Page 99 of Sweet Like Whiskey

I look up at the steep mountain face in front of me. No help there. Turning, I find the ground I took a tumble down. It starts at eye-level, which explains the second fall. The hill is steeply sloped, the path I carved down it visible as an irregular streak through the leaves and dirt. My breath whooshes out of me when I see Shorty looking down from atop the hill.Thank fuck. He’s still on the trail, maybe forty feet away.

“Hey, buddy,” I call. “You okay?”

His ears flick, and his hoof stomps the ground.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s see…”

The second I try to heft myself onto the slope, I know I’m not going anywhere. Pain sears through my shoulder, and I pant through it, my chest resting against the lip of dirt. Finally, I let myself fall, dropping the short distance back to the ground.

Using my good arm, I fish my phone from my pocket, astonished it’s even still there. I swear aloud when I see the screen, cracked and clearly broken. I swear again when the phone won’t turn on.

“Goddamn it!” I shout, my voice echoing inside the pit I’ve found myself in. Once I’m calm, I look around again. Every which way, there’s a steep climb.

I don’t have a choice. I have to try again.

Girding myself against the pain I know will come, I grab onto the thickest sapling I can reach on the hill I fell down and hoist myself up. Stars dance in my vision, a ragged sound leaving my mouth as I inch myself a little higher…little higher…

As soon as my hips clear the edge, I roll onto my back and suck in breath after breath, still holding the sapling tight. My arm is shaking, my other a useless weight at my side. Slowly, I wriggle upwards until my feet can find purchase. Knees bent, I push with my heels, trying to slide myself up the hill a little further.

It works. Kind of.

I grab for another sapling, smaller than the first, and pray it holds my weight. Again, I dig in my heels and push, but the ground is so wet, my feet kick out. Taking a calming breath, I try again, going slower, getting myself up another half-foot on my back before needing a new hand-hold. I arch my neck, finding Shorty watching me from atop the hill.

“Coming,” I assure him.

Every muscle in my body protests as I inch myself up the incline. I’m soaking wet. Muddy. I don’t have a hand to clear the moisture from my eyes. My teeth are chattering, adrenaline the only thing letting me block out, even a little, the pain radiating out from my shoulder.

Doesn’t matter. I push myself up another few inches. Another few. I find another handhold, heels dug into the earth.

The tiny tree I’m holding gives.

“No, no, no,” I say, frantically trying to stop my momentum as I slide down the wet earth. I grab at dirt, rocks, branches. Kick my feet…

And fall back into the pit.

I black out for a second. Spots dance in front of my eyes as I lie on the ground, my head swimming, my dislocated arm wedged beneath my body at a horrible angle.

“Shorty,” I call out, voice hoarse. “Can you go back? Can you go get help? Please?”

I have no clue if he even knows what I’m trying to say, but when I get myself turned around, my jaw aching as I strain not to cry out, I can see him still up on the trail, tail swishing.

“Shorty,” I yell again. “Go home? Run home?”

He doesn’t, and as darkness crawls along the edges of my vision, the pain threatening to pull me under, I hear a sound. It’s quiet at first, so quiet I assume I’m imagining it. But then it gets louder and more distinct, and there’s no mistaking what I’m hearing.

The tinkling of a bell.

Abell.

In the middle of a forest in Darling freaking Montana.

Good fucking grief.

“Please,pleasedon’t bite me,” I mumble with the last of my waning strength.

And then everything is black.

Chapter 24

---