Smoky Mountain Mystery 01 - Out on a Limb (17 page)

“Did you?”

 Tim shook his head, “I was into Ivy. I liked her a lot. But not enough to go all
stalker
on her.” He looked at Henry, gesturing with both hands at the open pedestrian mall around where they were sitting. “Dude, look around.”

When Henry raised his eyebrows for clarification, Tim added, “There’s like 10,000 chicks going to school in this town.”

“Are mosses and
liverspots
pretty good chick magnets?”

“Liver
worts
,” Tim said. “Believe
me,
chicks go for moss way more than the pieces of lint butterfly guy is shopping around.”

Henry considered pointing out that apparently Ivy didn’t agree, but because he was
way
WAY
old, he was too merciful to rub the kid’s face in it.

Leon
lived in small, charming cabin he’d cobbled together from the remains of several old buildings on his family’s property. The central part of the house was built of hand-hewn logs salvaged from a smoke house and an apple barn. Two rooms built of weathered oak boards from an old shed and corn crib jutted out on either side of the log cabin. The whole thing sat perched about eighteen inches off the ground on stacks of rocks hand-chiseled by his great grandfather.

The farmstead sat in a meadow at the back of his family’s farm. His field shared a border with one of the most rugged areas of the national park.

It didn’t take long for Jill to make it to
Leon
’s place. But it was getting dark already down in the hollows and if she hadn’t been there several times before, she’d never have been able to find it. There were no lights on, the weathered wood blended perfectly with the trees, and the cedar shake roof was nearly invisible under a thick layer of moss.

She stepped across the fence on a stile and walked through the pasture toward the gate nearest the house. The cabin was surrounded by elaborate, meticulously cared for herb and vegetable gardens. Jill didn’t know that much about herbs, but she thought the gardens were beautiful, even though they were obviously not just ornamental.

At one end of the garden there was a row of beehives. At the other end were several rows of brightly colored zinnias to attract butterflies. And running along one edge of the herb garden was a half circle of large etched stone pillars. She’d have to ask
Leon
about the stones. She didn’t remember seeing those before.

She climbed the steps to the front door and knocked on the thick wood. The curtains were drawn on the small windows on the front side of the house, and the place was quiet, so she couldn’t be sure he was inside. His pickup truck was in the driveway, though, looking even more beat up than she remembered.

She sat on the steps and waited, enjoying the peace and the twilight view across the little meadow. Soon it was full dark.

“Hey Jill.
Where’s your car?”

Jill swiveled around to see
Leon
standing behind her in the open doorway of the cabin.

“Oh
Leon
, I’m so glad you’re home,” she said. “I need your help. Somebody’s hurt.”

She handed him the strange broken and bloody stick and told him about finding the injured woman. “I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think it was an accident.”

Leon
examined the stick and said, “This is an arrow for a crossbow. They call
em
bolts
.”

“It didn’t feel right to go to the law. At least
til
we figure out what’s
goin
on.
So I come to you instead. Can you
git
her down?”

“
Prob’ly
,” said
Leon
.

Jill turned to go back the way she came, saying, “She’s up this way,” but
Leon
laid a hand on her arm and said, “We need to take a little detour first so I can
borry
some
climbin
gear.”

Twenty minutes later Jill stood guard as
Leon
moved around in the dark in a storage room at the dude farm Cloud Forest. He was stealing a ridiculous looking six-foot-tall slingshot, several coils of rope, and a duffle bag full of climbing paraphernalia used to teach wilderness skills seminars.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “It’s only temporary. I’ll bring it back when we’re done and they’ll never know it was gone.”

***

“We’re
gettin
close now,” Jill said, as they walked along the logging road.

“I know this place,” said
Leon
. “My grandma used to bring me here. It’s got some kind of special climate on account of the ridges acting as wind breaks. Grandma said the Cherokee people consider it a holy place. Whatever
eejit
hurt somebody up
here’ll
have a curse on
em
for life. It’s like
killin
somebody in a church.”

Jill was having trouble seeing in the darkness of the forest at night. She had to use a small flashlight.
Leon
didn’t seem to need one.

“I think I’m sorta lost,” Jill said.

“Don’t worry, I can see her now.”

“How?”

