Chapter 10D

Out of the Frying Pan...

Day 8...

The morning began like the day before, thick fog blanketed the camp. Jim and Sara took care of their morning business, and then returned to the cooking tent for breakfast. "I'm going to start a fire this morning because I found a bag of pinto beans in those boxes of food for the cabin. It sounded like a good idea to me."

Sara smiled and said, "Too bad we can't have some cornbread to go with it."

"Who said we can't?"

Sara shook her head, "What are you going to use for an oven? If you don't mind me asking."

Jim walked over the wooden crate he had pulled out of the plane, "This, it's a Dutch oven."

"What about eggs and milk?" Sara asked.

"Well shit! You got me there. I guess we'll have to make do with some hot water cornbread."

Jim had been able to soak the beans by leaving the pot in the sleeping tent with them the night before. It had a light layer of ice on the top but the beans had swelled and softened. Jim sat the pot on the rocks and used a stick to rake some more coals under it.

"Sara, I'm going to go get some more wood. Keep an eye on the beans while I'm gone please."

"Okay, be careful."

Jim and Sara had already scrounged all of the easy-to-get wood they had used it in their signal fire, so now Jim had to go further down the mountain to find dead wood. When they were building the bonfire Sara had found a box in the baggage compartment and in the box was a game hauler, basically it's a two-wheeled cart for hauling deer and elk from the kill site to the camp. Since it didn't know deer meat from firewood it had come in handy, the hard part had been putting it together. The folding pliers of Jim's utility tool had been hard pressed, but they had managed and it had been well worth the effort. It was over an hour later when Jim pulled the heavily laden cart into camp. He unloaded the cart and carefully stacked the wood out of the way.

Sara stuck her head out of the door of the cooking tent, "Come on, I have some tea ready for you." Jim knocked the snow off of his clothes and shoes and ducked into the tent. Sara threw her arms around him and kissed him, "Burrr!" she said after breaking the kiss, "your face is freezing."

Jim just nodded his head and started sipping the hot tea and feeling it as it warmed him from the inside out. "Jim," Sara reached over to caress his face still smooth from yesterdays shave, "do you think we ought to start thinking about hiking out of here?"

Jim finished the last of his tea and reached to refill it from the steaming pot sitting on the small backpacking stove, "Well I'm hoping that someone saw that fire and as soon as the damn fog lifts someone is going to come and see what it was about. We'll give them two days after the fog lifts and if no one shows we'll leave."

"Which way will we go?" Sara asked, she had pulled up the map that she had on her laptop and it looked like west was their best bet. Jim and Sara decided to move from the cooking tent to the sleeping tent. Jim stopped and gave the beans a stir and put some more wood on the far side of the fire.

"We can't go east, there are just too many mountains that we'd have to climb, the same goes for north and south. This range of mountains seems to be one side of a valley."

Sara's face took on a serious look, "What are you going to do when we get back?"

It was a question he had asked himself a hundred times in the last twenty four hours. "I know that I don't want to stop waking up next to you." He pulled Sara into his arms and looked into her eyes, "I love you Sara. I'm afraid the whole world will be against us once we're off this mountain, there's going to be a bunch of money grubbing bastards that are going to do everything in their power to keep us apart."

"What if we were married before they got to us?" Sara asked.

"We do have that letter from your dad to that judge so if we could get a Canadian judge to honour it we could get married here before we head back to Texas."

Sara smiled that smile that Jim had come to know as her mischievous smile, "Well, you're assuming something."

"Oh, what's that?" Jim asked, knowing he was taking the hook in his mouth.

"Well technically I haven't been asked to marry you yet," Sara's face was bright and happy but still with that hint of mischief.

Jim looked at the beautiful woman he had fallen in love with, sure she was sixteen, she'd be seventeen tomorrow, but she was no girl, her mother's death and her father's abandonment had made her older than her years. "Sara, would you please hand me my wallet."

Sara handed Jim the wallet, Jim opened it and pulled out a small velvet bag and as he did Sara raised an eyebrow that quickly turned into a wide eyed stare as Jim pulled her to her feet in the tent, Jim's head crowding the top of the tent. Jim pulled Sara into a kiss and just like every other time he had kissed her he could feel his heart soar. He broke the kiss and dropped to one knee, "Sara Marie Dillon, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?" Jim slipped the ring onto her finger, and then kissed her hand.

Sara looked down at Jim with tears in her eyes, "Yes, Oh yes, I'll marry you." Sara dropped down and threw her arms around Jim and held on to him as though her life depended on it.

"This was my Grandmothers ring. She told me if I would always keep this with me I wouldn't have to let the good one get away."

Unnoticed by the two lovers the light outside the tent had been steadily increasing over the last hour. Down below the mountain Jonathan Hicks and his granddaughter Mary Beth had driven to the nearby ranger station. Sergeant Dave Sampson greeted them, "Good morning Mary Beth, Professor, it looks like the fog is going to lift this morning."

"Yes, Mary Beth has been watching the weather reports, she's very excited to find out what you might discover out there."

"Well we'll know here shortly. The pilot is about to start warming the helicopter up any minute now," the sergeant explained. As if on cue they heard the twin turbines start winding up. They watched as the pilot made his remaining pre-flight checks then the three of them watched as the bright orange helicopter lifted off the ground and took off towards the mountains in the east.

Jim heard the thumping of the helicopter's blades a good two minutes before Sara did. She was watching Jim as first a smile and then a frown came on his face. "I think we're about to have company."

