River to Cross, A (18 page)

That told her exactly nothing. “Was she beautiful?”

She caught the tensing of his shoulders and realized she’d touched a nerve. Obviously he wasn’t interested in discussing the subject.

“Sorry, Jake, I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s none of my business.”

He snapped his head around, his paddle dragging the water. “She broke it off, not me, although I would have with the next breath. Her name is Audrey and, yes, she’s beautiful. Or was. Tall, with pitch-black hair, and a few years older than me. She was as sophisticated as they come.”

The lines in his face hardened. “I was eighteen when I met her, a young green lieutenant with a new command and feeling ten feet tall. The kid from Burkburnett fell for her hard and then bought her a ring. . . .”

His voice trailed off. She said nothing, sensing he hadn’t finished.

A few moments later, he said, “I wanted a big church wedding, with her folks, my folks, all my aunts, uncles, and cousins trekking up to Houston to see us get married. My favorite uncle is a Methodist minister. He was coming out from Mobile to perform the ceremony.”

His mouth tightened and the muscles of his jaw worked. When he turned back to face her, his expression was aloof. “I thought we were happy. I loved her, or thought I did, and I never suspected anything wrong until the day I walked in on her with another man.”

Elizabeth felt as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her head. “I’m sorry, Jake.”

“So was I. In the year or so that I knew her, I never looked at another woman. My mother’s marriage wasn’t good, and I was determined to make mine different. I wanted to be married to one woman for the rest of my life. Till death us do part and all that. Instead, I didn’t even make it to the altar.”

“You must’ve been so hurt.”

“I got over it.” His voice was flat.

“When you didn’t talk about it, I guessed something like that had happened.”

One corner of his mouth dug in. “Only you figured it was the other way around, that it was me with other women.”

Elizabeth looked away. “I’m sorry about that, too.” Murky water rippled around the stern of the canoe. Elizabeth looked at it, uneasy about what was coming.

His paddle strokes increased—deeper, stronger, knifing the dark water as if in a hurry to leave this spot as soon as he could.

Another hard pl
unge forced the canoe ahead.

He held the paddle up at the top of his swing, poised for another plunge into the water. Then slowly, deliberately, he slipped the paddle into the water without a ripple and resumed his lazy yet powerful strokes.

They paddled on in silence. After a moment he turned and smiled over his shoulder at her. He dipped his fingers in the creek and flicked water back at her.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I’m no stranger to falling in love at first sight. I’ve been burned. You beat me by an hour or two, but I was way ahead of Carl. I was down on my knees and proposing to Audrey just three hours after I met her.”

Though he smiled when he said it, there was something in his voice that said he wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

Paddling on, they talked easily about everything—except Carl.

A white heron stood motionless in the water, stalking minnows in the shallows by the bank. The skinny, long-legged little bird peered down, then lifted each little stick leg in slow motion, setting a tiny foot down with such delicacy it never muddied the water.

Elizabeth felt an odd kinship with the bird, because she was trying to choose her words as carefully as the heron was choosing its footsteps.

And Carl muddied the water.

Elizabeth pointed her paddle forward. “I’m getting tired of sitting. How about we paddle around that next bend and then pull in, stretch our legs a little?”

They beached the canoe and, hand in hand, began to walk the wide sandy trail that served as a road through the thick growth of trees.

Hugging her shoulder, he looked up at the trees and blew out a sigh. “Thanks for bringing me here, Elizabeth. I hadn’t realized how tense I was. I needed this.”

A little more than an hour later, they beached the canoe again, this time to have lunch. Sitting together in the shade of a huge tree, they devoured the sandwiches and drank every drop of the lemonade they’d brought along.

Afterward, Jake lay back on the grass, h
ands folded under his head. The sun felt warm on his face. Pitch gum cooking in the nearby pines drenched the air with the tang of turpentine. With a contented grunt, he closed his eyes.

The grass rustled alongside as Elizabeth dropped down beside him. He opened his eyes and stared through the branches at a patch of blue sky overhead.

“Suzanne told me you’d been wounded,” she said. “When did that happen?”

“Long time ago. An Apache hit me with a bullet to my hip.”

“Where were you?”

Jake shifted to his side and looked at her. “Kansas,” he answered. “I was part of a rescue operation with the Fourth Cavalry. I’d gone back onto the field after a wounded man when I was shot.”

“But there must be more to it than that,” she said.

Reluctantly, Jake went on to tell her the whole story. He’d been a lieutenant then and had gone searching for his missing commander, now Colonel Gordon. The Cavalry had come in fast over a hill north of Fort Dodge after the Apaches, who scattered under the onslaught of three companies of soldiers. It was a shootout, both sides taking fire.

Jake rode off across the field, really a valley between two mountains, when he spotted the colonel. He yelled to him to grab his arm. Jake slowed the horse and made two passes before he hooked the colonel’s arm and got a good hold on him.

It was on the second pass he was shot. Bloody from the waist down and so woozy he couldn’t see straight, he rode back to his unit, half dragging, half carrying his commander.

