WILD Justice - Chapter 5
Another gripping chapter from the WILD MYSTERY SERIES—In the WILD, there will ultimately be a reckoning.
Hello from the WILD world of statewide (and federal) politics! As promised, here is another chapter from my short story WILD JUSTICE. This is the penultimate chapter— known in literary jargon as the all-hope-is-lost point in story—the place where your protagonist has seemingly got no way out, and the mission appears to have failed.
While I am wrapping up some political organizing work and some team system building[1] that has taken me away from writing regular essays here on Substack, I hope my gift to you of this award-winning short story will serve as some compensation for missing the kind of essays and audio podcasts I usually create.
Also, I want you all to know that our Substack !LIVE! Event with Colorado Attorney General and candidate for Governor Phil Weiser was an energy-packed interview. If you missed it, here is a link to the video so you can watch it and share it with friends:
SANDI AULT LIVE with CO AG Phil Weiser
or it’s available as an audio podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
And I have some exciting news about our NEXT two Substack !LIVE! Events! We will have a powerhouse guest for this one:
Colorado State Senator and candidate for the U.S. Senate Julie Gonzales will be my next guest on Substack !LIVE! on Friday April 17 @2PM MDT!
and we’ll be taking May 1 off for the NO BILLIONAIRES Strike, but the week after:
An undaunted and fearless fighter for free and fair elections and for democracy, Colorado Secretary of State and candidate for Attorney General Jena Griswold on Substack !LIVE! on Friday, May 8 @2PM MDTWatch this space for more details and plan to join us!
I hope you are enjoying these chapters from WILD JUSTICE. I would love to hear what you think. Please leave me a comment and/or a restack.
The books and short stories in the WILD MYSTERY Series have appeared on dozens of bestseller lists, and won a multitude of awards from the literary world. While the series has received profuse acclaim from national reviewers, I truly cherish the review quote below from what was at the time my “hometown” paper, because Estes Park was the nearest village to the mountain valley cabin where I lived and served as a wildland firefighter in the northern part of Colorado. That small community paper chimed in with frequent accolades as each new book was released, and the local bookstore hosted big book-signing events that had to be held in large gathering halls because of the standing-room-only crowds.
“Ault is often compared to the late Tony Hillerman. While it’s an honorable and helpful comparison, it’s also a bit unfair. Ault’s novels are unique and original, and they deserve to stand on their own. …Ault’s WILD INFERNO was recognized by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of [the year]. …Ault, like many a great storyteller of the American West, understands the richness of ‘deep time.’ And we are fortunate she has once again given us a glimpse into the great heritage of a great people.”
—ESTES PARK TRAIL GAZETTE
Here’s Chapter Five of WILD JUSTICE![2]
Chapter 5: Hung
When the noose snapped around my ankles, I took flight. My feet catapulted up into the air, high above my head and into the trees, capsizing me and yanking my body into a high-speed inversion as a hailstorm of my gear plummeted downward. I dropped the metal detector and groped for my rifle, which eluded me, the strap sliding off my shoulder as it fell toward the ground. The field glasses went, too, striking me hard in the chin as the strap slipped off my neck. All the while a bell clanged loudly from somewhere below me. I swung back and forth, my right ankle burning painfully where the rope strangled it right through my boot. I twisted my upper body to one side and looked up. My left boot crossed atop my right foot but the lower ankle had taken most of the snap of the noose. Now my full body weight tightened the rope’s grip and compressed both ankles together in a chokehold. I felt blood rushing to my head as I hung upside down, and I also felt a trickle of blood wind down my jawbone, past my left eye at the temple, and into my hair inside the stocking cap—this from where the field glasses had struck me in the chin on their way down. The bell stopped clanging as my swinging slowed; I was no longer triggering the striker, which worked like a pendulum with my body as a counterweight.
Before I could think what to do, I heard crashing in the brush as someone rushed downslope from above and to the northwest. The sound grew closer, and then Casta Diaz came into view, his rifle aimed at my head. Thin, grizzly-bearded, with long, thick locks of black hair shooting out at all angles from beneath his ball cap, he looked like a wild man, and much older than this thirty-or-so years. A jawbite pattern of deep purple pits, rumored to have been from a dog attack when he was a child, disfigured one side of his face, making him look all the more menacing. “Well, what do we have here?”
