The River Nymph

by Shirl Henke

  His mind spun in circles until he threw the passenger manifest against a barrel of dried fruit and sat down beside it, combing his fingers through his hair. Before he spoke with her again, he needed to gather his thoughts. Iversen’s toothache had furnished the perfect excuse to avoid her until he decided what to do. That was, if he had the slightest idea what he should do.

  The night sky was starless and dark, with a brisk wind that promised, and then around midnight delivered, a soaking storm. The boat rocked from the onslaught even in the shallow inlet the captain had chosen to protect them from the elements. All the better cover for a meeting with Clint, Delilah thought. If he knocked on her cabin door, her uncle, always a sound sleeper, would hear nothing above the pelting rain. No one would be out on such a night to see him enter.

  “Please come and let’s put this behind us,” she murmured to herself as she paced on silent, bare feet.

  Finally, at one in the morning, Delilah gave up. She quickly and angrily undressed, yanking off her garments and tossing them in a messy pile on the cabin’s lone chair. She donned her lawn night rail, all the while cursing the perfidy of the male of the species. He was doing this deliberately to torture her. He’d never had any intention of talking to her. When the opportunity presented itself, he would simply appear and expect her to fall into his embrace. “Well, you’re in for a bigsurprise, Mr. Clinton Daniels,” she muttered through gritted teeth as she doused the lantern and turned back the covers on her bed.

  She lay down and stared at the ceiling in the darkness, hearing the pounding rain lash the boat. The storm was fierce. Perhaps Clint had been forced to remain below with the crew since Mr. Iversen was ill. The thought offered small consolation. Sleep eluded her as the night wore on. Bright slashes of lightning ripped jagged patterns across the sky. Spring weather back East had never been this fierce. It was as if the elements mirrored her own inner turmoil. Delilah tossed off the covers around three in the morning and lit a lantern, turning the wick low.

  Waiting out the storm was her only choice. Perhaps by dawn it would end and they could resume their journey. But she had heard Captain Dubois and his crew talking about storms that ripped violently across the open plains, destroying everything in their path. What if the boat was smashed against the trees lining the inlet? Or the cargo washed overboard? They could lose everything, even their lives.

  Suddenly the rain slowed to a drizzle and the wind died down. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was over! The preternatural calm continued until she could see the faintest yellow light heralding dawn through the curtain on her cabin window. That was when she heard the roar. It sounded like a great freight train bearing down on the Nymph. But there were no railroads within hundreds of miles. What on earth could it be?

  Seizing her wrapper, she slipped it on and cinched it tightly, then found her slippers. When she opened the door, a dark figure stood silhouetted against the pale light. Delilah gasped even though she instantly recognized Clint. His hair and clothing were plastered to his head and body. He was soaked to the skin, dripping a puddle of water on the door sill. “What—”

  “No time. Tornado’s coming. Everyone off the boat,” he said in low, urgent tones, speaking rapidly without a trace of lazy drawl in his voice.

  “Uncle Horace—Sky—”

  “I’ve roused him. Already sent her below. She knows what to do in a tornado. Promised Horace I’d fetch you. Come on.” He seized her arm and pulled her out of the cabin.

  “I’m not going anywhere without my uncle,” she said, heading toward his cabin door.

  But Clint had other ideas. “He’s depending on me to get you to safety, dammit!” he said, scooping her up and tossing her over his shoulder as his long legs quickly moved to the stairs at the front of the boat.

  She started to squirm and hit him until she raised her head and saw Horace emerge from his cabin in carpet slippers and a robe, following close behind them. His face was grim and she knew it had nothing to do with the impropriety of seeing Clint carry her off in her nightclothes. “Let me down. I can walk.”

  “No time,” he said, sprinting down the steps.

  Two crewmen had pulled down the gangplank, and passengers dashed recklessly to shore. Sky stood in the dim light, shoving panicked men this way and that until Clint yelled for her to get away from the boat. She waved and disappeared into the darkness. Many of the roustabouts simply leaped overboard into the muddy water.

