THE  CAVERN  OF  DEEP  HARMONY

PART THREE:

It had been warm when Marshall had headed out and he'd only worn tan slacks and a cream shirt with its sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. As he lay there with the muddy water flowing under and around him, he began to shiver, though. It was almost November and the water had a definite chill to it. The bottom of the gully was also in complete shadow, which

made everything seem even colder.

His eyes hurt. Grit had gotten underneath his lids and a thin coating of mud was drying atop them.  Well, nothing he could do about that. He tried and tried to get the mud out of his mouth, but a layer of grit still coated his tongue and teeth and occasional larger bits constantly threatened to slide toward his throat.

"Damn!"  he thought, berating himself. He knew better than to let his weight come forward onto an exploring foot like that, especially after Wadsworth had blocked him as he had. The sound of Wadsworth's barking had stopped a moment ago. He must've gone back down the trail. Surely someone would see the dog and his tell-tale harness and figure something was amiss?  Long minutes passed, though, and the struggle to keep from choking was steadily getting more difficult. He had to sit up! Pulling again on his right arm, he was still not able to budge it. Something pinned it just above the wrist.  His fingers felt slightly numb. That worried him.

His left arm was free, but even lying still the pain flared in his shoulder. He had to try, though, and attempted to turn his body toward the right side.  Sharp pain made him gasp and he lay back, choking from the mud he'd sucked further down his throat. He gagged, coughed hard,

and managed to move it up toward his tongue. Air was becoming terribly precious and getting

it past the mud steadily harder. He managed to push a bit more of it with his tongue and
it dribbled over his lips, clotting in his beard.

The running water, also thick with mud, had risen and now covered his ears, blotting out all sound. He began to have somewhat of a floating sensation, knew it was probably lack of oxygen, that he wasn't actually floating but as he began to drift away on the tide of it, he stopped feeling the rocks that protruded against his back. Floating felt much more comfortable and he was losing the will to resist it. 

He remembered the pool in his Aunt's back yard and how when he was a boy he would stand

at the deep end, his toes curled over the concrete edge. He remembered letting himself
go, letting himself just...fall. The tinglingly wonderful delight of that brief moment of passing through the air toward the water he trusted would be there.  But as he fell it was, for him, a fall into nothingness.  He had never been afraid of nothingness. Then the water was there, received him, and he sank beneath it, feeling its flow around him and suddenly nothingness had liquid form.  Down he would go, down and down until the liquidity had boundary. He'd lie there as long as he could, feeling the roundness of his breath bubbling out of him. Then up he'd float, rising like the bubbles, and just lie there on the surface, rocked in the small waves of his own passage. Floating was one of his favorite things, lying there adrift between the waters and the sky, caressed below by the one and above by the other.  He felt like they found their connectivity in him, that in some strange, profound way the essences of both flowed into him and it was there,  in the deep cavern of himself, that they touched and blended and yet still knew their differences.

Despite the chill that seemed now to be sinking into his flesh, he found himself there again, floating in the pool, suspended between earth and heaven.  He smiled and the movement of the smile let mud flow around his tongue and toward his throat, but there was nothing left to stop

it and so he began to sink again to the bottom of the pool.

Eden screamed, backing up along the path, dropping her leaves. Too far. It was too far back to the inn and she could never outrun a bear.  Her heart pounded and when some low leaves parted and she got a fleeting glimpse of black fur, she screamed again, tripped and fell hard on her rear.  Her eyes were closed.  She couldn't look! It was right there, was right on her! Oh, God! Oh, God!!  She flung up her arms in a feeble effort to protect her face.

Trembling, she sat there as it circled around her. She should have rolled onto her belly. From what she read, that's what one did during a bear attack, rolled onto your belly and folded your arms over the back of your neck. Too late, it's wet nose was poking at her.  She felt it jam into her arms twice.  Then it barked. Loud. And right in her ear. Her whole body jerked. It had to bark again and yet again before it penetrated into her mind that it was a bark and not a growl.

Slowly she lowered her arms enough to peer at the thing. It was a...dog.  A huge dog but, nonetheless, a dog. It kept circling her, almost bouncing on its paws, barking and now and then poking at her with its nose.

"Go away!" she shouted at it.  It wasn't a bear, thank goodness, but it was still plenty big enough to do a lot of damage if it wanted.  She saw that it was a German  shepherd. Oh, lordy. She'd heard tales of German shepherds gone bad.  That same hard, cold fear she'd felt about the bear came back, lodging in her gut. "Go away!" she half-screamed, half-sobbed at it.

Wadsworth, trained to be aware of human needs and circumstances, stopped, and stood quietly, staring at the strange person sitting on the path.  He whuffed deep in his throat, took two steps backwards, then came up to her and whuffed again, this time taking the bottom of her jacket

in his mouth and pulling.

"Let GO!" she shouted, scrabbling to her knees. Wadsworth held onto the jacket, though. She smacked him across his face. "Let go, I said!"

