Rain Shadow (27 page)

Melissa spoke softly, “You lied to me. Why?”

A tingling sensation spread through Taylor’s limbs as her heart began
to pound. She felt like a confused rabbit that had been chased inside the fence and found there were no places left to run.

“I had an abortion at fourteen weeks, Melissa.” Taylor clenched the phone and listened to the silence on the other end. “I know you must think I’m a hypocrite with all my advice. I’m not a very good example, or friend.” Her chin began to tremble. “Maybe you need someone else to help you through this pregnancy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t. Can’t you see why after today? I don’t want to talk about it. I gotta go … ride.”

“Taylor!”

“I’ll call you later, bye.”

Taylor clicked the phone shut and pressed the power button.

It only took a few minutes to tack up Rain. She swung her leg over the mare and settled into the seat of the saddle. Clucking to the horse Taylor guided her out of the driveway and toward the trail head a short mile away.



Chapter 36

N

o one watched her clip-clopping down the road already darkening with shadows. The towering pines edging the roadway seemed to be pushing the light to the other side of the valley. It glowed golden in the late afternoon sun. Taylor reached down to pat the mare.

“We won’t go too far, Rain. Just need to clear my head.”

Rain picked her way easily over the large rocks blocking the entrance
to the maze of logging roads and trails that constituted their training ground for Ride and Tie. Logging roads eventually gave way to hundreds of miles of Department of Natural Resources acreage. The landscape was an undulating tapestry of color and texture: evergreen
trees of every hue and type; rocky granite cliffs accentuated by the occasional
hunk of emerald olivine—chunky jewels from the foothills of
the Twin Sisters; huckleberry and salmon berry bushes; and the occasional
stream or waterfall that meandered its way to the nearby Nooksack River.

As she rode, Taylor felt her body relax into a simple primitive rhythm of shared energy. She felt proud that the girl who could barely mount a horse unaided six months before now navigated uneven and challenging terrain with ease. She thought of Jacob and the previous months of training with him and Rain. She’d given up smoking and exchanged a few pounds of fat for muscle. When jogging her portion of a race or flying along the trail on the back of a hairy angel, she felt connected to life and engaged in the present.

Guiding Rain to a narrow dirt trail off the logging road, they made their way into the trees. The air was moist and soft. Taylor slapped at a mosquito as a huge oak leaf brushed her shoulder. Even in the waning light the nearly chartreuse foliage glowed with spring life. Moisture from a recent shower dripped down through the rain forest-like canopy overhead. Taylor felt as if she could disappear into the woods and never come back.

“Just a short loop, girl.”

Taylor stroked Rain’s neck and listened to the mare’s even breathing as she negotiated an incline. It occurred to her that she hadn’t left a note about her whereabouts. She always made a point, when riding, to leave a note in the kitchen about where she’d gone and when she expected to return. It was a deal made with Rowan—“I worry about you out there alone”—who had important phone numbers in case of emergency: her mother, father, Liz, and Melissa.

“Things happen, you know. And there is wildlife on those trails, cougar, bear … ”

If Rowan meant to scare her it didn’t work. Nature was her friend. Taylor felt much more anxious about people and their ability to harm her.

Taylor pushed Rain into a trot after cresting a hill. The trail meandered
through a stand of poplars along even terrain, a perfect place to enjoy the horse’s steady extended gait. Jacob had discovered that on level ground Rain could trot at an astonishing clip of 17 miles per hour. The mare had long since surrendered her blind side to Taylor, trusting that her rider would be the measure of sight she was missing.

Rain snorted and shook her head as they flew through the trees, happy to move out and leave the bugs behind. The warm early evening air caressed their faces and Taylor breathed in the tell-tale aroma of the river rushing nearby, a mixture of fish, dead leaves and moist soil. Soon they would come to a fork in the trail and begin the journey back home.

Suddenly Rain’s neck tensed. She slowed to a walk and then stopped altogether. Taylor peered into the shadows at the trail’s edge but saw nothing.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Rain’s neck remained rigid. Taylor felt the horse’s heart begin to pound under her legs and instinctively gathered up the reins. Forcing herself to breathe slow and deep she laid a hand on Rain’s shoulder.

“Easy.”

The mare would accept no comfort. She snorted again and swung her head around to examine the trail on her blind side. Something moved in the bushes. Taylor heard a branch snap.

“It’s probably just a deer, Rain, lets move along and let it go its way. Maybe a mother and her baby are in there.”

It was spring, after all. Taylor tried to imagine the innocent spotted shape of a fawn. Instead, her heart raced along with the horse’s. Rain ignored her squeezing calves and continued staring into the woods as if frozen to the spot. Something was definitely in the bushes and it would likely come out at any second.

The cougar stepped onto the trail with measured dignity, the tip of a very long tail curling into a half circle. It paused and stared at them, green eyes intense and glowing, a vision of wild beauty and terrifying power.

Rain did not wait for a cue. She whirled and leapt into a gallop in one stride. They flew down the trail in a crazy zig-zag, dodging slender trees and low hanging branches along the way. Taylor simply hung on, reins slack, and let the mare go where she would.  At a bend in the road Rain gave a mighty leap and cleared a downed tree, landing off trail. Taylor lost a stirrup and slipped to the side. Grasping a hunk of mane hair she righted herself and groped for the stirrup as the mare continued running madly through the slash and undergrowth of a slowly maturing clear cut.

On and on she ran, the crackle of brush and snap of branches obscuring
any clues that would signal the cat had followed. 

“Easy Rain, EASY.”

They might get eaten, but if Rain didn’t stop she would certainly
break a leg in a slash pile. It took several minutes for the mare to respond
as Taylor pumped the reins and called her name repeatedly. She slowed to a trot, then a walk, and finally stopped altogether, her chest heaving.

