The Firefighter

Chapter 15 - The Escape

One morning, they awoke early to find that the llamas had escaped from their pens and disappeared. Charlotte and Oliver went to the stables and saddled up to go and look for them. Jimmy said that he could join them later as he had to take the twins to school first.

As they road out over the hills, Charlotte spotted a removal van. There were men behind the van loading up her llamas into their van. She pointed her horse in the direction of the truck and advised Oliver to follow her. When they got to the truck, Charlotte climbed down.

"Excuse me, just what do you think that you are doing with those llamas?" she asked them. The men swung around, and their leader said in a menacing voice, "These are our llamas and we are moving them to another field."

"No, they are not. I recognise them as being from our sheep farm, Tanderra, over there."

The leader pulled out a gun and ordered Charlotte and Oliver to back away.

"We are taking these llamas so don't try to stop us, golden oldies," he threatened.

Oliver grabbed Charlotte's arm and pulled her back, along with their two horses, who were prancing around nervously. When they were a safe distance away, Oliver called out to them, "You won't get away with this, you know. We are going to call the police."

The leader seemed to be a bit trigger happy and pulled the trigger when it was pointing at Charlotte's leg. A loud shot rang out and Charlotte bent over, screaming in pain.

"Well, that should slow you down!" With that, the gang closed the back door of the truck, jumped into the front seat of the truck and drove away. Oliver memorised the number plate, as he glanced at it speeding away down the dusty road. Then he bent down, to bandage up Charlotte's leg, to stop the bleeding from her thigh. She had lost a lot of blood and he worried that if she didn't get more blood soon, she may die. He helped her back onto the horse and they wound their way back to the farmhouse as quickly as they could. By this time, Jimmy had returned from dropping the children at school and looked up to see Charlotte riding in a bent over position. He ran to them and then helped them both indoors. Jane called the ambulance and the police. The police were there very fast, and Oliver gave them the number plate of the truck and descriptions of the thieves. The police admitted that there had been a string of other stock thefts in the area and they had some prior knowledge of the gang. Then the police spoke over the radio and took off at high speed since they had found out a location on that truck, full of their llamas.