by Holly Bush
The closer Matt got to Paradise, the more he wished he’d not dumped his whiskey, even though it felt as if it was finally out of his system. It might have dulled his wondering about what his mother would see when she looked at him and what his brother would ask him. Whether Olivia would look at him with the same worship in her eyes as she had when she was a young girl.
The morning came with the familiar sounds of the water’s tap-tap on the canvas above him as the leaves dripped on their lean-to and the smell of wet wood as Ben tried to start a fire for coffee.
“Why’re you bothering with the coffee? You’re never going to get a decent fire going.”
“When I’m home, I like my coffee in the morning.”
Matt shook his head. He was getting mighty tired of travel with this old geezer and his two-sided comments that left Matt wondering what he thought of him or of anything he made mention of. As much as he was starting to dread the end of the journey, he would be just as glad to be away from Ben Littleship. Matt pulled on his coat and headed in the direction they’d be riding to get some privacy and scope out the morning’s ride. He squeezed between some thick pines and skidded to a stop. The trail he could see was a winding, angled, narrow path, near vertical in some spots. Taking the horses down the steep side of the valley in front of him would be treacherous. As he stood there a boulder came loose from its moorings in the mud and tumbled down the incline, gaining speed until it splashed in a wide river of water at the bottom of the trail.
He hurried back to Ben. “Don’t think we can take the route you planned. We’ll never make it down.”
“We’ll make it,” Ben said and checked his horse’s saddle.
“No. I don’t think we will. Take a look yourself.”
Ben followed the trail through the pines and stopped where Matt had stood. “I’ve been down worse,” he said with a shrug and turned back to the path.
Matt followed. “You’re a fool then! We’ll end up losing a horse when they bust a leg or get hit by a boulder. Then what are we going to do when we get to the bottom? We can’t cross that river here!”
“You worry too much.”
“I worry too much? What a damn stupid thing to say! I’m not going down that bank until the mud dries up.”
Ben mounted his horse. “Suit yourself. When I get to the bottom, I’ll follow the river on its bank and find a good crossing spot.”
“You fool! There is no bank! The river’s over its sides. The trees along the edge are underwater up to their branches.”
Matt watched as Ben rode away toward the pines. He threw his hat on the ground and cursed with every bit of the colorful language he’d learned during the war. “Fine, old man!” he shouted to the trees. “Fine! Kill yourself!”
Matt stretched out on the ground, with his saddle under his head, intending to nap in a bit of sunshine while it lasted. But he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing his mother’s face before him, asking him why he would let longtime family friend and employee Ben Littleship die in the mountains of Virginia.
He stood, kicked the stones in front of him, and saddled Chester. “We can’t let him go down there alone. We just can’t.”
Chester immediately obliged the nudge of his knees and trotted through the stand of pines. The horse began down the fairly level trail while Matt scanned for Ben. After a few more tentative steps by Chester he saw the ranch manager.
“Ben! Wait!”
But the man never even turned his head. The roar of the river was drowning out any of Matt’s shouts. He watched as Ben got off his horse and tugged on its bridle. Matt continued, looking down every minute or so to see Ben’s progress. He watched him slip and fall, but the older man stood up quickly and leaned close to his horse’s nose.
Matt saw a path on the right, running parallel to the water, through a rocky area that led away from the sharp incline and loose boulders. Rain started to fall and the mud slid out from under his and Chester’s feet. He called to Ben until his voice was hoarse and made his way slowly to the safer path to his right. He looked back and watched rocks and stones tumble forward, hitting Ben and making his horse shy back and rear up as much as it could on the narrow path.