“Look up. You can see the reflective strips on her shoes.”

Jill played her flashlight played around
til
it illuminated the jacket she’d left tied to the little tree.
Leon
was uncanny.

Then, in the same way Ivy had used a crossbow,
Leon
used the
Big Shot
, the six-foot-tall sling shot, to throw a bean bag over a limb slightly higher than the one the woman sat on. It took most of his body weight to pull back on the flipper, but he was accurate and made the shot on the first try.

He tied a heavy rope to the nylon cord and reeled in the cord until his climbing rope was draped across the limb. Then he quickly rigged a harness and climbed up to where the woman sat.

He hung beside her and reached over to touch her neck. Although she was cold and non-responsive, he could tell she was still alive.

“Girl,” he mumbled as he clipped her harness to his, “this gives a whole new meaning to
bein
out
on a limb.”

He pressed down on both her Blake’s hitch and his and lowered them together, letting her own ropes bear her weight as long as possible. Then he clipped their harnesses together and made the last segment of the descent with both their weights borne by his rope.

When they reached the ground,
Leon
laid her flat on her back. “Need to
borry
yer
flashlight,” he said.

He knelt to lift the woman’s eyelids, shining the light into each eye in turn. “Well, at least her pupils are equal and both reactive to light. That’s good.”

He looked her over with clinical efficiency and said, “Head wound’s the problem.”

Then he stood to retrieve and pack his climbing gear. He left the woman’s ropes dangling up in the tree. He handed Jill the duffle bag and the Big Shot and hoisted the woman over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He grunted at her weight.

Jill shot him a look and he said, “What?”

“The way you’re
carryin
her, it’s like she’s a sack of potatoes.”

“She
don’t
care!” he said. “Hell she weighs as much I do! She’s a hundred
an
fifty if she’s an ounce! Built like a dang weight lifter.”

“Should you be
carryin
her upside-down like that when she’s got a head injury?”

“Trust me, okay? She’s young, she’s
gonna
be fine.”

She didn’t argue any further except to say, “Well, it
ain’t
very romantic
lookin
.”

Leon
snorted and moved past her on the trail. Jill had to run to keep up with him. A few minutes later he mumbled, “I run up a mountain, do a hundred and fifty foot vertical ascent, and rescue some woman I don’t even know. Then I
carry
her back down the dang mountain, by myself. That’s pretty dang romantic if you ask me.”

Henry and Phoebe arranged to meet at the parking lot of a restaurant close to the
Newport
exit off I-40. Phoebe left most of her stuff in her Jeep and came toward Henry’s SUV carrying a plastic grocery bag full of food.

“Phoebe, we’re only
goin
to
North Carolina
. You’ll be
back
home a few hours.”

“Hey, this is regular work for you, but it’s a vacation for me. I don’t go on any road trips without
Cheetos
and Diet Coke.”

“And Almond Joys,” he added, looking at her supplies.
“And Peppermint Patties.”

“What’s your point?”

“When I patrol the AT, sometimes I go out for five days at a time.
All I take with me is half a dozen cans of pork n’ beans!”

“Oh, you are
so
tough
. I bet you don’t even use a can opener. Do you chew a hole in the can or shoot the lid off?”

He pulled an absurdly thick Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and pried out one of the incomprehensible bits of curved metal and brandished it. “And I eat
em
cold.”

“That’s just … sad,” she said, getting in the passenger seat and tearing open the wrapper on an Almond Joy.

It was a long drive to
Cataloochee
, so they had plenty of time to fill in some of the gaps created by the last thirty years.

“What’re you
doin
back here?” Henry asked. “It’s
gotta
be a big change.”

“It
is
a big change,” said Phoebe. “But it’s a good one. I’ve missed everybody and I missed the mountains. And the whole reason I went into
nursin
in the first place was
cause
I wanted to take care of sick people. But every time I got promoted, I got farther and farther away from patients. Finally I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I was
spendin
all day on a computer!

“So I came home and I’m real happy with what I’m
doin
now. I get to be on my own, out
runnin
the roads around White Oak. I get to see the countryside and all sorts of people and medical issues. There couldn’t be a better job for me anywhere in the world.”

Henry smiled at her.

“Do you like your job?” Phoebe asked.