“Wait up,” I said.
I plucked a grayish clump off a thorn. It resembled deer’s hair, but the fibers were not hollow.
“Is this where the black wolf dragged Little Amos?”
Samuel looked at me in wonder. “How did you know?”
I showed him the tuft and pushed it around my open palm. “Do you know what a deduction is? It’s when you draw a conclusion based on bits of evidence. This hair looks to me like it came from a donkey. I deduced that this path is where the wolf dragged Little Amos. How about I go first from here?”
The ground was soft and springy with patches of ice that collapsed beneath my boots and plunged me ankle-deep in muddy water the color and consistency of a frozen coffee drink. The surface, being coated with small multicolored leaves and having frozen and thawed multiple times, was hard for me to read. But I found more donkey hair and, finally, a few wisps of black fur.
In the distance, I heard the brisk clippety-clop of hooves. One of the Amish buggies was headed back up the road.
A rock face reared out of the tangled bushes, eight feet tall, made of lichen-crusted sandstone. Shadow had been stronger than I’d imagined. There was no missing the claw marks he had gouged in the moss as he’d hauled the burro, a hundred pounds or more of dead weight, up and over the crag.
When I turned to point out the marks to my junior guides, I noticed Samuel staring through the trees in the direction of the road with an upright alertness I associated with prairie dogs. My ears caught the rumble of a truck engine that became a roar as it drew closer. It might have been an aural illusion, but it sounded as if the pickup was accelerating.
The boy took off through the shrubs so fast he knocked off his hat and left it lying in a puddle.
Not thirty seconds later, we heard the crash. Wood shattered and snapped. The truck skidded on loose gravel to a halt. The horse let out a scream that became a series of guttural whinnies.
Now Zane and I were both fighting our way back through branches that whipped at our faces. By the time we stumbled out to the flooded ditch, Samuel Stoll had nearly reached the scene of the crash. The same black buggy I had encountered earlier lay on its side in the matted grass. Falling, it had snapped a fence rail and torn off a spoked wheel. The panicked bay horse, still in her harness, was trying and failing to rise. Her iron shoes tore at the wet topsoil.
An Amish man, jettisoned from the wreck, lay limp in the field.
Gorman Peaslee had not emerged from his truck. Cleaned of mud, the vehicle was a bright fire-engine red. Plumes of blue rose from its chrome tailpipe.
While Zane sprinted toward the crashed buggy, I pulled my phone from my pocket. Thank God, I had enough of a signal to call 911. I identified myself to the dispatcher as a game warden and called for immediate assistance.
Then I, too, began to run.
Samuel was pawing at the shoulder of the motionless man, who lay almost perfectly spread-eagled on his back. “Ike? Uncle Ike?”
Zane stood over the boy, arms loose, fingers spread, seemingly at a loss what to do.
“Check on the horse!” I said. “Get it loose if you can.”
I took the boy by the arms and, as gently as I could, lifted him clear of his injured uncle. “Let me look at him, Samuel. I’m trained in emergency medicine.”
A blood-smeared bone jutted through a torn coat sleeve. Compound fracture of the radius. How white it looked. I reached under Isaac Stoll’s bristly jaw until I located the carotid artery. His pulse was weak, whether from shock or a blow to the head, I couldn’t be certain.
“Isaac? Mr. Stoll? Can you hear me?”
He made no response.
Plenty of rocks, some as big as fists, protruded from the damp earth around us. Chances were good he had hit his head against one. A concussion was probably the best-case scenario. What I feared was that he had broken his neck or back.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the mare rise. Zane had gotten the animal loose of her tack. Impossible to believe, her fragile legs seemed unbroken. She might have internal injuries, but they weren’t severe enough to stop her from galloping across the field. I had been prepared to put the horse down.
“Should I go after her?” Zane asked.
“I need your help here.”
“We’re not supposed to move him, right? That’s what they told us in Outward Bound.”
“It depends on whether he has a spinal injury or not. As long as he keeps breathing steadily, we should leave him where he is until the EMTs arrive. The danger is if he starts to vomit. Then we have to find a way to ease him onto his side. If there’s damage to his vertebrae, we could snap his spinal cord.”
Tears had run rivulets through the dirt on Zane’s cheeks. “Shit, man!”
“Samuel?” I said to the boy. He had lost his own hat, but he had retrieved his uncle’s and was clutching it to his chest. “I want you to run back to your house. Tell your parents what happened. Tell them I have called an ambulance. Have them bring me blankets. This is important. We need to keep your uncle warm until the emergency medical technicians arrive.”
The kid nodded and took off. He was more composed than his adult neighbor.
“Here’s what I need you to do,” I told Zane. “Kneel down beside me. You don’t want to block him from getting air. You need to be close enough to listen to his breathing. If you hear him start to have problems—”
“What kind of problems?”
“Gasping. Gurgling. Anything that sounds like he’s in distress. If his breathing changes at all, yell for