Matt slid out of the saddle and struggled to turn himself and Chester around to get back to where Ben was held up. The rain was coming down steadily now and Matt went down hard on his shoulder when his boot slipped. He sat up, now thoroughly soaked and mud covered, turning just in time to see Ben’s horse fall as his hooves came out from under him, landing on his side, kicking Ben, and sliding toward the raging river. Ben stood, reaching out, as if he could pull a thousand pounds of horse upright. A large boulder behind Ben shifted and began to bounce and roll toward him. Matt shouted and started down the hillside, off the trail, desperate to get to the other man in time. It was of no use, he knew—he was twenty or thirty feet away—but he clamored down anyway, slipping and struggling, watching as the rock slammed into Ben’s legs, pinning him against another rock and then rolling on toward the river.
He heard Ben’s screams over the sounds of the rushing water. He hurried the last ten feet as quickly as he was able and fell to his knees.
“Ben!”
“My leg! God! Look at my leg!”
He held Ben’s shoulders still as he looked at a bone that had poked through Ben’s pants. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to climb back up to Chester and get off the hillside. He wanted a whiskey. He pulled his belt from his pants and pulled it tight above the exposed shinbone on Ben’s leg. He looked up to see Chester lose his footing as he followed his whistle, the horse forced to leave the trail and pick through the stones and moving rocks.
“Easy, Chester,” he called while Ben moaned in his arms. “Easy boy. That’s right. Slow it down.”
Matt couldn’t see a way clear to move Ben but knew if he didn’t get himself, Chester, and Ben off the hillside soon, the chances increased that more boulders would roll or a full-fledged mudslide would begin, taking them all down into the river. He consciously stopped thinking about what to do and just started moving.
“One more step, Chester. Just one more!” he called. “That’s it.”
He maneuvered Chester around until he was facing back up the hillside, trying to keep his feet and Chester’s hooves from stepping on Ben in the small, flat area. He pulled Ben by the shoulders to a sitting position, grabbing him around the waist, and hefted him straight up over his shoulder, his feet slipping, and Ben screaming in pain. He tossed Ben as gently as he could, stomach down, over his saddle, and covered him with the coat he’d just shrugged off.
His boots sank into the mud and stones so much that he had to pull his foot out of the muck with each step before sinking down with the next. He held Ben in place and guided Chester with slight pulls of the reins in his left hand and low words. Both he and the horse struggled to find footing as he made his way back to the safer path he’d been on before. It felt like forever until he got Chester’s back legs on flat ground, although he figured it had taken him an hour or more. Ben had long been unconscious.
This path was easier footing but was leading him closer and closer to the rising edge of the water. Once around a bend he saw that the river was wider ahead. It was only feet away from the path he was on in some places but hopefully was less deep, although it was still moving fast. Matt looked up the hillside to the ridgeline where they’d slept. The uppermost paths had washed away, leaving the pine trees standing on a two-foot shelf of dirt, their roots dangling underneath.
He stood there for a long moment, rain trailing down his face and neck, as he’d lost his hat somewhere. He looked up the hillside and down to the river, where he spied Ben’s horse floating dead and caught in tree branches in the water. It was then he realized he wasn’t getting out of there alive. That all the dangers he’d faced during the war and after, the bullets and the cannonballs were insignificant in comparison to this water. His legacy would be that he’d left his family and his home after an argument with his fat
her no one remembered or cared about anymore, to die alone and with no accomplishments, his mother never knowing what had become of him. He took a sharp breath, feeling near tears and starting to shiver in earnest.
Chester turned his head and nickered.
“What, boy? You getting cold, too? I just can’t figure out how to get us out of this mess . . .”
His words trailed off as the mud under him gave way and his feet came out from under him sending he and Chester careening the last four or five feet into the water. He managed to hang on to the back of Ben’s shirt with one hand and Chester’s reins with the other. He hit the frigid water and gasped for breath, fighting his way to the surface and grabbing Ben under the arms with one arm and clinging to the reins and horn of his saddle with the other. Chester moved against the water, heading slowly to the other side of the river. Everything blurred around him, the distant shore, the branches sticking up out of the water that had nearly snagged Ben away from him, the sky as it cleared to a crystal blue, and the sounds of the rushing water and Chester’s neighs as he met debris under the water. He was only able to concentrate on his fingers gripping the saddle and his arm around Ben. It would be a painless death, he thought suddenly.
