Victor looked up and noted that it was somewhere around 3 in the afternoon. "We'd better get back to work Miguel. No telling when Jorge will return." As Victor stood up he felt stiff. His body wasn't used to all this work after several days off. He stretched before hobbling off. He slowly walked around the parameter of the homestead making mental notes of where someone would run once things started to happen. He picked an area behind the paddock, which stood between but a little behind the house and barn. There was a lot of brush here, easy to hide a trap. He turned and called to Miguel to come over with a shovel. He explained to Miguel what he wanted. "Are we going to put spikes in the bottom?" Miguel asked.
"Huh! Why, what for?" Victor asked shocked.
"To kill those men. They are bad men." He answered truthfully.
"No, Miguel. We want to discourage them from returning, maybe hurt them, but I won't kill unless I absolutely have to. We will put a few short thick branches down there and hope they sprain an ankle and put them out of commission. This will probably take you the rest of the day if not part of tomorrow. I will have to handle the other traps by myself. Think you can handle it?"
Miguel nodded yes. It was a big project, but he could do it.
Victor went around to the front of the barn and found a large gunnysack, which probably held grain for the animals at one time. He grabbed with his sore arm, and instantly regretted the speed with which he did it. The sack wasn't heavy so once the pain subsided, he was able to carry it to the fireplace to grab several more rocks. Not too many, just enough to pack a good wallop. This time, he held onto the bag with the same hand that he uses to hold the crutch. It made walking even more difficult as the bag swung around with each stride and periodically hit either the crutch or his bad knee. Thankfully the barn wasn't that far. At the barn he dropped the sack, sat down in the straw and started stuffing the bag with the straw. He was careful to move the rocks into the middle of the now straw loaded sack. With a small length of baling twin he tied the sack closed. After he finished, Victor sat for a while. He was quickly running out of steam. His body although used to a lot of hard work, was still suffering from the damage he did to it with the hypothermia, dehydration, starvation and injuries. As tired as he was, he still felt driven to complete as much as possible. Jorge could come back within the hour or within a week. He was too unpredictable. Victor did not have the luxury of time. He could rest all he needed once all the traps were set. He took a deep breath and using his crutch, got back up. He grabbed the sack by the neck with his bad arm, because it was too full to try to carry with his good arm holding the crutch. As he took a step forward trying to drag the sack, pain seared up his arm. He held the tension, gritted his teeth and waited for the pain to come down to a manageable level. When it reached a level he could endure, he continued on. He dragged the bag to path that Jorge most likely would return by. He went fairly far down the path before picking a good spot. The path was narrow and dark due to the thick brush. He set down the bag and when he realized he didn't have rope with him cussed. He was getting tired and starting to make mistakes. Now he had to make another energy sapping trip. He took a deep breath and headed back to the barn for another length of rope, leaving the sack behind.
Teresa was busy doing many of the chores normally saved for Miguel. At this time, she was cutting more firewood as the pile had been severely diminished over the past few days. She was in back of the house and could see her son digging. He was working so hard. She was so proud of him. He was a man before he was supposed to be. She could tell from where she worked that he was making a lot of progress. The hole was getting deep quickly. She continued chopping the logs with the ax. It was a chore that she had done plenty of times before. She could wield the heavy ax with ease. Both Teresa and Miguel dropped their tools instantaneously when they heard a scream of pain coming from the front of the house.
Victor heading towards the barn took a misstep about halfway there and fell hard on his bad knee. The shock of pain forced him over to his left side and he landed on his bad arm. As a reflex, he rolled off his bad arm onto his unprotected back. A stream of curses flowed from him as he rolled onto his right side. For most of the past several days he had been quite stoic, but this happened so suddenly, that he couldn't hold it in. He lay on his right side, just willing the pain to cease.
Miguel was the first to reach him but his mother was right on his heals. As Teresa approached she saw with dismay that she should have insisted earlier that Victor get his bandage and shirt back on. She cursed to herself for giving into a moment of weakness at the thought of giving him another sponging later in the evening instead of insisting he needed to protect his back. Now she could see his sticky sweat-covered back had a thick layer of dirt on it and crimson marks were showing through where the worst of he wounds were.
"Victor, you have hurt yourself!" Teresa exclaimed a little too much anger showing.
Not knowing what to say, he just grunted, "yes" through clenched teeth.
"You have had enough for the day. Let's get you back into the house and on your bed." Teresa ordered.
"No, no! Just let me lay here for a moment. Let me catch my breath. I'll be ok. I just need to rest a moment." He said.
Now Teresa was showing her stubborn side. "Listen Victor Whoever-you-are, as long as you are a guest of my house, you will do as I say. And I am telling you that you have had enough and need to go inside to rest. The sun is almost gone anyway. What more can you accomplish today?"