After hearing the story, Elizabeth studied him for a moment, her eyes dark with questions. “When you went in, were the Indians shooting at you?”

“Of course they were.”

“And you still went in?”

“I was the team’s leader, and my job was to get a wounded man out. We try never to leave a man behind. Wounded or dead, he goes out with us.” He spoke the words in a flat, calm voice.

The color drained from her face. She moved closer to him, reached over and took his hand in hers.

“You’re crazy, you know that,” she said.

He smiled and squeezed her hand.
Crazy about you.

Inside, he was kicking himself. He hadn’t told her of Colonel Gordon’s offer to come back to the Cavalry and work with him and his battalions. It was a good opportunity for him, putting him on the fast track for promotion. He didn’t know how she’d react to that. Maybe they both needed more time.

He rolled his head to the side and gazed at the dark windblown hair and the beautiful features he couldn’t get out of his mind.

Don’t push your luck.

Maybe he’d tell her on the way home. . . .

And yet telling her was the last thing he wanted to do.

He sat up. “Let’s get back on the water,” he said.

They were on the water
less than ten minutes when she saw it: a two-foot-high mass of limbs and stones plastered with mud, stretching across the creek from bank to bank. Water pooled behind it, deepening.

Elizabeth squealed. “A beaver dam—that’s it. This is what Gus saw. We found it.”

“They’ll have to send a detail out here and tear it down,” Jake said. “This is all Fort Bliss property. They can’t leave it to flood.”

Elizabeth held back, studying the sluggish water this side of the dam and the foam-flecked baby rapids tumbling through a yard-wide channel, an opening where the current had cut through.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “If we’re ever going to swamp, it’ll be now.”

Jake’s paddle stopped midair. He turned. “How do we get around it?”

She pointed to the opening. “We don’t. We let the current take us through. Should be okay. Just steer for that channel in the middle.” She giggled. “And stop frowning. The water’s barely three feet deep. It’s just a little beaver dam.”

Jake began paddling hard for the sluice of water. Too hard. And things went very wrong, very fast. They overshot the current in the center of the creek, crossed it, and wound up in the still eddies behind the dam.

“Back in the current—back in the current!” Elizabeth swept the water behind her, paddling backward frantically.

Lifting himself for leverage, Jake strained and fought the water forward.

“Other way!” she hollered.

Elizabeth’s eyes widened on something behind him. He spun around.

The dam rushed at them.

Faced with an imminent collision, he did what any good soldier would do. He rammed it with his weapon. The paddle snapped, the blade flipping end over end and plopping in the water. With a scraping sound, the bow of the canoe plowed into the mud and sticks of the dam.

Dumbfounded, Jake looked at Elizabeth, gripping his broken piece of paddle like a broom handle.

She doubled over with laughter.

“This is not funny, Elizabeth!”

The current sucked the stern of the canoe back out into the channel. Elizabeth fell to her knees, backstroking with her paddle. The creek poured in over the side. “We’re swamping!”

Jake launched himself over the side. In a small avalanche of stones and twigs, he scrambled onto the beaver dam and stretched for the canoe. The ground sagged beneath him. His legs caved through and plunged him knee-deep in mud. He swiped for the canoe as he went down, grabbing the bow with both hands. Straining, feet rooted in the dry inner chamber of the beaver lodge, he tried to wrest the twelve-foot canoe awash with brown water from the clutches of the Little Pine.

All around them, furry beaver heads surfaced like corks and began swimming toward shore. Whapping her tail, an irate mother beaver scampered around Jake and the hole he’d made in her kitchen ceiling.

With a groan, the canoe wrenched from his hands and drifted out into the current. Elizabeth floated away. The current sucked the stern around into the strip of white water gurgling through the dam. Elizabeth rode the canoe backward into the pool at the foot of the dam, where the canoe promptly filled up and sank. Sitting in the creek, the water up to her neck, she squirted a stream of water through her teeth and grabbed for her hat as it floated by. She missed.

Jake heaved the useless piece of paddle into the woods on the other side of the creek and waded through the water after her. He hauled her to her feet. “You all right?”

Muddy water dripped from the end of her nose. Picking a handful of hair away from her mouth, she laughed. “Good thing you didn’t join the Navy.”

“True,” he said. “Well, there goes your hat.”

Holding his elbows out of the water, Jake slogged after the hat and the rest of their things that had floated away. Together they got the canoe up to the surface. Effortlessly Jake raised the canoe and flipped it, dumping out all the water. Setting the canoe back on the water, he dragged himself over the side, then helped her in.

Immediately they started to argue over who was going to sit where.

“Sit in the bow, Jake!”

“No, I’m going to paddle.”

“Sorry, you broke yours. The person in the stern steers and you don’t know how. So you ride up front back to the Fort.”

“I will not be just a passenger,” he said, then grabbed the paddle from her hands, crawled back to the stern, and plunked himself down onto the middle seat. “You are not paddling me back to the fort.” He stripped off his wet shirt and turned to spread it to dry on the small deck behind him.

She shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jake. Give me that paddle.”