His arms were shaking, and he could feel his grip on Ben slipping. Just as he thought he couldn’t hold the man for one more second, Chester began to climb out of the water. Matt struggled to get his feet under him as the horse dragged him but was terrified to let go and stand on his own, as he could barely feel his face or hands any longer, let alone his legs and feet. He got one leg down and steady where it stood and pulled at Ben to keep his face above the shallow water. Chester jerked forward, pulling himself up and out of the water onto the dry bank. Matt’s foot slipped and he cracked his head hard on a boulder, leaving his ears ringing and his sight blurry. He gave Ben one final pull and hugged the man against his chest as they lay together, spooning, in four or five inches of water.
Matt’s eyes opened a few seconds or minutes later, he didn’t know how long, his head pounding. His left arm felt like it was pulling out of its shoulder socket. He looked up and realized Chester’s reins were still wrapped tightly around his hand and the horse was on the bank pulling him inch by inch out of the water.
“Come on, boy, that’s right. Back it up. Back it up.”
Chester kept stepping backward, banging Matt into rocks and logs as he did but slowly moving them out of the water. Matt felt grass under his hand and crawled and pulled Ben behind him before dropping down to the ground, his muscles giving up. He unwrapped Chester’s reins from his hand and hoped the horse could find food and shelter, because he was certain he couldn’t go one step farther to save either one of them. Pressing his shaking finger on Ben’s wrist told him that the man was dead.
Matt barked a laugh. He’d got to shore even while saving a dead man. It was the last thought he had before the sky went dark above him and his eyes closed.
Chapter 3
The rain had finally stopped long enough for Annie Campbell to feed the hogs and not get soaked to the skin. She pulled on her father’s brown hat, the brim bent down so far that it was barely recognizable as a brim any longer. She stepped into her brother’s boots, pushing down on the newsprint that lined the soles where the leather had worn through. She pulled on her coat over the heavy wool shirt she wore and tucked the legs of her flannel pants down into her boots. She threw another log on the fire before she left and stirred the soup in the back of the fireplace.
Annie moved the shotgun from her right hand to her left and picked up the bucket sitting on her front porch beside the old rocker. There were plenty of scraps there to keep the hogs happy and fat, and the fatter they were the better price she’d get from Jeb Barlow, a neighbor man who took her hogs to auction in Harrisonburg when he took his heifers. For a price, of course.
“Dinnertime!” she called. “The sun is finally coming out and I’m able to get out here and feed y’all.”
Two great pigs and nine piglets came trotting over to the trough where Annie was dumping the scraps. They were snorting and oinking loud enough that she could barely hear herself think. But it was springtime, her hogs would sell soon, and it was a beautiful day. Even though she was not naturally happy or ebullient, the sun breaking through after endless weeks of wet, chilly spring weather was threatening to make her feel some joy. What an odd feeling, she thought, as she spun in the warm sunbeams. Maybe tomorrow she wouldn’t even need her coat when she went out to do her chores.
She took a look along the fence line she intended to fix this spring, and fix it she would starting tomorrow, the whole way down to where it stopped at the stand of trees. Past those trees was the North River, just a large stream at this point but with all the rain, she imagined it was well over its banks as had happened on other occasions.
There was something standing there just inside the tree line. She brought her shotgun up to her shoulder instinctively, but it wasn’t a who. It was a what. A deer? No. Her eyes were playing tricks on her now. She walked down the slope toward the trees to get a better look. She stopped dead in her tracks when she realized it was a horse. A horse meant a man. She turned and ran back to the house as fast as her feet would carry her. She threw the bar over the door and climbed on the stool to see out the slit on that side of the cabin. The horse had walked out of the trees and stopped in the tall grass. She climbed down, opened her mother’s sewing box, picked up the tray that held the spools of thread, and pulled out her father’s spyglass.