"Oh no!" Jim looked at Sara nodding his head; he understood exactly what she meant. While they were being rescued it could be spelling the end of their relationship. They slipped on their coats and went out to meet their fate.

Jim draped his arm over Sara's shoulder as they watched the helicopter come in. The pilot spotted the two survivors and watched as Jim signalled that he could land in the cleared area where they had built the bonfire.

The helicopter circled twice and then eased in sending up a fog of ashes, dust, and snow. Once the pilot had landed, the side door opened and a rather small person in orange flight coveralls, and a helmet, and carrying a small backpack, came towards them.

When the helmet came off a thick shock of strawberry blond hair fell out and was shaken into place. Sticking her hand out she introduced herself, "Flight Nurse Maggie Piper, are you folks all right?"

Jim nodded his head, "We're fine, will you give us time enough to pack up our stuff?"

"Sure let me help you, the pilot is going to want to get out of here as fast as he can," Maggie told them.

Turning to Sara, Jim said, "I'll get the cooking tent cleared out and down if you two will work on the sleeping tent."

Thirty minutes later Jim and Sara's backpacks were packed and Jim had already carried one load to the helicopter. When he got back Sara was digging through the baggage compartment looking for something. "What are you hunting for sweetie?"

Jim's question caused Maggie to turn and glare at him. Jim felt her anger right away, "You bastard, you took advantage of her didn't you." Maggie's temper was somewhat legendary and it had just kicked in the afterburners as she charged the few feet to Jim and slapped him, the sound echoing off the nearby rock face. Maggie was about to hit Jim again when a hand grabbed her wrist and spun her around.

Jim yelled, "No Sara!" but it was too late. Sara connected with a roundhouse punch that knocked Maggie out colder than a wedge. "You shouldn't have hit her."

"The bitch shouldn't have slapped you, at least not till she found out what the deal was," Sara replied, her face still showing all the signs of being very angry.

"Found out what was what?" Maggie asked rubbing her chin, and trying to clear the cobwebs in her head, "what did you hit me with?"

"My fist bitch, and if you touch my fiancé again you'll get another one," Sara said, standing over the woman with her hands on her hips.

Maggie looked up to see the ring on her finger, "Isn't she a little young for you?"

"I tried to tell her that, but she doesn't care," Jim laughed. "Again, what were you hunting for Sara?"

"Oh, dad always carried an aluminium case with money and special papers in it. I don't want to leave it up here," Sara answered.

"Well let's get it and get off this mountain," Maggie said as Jim offered her a hand to help her up off the ground.

Maggie looked at the other cases sitting on the ground, "What's in those?"

"Guns. Her dad was taking them to his new hunting lodge in Alaska, he wasn't planning on stopping anywhere in Canada," Jim said. "I know you don't want to leave them up here for someone to find."

"No, but we can't haul everything," Maggie complained.

Jim heard a muffled curse from the plane, "Did you find it?"

"Yeah, I did, I was just looking at this." Sara held up her dad's shaving kit. "Here, that was his spare one," Sara rolled her eyes, and handed Jim a very nice Rolex watch as she put the rest of her father's jewellery into the pockets of her jacket. Jim picked up the gun cases and the aluminium case and started to the helicopter. Sara had her suitcase and her dad's briefcase; they turned and looked back at the place that had been home for eight days. In some ways it was sad to be leaving there, in others it was good to be gone, but whatever the case, things were about to get complicated and Sara and Jim both knew it.

Sara walked up to the pilot, "Can you please call ahead and have a judge meet us when we land?"

"A magistrate? Why?" the pilot asked.

"Because I have some very important papers in here and it will take a judge to sort them out," Sara replied.

The pilot nodded his head, "Yeah, sure, get in." In minutes they were airborne and headed back to the ranger station, but not before the pilot circled around to see if he could find the rest of the crash site.

It didn't take long to find the blackened side of the mountain that marked where the other half of the plane had hit. There was nothing recognisable, and the storm had wiped out the tracks from where the half that Sara and Jim survived in had slid down the mountain. As the helicopter banked and headed back to the ranger station Sara had waved her hand and said, "Good bye, Daddy."

Sara squeezed Jim's hand and then she turned and buried her head in his shoulder. For the first time since Jim had known her she seemed like a little girl and not the young woman she had shown for the last two months, but before the helicopter had landed the woman was back and Jim got to see another side of Sara he hadn't seen; Sara the business woman.

Sara turned to Jim, "When we land you start getting our stuff off of here and I'll get started on the other stuff that needs to be done. You might want to see about hiring us a plane so we can get back to Texas."

Jim smiled at her leaned down and kissed her, "Go get 'em tiger."

Maggie was shaking her head, "How old are you?"

"I'll be seventeen in," she pulled the sleeve of her shirt up and looked at her watch, "eight hours," Sara replied.

Maggie shook her head. "You act more like you're twenty than seventeen."

The pilot's detour around the crash site gave the magistrate time to get to the station and he was standing talking to Mary Beth Hicks and her grandfather when the helicopter landed. The pilot had told Sara and Jim about the little girl seeing their bonfire and how she had even calculated their location which had been right on the money.

When the helicopter touched down Sara waited patiently till Maggie slid the door open. After that she was out of the helicopter like her life depended on it, and maybe in a way it did. "Excuse me, but which one of you is the magistrate that I asked to meet us?" Sara asked.

"I am the magistrate," the older of the two men said.

Sara's mind was running a mile a minute turning to the girl, "I hear you're responsible for Jim and I being rescued and I truly thank you. I want to spend some time talking to you but I need to talk to this man first, can you stick around a little bit?"