Taylor waited for the thud of velvet paws on her back, movie-style. At least she would die in a majestic way worthy of the nature channel, she thought, not fade away in the slow death of a bottle of booze. The circle of life, that’s what it would be.

When nothing happened she turned around and considered the
path they had come. Rain’s haunches were shaking from terror and
exertion, but the clear cut looked empty. As suddenly as it had appeared, the cougar melted back into the landscape. Taylor dismounted
and examined Rain’s legs. Sweat dripped from her chest and foam flecked her neck. She hung her head in exhaustion and, it seemed, embarrassment at letting her emotions get the better of her.

“It’s okay, girl. Trust me, I freaked out too.”

Outside of a few shallow cuts on her legs, the mare seemed okay. While the horse rested, Taylor sat on a stump and considered their location. Nothing looked familiar.

“The trail has gotta be back there not far
… ” Taylor chewed her lip and massaged Rain’s withers as she continued looking around for a point of reference. She’d ridden the trails dozens of times but stuck to known routes she had mapped with Jacob and Liz. The terrain had gotten as familiar as Rowan’s back yard. This made it easy to forget that DNR land was wild and extended for miles in every direction.

She looked at her watch, eight o’clock. She’d completely lost track of time. When had they left? The day faded and reappeared in Taylor’s memory in snap shots: listening to Jennie at the childbirth classes, the cemetery, Melissa’s phone call, the adrenaline rush of seeing her pathetic life end in the jaws of a big cat. Time had long since ceased to exist in any sort of recognizable pattern. Her stomach growled. When had she last eaten?

“Well, all we can do is go back in the direction we came. I’m sure it isn’t far.” Taylor tried to sound confident as she remounted.

The night air remained warm but she shivered and peered into a sky of deep purples. The evergreens all around formed a wall of black sentries. Overhead the moon hid behind cloud cover, its edges blurring as if a giant eraser was working to extinguish the light. Rain picked her way back through the slash in a direction that felt like home. Taylor sighed in relief when, a few minutes later, they stepped onto a dirt track.

“Good girl, Rain.”

The mare moved to the left.

“No, that’s not it. Let’s go right.” Taylor squeezed the mare, kicking her when she refused to move. “Left doesn’t feel right so … lets g
o
righ
t
.” She giggled with relief at her own turn-a-phrase and, ignoring the horse, kicked her again.

Rain tightened her body in resistance, but when Taylor continued she finally moved forward, plodding down the trail in defeat.

“Don’t pout. Sometimes I have to be the boss you know.”

Taylor continued talking to the horse as they walked the darkened trail. Owls hooted in the distance and the mosquitoes attacked with a vengeance as she struggled to keep the fears at bay. She wasn’t sure of the direction at all.

Minutes turned into hours as Rain walked on. Dark shapes in the surrounding forest appeared and disappeared like ghosts and the noises of awakened night life became deafening, shredding
what was left of her nerves. Every time she thought of the cougar re
turning Taylor’s
breathing became fast and shallow and she fought back the panic attack.
Big cats hunted at night, everyone knew that. It might smell them, smell their fear and vulnerability, and return to take them down.

Her mind did not seem capable of rational thinking as Taylor strained to see through the pitch black. She had long since let Rain go where she would. They were lost so it didn’t really matter. The horse
had probably known how to get home at the fork in the trail, but Taylor
hadn’t listened. She’d taken the wrong path. It seemed as if her
life had been pointing to this last desperate journey all along. A meandering
road of wrong decisions had taken her to a wilderness and she was now lost beyond hope. All she could wonder now was if being eaten by a cougar would be extremely painful. Hopefully it would bite her jugular vein and she would bleed out before the eating began.

After what seemed like hours Taylor heard the splashing of the river and smelled its peculiar wet dog aroma. It jogged her back to the present and she spoke to the horse under her. “The river—Rain you got us back! I think all we need to do now is follow it south.” She squeezed the reins and pulled Rain to a stop, then patted the horse’s neck crusty with dried sweat. “Good girl. I probably should have listened to you way back there.”

Taylor looked up. The moon and constellations were hidden behind
a curtain of clouds. “Not much light, Rain. Let’s stay close to the river.”

Maneuvering the horse down a shallow embankment, Taylor found what looked to be an animal trail that closely followed the glinting ribbon of water in the right direction. Rain willingly walked on, her hooves sinking periodically in the muddy trail. Lazy and shallow in summer, the river now rushed, swollen with spring rain.

The sound of the water was soothing and drowned out the forest noises that kept Taylor’s nerves on edge. If the cougar was following them she couldn’t hear it approach and the attack would come as a surprise. Somehow that seemed better. Ignoranc
e
wa
s
bliss. There were so many things Taylor wished she could still be ignorant of.

The spot on the trail appeared at first to be a puddle. Straining to see it in the dark, Taylor could only be sure of a stump on one side and a good deal of mud. It appeared as an extra dark place on a barely visible track. Rain balked and tried to see it with her blind eye.

“Just a bit of mud, walk on.”

At Taylor’s urging the mare took one hesitating step, then another. Suddenly Taylor felt them both sink and move forward in what felt like slow motion. Rain tried to leap out of the bog as her back end sank, the stump at her side a solid barrier. The mud grasped at the horse like quick sand. One moment Taylor sat solid in the saddle, the next she tottered off the side, falling onto the trail as Rain went down.

Jumping to her feet Taylor kept a hold on the reins but stepped out of the way as the horse thrashed to free herself. When she failed to make progress Rain finally stopped and lay her head back. Mud covered her hind end up to the haunches and her front end slowly sank level with the back. It seemed to hold her in place as if she’d been super-glued to the spot.