“Lower me down!” I demanded.
“Now that sounds like a girl’s voice! But you don’t look so pretty with all that stuff on your face. Take off that hat, lemme see your hair.” He pointed the rifle at my hat and thrust the barrel forward.
I reached with one hand and pulled off the stocking cap. My hair billowed downward into the air.
“Well,” Casta said, grinning, “hello, Agent Wild. What are you doing here?”
“Lower me down!” I said again.
“You can probably get your own self down. You got a knife, don’t you? What kind of a resource protection agent would you be if you didn’t carry a knife in the back country?”
“It’s almost twenty feet to the ground,” I said, “and I’d be dropping head-first. I could break my neck. Lower me down, Diaz.”
He held his rifle steady in one hand and reached with the other to rub his chin, as if he were contemplating what to do. “This could be fun,” he said. “I like a little sport.” He walked over to my rifle and picked it up. A foul smell wafted upward. He surely hadn’t bathed in months. He spotted the metal detector and field glasses and grabbed them, too. Then he looked at me and winked. “You got a little something right there,” he said, holding his rifle upright and pointing a finger to the side of his face—indicating where the trickle of blood still ran from my chin into my hair. And then he walked back into the woods, the same way he had come.
Each time I struggled to reach for the rope, it jerked the noose and squeezed my feet tighter together, wrenching the heel of my left boot harder into my tortured right ankle. I gasped with the pain, wincing as I attempted to double my body over from an inverted position so that my hands could reach the rope. To make it worse, the bell clanged every time I made an attempt, thereby notifying Diaz that I was trying to escape. After my third failure to reach the rope with my hands, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do this quietly anyway, and I could use some momentum to help me. And so I started bending forward at the waist, then arching backward, and soon I had a rhythm going, and gradually I went from swaying slightly to swinging in a wide arc, back and forth. With each swing, I hinged from the hips and swung my torso higher and higher until, at the top of one high arc, I thrust my upper body forward into an upside down pike, grasping the rope with both hands above my boots, my knees bent just enough to allow me to hold myself in this position. I held onto the rope firmly with my left hand and carefully extracted my knife from the sheath on my belt, making sure not to let it fall as it came out. I pushed the blade against the rope just under where I gripped it, and began to saw. As I severed one strand after another, I felt the rope begin to give. And then, suddenly, my feet were free and they dropped, causing me to swing wildly. And the bell—which had sounded rhythmically in response to my swinging movements—now erupted in a rapid staccato. I knew as soon as the clanging stopped altogether that Diaz would come back for me. My left hand was cramping and my shoulder felt like it was coming apart. I couldn’t hold myself by one hand for much longer, but I took a moment to steady myself. Drop and roll, I told myself. And that’s what I did.
Only one more chapter to go, and we’ll be all the way through the story. You won’t want to miss the stunning end of this story. Will justice be served?
I’ll be back soon with a more typical salty, satirical, and semi-frantic essay about things going on in our world.
Until then, remember to join me on Substack !LIVE! with Colorado State Senator and Candidate for the U.S. Senate Julie Gonzales on Friday, 04/17/2026 at 2PM MDT.
Have the Substack app open on your desktop or device and watch for the notification that we’re about to begin!
[1] My production team has grown with the addition of twelve talented youth artists skilled in various aspects of content creation. We are excited to mentor these young artists as they raise their voices and grow in their craft to help shape their vision of the world that they have been handed. To get a glimpse of the work we are doing, please join us on Substack here: ourdemocracycollective.substack.com and on Youtube here: OurDemocracyCollectiveYouTube
[2] WILD JUSTICE is available in print and e-book here
The suspense is killing me! ("I hope it will last" :)) Sandi, your attention to descriptive detail is wonderful! I was right there with Jamaica. Ow! The accompanying old timey photo made me chuckle out loud.
There is a lot of justice to be served in the last remaining chapter of Wild Justice. Thanks for sharing this great mystery with us.