He tried to remember how he’d gotten there. At first, everything up until that moment was a blank slate in his mind, but slowly the details began to fill in. He remembered the gold, the journey from Richmond, the friends who had been with him . . .
Then the ambush and Wiley Potter’s sneering voice telling him the others were dead and he was dying. In fact, he recalled Potter saying, “He’s dead.”
Potter had been wrong about that. Luke was too weak to move, but he sure wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.
Since Potter had been wrong about him, maybe the bushwhacker had been wrong about the others, too. Luke yelled, “Remy! Dale! Edgar! Can any of you hear me?”
It was only when he heard the faint croaking sounds that he realized he wasn’t yelling at all. He’d only thought that he was. He was the one making those incoherent noises. Finally, after what seemed like another hour, he struggled to get out the name, “R-Remy . . .”
He heard some birds in the distance, the wind stirring the branches in the trees, the tiny lapping sound of the river flowing nearby, but that was all.
He had to get up and look for them. He might still be able to save them.
The gold was gone. Luke knew that. Potter and the other deserters would have taken the wagons with them when they left him for dead, so Luke didn’t waste time worrying about that. His only concerns were saving his own life and helping his friends if he could.
He needed to get up and see how badly he was hurt, but one thing at a time, he told himself. First he wanted to look around. He moved his hands enough to dig his fingers into the dirt and brace himself. Then, with a grunt of effort, he lifted his head.
A yell burst from him as even that much movement set off a fresh explosion of pain. He wanted to drop his head, close his eyes, and retreat back into the welcoming darkness.
Instead, he forced his head from side to side in small, jerking motions.
He couldn’t hold back a sob as he saw Dale lying on the ground a few yards away. The young man’s face was unmarked and his eyes were open, but flies were crawling around on them. He was dead, no doubt about it. His clothes were black with blood where he’d been shot.
Remy and Edgar had fallen in the other direction. Edgar’s face was a hideous ruin where several shots had struck him, but Luke recognized his friend’s burly build. Remy was disfigured as well, with most of his jaw shot away. The flies were feasting on their spilled blood, as well.
Luke groaned and let his head fall. There was nothing he could do for his friends, after all. Nothing he could do except save himself and maybe go after Potter and the others once the pain in his back got better.
He didn’t know how long he lay there, stretched out on the riverbank. The earth turned and the sun moved in the sky, and he was no longer in the shade. When the heat began to bother him, he tried to heave himself up to his hands and knees so he could crawl where it was cooler.
The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched, and the upper part of his body lifted slightly, but that was all. Luke pushed on his hands again to move upward, but was unable to move high enough. He tried to press against the ground with his knees . . . and realized he couldn’t feel his knees. He couldn’t feel any part of his legs.
Horror washed over him. His body seemed to end at his lower back, where the bullet had struck him and the pain was so bad. Below that, however, nothing hurt. His legs might as well not have been there, and for one sickening moment, he believed they weren’t. He thought Potter had sawed them off before leaving.
Slowly, Luke moved his right hand next to his hip. Breathing heavily against the pain, he twisted his neck and looked along his body. He couldn’t see very well, but caught enough of a glimpse to know his right leg was still there.
He slumped down. The effort had made his heart pound crazily and left him breathless. As he gasped for air, he remembered a farmer back in Missouri named Claude Monroe, who’d been kicked in the back by a rambunctious mule. The accident busted something in Monroe’s back, and after that he was never able to walk again. He had lived for a couple years, lying in bed or sometimes lifted into a chair, before he’d taken an old flintlock pistol, carefully loaded and primed it, and blown a hole right through his head.
He wouldn’t have to do that, Luke thought as a hysterical laugh worked its way up his parched throat. No, he would die right where he was ... on the riverbank . . . more than likely. He knew from the terrible thirst gripping him that he’d lost quite a bit of blood, and he might be losing more all the time without being aware of it. The easiest thing in the world would be to just give in to the pain that enveloped him, and wait for death. So easy . . .
There was no dramatic moment, no stirring speech he made to pull himself back from the brink of despair. It was just that after a while he got so thirsty he thought he might as well try to get a drink from the river. He moved his left arm next to his left hip and cautiously looked under his arm to see if his left leg was still there. It was. He pushed and clawed at the ground in an effort to turn himself around.
When he got far enough around, the steep slope worked against him, and before he knew what was happening, he was rolling down toward the water, his useless legs flopping loosely.
So, I’m going to fall in the river and drown in a foot of water. As that thought flashed across Luke’s mind he reached out, caught hold of a root growing from one of the trees on the bank, and stopped himself at the edge of the river.
He hung on to the root with one hand while he reached out with the other and cupped it in the stream. When he brought that hand to his mouth, the water he sucked out of his cupped palm was the sweetest he’d ever tasted.
Thirst made him ignore the pain in his back. His movements grew frenzied as he drank. He missed sometimes and splashed water over his face. It felt good.
Then his stomach lurched, and he spewed up all the water he had managed to guzzle down. The spasm made him cry out.