He let go and backed off a few paces, regarding her. Whuffing again, he backed up, came toward her, looked down the trail then back at her and whuffed again.  She managed to get all the way to her feet.  He didn't seem like he really intended to harm her somehow.  He repeated what he'd just done as she watched.  "What's up?" she finally asked. "Did little Timmy fall in the well?"  She'd seen Lassie. After all, who hasn't seen Lassie?  "You doing your impression
of a collie?" 

Wadsworth came right up to her but didn't touch her, just looked up at her face, whuffed, and began to back up. Her gaze centered in on the strange contraption fastened around the dog's body. What the heck was that? "You some sort of working dog?" she wondered aloud. It looked almost like it could be used to pull some sort of little cart. She glanced down the trail. Surely no child would take a wagon down there? It was becoming narrow where they were, with roots and rocks breaking up what had been a fairly smooth surface earlier.  She began to feel curious.
"Something down that way, boy? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

She took one step down the trail. Wadsworth whuffed and backed up more. She'd seen too many movies in her time. After all, that's what she did. She reviewed movies for the paper.  This was way too much like stepping onto a sound stage. This just could not be what she'd begun to think it was.  No way. But the dog kept backing up, keeping its eyes on her.  She took another step and it backed up more. This was just too strange!  What if there were a child further on, its cart crashed somehow?  She couldn't just go blithely back to the inn without checking. Miles would definitely have checked. Dammit! Couldn't she leave that behind for more than an instant? But that was true. Miles would have followed the dog. She sighed, looking at her leaves scattered, some of them already blowing away. Tomorrow.  She would just gather more tomorrow.

"All right, dog," she said firmly. "I'll bite."  Then she laughed at what she'd said. "At least YOU didn't bite, eh?" She walked toward it. "Lead the way."

Wadsworth turned and dashed down the trail, pausing when he got too far ahead of the human, making sure she could see him, see where he was going.  She wasn't nearly as fast as he'd have liked, but she'd have to do.

Eden panted, trying to keep up with the dog. He seemed in some dreadful hurry but she got a stitch in her side and stopped, leaning against a tree to catch her breath.  The dog halted about 30 feet further up the trail, giving her one short, sharp bark.  "I'm coming! I'm coming!" she grumped.

The path had become little more than a deer track with large rocks more concentrated nearby and huge roots of trees jutting up across it.  She had to pick her way carefully in order not to twist an ankle. Surely no kid would bring a cart this far?  The dog disappeared around a sharp bend and she could hear him barking at something.  Some sort of gully washer had rampaged through this area in the night washing away the path altogether and she came up to the dog right at the edge of a steep drop-off.  The edge of the big gully had obviously collapsed and the dog was staring down into the shadowy bottom, dancing back and forth in agitation.  She followed the line of his gaze and gasped. Someone was there! Squinting, she tried to make out
details, but there was so much mud, so many rocks and broken branches she could only tell that it was a person, nothing more. Again her heart began to pound. How would she ever get down there?

Wadsworth was determined. He went about 20 feet further along the top of the gully, finally finding a place where he could pick his way down by clambering over a large fallen tree and through some jumbled rocks. She had followed him and watched as he started down. A rock rolled from under his paws and he yelped, scrambling atop a larger one nearby. Down there? She was going to have to follow the dog down THERE? Blowing out a long breath, she hauled herself up and over the tree. The dog was almost at the bottom and she hurried as fast
as she could, trying to remember where he'd stepped and the rocks had remained in place.

When she got to the bottom, miraculously, she thought, still in one piece except for a long scrape down her left forearm, the dog was already beside the person.  At least she thought it was a person. One couldn't really tell yet.  A small, muddy stream was pouring down the side of the gully and she had to walk in it, white tennis shoes or no white tennis shoes.  She was beyond caring.  The mud squished up to her ankles, hiding small rocks and branches under its goo.  Several times she nearly fell but at last she came up beside the dog. He was frantically
licking the face of the person, and, yes, now she could see for sure it was a person, and from the looks of it, a full-grown man.  Not much of him remained above the mud, though.  She leaned forward, looking down at him. He appeared to be dead, yet the dog still licked his face.

"Mister!" she called loudly. "Can you hear me?"

The man neither responded nor moved. Then she saw his mouth was partially open and a lot of mud had gotten inside.  She fell to her knees in the mud, feeling for a pulse as Miles had taught her. Yes, weak, thready, but still there. Just barely there. Pulling out a scarf from her jacket pocket, she began to wipe at his mouth. Damn, she needed fresh water! She just seemed to be smearing the stuff around!  The way it was, it had to be clogging his throat. She got behind his head, trying to lift his shoulders but discovered his right arm was firmly pinned by a branch. So she moved to his left side, pushing hard, and managed to roll him half-way to his right. She tried
to lift his head again but now her hands were slippery with mud, so she sat down just above his head, slid her arms under him, and shoved him as hard as she could over her right thigh. His head was now hanging down and forward and she pounded on his back with her right fist while using her left fingers to almost claw the mud from his mouth. 

Finally he began to cough, long, gut-wracking coughs that seemed to go on and on. She pounded his back some more until she was too tired to go on and leaned back against a rock behind her.  Whoever he was, he lay twisted to the side over her thigh, gasping in air while the dog licked his face.

"Good dog," she sighed, then closed her eyes a minute, gathering strength to move again.

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