The SUV stopped for only a second.
Eli saw the driver through the open window.
Douglas Callaway.
County commissioner. Chairman of the committee preparing to close Sagebrush Youth Home.
Callaway stared directly at Eli, then accelerated away.
Eli climbed down into the canyon.
He found Cade beneath the motorcycle, unconscious and bleeding from the head. His right leg bent at an angle no leg should make, and gasoline dripped from a damaged fuel line near the hot engine.
Eli did not scream.
Earl had taught him that panic was energy spent without producing anything useful.
The boy dragged the biker away from the motorcycle, sealed the leaking line with wet canyon clay, and built a windbreak at a twenty-two-degree angle against the rock face. He used two pieces of broken wood and Cade’s belt to splint the injured leg. Then he cleaned the head wound with filtered water and closed the worst section with fishing line from Earl’s emergency kit.
Water. Shelter. Signal. Wait.
Eli wrote those four words in the dirt.
They became the rules keeping them alive.
Cade awakened briefly on the first night, muttered something about Sagebrush, and lost consciousness again. Eli gave him water in tiny amounts, monitored his breathing, and covered him with Cade’s leather vest after the temperature fell.
The boy made his first attempt to get help the following morning.
He climbed to the road and waved at a truck. The driver slowed, looked at his dirty clothes and Sagebrush identification badge, then drove away.
Eli returned to the canyon.
Cade was still alive.
His second attempt came at a gas station several miles down the road. The attendant listened until Eli mentioned Sagebrush. Then the man reached for the phone.