Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (52 page)

   
Olivia felt the force of impact knock the breath from her body, then heard the sharp splintering as the cabin box broke free of the deck. The sides of the craft split like kindling wood, sending debris flying through the air. When the boat finally settled on the continuously vibrating ground, Samuel raised up and looked down at her. With the lantern extinguished, all was in blackness.

   
He could hear a few faint groans from the men around them but none seemed nearby or inclined to menace them. “Are you hurt?”

   
“I don’t think so—no,” she replied, sitting up next to him, feeling numb from shock. “This is like the end of the world,” she rasped hoarsely.

   
He could barely hear her over the low insistent rumbles echoing up and down the churning river below them. The acrid stench of sulfur was chokingly strong now, borne aloft on the wind, which had picked up just as the cataclysm began. “It’s what the mountain men in the far west call a shake, the biggest one I’ve ever heard of,” he replied as he struggled unsteadily to his feet and pulled her with him.

   
“I can’t see anything,” she said, coughing and blinking her eyes in the dark.

   
“Neither can I but I know we need to get off this bluff. It could be pulled down into the river like the one on the other side.”

   
They groped through the jagged wreckage of the boat, climbing free of it, then stumbled across the uneven heaving, bucking earth, away from the roar of the river. After struggling for several hundred feet, they collapsed in the darkness, amid the screams of wildlife, the cracking of timber and the ever present rumble from the belly of the earth. High-pitched whistling noises heralded further eruptions from the sinkholes still opening up and down the river valley.

   
“We’re away from any tall stands of trees but the ground could sink or crack open anyplace. All we can do is wait it out and pray we can stay one jump ahead of the shake until daylight,” he said.

   
“That’s at least two or three hours,” she replied. “Do you think any of the others escaped alive?”

   
“No way to tell until morning,” he said fatalistically, wondering about the grizzled old boatman he had hired to bring him downriver after her.

   
“Hold me, Samuel.”

   
He did, enfolding her in his arms. “I love you, Livy,” he whispered.

   
She dug her nails into his shoulders, molding herself against the reassuring beat of his heart. “I love you, Samuel.”

   
Over the next few hours the ground quieted for brief intervals, then resumed its self-destructive fury, splitting and erupting all around them. Twice a sinkhole opened up near enough to spray them with water and sand, but the earth they rested upon remained intact. In the distance the river roared and hissed unceasingly like a wild beast in a frenzy of torment.

   
They waited it out, holding onto each other, shivering in the damp December air, murmuring indistinct love words and reassurances barely audible over the chaos of nature. Then the first low gray threads of light filtered across the eastern horizon and they could see the cataclysm they had thus far lived through.

   
The landscape looked as if a berserk giant had trod across it, uprooting whole stands of timber and kicking them into the river, leaving his giant footprints thirty feet deep where the earth had dropped into the sinkholes which had spewed up sand, coal and mud, then filled with water. In other places, low swampy swales had ballooned up, raising the overgrown vegetation into haphazardly formed hillocks. But the change on the river was the most dramatic of all.

   
“My God in heaven,” Olivia breathed. “Look at those islands. They weren’t there when we moored up last night. That stretch was open water.”

   
“The whole course of the river’s been altered,’’ Samuel said, squinting to see in the dim sulfurous light. “The main channel never used to curve to the east like that. Look at the chasm where it left its original path.”

   
As they stood overwhelmed by the destruction of nature’s fury, the rumbling resumed, more fiercely than ever. Suddenly a fissure several yards wide began to zigzag its way toward them. Seizing Olivia’s hand, Samuel began to run at a right angle away from it, praying it would not shift its general direction that now headed toward the river.

   
They outran it, then stopped, panting with exhaustion, able to see what they had only heard and felt before. The earth buckled up, sunk in and cracked open, releasing more noxious fumes. The river, too, erupted. Whirlpools formed when the bottom of the channel dropped into sinkholes with a loud sucking noise. Islands vanished and others were formed in moments as if the hand of an erratic god stretched itself upon the face of the churning deep, creating and then destroying at whim.

   
Then as another great cracking shudder threw them to the ground, the noise of the current stilled for an instant. When Samuel and Olivia were able to stand, they stared in stunned amazement at the Father of Waters.

   
“It’s flowing upstream!” Olivia said in awe.

   
“This is one for the history books. The whole Mississippi has reversed its course from south to north!”

   
“Can it stay this way?”

   
“I doubt it—the force of gravity eventually has to make it flow downstream again, but who knows what upheavals farther downriver caused this—or how long it’ll last?”

   
Olivia bit her lip. “I wonder how long we’ll last.”

   
“The sky’s getting lighter and the shake seems to be subsiding. We’ll need supplies to build some shelter and to eat. I’m certain we won’t be able to travel on the river safely for a while—at least not until it reverses its course downstream.”

   
“Look, Samuel,” she said, pointing to the southern horizon where a black cloud began to fill the sky, accompanied by shrill cries. “Geese, thousands and thousands of them.”

   
“All the wildlife’s panicked. Even before the shake I noticed how jumpy and erratic the rabbits, deer—even frogs were, as if they knew it was coming.”

   
“I wonder if Micajah’s all right,” Olivia said worriedly.

   
“Surely, he’s too far away to be harmed. I suspect we were almost at the center of the damn thing, but I bet they felt the vibrations pretty far away.”

   
Samuel looked across the jagged landscape toward where the wreckage of the keelboat lay like a smashed toy. “If there’s anything left of their food and weapons, not to mention blankets, we need to find the stuff.”

   
“Be careful, Samuel. If any of Wescott’s men are alive they’d just as soon shoot as not. He told them to be on the lookout for you.”

