The Loner's Thanksgiving Wish. Roxanne Rustand

away down the trail.

      Mei dumped the contents of her backpack on the ground. First aid kit. High-energy bars. Several water bottles. Leather gloves. The bright orange coils of her favorite old Mammut climbing rope and a handful of carabiners in a Ziploc bag.

      She’d done a lot of climbing up here as a teenager, and she’d continued the sport in the mountain ranges in the Southwest. Her climbing gear had been the first thing she’d packed for her move back to Colorado.

      Now, she looked heavenward and murmured a quiet “thanks” for the impulse to stop and hike this particular trail on her way home.

      But was her rope even long enough?

      She didn’t have enough length to rappel down with a belay device to control her descent, so it would have to be a far more dangerous drop—hand over hand down a single length of rope anchored near the top of the cliff.

      Swirls of dust still eddied at the bottom of the ravine. Where were Cade and Jasmine … beneath that boulder, or under the landslide that had sucked them off the trail?

      She tied one end of her rope to a stout pine trunk and threw the coils over the edge, then shouldered her backpack. From somewhere far below came a faint cry for help.

      Mei’s heart leaped with joy. At least one of them was alive and conscious—and that meant there was hope for both. Thank you, God! She donned her leather gloves, then lowered herself over the edge and started down. Another faint cry for help echoed through the ravine.

      “I’m coming,” Mei shouted. Her heart pounding against her ribs, she slowly lowered herself hand over hand. “Hang on.”

      “Mei—over here,” Jasmine yelled. “Hurry. C-Cade’s hurt.”

      And there she was, on a long, narrow ledge hidden from view from the cliff above by a clump of vegetation.

      At the last five feet of her rope, Mei clung to the rough, rocky wall and sparse vegetation to descend the final fifteen or twenty feet.

      “I’m so glad you’re here with me,” Jasmine cried.

      “And I’m glad to be here.” The teenager was scraped and battered from her fall, with deep red bruises that would turn black by tomorrow. But she was alert and coherent, praise the Lord. Her face white as chalk, she held Cade’s head cradled in her lap, holding a blood-soaked athletic sock against his temple. He wasn’t moving. “Has Cade been awake at all?”

      “N-no.” Tears spilled down Jasmine’s grimy cheeks as she watched Mei shrug off her backpack and pull out an emergency first aid kit. “I was afraid nobody would c-come. A-and it would g-get dark, and c-cold, and Cade w-wouldn’t have a chance.”

      “Take a slow, deep breath, honey. I’ve already sent for help. A rescue team is going to get both of you out of here in no time.”

      Any rescue attempt wasn’t going to be easy, though. It was more than a hundred feet to the top, with no trails in sight for a rescue team with a stretcher. The ravine was too deep and narrow, with multiple overhanging ledges, to bring in a helicopter.

      Even if a copter dropped a basket, the slightest wind up top could send the litter swinging wildly against the narrow vertical rock walls on either side.

      The best chance would be to hike out following the creek bed—if it led to easier access within a reasonable distance and not a dead end.

      Mei closed her eyes briefly, bringing her last CPR and first aid training session into sharp focus. She knelt at the boy’s side and timed his erratic respirations. She checked his pulse—weak but steady.

      “He’s breathing,” Jasmine whispered brokenly. “I keep feeling for his pulse. He fell so hard. H-he was trying to save me from falling when the ground buckled. I got caught in some bushes that slowed my fall, but C-Cade …”

      Mei eyed the sock pressed against the boy’s temple, then searched through her first aid kit for a roll of bandaging. “Smart thinking, Jasmine. I don’t want to risk disturbing the clotting of that wound, so we’ll leave that cloth there and overwrap it with this gauze to keep the pressure steady.”

      She looked up and gave the girl an encouraging smile as she wound the bandage around Cade’s head several times and pressed the end of the bandage in place. “This material sticks to itself, so it should hold well. But I’m going to ask you to sit still and not jostle his head, okay?”

      “I’m scared, Mei.” Jasmine’s voice quavered.

      “Head wounds always bleed a lot, so he might be just fine otherwise. But he could have a bad concussion, and if he has got any spinal injuries we don’t want to take a chance.”

      Jasmine nodded, her lower lip trembling and her eyes filling with fear. “M-maybe I hurt him already, just trying to make him comfortable.”

      Maybe, but it was done. And trying to keep Cade stable while managing a hysterical girl wouldn’t do either of them any good.

      “You’ve done your best—and if you hadn’t thought so fast, he could’ve lost a lot more blood.”

      Mei began a careful head-to-toe exam, gently palpating the unconscious boy for obvious fractures and searching for other wounds. The ugly dark bruising and swelling of his right ankle didn’t look good. His jacket and sweatshirt were torn, revealing multiple lacerations and bruising on his ribs and shoulders.

      Using sterile four-by-four gauze squares and the roll of bandaging material, Mei wrapped his wounds.

      Jasmine kept her gaze fixed on his face. “I love you so much, Cade,” she choked out. “You have to be okay because you and I are going to grow old together. You can’t leave me now. You just can’t.”

      Mei lifted his eyelids, checking for even pupil reactions. Was the right one more sluggish? Hard to tell, in these shadows, and she wished she had a flashlight. But if the pupils were uneven, what could she do? The first aid kit was the extent of what she had to work with.

      And what worried her the most was his lack of responsiveness. A head injury could easily be fatal. Even now, his brain could be swelling.

      And his spine …

      Mei said a long, silent prayer as the minutes ticked by, then kept up a steady patter of small talk to distract Jasmine.

      A half hour passed.

      Then another.

      Blood still seeped through the makeshift bandages. Noticing it was worse at Cade’s temple, Mei added another layer of bandaging, then applied gentle pressure.

      Shouts of excitement erupted from the top of the cliff.

      “They’re almost here!” a woman shouted. “Three county rescue guys!”

      Jasmine closed her eyes and sighed with obvious relief. “Thank you, God. I’ve been praying this whole time for help to get here.” Her gaze shot up the sides of the ravine. “But how—what can they do?”

      “This is their job, honey,” Mei said with more confidence than she felt. “They do this sort of thing all the time.”

      In minutes, one man in sunglasses, a dark jacket and a COUNTY SEARCH & RESCUE–emblazoned backpack quickly rappelled down into the ravine, while the other two rescuers stayed at the top and watched, presumably awaiting directions.

      Relief and gratitude welled up in Mei’s chest until she was barely able to speak. “Thank you, thank you,” she finally managed, fighting back the sting of tears in her eyes as the first man reached them. “I’m so glad—”

      Her next words froze in her throat when she realized just who he was … and, with the next heartbeat, recognized the tragic irony of him being the first one on the scene.

      Although he was all too familiar to Mei now that he’d removed his shades and black ball cap, he didn’t even glance her way because his attention was riveted on Cade.

      He