“Let’s look at this logically—I’m bigger and have more strength.”

Her voice scaled up. “No. I want to paddle.”

“Elizabeth, please . . .”

Muttering under her breath, she began moving up to the bow. The canoe rocked wildly.

Eyes wide, Jake gripped both sides of the canoe. “Good. Now sit down before you swamp us again.”

Turning on him, she said, “Stop treating me like a private!”

“Stop fussing at me and sit still.”

She glared at him. “Is that another order?”

“No, ma’am.” He grinned at her. “Consider it a firm request. C’mon, I need your help.”

Finally she took her seat. “You always have to be in charge, don’t you?”

“Most of the time, that’s what I get paid for. But not with you. If I was in charge now, we’d be somewhere on land, nice and dry.”

Pretending to ignore him, she settled herself in the bow, with her back to him.

She almost missed it. A small furry head, bobbing alongside the canoe. Tiny front legs pedaling the water, it struggled to stay afloat. Twice the little head went under.

“Jake, wait! Let’s get this little guy out of the water. He’s going to drown.” She leaned out over the side of the canoe.

“All right, but be careful or we’ll tip over again.”

“He doesn’t swim very well. May be only a day or two old.” She stretched her hand down into the water.

Jake grabbed the back of her dress to keep her in the canoe.

“There, I got him!” She scooped the small beaver out of the water and put it in her lap. He lay still, his eyes half closed. “Oh, the poor little thing. Take us back to the dam and let’s put him with the others. We have to find its mother.” She twisted around and looked up at Jake.

Jake stared at her. “Are you serious? You want me to turn around and paddle back to the beaver dam I fell through and put this animal back?”

“Please,” she said softly.

Shaking his head, he turned the canoe and headed back to the broken dam. The beavers had returned and were swimming around their collapsed lodge.

Jake swung his legs over the side and dropped into the water alongside the dam. “You are aware, of course, that beavers have big teeth?”

“Which is why you have to keep your distance. Return the baby and we’ll leave.”

“Give him to me,” he said, and held out his hand.

Elizabeth eased the little animal up and gingerly laid the little ball of wet fur in Jake’s palm.

“Not very big, is he?” Jake said.

For all his gruffness, he held the baby beaver gently as he scrambled toward the dam. He stumbled twice and slid sideways, but the hand holding the tiny beaver stayed steady.

The little thing squeaked. Immediately a larger beaver raised its head and looked in their direction. She moved toward Jake, slow and wary. Jake set the baby down on a dry section of the dam and then carefully backed away.

A half hour later, Elizabeth turned and asked Jake, “Was that thunder?”

He cocked his head. In the stillness, a blue jay called, one shrill, piercing note before it flew off into the woods. To the east, a mountain of dark Pacific thunderheads boiled overhead. A low, rolling rumble thumped across the sky.

“There’s your answer,” he said.

Wind gusted a line of small whitecaps up the Little Pine. Soon the waves began slapping up against their canoe. Raindrops pelted rings across the water. Jake reached behind him, grabbed her hat and his shirt. Juggling the paddle, he yanked the shirt on over his head, then started paddling for shore.

He glanced at the sky. “Put your shoes on, and let’s get out of this canoe. I don’t like the looks of this.”

Jake paddled intently, his eyes scanning the bank alongside. A jagged tree of lightning blazed above the creek. The Little Pine’s surface glowed with luminescence, as though lit from below. All along the creek banks, the cedar tips pulsed an eerie blue. A peculiar odor hung in the air.

Ozone.

Jake dropped to one knee and dug hard for the nearest bank. With one last, mighty shove of the paddle, he stood, drawing Elizabeth up with him. The canoe surged for the shore.

The sky exploded into blinding brilliance.

“Jump!”

Jake landed in the water a few feet behind Elizabeth and shoved her up the bank ahead of him. He hauled the canoe up onto the bank and turned it upside down in the weeds.

They broke into a run, heading for cover. He stumbled, grabbed a tree trunk for balance, and started running again.

She shot him a concerned look. “You’re limping. What’s wrong?”

“I twisted my ankle when I fell through the beaver dam. Keep going! Let’s get out of these trees!”

Squinting into the wind, he zigzagged them through the woods, away from the canoe, away from the creek. A quarter mile later, they found one of the sand roads that cut through the pines.

Overhead, lightning lit the sky, and rain came down in torrents. Every few seconds, thunder crashed. On both sides of the road, the trees thrashed under the force of the wind.

Elizabeth screamed when a bolt of lightning flashed from a mile high. With a great cracking sound, the trunk of a nearby cedar split its length and fell across the road, blackened, smoking in the rain.

“We’re right in the middle of it!” Jake shouted. “Look for someplace open . . . Over there!” He grabbed her hand and led her toward a small meadow of stumps and dunes on the other side of the road.

A washed-out gully lay between them and safety. It wasn’t wide, but he wouldn’t risk jumping it with a bad ankle. If something happened to him, she’d be completely on her own. He squatted, then slid on his behind down into the gully.