Matt looked up to see John Sullivan looking down at him, "Yeah, I"m okay. What about the girl?"
"Henry Sims and one of the girls are giving her CPR. Look. They seem to be having trouble out on the
pontoon. Could you swim over and help? I"m worried about those guys still in the water. It"s not so bad if
they keep moving, but staying still in the water like that. Well, I"ve got a bad feeling about them."
"Okay, I"ll start hauling them back if they can"t manage on their own. Just make sure you have people ready to receive them."
Matt launched into a fast crawl and swam for the pontoon. Thirty seconds later he was helping get the last couple of swimmers out of the water. "Huddle together for warmth you guys." Pulling himself onto the pontoon Matt looked down on the shivering young men and women. A couple were going blue around the lips. Looking around the quarry Matt searched for a boat. Anything that floated. There was nothing. "Everybody. You have to stay huddled together for warmth. You understand?" The shivering swimmers nodded. "Right, I"m going to swim back to sh.o.r.e to get a rope or something. You just stay out of the water. You understand?" Seeing their nods Matt dived back into the water and struck out for the sh.o.r.e.
Helping hands dragged Matt onto the pier and quickly toweled him down before throwing a blanket around his shoulders. Shivering Matt turned to John. "I wouldn"t risk swimming them back if we can avoid it. Is there a boat out here?"
"No," said John.
"h.e.l.l. Anybody know how the pontoon is secured?" Matt asked, looking around the faces congregated on the pier.
"I think it"s a concrete anchor on a chain," suggested Mark Higgins. "The chain is attached to the
pontoon by a shackle. If you can undo the shackle the pontoon should float free. I"ll run back to the
wagons and see if I can find any rope."
"Dieter and I"ll get a couple of horses to help pull the pontoon," said Julia O"Reilly as she grabbed her boyfriend, Dieter Klaus Schmidt, by the hand and dragged him off towards the horses.
Still shivering, Matt turned to John. "The guys on the pontoon seem a bit punch drunk. Does that make
any difference to anything?"
John Sullivan was thoughtful for a moment before nodding. "Yes. It means we better get them on dry land and warmed up quickly. They"re ripe for hypothermia, and if they are drunk, that"s even worse.
Look, Matt. If you"re planning what I think you are, you"re going to need some equipment. Stay here while I get a few things together."
Matt watched John run off, to return a few minutes later with a backpack in his hands. Mark Higgins and
a couple of down-timers arrived at the same time, carrying some lengths of hemp rope.
"None of these will do on its own, but if we join them together, it should be enough," Mark said. He started unraveling the bundles of rope.
"Here, let me do that." John grabbed two lengths of rope and expertly joined them. "Matt," he called, "there"s a large screwdriver, some knit caps, a thermos of hot water, and a couple of survival blankets in the backpack. Get them to wear the knit caps. Remember, we lose up to thirty percent of our body heat through the head. Try to get them to drink some of the hot water, and wrap them in the blankets. Here, use this as a leader. We"ll attach the ropes when you get to the pontoon and you can haul the rope over.
Much easier than swimming pulling a rope." John pa.s.sed Matt a stick with heavy line wound round it.
Matt nodded in understanding. He put the roll of string into the top of the backpack and pulled the end free. He made a loop and tied it to a pile on the pier, then put the pack on and adjusted the straps. Then he lowered himself back into the water. It felt colder this time.
Matt barely felt the increased drag of the pack as he swam back out to the pontoon. He shivered when he pulled himself out of the water. The first thing he did was loop the string around a cleat. Then he emptied the backpack. He had to physically put the hats on the shivering men and women. One by one, he forced them to drink some of the hot water. After that, he wrapped them in the survival blankets and left them huddled together. He"d done the best he could.
He looked back to sh.o.r.e. Julia and Doug had almost arrived back with a pair of horses. It was time to see
about undoing the anchor.
The shackle was old and rust had built up. Pushing the end of the screwdriver through the hole of the shackle, Matt applied all his strength. His body was starting to shake when the shackle squealed and turned a bit. Switching the screwdriver around Matt made another half turn. Half a dozen turns later a thought struck Matt. Going back to the pack he removed the ball of string, and unraveling it as he went, moved back to the shackle. Quickly he tied a loop of line to the chain. Now, when the chain was released they would be able to recover the anchor relatively easily.
There was a cry from the sh.o.r.e. Matt hurried to the front of the pontoon and started hauling on the line as he pulled the heavier rope toward him. With the rope in hand he secured it to the pontoon and hurried
back to the shackle. With a few more turns the chain dropped free to be caught by the line Matt had tied to it. Letting line out, Matt waved to the people on sh.o.r.e. Slowly the pontoon started to move as the horses, aided by helping hands, hauled on the rope.
Helping hands carefully lifted their shivering friends from the pontoon and rushed them up to where fires had been lit. John stayed with Matt as he dried off and dressed in the clothes someone had recovered from where he had dropped them less than twenty minutes earlier.
* * * "Help. Help. We need help. We have someone in the early stages of hypothermia," called Janie Abodeely as she ran up to the camp. "We need someone to ride to the nearest phone to call the emergency services. We might have another three or four cases." As she arrived at the campfire Janie looked at the girls huddled around the fire with Diana and Liz caring for them. "Oh h.e.l.l. Is everything all right here? Liz? You came on a horse didn"t you?" Not waiting for a reply she hurried on. "Look, I"ll give you a note. You have to ride to the nearest phone as quickly as you can."
