So she led the way, trotting forward as the terrain got more rocky and difficult, remembering the landmarks she’d internalized so long ago.
These days, she didn’t have time to get this far up, usually; her runs tended to be restricted to the woods immediately behind her house. But she remembered vaguely which way to go.
They arrived at a steep climb upwards, and suddenly Ryder bounded ahead. Her doe startled, prancing to the side before Misty could clamp down on the instinct of Wolf! and stay put.
But then Ty came up next to her, and her doe calmed immediately. The presence of her mate meant that no predator could hurt them.
Ryder was pulling ahead, so Misty corralled her doe and leapt after him. He must have started to remember the way. Thank God.
They climbed further and further up, as the trees thinned and the snow grew heavier, until finally Misty could see a huge rock, a dark shape rising over the sparse forest. Ryder stopped at its base and waited.
When they arrived, he shifted, and nodded to the stone. “Up there.”
“You climbed up,” Misty interpreted, “and then he fell down the other side.”
Ryder nodded. “There’s not a way to get around—you have to go up and over. I tried, after.”
Misty radioed again. Lynn immediately knew where they were, which was a relief, because giving directions through the night-dark woods based only on landmarks would have been difficult.
“Okay,” Ty was saying. “Help is on the way. But we want to get to Zeke as soon as possible, make sure he’s all right. Ryder, you’re coming with us, so let’s scale this rock, all right?”
Ryder nodded bravely. Misty wondered if it was necessary to bring the delinquent teen along—what if he fell, too?—but she trusted Ty’s judgment.
In human form, they scaled the rock, which had just enough of a slope, and plenty of jagged bits to grab. Ty went first, and Misty made Ryder go between them, just in case. Misty’s hands were cold and scraped by the time they got to the top, but no one had fallen.
They made their way across the top of the rock to where it started to slope again. Misty could see the problem Ryder had had. They were on top of one solid rocky outcropping that had a rift in the middle of it. However, the rift didn’t extend all the way to the ends—it was more of a long hole, with steep slopes, almost completely vertical, on all sides. She would have been hesitant to commit to climbing back up with an unconscious person.
“All right,” Ty said. “I’m going to go down there and check on him.”
“I want to come with you,” Ryder said fiercely.
Ty glanced at Misty, checking in on what she thought.
“If you think he’ll be useful, and you’re confident you can keep both of you safe,” Misty said. She trusted Ty’s judgment.
“All right,” Ty said. “We’re going to climb down. It’s not far enough to get seriously hurt if you’re paying attention. Then we’re going to assess Zeke’s situation, see if we can wake him up. The sheriff’s going to wait up here to help us up if we need it. Understood?”
“Understood,” said Ryder.
Ty nodded sharply. “Let’s go.”
***
Ty
In Ty’s experience, when someone was behaving immaturely, the worst thing to do was to treat them like they were immature. A delinquent teen, in particular, was never going to shape up if everyone assumed he didn’t know any better—whether they excused his behavior, or tried to punish him into knowing better, nothing was going to change.
If, on the other hand, you put the kid in a situation where he had real responsibility and he knew it, and where the consequences of his behavior were obvious and up-front and mattered to him, he’d probably shape up. And if he didn’t, he needed more serious help.
Ryder was shaping up.
He followed Ty down the other side of the rock with careful concentration. It wasn’t a long or difficult climb; Zeke must have hurt himself by going down unexpectedly, maybe headfirst. Ty really, really hoped that he wasn’t seriously in
jured or worse.
They were going to find out soon. As they climbed down, a dim shape at the bottom resolved itself into the motionless form of a lanky teenage boy.
Ty landed solidly on the snow at the bottom of the hole, and Ryder followed suit. Immediately, the kid rushed over to his friend. “He’s breathing!” he reported.