The sickness faded after a few minutes. Luke lay there a little longer and started drinking again, slower.
He kept it down.
When his thirst wasn’t so desperate, he twisted around and looked up at the top of the riverbank again. In his condition, the slope seemed impossible for him to climb. He would be better off just staying close to the water, so he could get another drink later.
Making that decision was all he could manage. Closing his eyes, he rested his head against the ground, content to lie there and wait for . . . something.
What he got wasn’t good. A short time later, it started to rain.
Luke hadn’t noticed the sun going behind the clouds, hadn’t been aware the day was growing dark and ominous with the approach of a storm. He had no idea what was happening until thunder suddenly boomed so loud it shook the earth underneath him.
Or was that artillery fire? He had felt the earth move plenty of times in Richmond as the Yankees pounded the city with their big guns.
No, definitely thunder, he thought as several large raindrops pelted the back of his head. In a matter of seconds, a torrent was sluicing down around him.
Luke lifted his head, tilted it back as much as he could, and shouted at the heavens, “Go ahead! Rain on me, damn you! After everything that’s already happened to me, how much worse can this be?”
He wasn’t sure if he actually bellowed out the words or just thought them, the way he’d thought he was calling his friends’ names earlier. But either way, the sentiment was real.
Unfortunately, a few minutes later he realized his situation could get worse.
When he looked along the banks, he saw how they were washed out in places. That was why the root he’d grabbed was sticking out of the ground. It meant the river had a tendency to rise when it rained. If the marks on the bank were right, the water could come up higher than the place where he was sprawled.
But how long will it take to do that, he asked himself? And how much will it have to rain before I’ll be in danger?
He couldn’t answe
r those questions, but it was a downpour, no doubt about that. A real toad-strangler, they’d call it back home. All along the banks, miniature waterfalls were already forming as rain landed higher up and ran down to the river, raising its level drop by drop.
And there were millions of drops.
Luke started laughing again. By all rights, he should have been dead already. How many more times could he manage to dodge the reaper? When was his luck going to run out?
Soon, he thought. Soon.
The water would climb up his body until the current plucked him away from the bank and spun him out into the stream and sucked him under. Tomorrow his lifeless body would wash up somewhere downriver. He could see that grotesque image in his mind, plain as day.
But he wasn’t going to give in to that fate without a fight. His father had made it clear to him at an early age that Jensens didn’t have any back up in them. Don’t go lookin’ for trouble, Emmett had told him, but don’t ever go runnin’ away from it, either. And if the devil finds you, spit in his face.
Luke reached up the bank, dug his hand into the mud, and pulled.
The ground was wet and slick, but he clawed at it stubbornly, grabbed another root, dug in with his elbows, and shoved. He got his body turned so he was facing up the bank again instead of lying sideways on it.
Even if he’d been able to use his legs, it would have been difficult to crawl up that muddy slope. With only his arms to pull himself along, it was sheer torture. The burning pain in his arms and shoulders dominated the misery in his back.
Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he pulled himself up the riverbank.
After what seemed like hours, when he was too exhausted to go on, he turned his head, looking under his arm, and realized he was only a couple feet higher than when he’d started out. He looked back along his body as best he could.
His feet were already in the water. The river had risen about a foot, and the current was running fast, which meant more and more water was coming down from upstream.
Gritting his teeth, Luke tried to haul himself higher. He made another few inches, maybe half a foot, and his strength deserted him again.
Maybe what he ought to do was try to roll over onto his back, he thought. Then the rain, which was still coming down with blinding force, might drown him before the river rose high enough to do the job.
The problem was, he was too weak to roll over.
Luke laughed. “You got me,” he rasped. “I’m done for. Fought all I can fight. I’m sorry, Pa. Wish I could see you again. You and Ma and Janey and Kirby . . . but this is where it ends for me.”
His head fell forward. Mud covered his face, clogged his nose, choked him. He coughed and fought free of it, his instincts refusing to let him die. The rain washed some of the muck from his eyes.
And he was able to see the slender fingers reaching down and wrapping around the wrist of his outstretched right hand. Thunder boomed again and lightning flashed.
Luke Jensen blinked in amazement as he rose up as best he could, carefully turned his head, and saw the face of the angel who had reached down from heaven to lift him from earth.
It was funny. He’d always figured when he died, he’d be headed in the other direction.
CHAPTER 12
“Damn it!” the angel yelled.
Confused, Luke blinked rainwater out of his eyes. He’d never gone to prayer meeting all that much, but he didn’t remember any preachers he’d ever heard saying anything about angels cussing.
“Come on, mister!” the beautiful vision urged. “You weigh too much for me to lift you by myself. You gotta help me some!”
Understanding sunk slowly into Luke’s brain. Despite the pretty face, it was no angel above him but rather a flesh-and-blood girl. She wasn’t wearing heavenly robes and didn’t have wings, either. She was dressed in tattered overalls, a woolen shirt, and a battered old black hat with rainwater streaming from the brim.
She tugged on his wrist. “Mister, can you hear me? The river’s comin’ up. If we don’t get you off this bank, you’re gonna drown.”