After hurriedly writing on a page from a notebook Janie grabbed Liz and dragged her towards the line of horses feeding from baskets set at their feet. "Which is your horse?" she asked still pulling on Liz"s arm.
"Speedy. That one over there," Liz pointed.
"Oh good. Do you know the shortcut?" At Liz"s nod Janie continued, "Quick, where"s his tack." Liz looked around. The s.p.a.ce where she had left Speedy"s tack was bare.
"Someone must have taken it," Liz called. She ran to Speedy"s head, stuffing Janie"s note into her pocket.
Untying the halter rope Liz quickly looped it over Speedy"s neck and tied the end to the front clip. She then threw herself up onto Speedy. Bareback and with only a halter for control Liz led Speedy off towards the shortcut.
* * * Fifteen minutes later Liz burst out of the valley and surprised the workmen gathered around the hut. Speedy staggered to a halt and helping hands caught Liz as she slipped from his back. Struggling to stand, Liz pulled at her pocket, her whole body shaking, as she tried to get Janie"s note. "Help, we need help," she said.
As someone took the note, Liz collapsed from a combination of emotional exhaustion, coming down from the adrenaline rush, and her rubbery legs refusing to support her. Reading the hastily scrawled note, Michel Kuhn detailed one of the boys to throw something over the horse and walk it around to cool it down. He then hurried over to the phone and made a call to the emergency services. After a few moments of conversation he gathered most of his crew, leaving a couple of men to look after the up-timer and her horse. Grabbing what equipment they could they started towards the site of the picnic.
The Hospital "What have you got for us, Doctor?" Police Chief Preston Richards asked Dr. Adams.
"Well, three of the five who went into the water are in a stable condition. They should recover, but they will be in the hospital for a couple of weeks. For the other two, the prognosis isn"t so good. Tina Logsden suffered severe head injuries when she dived into the quarry. She appears to have forgotten that the quarry shelves on that side. She is also suffering from hypothermia with complications, including cardiac arrest, probably due to the shock of the cold water. Young Glenna Sue Haggerty is critical. She has suffered a number of cardiac arrests in addition to hypothermia. We are still trying to stabilize her heartbeat."
"Do you have any idea why things happened like that? It seems everybody was okay, then suddenly
everything went wrong."
"That"s for the coroner to say, but there are indications alcohol was involved. In addition to our five hypothermia cases there were a couple cases of what appears to be alcohol poisoning." Dr. Adams held up his hand to stop Chief Richards interrupting. "They should be all right. But I want to keep them in for forty-eight hours for observation."
"Are you saying that the kids drank too much and then went swimming?" asked Chief Richards.
"I wish I could say that, but it appears that someone spiked one of their beverage barrels with spirits.
Pretty cheap spirits at that. Diana Cheng, one of our new medical students, saved a sample and ran it through the lab. There were traces of methanol in it."
Seeing the shocked look of his audience he continued, "Oh, don"t worry, the amount was too small to
cause any permanent harm. The worst affected, Rich.e.l.le Kubiak and Maria Pflaum, should make a full recovery." Dr. Adams gave Chief Richards and his officers a rueful look. "Given the girl"s families, I wouldn"t want to be whoever it was that spiked the drinks. Do you have any ideas as to who might be responsible?"
"Officer Fleischer followed up a hunch. She located a couple of bottles of cheap alcohol and a few doses of those horse steroids that went missing just after the Ring of Fire in the bedroom of one of the students," said Officer Bernadette Adducci, the juvenile officer.
"Who?" asked Dr. Adams.
"Normally we wouldn"t say until our investigations are complete. But under the circ.u.mstances," Officer Adducci took a deep breath, releasing it, with the name. "Kevin Simmons."
"Oh." Dr. Adams nodded his head in understanding. There had been one fatality so far from the picnic.
Kevin Simmons had taken a horse and, having poor horsemanship skills, failed to properly secure the saddle. At some stage, as he galloped away from the picnic site, the saddle had slipped, spilling Kevin.
Unfortunately, he had caught a foot in the stirrup. Kevin"s battered and bloodied body had been found, missing a boot, caught in undergrowth. "That"s going to hit his parents Lorraine and Peter pretty hard.
Does it all have to be made public knowledge?"
"Under the circ.u.mstances there isn"t much point in revealing more than necessary. It won"t bring those girls back, and Kevin Simmons can"t be punished.
What about the Manning girl? I understood she was in a pretty bad condition," said Chief Richards.
"Liz Manning should be okay. She"s a little stressed out." Dr. Adams grinned for the first time. "Based on the time Janie Abodeely wrote on her note and the time the emergency call came through, Liz Manning had just set an all time record for racing a horse through that shortcut. She wiped a good three minutes off her sister"s record. I would think the less Liz remembers of that ride the better. Her sister JoAnn was always the risk taker of those two."
"Right. Dr. Adams, is there anything we can do before we go?" asked Chief Richards.
"There is one thing. If it hadn"t been for the bravery of Matt Tisdel things could have been a lot worse.
He seems to have behaved completely different from what people would expect if they listened to his uncle Melvin Sutter. Is there anything we can do for him?"
Chief Richards looked to Officer Adducci. As the juvenile officer Bernadette knew more about Matt
Tisdel than he did. "I"ll have Officer Adducci look into it, Dr. Adams. Matt does seem to have covered himself with glory, just like some of your new intake of medical students, and he shouldn"t go unrewarded."