   
He turned back to her with a smile. “Did you believe I’d come for you?”

   
“You mean after that letter? I didn’t write it, Samuel. Emory forged it—a skill he acquired as a smuggler. He bragged to me about it.” Quickly she outlined to him how she had been duped and taken prisoner so that Wescott could use her to gain control of the Durand fortune.

   
As she explained, he realized Liza had been right. He had failed to trust Livy as he should have.
Once a spy, always a cynic.
Sadly, he vowed to change his suspicious nature.

   
As they approached the boat he could see several of Wescott’s men lying on the ground. All of them appeared to be dead, their bodies thrown clear of the wreckage like rag dolls tossed away, heads and arms jutting at grotesque, twisted angles. He did not see Wescott.

   
“Stay here while I look inside the cabin box. It seems to have survived relatively intact,” he instructed. The small wooden rectangle lay on its side a dozen or so yards away from the shattered prow of the boat.

   
“I can’t believe we survived that landing with nothing more than a few bruises,” she said, climbing over the splintering debris.

   
“You both have the devil’s own luck, as do I, my dear,” Emory Wescott said in a businesslike manner as he stepped out from behind a clump of coyote willow where he had lain in wait for them. He held an expensive over-and-under barreled pistol in his hand aimed directly at Samuel’s heart.

   
“I need my impetuous young charge to accompany me to New Orleans, but as for you, Colonel, well, you’ve been a thorn in my side for far too long as it is.”

   
Wescott raised the pistol and took aim.

Chapter Twenty Three

   
Just as Wescott pulled back the hammer, Olivia slipped the knife she’d taken from Gruener out of her boot and threw it quickly, aiming for Wescott’s chest. Seeing the blurry motion from the corner of his eye, Wescott jumped aside, firing wildly. That was all the opening Samuel needed as he dove toward his foe, intent on beating the vicious schemer insensate before he could discharge the second barrel of his weapon. The two men went down, kicking and punching, just as another tremor began to rock the already riven earth.

   
So intent were they on each other, Shelby and Wescott felt the shaking earth only as an extension of their own fury. They rolled forward and back, locked in an embrace of hate. Shelby had the advantage of height but Wescott was barrel-chested and exceedingly powerful, fighting with the desperation of a cornered animal. Olivia quickly retrieved the knife which had missed its mark, the only weapon she had managed to keep during the night’s upheaval. Samuel had his own blade strapped to his hip, but as yet he could not draw it. He was too caught up in staving off Wescott’ s attempts to cock the pistol he still clutched.

   
Frantically she waited for an opening, some secure way to plunge the dagger into Wescott without risking injury to Samuel. She was down on her hands and knees now, unable to stand as the quake intensified. The river was a loud hissing inferno in the distance. The sharp reports of more trees snapping filled the sulfurous air.

   
Severed at the base by the force of the vibrations, one big oak less than fifty feet away fell with a deafening crash toward Olivia and the men. With a scream she jumped out of the way, terrified that Samuel had been injured. She climbed over the broken limbs with her heart pounding. The heavy trunk had narrowly missed the combatants.

   
The sudden explosion of flying twigs, bark and dry winter leaves momentarily blinded Samuel. He blinked furiously trying to clear his tearing eyes as Wescott slipped out of his reach. Then he heard Olivia’s scream.

   
“Samuel, he’s going to shoot!” She had no clear way to throw her knife in the tangle of tree limbs she was scrambling through. The scene was horrifying, almost frozen in time—Samuel shaking his head and squeezing his eyes as the tears gushed, Wescott malevolently grinning as he stood on the undulating earth, trying to steady himself for a shot.

   
Olivia fought her way through the last imprisoning branches, knife raised ready to throw. Then the ground opened up like a gaping maw directly in front of Wescott, separating him from Shelby, whose vision was finally restored. Samuel jumped back as the crevice widened, yelling for Olivia. She clawed her way free of the tree as he seized her wrist, pulling her with him. They began to run around the fallen tree, trying to escape the ever widening fissure which was belching noisome vapors in thick gray clouds.

   
Wescott bellowed his rage as they escaped to the other side of the tree. His pistol was ineffectual as he fought to stand upright on the careening earth. In spite of it, he raised the cocked weapon again and took aim at Shelby’s broad back but the bucking ground suddenly dislodged the tree that began rolling toward the fissure.

   
Samuel saw the tree start to move at the same time he lost his footing on the wildly shaking ground. Just as he and Olivia went down they heard the report of Wescott’ s pistol. The shot flew harmlessly over their heads, a puny sound indeed amid the roaring of unleashed natural fury. Wescott stood at the edge of the abyss now, oblivious of his precarious position as he raved at his nemesis and his prize. Without Olivia, he was destitute, bankrupt. Everything he had worked and schemed for all these years would come to an ignominious end in a jail cell if he could not kill Shelby and reclaim the girl.

   
Samuel and Olivia watched in amazed horror when the mighty oak tumbled into the giant rent in the earth. One of its long outstretched limbs plucked Emory Wescott from his position on the opposite edge, dragging him into the steamy bowels of hell. His screams wailed thinly over the tumult all around them.

   
Struggling to his feet, Samuel approached the edge with Olivia trailing him closely. Wescott clung to one sturdy branch like a demented leech, shrieking curses through the sulfurous clouds, clawing his way upward on the limb. It was too thin at its outer extremity to bear his considerable weight and began to give way just as the earth inexorably closed, crushing the giant oak branches as if they were mere twigs. Before Olivia and Samuel’s eyes, the crevice fused shut, burying Emory Wescott for all eternity.