“Can we see him?” asked Joy.
“Just you two; no kids yet. Follow me.”
* * * *
We walked back inside through the house that smelled like beef ribs and candy canes.
“I’ll be out in just a minute to say hi,” said a pretty middle-aged woman. “Just need to turn this roast.” She looked like a cross between Jennifer Aniston and Martha Stewart, and had I seen her in New York City or L.A., I would have thought she had lived there her whole life. We all waved and smiled.
“It’s a good thing you got him up here as fast as you did. Another night on the road and I don’t think he would have made it,” said the doctor.
“Will he be okay, Doc?” asked Joy.
“Just call me Carl—all of you, please. He lost a fair amount of blood,” he started out, as he described in detail Ringo’s injuries without answering the simple question.
I was interested in hearing what exactly he did to help my friend and understood the majority of it from my Chiropractic background. I knew halfway through that he would heal up with time and antibiotics, and I squeezed Joy’s hand lightly, giving her an all-okay nod. It turned out mostly as we had expected. Deep puncture wounds were made by teeth that only three weeks ago housed a pink tongue used to kiss babies and chew table scraps before sleeping the rest of the day or night away. There was some concern about blood loss, but the glue Nancy applied quickly changed the diagnosis from life-threatening to concerning.
“Give him these pills, just as I wrote on the bottle. No running, chasing, or anything else strenuous for at least a week—better if it’s two.”
“Thank you, Carl,” I said, shaking his hand. “I was worried we were going to lose him.”
“This one wouldn’t let us,” he replied, pointing down to Mini, who laid under the operating table the entire time, not making a sound.
We all laughed, petting her, and of course Ringo.
“What do I owe you?” I asked, wanting to get it out of the way before we moved on to something else.
“All of you are our guests and are welcome for the night—unless you’re planning on leaving in the dark. You will owe, but not to me.”
“I don’t understand,” I told him.
“The boys back in town collect a ‘pass tax,’ they call it. Everyone pays unless you sneak around, which won’t happen with those trailers you have. We have an agreement of sorts up in these parts, so your pass, once stamped, will get you through the next towns of Fairplay, Alma, and Blue River—a town, not just a river. After that, you will hit Breckenridge. They’re, how should I say it, a little hoity-toity up there and have their own rules, I hear. But I do know the Mayor, so it might be worth a name drop.”
“So, what’s the toll?” I asked.
“Different for everybody. It is used to be $50 per vehicle or $10 per walker, but it’s changed since cash money doesn’t seem worth the paper it’s printed on anymore. I’ll help you all out with negotiations tomorrow. We’ll figure it out. Now, as promised, my wife is cooking a feast for a small town. I killed a good-sized buck early this morning, so we’ve got fresh venison. I hope you all are meat-eaters!”
“I would say we’re anything-edible eaters, at this point. We’ve got provisions in the freezers we can use to make up the difference if you need it,” I offered.
“Nah, we’re good,” Carl said. “We have a nice garden down by the water and more deer than we can kill.”
“I figured you would have enough city people walking up here, hoping to hunt game,” I replied.
“They either don’t make it this far up or don’t want to pay the tax and head back down to the lake.”
“That’s where we came from,” I noted.
“Really? Then you were lucky to get out of there alive. Some bad things are happening down there, from what we’ve heard.”
“It’s different now—under new ownership, you could say,” I replied. “Thanks again for your help.”
* * * * * * *
Chapter Thirteen
Cañon City, Colorado
I let Ringo rest and grabbed the boys to wash up for dinner. Carl and his wife filled our bellies. We returned the favor as best we could, with the ladies giving his lonely wife some girl time and a night of talking about last season’s “The Bachelor” or “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” and of course “American Idol.” Lucy stayed behind, citing a migraine she couldn’t shake, and the children were playing board games inside the house. Once the wine started to flow, I overheard the ladies speaking something about “Fifty Shades of...” The men broke off with Scotch and vodka until the ladies borrowed the clear stuff. Vlad and his new lady friend, Anna, sat on the back porch talking, and a few of us went off to look at the map and talk strategy.
* * * *
Mike wanted a small group, and it was just Lonnie, Jake and me in front of Lonnie’s truck. using the hood to spread the map over and a flashlight to see in the dark. Mike would head straight back from where we came, bypassing the lake altogether, and find the Baker group. We contemplated telling the Colonel, just in case he was spotted by Ronna, who would surely never forget his face from their tent encounter that seemed like years ago now. We eventually agreed to keep it between us, since he planned to bypass Ronna’s group anyway.
“That’s why Vlad is not here right now,” said Mike. “I don’t want him to have information he’s kept from the Colonel.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I offered.
.
“Let’s get on the same page here,” said Lonnie.
The story to be told by Mike was simple: “He was a bad man and didn’t fit with our group. He stole—no, wait a minute; we don’t want a