Annie climbed back up on the stool, closed one eye, and turned the column until she could focus on the horse. It was a big one, chestnut colored, saddled and with the reins from the bridle hanging loose in front. The horse turned and she saw a long, bleeding gash in its side near the stirrup.
She didn’t know what to do. What if someone was hurt? The river was high for certain. What if some damn fool had tried to cross? But what if there was a group of men in those trees and one of their horses had just slipped its hold? She was being silly, of course. She dropped extra shells for the shotgun in her coat pocket with her knife and a pistol she’d taken from a dead Johnny Reb years ago. She had plenty of bullets for it and put some in her pants pocket.
She walked down the slope toward the horse, half sick to her stomach from fear, telling herself the war was over. Had been over for four years. She slowed down as she approached the animal and lifted her shotgun to her shoulder. It was a big horse, huge in fact, bigger than she’d been able to tell with her glass. She was within ten feet of it, scanning the woods behind it for two-legged creatures, when the horse turned and walked through the trees. She followed, going from tree to tree for cover in case someone was watching her. The horse kept moving until it stopped just beyond the trees, on the creek side.
Annie gasped when she came up behind the animal, dropping her shotgun to her side. The river was well over its banks by ten feet or more and the western hillside with the trail was gone. Massive boulders lay at the edge of the water. A pine tree fell from the ridge and tumbled end over end as she stood there. She’d never seen it like this before. She turned her attention back to the horse, wondering where it had come from. It was then she saw the two men on the ground. She turned and ran and then stopped herself. They were most likely dead. Why was she running from dead men?
She stepped close enough to see that one man was old, his mouth opened at an odd tilt. The man behind him had his stomach to the old man’s back, cradling him. He was young, with a cut on his head that had bled down his cheek and neck but was now congealed at the source.
Annie walked closer until she was a few feet away. She nudged the younger man with her shotgun, and in an instant it was out of her hands, clattering down with the young man’s fingers wrapped tight around the barrel, until it dropped from his grip and his hand rested limp on the ground. She pulled her pistol from her coat pocket and aimed it at the man, stepping back and keeping herself out of his reach, resisting the urge to run.
“Who are you, mister?”
“Daddy?”
Annie shook her head. “I’m not your daddy. What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m so sorry.”
With those words, the young man’s eyes rolled back and his shaking and shivering were so violent that she thought he was in his death throes. Tears trickled down her face and she swiped at them with her sleeve. She didn’t want to watch anyone else die. She’d had enough of it with her father and Teddy.
She put the pistol back in her pocket, dropped to her knees beside the young man, and tapped his cheeks. “C’mon, mister!” she shouted. “Nobody else is dying on me. I’ve had enough!”
She looked up at the horse and back at the two men. She stood, picked up her shotgun, and raced to her outbuildings. She pulled a two-wheeled wagon out of her barn that had been left there when their last horse was taken by soldiers. She put some grease on the rusted axle and hammered in a couple of loose nails. She grabbed the harness from inside the barn and pushed and dragged the cart as fast as she could back to the river.
The massive horse whinnied but stood still as she pulled the harness tight around him. “You’re no plow horse, are you fella? You’re a riding horse and don’t like this at all.”
Annie backed the horse up until the open-ended cart was close to the men and sitting as upright over the two wheels as she could get it. She dragged and pushed the old man first, seeing a bone sticking out of his leg with a belt strapped tight just above it as she pulled his upper body to the cart. She threw herself and the old man far enough in that he stayed and didn’t slide out. She crawled out of the wagon and sat on the ground, getting her breath and thinking about how hard, maybe even impossible, it was going to be to get the younger man in the wagon. He was tall, she could tell, even with him lying down. He wasn’t fat, but he sure wasn’t skinny, either.