  Clint grabbed a lantern, then carried Delilah down the plank and ran toward a low thicket of willows where a small stream fed into the river. Its banks were about three feet high, offering some protection from the onrushing wind.

  She tried desperately to see where Sky and her uncle had gone but she could not discern either of them in the melee of running, shouting men. Over the cacophony, she heard the faint sound of Captain Dubois’s calm voice ordering everyone to abandon ship. Clint splashed down the side of the creek bed until he found a deeply eroded gouge in the earth.

  “Lie down,” he commanded, sliding her from his shoulder as he knelt on the mossy ground. It was soaking wet and chilly, but he gave her no choice. His big body quickly covered hers, burrowing them inside the shelter of muddy ground and wild honeysuckle vines.

  The noise grew even louder, closer, like some great mythological beast come to devour everything around it. Delilah could hear the roaring as it passed overhead. Then the lantern went out and all was blackness. She closed her eyes and prayed for her uncle and her friend. Please let them be safe! Almost as quickly as it had come, the deafening noise abated and the rain resumed.

  Several minutes passed before Clint rolled away from her. Their makeshift little cave hollowed from the side of the creek bed offered some protection from the rain, but the false dawn had faded into blackness once more. It was as if the tornado had swallowed up the very sunrise itself.

  “It’s over. I didn’t hear the sound of timber splitting. Reckon the Nymph made it. Good thing, because Dubois stayed aboard.”

  “Oh, my God! Why?”

  “He’s the captain,” Clint replied simply. “He’s never lost a boat. Doesn’t figure to start now. I saw your uncle with Ha-gadorn. Sky got them down the creek a ways. Should be fine,” he added, knowing that would be her next question. “We’ll have to stay here until daylight.”

  She could not see him in the pitch blackness even though his voice gave away his position barely a few feet from her. “I pray everyone is all right,” she said with a shiver.

  “We were lucky. Dubois knows all the best hidey-holes along the river, places where it’s safest to ride out storms or twisters. Long as you have time to get off the boat and onto land and lay low, chances are good you’ll make it.”

  The silence between them thickened. The only sounds now were faint voices in the distance. Apparently most, if not all, had survived the tornado. Finally, Delilah could not abide lying beside Clint, feeling the tension crackling between them. “How long until dawn?” she asked.

  “An hour, maybe less. You want to escape, don’t you, Deelie?”

  She swallowed for courage. “No, but I do want to thank you for saving my life. I’ve never heard anything like that noise. The destruction must be horrible.”

  “Yes, it can be…but you don’t really want to talk about the weather now, do you? By the way, thanks accepted.” He waited, but she uttered not a sound. He combed his wet hair from his forehead and sat up, hugging one bent knee with his arms. “Guess I don’t want to talk about yesterday either, but we need to.”

  “I waited for you until one this morning,” she replied crossly. “We can’t avoid each other for the rest of the voyage, Mr. Daniels, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue…well, doing what we did.”

  He threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Now I’m Mr. Daniels again. You really are upset that I didn’t come knocking at your cabin door, aren’t you, Deelie?”

  “I am not upset for that reason. I merely think you’re a coward—or worse ye
t, you have made the erroneous assumption that I’ll fall into your arms any time you touch me. Well, I won’t.”

  “You seemed willin’ enough yesterday. Enjoyed every minute, too, unless I’m badly mistaken.”

  “You arrogant lout, if you’re fishing for compliments, I’ll grant that you possessed considerable skill,” she admitted forthrightly.

  He shrugged in the dark. “Practice makes perfect, whether you’re makin’ love or playin’ cards.”

  “A man like you would equate one with the other,” she replied with a sneer in her voice.

  “Not really. Playin’ cards is a lot more important,” some inner devil made him say, knowing the remark would provoke her.

  “If I could see your face, I’d claw that smirk right off it. But I suppose I should be grateful you’ve revealed your true nature. I’m certain you’ve had as much practice with your harlot Eva as with a deck of cards. When we return to St. Louis, you can go back to shuffling her.”