After fighting on his own for what seemed like an eternity, the sheer fact that someone else was trying to save him filled Luke with gratitude and relief. That feeling was short-lived, though, because he realized she was right. “Can you . . . get help?” he croaked.
“No time!” she said. “This ol’ river comes up mighty quick when it rains like this. Goldang it, I told Grampaw I heard somebody yellin’ last night!”
“You better . . . fetch him. Has he got . . . a horse or . . . a mule?”
“Yeah, but like I told you, there ain’t enough time for that.” She dug the heels of her bare feet into the bank and got hold of his wrist with both hands. As she hauled hard on his arm, she said through clenched teeth, “Can’t you push . . . with your damned legs?”
Luke couldn’t, and he didn’t have a chance to explain it. Just then her feet slipped in the mud and she sat down hard as her legs went out from under her. With a startled cry she started sliding down the bank toward him.
She didn’t go very far. His head butted her in the stomach and stopped her. Her thighs rested on his shoulders. She put her hands on the ground and pushed herself away from him.
“Dadblast it!” she cried. “Don’t you go gettin’ any ideas, mister!”
“The only idea I have ... is not drowning,” Luke said. “Let’s . . . try again.”
The girl scrambled up and took hold of his wrist again. Luke used his other hand to grasp one of the tree roots and pulled. The combined effort was enough to break him free of the sticky mud. He slid upward almost a foot.
“Hang on,” Luke told her. “Let me . . . get hold of... another root.”
She waited until he had a good grip, and then both of them grunted with the strain as they lifted his mostly dead weight. He wound up higher on the bank.
“Here we go,” the girl urged. “We’re gettin’ it now.”
They had made some progress, that was true, but Luke didn’t know how much longer his strength would last. He was already drawing on reserves he hadn’t known he possessed.
The rain was falling harder, turning the riverbank into a swamp. Knowing there was a risk he would slide back down and lose all the ground he had gained, he reached up to grasp another root and pull himself higher with the girl’s help.
But the roots were about to run out, he saw with a sinking heart. The top of the bank was only about six feet above him, but it might as well have been six miles. The rest of the slope was nothing but slick mud.
“You’ve got to hang on here,” the girl told him. “I’ll go find a branch or something I can reach down to you!”
“You can’t hold my weight,” Luke said.
“I’ll figure out a way. It’s our only chance!”
Luke nodded his agreement and got a good grip on the last root. “Okay.”
With obvious reluctance even though it was her idea, she let go of his wrist and clambered up the bank, slipping and sliding. When she disappeared over the top, he felt a sharp pang of loss. There was a chance he would never see her again, and for some reason that bothered him as much as the possibility that he was about to die.
He hung on to the root for dear life as the rain continued to pound down on him. The river was making a rumbling sound, and he wondered if the water was already plucking at his legs. He still couldn’t feel anything below the waist.
The jagged end of a gnarled tree branch nearly poked him in the face. He looked up and saw the girl lying on top of the bank, extending the branch down toward him. All he could see of her was her head, arms, and shoulders.
“Grab it!” she called. “Pull yourself up!”
Luke let go of the root with one hand and grabbed the branch. “I don’t want to pull you over!”
“You won’t! I’ve got it! Now climb, damn it!”
Luke shifted his other hand to the branch. Its rough surface provided a pretty good grip. He looked up at the girl again,
and she gave him an encouraging nod.
He didn’t see how it was going to work, since she probably didn’t weigh even a hundred pounds soaking wet, the way she was at the moment. But he tightened his hands and hauled hard on the branch, and to his surprise, his body followed. Reaching hand over hand, he continued pulling himself up.
When he glanced at the girl, he saw pain etched on her face. Supporting his weight was obviously painful. Not wanting to hurt her any longer, he summoned all his strength and energy and continued climbing up the branch.
When he was finally close enough, she reached out and grabbed his shirt, pulling hard. He added his efforts and surged up and rolled over the top of the bank. He came to a stop on his back and had to push himself onto his side to keep the rainwater from filling his nose and mouth.
“C-careful,” she said. “After all that, we d-don’t want you to drown now.”
Luke blinked water out of his eyes and looked over at her. She still wore the soaked wool shirt, but she had taken off the overalls. The suspenders were tied around the trunk of a tree while one of the legs was tied around her ankle. That was why she’d been hurting, he realized. The strain of his weight had gone through her whole body, passing through her hands on the branch to her shoulders, along her body, and through her ankle.
When he turned his head, he saw the surface of the river racing along about three feet below the edge of the bank. He almost hadn’t made it.
This girl, whoever she was, had saved his life.
“Th-thank you,” he gasped out.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “The river could still get out of its banks.”
Her hands were scraped raw from the rough bark, he saw as she sat up. Rain washed away the blood seeping from the wounds.
“I’ll fetch Grampaw and the wagon,” the girl went on. “He’s pretty strong for an old fella. We oughta be able to lift you into the wagon.” She paused. “Your legs don’t work at all, do they?”
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