The Gentrys: Abby. Linda Conrad

rope up and over her head, freeing herself to turn and scramble back to the dark, still form lying in the shadow of a boulder a few feet away.

      Nearing the shadow, she saw the truth. She hissed a breath through her teeth when she realized this was no animal…but a man. A terribly injured and possibly dead man who hadn’t moved or moaned the whole time she’d been climbing down the rock ravine.

      Abby squeezed past a couple of boulders and had just enough room to kneel beside him. She knew then why she’d thought this was some kind of animal. Everything about him exuded darkness and shadow: black hair, deeply bronzed skin, and he’d dressed in black jeans with an inky-colored, long-sleeved shirt.

      It hit her almost immediately that this man must be Native American, which seemed highly unusual for Castillo County. In fact, she could only think of one American Indian that she’d ever seen in these parts. Surely, this man couldn’t be the same boy who’d taken her side against a bully in high school ten years ago. She’d dreamed about him occasionally since then, and maybe her imagination had taken over her good sense.

      Abby put aside the old dreams and the decidedly sexual images she’d kept in her heart for so long and forced herself to concentrate on saving the injured man. Could he be saved?

      The little gash on his temple and the small trickle of blood that had dried against his cheek shouldn’t have caused him to be unconscious, she thought. He might have blacked out for a moment from such a head trauma, but to be so still for so long…

      Perhaps he’d fallen into the wash from above. She glanced up at the rim and shook her head. Well, if he had, he’d probably broken his neck.

      She checked for a pulse. He was alive! His heart rate was faint, and as she listened carefully, she heard him wheezing when he tried to breathe. But he was most assuredly alive.

      All her first-aid and emergency medical training nagged at her good sense and reminded her not to move him. No telling what injuries he had. Still, she was all the help he was likely to get. If he was going to make it out of this dry wash alive, she was his only hope.

      Abby propped open his mouth, trying to find any obstructions that might be causing those gurgling sounds. When her hand touched his chin, she nearly pulled it back with a jerk. His skin was so hot, her first thought was that she’d been burned. A fleeting image of smooth fire flashed in her head, but she forced herself to stay focused on keeping him alive.

      Not much blood and no other obvious wounds. What had befallen this man?

      When she reached to open the top button on his shirt to give him a little more air, Abby took a good look at his beautiful face. Even in his unconscious state she could see the pain written in his expression. But she also saw the dark and noble features she’d remembered all these years, older now but somehow even more compelling. Oh my God. This man really was the boy hero of her dreams.

      Trying her best to remain professional, she opened his shirt collar and immediately saw the telltale swelling at his neck. Uh-oh. She had a feeling she knew what had happened.

      Quickly, Abby checked his arms but didn’t find what she was looking for. Her gaze quickly took in his long torso and grazed down his legs, halting when she saw that his left thigh was swollen and straining the stitching of his jeans. Exactly what she’d feared. Snakebite.

      Removing her knife from its sheath on her belt, she began slicing his pants leg. The material was so tough she had to rip and tear at it. At one point she even had to use her teeth, hands and the knife.

      Finally the chore was done, and she frantically searched his skin for the two telltale holes. By now his lower thigh was twice its size, bruised green, purple and yellow. Turning him on his side, she found the wounds on the back of his leg just above his knee. Looked as if a large rattler had done this job.

      She eased him all the way over and carefully arranged his head so that his breathing was a little quieter. As she did, the images of broad shoulders and rippled muscles blasted her with memories and tender feelings. But there wasn’t enough time for her to be gentle, let alone pay attention to much else. He might be running out of time.

      Abby left him for a few moments to dash back to her rope, still dangling over the side of the ravine. She climbed back up to the top of the ravine and found Billy Bob waiting there for her return.

      “What’s going on down there?” he asked as she headed for her canteen and snakebite kit. “You fixin’ to nurse a steer? You’d be better off using your rifle to take him out of his misery, missy.”

      “No, it’s not one of the yearlings,” she gasped through the fear that made her voice raspy. “It’s a man. And he’s hurt bad.”

      Abby gulped down a near-hysterical sob. She’d never helped anyone this gravely ill before. If he died…

      Back at the bottom of the wash, she thanked heaven for the rattlesnake antivenom. Abby did exactly as she’d been trained. First she’d used the Sawyer Pump extractor to draw out as much surface venom as possible. Next she’d injected the antivenom.

      The rest would be up to God.

      Within a few minutes she could see the swelling begin to subside. He’d started to breath easier and his eyelids fluttered as he seemed to fight for consciousness.

      Perhaps he was in shock. She poured canteen water on her red bandanna and wiped his forehead, eventually leaving the wet cloth lightly covering his face to keep the sun off. Abby knew she had to get him to the hospital. He needed professional medical attention.

      The cell phones were worthless out here, and they would need to ride for hours to find help. But first he had to be moved out of this harsh sun. How on earth would she manage that?

      She screwed up her mouth and looked around at the walls of the wash. Well, there was nothing to do but try the best she could. A man’s life hung on her efforts.

      Fortunately, Billy Bob had known what to do. He had rigged up a makeshift stretcher, made from a few sturdy mesquite branches, some rope and a couple of vines that grew alongside the rim of the wash. In the meantime, she’d used the elastic bandage from the first-aid kit to keep pressure on the wound.

      After a couple of trips up and down the walls of the ravine, she and Billy Bob used their ropes and horses to pull the stretcher up past the sharp rocks along the sides of the dry wash. She was breathing hard and nearly ready to pass out by the time she’d finished guiding the man’s inert form as he lay tied firmly between the branches. Her long-sleeved denim shirt was soaked through, and the sweat poured from every inch of her body.

      Billy Bob handed his trail canteen over to her.

      Abby put a few drops of water on the unconscious man’s cracked lips and took a couple of swallows of the metallic-tasting water herself. Then Billy Bob did the same.

      Abby finished packing her saddlebags. “We’d better figure a way to get him out of the sun,” she told Billy Bob. “Line shack twenty-three isn’t far away, is it?”

      “’Bout a half mile back up the fence line,” Billy Bob answered over his shoulder. He was rigging up the stretcher behind her horse, Patsy, in the old Indian-squaw style.

      “Good thing, too,” he said. “Don’t rightly think those branches will hold together for much farther than that.”

      Abby agreed wholeheartedly. Their lashing ability left a lot to be desired. But the makeshift rig should remain in one piece just long enough. She hoped.

      The line shack turned out to be only a quarter mile away, but it took them much longer than she’d thought to reach it. By the time she dismounted and opened up the shack, the harsh, late-spring sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows from every tree and rock. The stretcher, which had surprisingly held together until now, began to unravel and would soon be in tatters.

      The heat in the little cabin was intense. She quickly threw open the front door and all the windows except the one that had been broken and boarded up. A dry, dusty breeze finally blew through the one room and dropped the temperature,