  Since he hadn’t shared Eva’s bed after meeting Delilah, that struck a nerve. “Eva is my business associate at the Bud. She has nothing to do with us. But I am afraid we won’t be able to resist temptation while we’re cooped up on the Nymph.”

  “What do you mean, we?” she asked sweetly. “I won’t become your temporary paramour, a—a convenience.”

  “Sounds as if you want a more permanent arrangement…like a weddin’,” he drawled. Intuition told him she did not mean that, but who knew with a woman like her?

  “You are the last man alive I’d marry—if I ever intended to tie myself to a man again—which I do not.” Her voice was as calm as she could make it. All the snappishness and something else she refused to recognize, she kept hidden.

  “Ah, Deelie, what are we gonna do? I certainly desire you. And, considerin’ yesterday, we both know you desire me. Now, before you get your feathers all ruffled, be honest.”

  She let out a long whispery sigh of capitulation. “Just because I enjoyed what we did doesn’t mean I have to repeat it.”

  “You think your uncle and my little sister will give up?”

  “We’ll just have to be wary of their schemes from here on. Forewarned, you do possess the intelligence for that, don’t you?”

  Clint suddenly realized this was not the answer he had hoped she would give. “I’ll try, Mrs. Raymond,” he replied. “All either of us can do is try.”

  The River Nymph miraculously received little damage from the night twister. A few canvas covers had been ripped from the cargo on the open main deck, but that was quickly repaired. Nothing had been swept overboard and no crew or passengers had been seriously injured in the mad rush to shore. One roustabout sprained his ankle when he jumped into the shallows and a burly farmer bound for the gold fields broke a tooth when he fell over a tree root in the dark.

  Sky had found Horace amid the confusion and kept him safe, much to Delilah’s relief. Everything returned to normal when they pushed off upriver the next day…or almosteverything. Clint and Delilah acted as if nothing had changed between them, but Horace and Sky sensed a strange truce. No more of his teasing or her snappish replies. They worked smoothly, crossing paths as little as possible.

  She checked inventory lists when cargo was unloaded and passengers were added to the growing roster. He assisted the first mate, overseeing the roustabouts as they hauled goods to shore. Clint collected the money due them and Delilah tallied their profits. They were civil to each other at the dinner table, but Clint often ate with the roustabouts on the lower deck, saying he had too much work to dine formally. Mr. Iversen’s infected tooth made him violently ill. When they reached a doctor in Sioux City, he was told he was too sick to continue the trip. After they paid him what he was owed, Clint assumed his duties.

  Within days they reached Dakota Territory, and the landscape evolved gradually, growing more stark and wild. The river became shallower. No more high bluffs but wide, treacherous shoals lay hidden, waiting like the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho who had the past winter refused an army ultimatum to go meekly to reservations or face the wrath of the Great White Father inWashington. But it was not the government or even the ruthless little general, Phil Sheridan, who would attack the tribes. Commander of the Missouri Sheridan issued orders to a lieutenant colonel who had advanced his career by massacring high plains horse Indians.

  They called him Long Hair.

  Aboard the Nymph, Captain Dubois and Clint knew little about the army’s battle plans for that spring but were aware of the long-standing antipathy of the tribes toward the fire canoes that brought soldiers and supplies for the invading hordes of whites. The steamers also brought disease, the inadvertent and fatal accompaniment of government-issued trade goods. In return for buffalo hides the natives often received blankets contaminated with smallpox or whooping cough, a certain death sentence for people with no natural immunity to white illnesses.

  Although the Ehanktonwons, or Yanktons, as the whites misnamed them, had been pacified and placed on reservations, most of the Sioux tribes and their allies still roamed free and often attacked steamers. Every time they rounded a bend in the river or slowed for shallow water for fear of running aground, Clint, Horace and crewmen who were proficient with firearms watched the shoreline apprehensively, anticipating ambush. The same was true when they had to pull over to refuel or tie up for the night. Guards patrolled the decks and kept watch from the wheelhouse for any signs of hostiles.

