she asked, looking around and searching the sky.
“I don’t know. The cage top was ripped off. I think it happened when the truck landed on its cab and it tore the whole roof off.”
Giving him a horrifying look, she whispered, “Valkyrie could have died then. We could have been decapitated . . .”
“Yeah,” he grunted, “but we kept our heads down and we had those seat belts, which saved our lives, keeping us in a fixed position. Let’s hope Valkyrie was as lucky as we were, Cari.”
“It happened so fast, Chase. One minute, it was like going for a Sunday drive, the next minute, those trucks raced up on us like they were racing in the Indy 500.”
“I know.” He led her into the grove of very old junipers, their thick trunks gnarled with age, their limbs skyward, providing wonderful shade. He guesstimated the grove was at least a thousand years old, perhaps more, because the trunks were three to six feet in width.
“Look!” she said, pointing ahead of them. “Water! It’s a creek of some sort!”
“You’re right,” Chase said, sizing it up. “I think on the map we had, it showed a spring in this canyon. Maybe this is it.”
“Water in the desert,” she whispered. “Thank God.” She pressed her hand to her heart over her dusty T-shirt.
Chase decided to take them to the green, grassy bank of the stream that was about four feet wide. The water was about knee deep, clear, and looked good to him. It would be a place to bathe and wash the grime and grit off them. “How’s this for a place to sit for a bit? You have a nice old grandmother juniper to lean your back against and you can stretch out your legs in the green grass toward the stream.”
“It looks wonderful,” Cari choked fervently, sitting down, his hand guiding her. “Thanks.”
He knelt down beside her, opening the go-bag. “We’re in shock and have to drink water, Cari.” He pulled out the bottle of water and opened the top of it, handing it to her. “Drink all of it. Sip it if you want. We need to rest and just be for a bit.”
Nodding, she took it and thanked him, looking around. “This is so beautiful! And it’s so arid everywhere else around us.”
“Sort of like a Kalahari Desert oasis,” he agreed, opening the second go-bag. He slugged down a quart of water in no time. He found the purification tablets and dropped one into it, moving to the stream and filling it with the cold stream water. “I’ll bet this stream is coming from somewhere, but where? Do you remember seeing it on your cell phone map?”
“It just said ‘spring,’ but there was no thin blue line to indicate a stream was there.”
Nodding, he capped the plastic bottle and shook it. “Could be an artesian well up there somewhere in the grove, which is really good.”
“That means there’s an underground aquifer,” Cari said, patting the cool, soft grass. She looked up at him. “What are we going to do? I don’t have a cell phone on me. Do you?”
Shaking his head, he grumbled, “Both of them blew up when that fire hit the gasoline tank. We’re on our own. We’re about twenty miles away from the raptor center. If we’re up to it, we can walk it.”
“But, what if those druggies are around, Chase?”
He touched her dusty cheek. “We’d only travel at night, so don’t worry. Right now? We need to rest and let the shock wear off. When you’re like this, your mind isn’t thinking clearly.” He looked at his watch. It was one p.m. “It’s starting to get hot. In June it says this area reaches a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. We’re not putting ourselves out in that kind of heat and conditions.”
“I want so badly to get out of these clothes, wash the dirt off.”
“Why don’t you do that?” He gave her a teasing look, touching strands of her hair. “I’d like to stay around, but I want to reconnoiter and understand where we’re at.” He put one go-bag at her side. “Everything you need is in there. There’s a washcloth in there and soap, too.”
“You never told me that!” She smiled a little.
His heart widened. Fifteen minutes ago, he was afraid Cari wasn’t going to survive. Now, that sweet, honest smile of hers just axed him like nothing else ever would. “There’s even a small towel in there. Don’t you feel like we’re at a five-star