"Ok, ok. But I still need to rest here a minute before I attempt to get up."
As Victor was lying there, Miguel went over to pick up the hoe handle and found that it was broken. He looked back at Victor who had his back to him and he knew that he would not be able to maneuver without some assistance. He ran around back and grabbed the ax and disappeared into the woods before it got too dark to see. Victor and Teresa had no idea what he was doing or where he had gone. In fact Victor hadn't even see the broken handle.
Miguel came back about 15 minutes later with a thick sturdy branch, cut to Victor's size that had an almost perfect fork at one end to fit perfectly under his arm. With his pain subsiding a little Victor was able to give Miguel a large grateful smile. He took the new crutch firmly in his right hand, planted it in the ground and hoisted himself back into a standing position.
"This is perfect, Miguel, much easier to use than the handle. It at least frees up my hand since I can hold onto it with my arm." Victor said. Then he turned and headed back to the barn.
"And where do you think you are going?" Teresa demanded hands planted firmly on her hips.
"I'm just giving it a test drive."
"Not to the barn, you're not. Into the house."
"Teresa, I am fine, really. The daylight is almost gone. Let me finish this one last trap. I will be at the house immediately afterwards." Victor pleaded.
Teresa saw no point in arguing. "I will be waiting to clean your back off and take a look at your arm and knee, so be quick about it."
Victor picked out another length of rope and headed to the almost dark path where he left the sack. He threw the rope over a strong branch about 20 feet up. When the end came back down, he tied it to the sack leaving extra rope for him to work with. He then sat down just below the branch. By sitting down he would be able to pull the sack up with his good arm, then use his good foot to keep the sack in place as he gathered up more rope with his arm for another pull. It was an awkward way to pull the sack up, but he had no other choice. When the sack was 4 feet off the ground, he tied the rope around the base of the tree and covered it up best he could. He got up and grabbed the extra length he gave himself that was attached to the now free-swinging sack. He threw that over a branch of another tree. He pulled the sack up onto the branch, took the extra rope and looped it back over the branch then down behind a tree trunk to keep it hidden from immediate view. He fed the end under an exposed root, crossed the path a couple of inches off the ground and tied it to the trunk of a tree on the other side. He had just enough tension on it so that the slightest pressure should trigger the trap. He built up a twig and brush tent over the elevated rope just enough to hide it but hopefully not enough so that Jorge and his friends would step over it. He tested the tension and watched the sack wiggle. It looked well hidden, but then, it was very dark now. He would need to come back in the morning to see how readily it stands out in the daylight.
His energy now spent, he slowly hobbled back to the house. Teresa already had dinner on the table and Miguel had stopped digging to come in and eat. Victor thought that Teresa was going to tend to his wounds first, but the with aroma of dinner floating in the air he found he was starving. He sat down and waited for her. He looked to Miguel who was wolfing down his food and gave him a questioning glance.
"I am going back out to dig some more when I finish." Miguel offered.
"But it's dark out there." Victor said.
"I will use a lantern." He replied. He took a few more gulps of dinner then left even before Teresa sat down. Grabbing the lantern as he exited the house, a sly smile crept across his face. Getting the hole dug was only one of the reasons he left. This gave Victor and Teresa time alone together.
There was an awkward silence for a while at dinner. She couldn't ask him what he did for a living or anything at all about his past for that matter. He was afraid to broach the subject of her husband or Jorge. He didn't want to pry where he wasn't suppose to. They talked mainly about what was accomplished today, praising Miguel and trying to guess when Jorge would indeed return.
After dinner, she told him to lie down on his bed face down so that she could clean the mess he made of his back today. She softly brushed the loose dirt away with her hand, then gently she started to sponge him. The warm water trickled down his spine and pooled in the small of his back. Other rivulets tickled as they ran down his ribs onto the floor. Victor wanted to tell her that it felt good, but kept his silence. Only periodically did it sting when she hit the worst of the wounds. He had his eyes closed. His body ached all over and this helped relaxed his complaining muscles. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something exceptionally soothing about this.
She could feel his body relax under the gentle swabbing of his scarred back. She had added just a touch of the soothing herb, chamomile. She was happy she could make this gentleman comfortable, he has after all done so much to try to help rid of Jorge. But she was trying hard to suppress the feelings that were simmering deep inside. She just knew he was not going to stay and did not want to fall in love. She was carefully patting his back dry before putting the dressing back on. As she finished up near his neck, he reached behind him with his good arm and gentle grasped her hand. His eyes were still closed. She started once again to feel warm all over. She just didn't want to admit to herself that she was falling for this handsome stranger. His grip loosened as he fell asleep.