  At a wood stop near the mouth of the White River, Delilah was finishing a count of men who had paid for passage to the Montana gold fields when a loud commotion drew her away from her work. She heard the captain’s voice from above call out a warning. It was quickly followed by the sounds of guttural cries in a foreign language. Dropping her pen, she dashed out onto the deck. Clint strode slowly down the gangplank after ordering the crew back toward the boat.

  The men backed up as a large party of Indians followed them, some mounted, most dismounted. The hostiles shouted what she knew must be insults, even though she couldn’t understand a word. “They’re spoiling for a fight,” she said to Sky, who looked worried when Clint, armed to the teeth, stood on the bank while the crew returned to the boat.

  “Let Clint handle them, my dear. He’s familiar with their ways,” Horace said, although he carried his Colt rifle. “Perhaps it might be wise for you ladies to remain indoors.”

  “They’re Teton Sioux. Renegades, and they’re demanding whiskey,” Sky said, showing Horace and Delilah the cus-tomized Winchester Yellow Boy she had partially concealed in the folds of her skirt. “I’m a very good shot, Uncle Horace.”

  “As am I,” Delilah said, turning swiftly back to her cabin for the Hopkins & Allen .32-caliber revolver that she seldom carried on her person because of its long barrel.

  Sighing, Horace said, “Let us hope your brother can defuse the situation before it escalates.”

  “We should never have brought that whiskey,” Delilah said as she returned with her weapon ready to fire if necessary.

  “I doubt they know whether or not we have contraband aboard,” Horace replied dryly.

  “He’s right,” Sky said. “They look for any excuse to fight. Nothing would make them happier than to burn a fire canoe to the waterline.”

  “There is some justification for their anger,” Horace replied with a reflective expression on his face.

  “Not my fire canoe,” Delilah said, her eyes never leaving Clint, who made a broad gesture with one hand. “What’s he saying to them?” she asked Sky.

  “He is introducing himself as Lightning Hand, an Ehank-tonwon. He calls them cousins.”

  “We hear of you, great Pawnee killer,” the leader of the Tetons said in a loud voice in English. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave a proud smirk. “I see your squaws with weapons. They must not trust you to fight for them. And they are very pretty. Two fine ponies for the one with fire in her hair,” he said, pointing at Delilah. “I want her for my blankets.”


  “I will give two ponies for the other,” the man standing next to him said in their own language.

  Sky’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “They’ve insulted us. A healthy young woman is worth at least a dozen ponies.”

  Delilah gasped, giddy with fear, uncertain whether to laugh or be as angry as her friend.

  Clint answered the chief. “White men—even those who have lived as Ehanktonwon—do not sell their women. You know this. We have no firewater to trade either. Go in peace.”

  “No! We will have whiskey first. Then we leave,” the leader reiterated. The men around him began to murmur restively. Farther back, those on horses scattered across the riverbank, waiting to see what would happen. One of the roustabouts reappeared with several sticks of dynamite and matches.

  “What on earth…” Horace said in a low voice as the man handed the volatile materials to Clint, who had obviously asked him to fetch them.

  “As I said, my canoe does not carry firewater, but we do carry fire sticks, and these I will share with you.” Clint struck a match, then touched the flame to the wick on one stick of dynamite. He appeared to admire it calmly for what seemed an eternity to Delilah and the others.

  “What on earth is he doing? Is he insane?” she asked of no one in particular.

  Then Clint said to the young chief, “Look you.”

  With that, he threw the lighted explosive between two of the mounted warriors some distance up the bank. Their horses shied when the dynamite exploded, gouging a big hole in the soft earth, sending dirt and rocks flying all around them. A small crater remained where the stick had landed. A collective gasp and murmurs of astonishment echoed through the assembly of Tetons.

  Very calmly, Clint lit a second stick with a slightly longer fuse. “Let us smoke this fire stick as cousins. Very strong medicine.” He stuck it in his mouth as if it were a cigar, rolled it around, then extended it to the leader. “Now you puff.”