see people peering anxiously down at him. At his side, leaning over him, were Julie and a man he recognized as Vern Sauer, one of the few WAFA members who wasn’t a professional anthropologist. Sauer was a physician, a coroner somewhere in Nevada.

Gideon wet his lips and spit out sour dust. “How long have I-”

“-been unconscious,” Sauer said happily. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

“Only a few seconds,” Julie said anxiously. “How do you feel?”

“Okay, I think. I’d like to get up. It’s hot.” He started to push up.

“Now you just hold your horses,” Sauer told him, pressing him back. “Sorry, I’m not much on metaphors,” he said with a laugh, and continued his prodding. “Let’s just make sure you’re all in one piece before you get going.”

Gideon lay back without resistance, swept by a billow of nausea. Julie reached for his hand.

“I’m fine, really,” he told her weakly. “A little queasy, that’s all.” He squeezed her hand.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Sauer asked.

“Two,” Gideon said. Below, near the stream, he could hear a horse stamping nervously, and the voice of one of the wranglers trying to soothe it.

“And now?”

“Three. Is that Rosebud down there?”

“Yes, she’s fine.”

“Did she fall on me?”

Sauer laughed. “If that thing landed on you, you wouldn’t have to ask. No, you got out of its way, but apparently you hit your head on a stump.” He probed some more, gently moved Gideon’s limbs, asked a few questions. Then he leaned back. “Well, it looks like he’ll live,” he told Julie.