Defiant (14 page)

He
would
save Jeff. He just had to get the rope to him. He couldn't throw it; Jeff might let go of the rock with both hands to catch it.

A dead log rolled into him, nearly knocking him down. He was able to keep his balance, but only a short distance from Jeff the bottom started to suck at his feet. Quicksand! He started to swim, using his left arm. But the water kept swinging him away from the rock, and Jeff.

He gripped the rope tightly and kicked as hard as he could toward the boy. Water washed over his face, blinding him. But then he felt Jeff's body, and his left hand went around the rock, anchoring him.

He rested for a moment, then struggled to plant his feet again. This time the bottom seemed solid.

“I'm going to put my arm around you,” he told Jeff. “When I do and you feel secure, let go of the rock, then tie the rope around your waist. Can you do that?”

Jeff nodded.

“It will be all right,” Wade said. “I'm not going to let you go until the rope is around you, and then your mother will pull you out.”

“I-I'm all right,” Jeff stuttered. Wade smiled, hoping he appeared more confident than he felt. “Good boy.” Some of the fear left Jeff's face.

Wade put his good arm around Jeff, holding him tightly. For a moment, Jeff still clung to the rock, but then suddenly let go. Wade felt the pull of his body as the current caught it. He tightened his grip.

“Take the rope from my hand,” he said, “and tie it real tight around your waist.” The boy did as he said. Even with his hands shaking, he managed to tie a good knot.

“Good boy,” Wade said. “That's just fine.”

He looked up toward Mary Jo. “Can you pull him up now?”

She nodded.

“Take hold of the rope, Jeff,” Wade said softly. “Try to inch yourself up as your mother pulls.”

Jeff nodded, and Wade carefully released him. The boy followed directions completely. His hands moved forward on the rope as it started to tug him through the water. At times, his body started spinning but then Jeff would straighten himself out. Finally, he reached the bank, and Mary Jo Foster was pulling her son up.

Now
he
had to get back, Wade thought wryly. Easier thought than done. Getting to Jeff had taken all the strength he possessed.

Mary Jo Foster threw the rope out to him. He reached for it, missed, and she reined it in. She was preparing to throw it again when a log hit his wounded shoulder and he doubled over in agony. The current caught him and started tossing him along. He struggled to stay above water, but it kept sucking him under. And it was hurtling him fast downstream, sending him crashing against rocks and flotsam.

He closed his eyes, too weak to fight back. Maybe he was getting his wish, after all.

9

Mary Jo looked on in horror. Jeff, who was still coughing up water, had glanced up just in time to see his rescuer go under.

“Mr. Foster!” he yelled. “Mr. Foster!”

“You stay here,” Mary Jo said after making sure he was all right. “I'll go see if I can find him.”

“I'll go, too.”

“No. I can't worry about you both. Stay. Just please stay.”

“Jake …?”

“I'll look for Jake, too.”

She was untying the rope, gathering it up to use again.
Please Lord
, she pleaded silently,
please give him another chance
.

She couldn't bear it if he died for her son.

She started running along the bank, her eyes darting over the rushing water, along the sides. She prayed that he had caught hold of a branch, a rock, anything. She saw something moving swiftly away, some small animal. Not Jake, thank God.

Her heart was frozen with dread. How much more death could Jeff take? How much more could
she
take? The thought moved her legs faster.

She stopped once, when the trees grew thick. And then she saw him, his blue shirt vivid against the dark muddy brown of the water. He was sprawled on a large branch hooked on a rock. She had to get him to shore before the branch dislodged and sent him back down the swollen waterway.

Mary Jo couldn't tell whether he was conscious or not, whether he was even alive. He wasn't moving. She remembered everything he had told her. She tied the rope around a tree and then around her waist.

Wade Foster wasn't as far toward the middle as her son had been. A few feet, that was all. But it was a few dangerous feet. There was no bank left, and the area bordering the water was slick with mud.

“Mr. Foster?” she yelled out as she approached. “Mr. Foster.”

He didn't move.

“Dear Lord, let him live,” she said, this time aloud. If He hadn't heard her last time, she wanted no mistake now.

She inched closer to him. “Mr. Foster. Wade!”

His eyes fluttered open. His face turned. He groaned.

“Wade!” she said again, then reached out and touched him. The current was strong here, very strong.

“Go,” he whispered. “You might—”

“I have the rope around me. Can you take my arm and hold on?”

His eyes closed, and Mary Jo felt that suffocating fear again. She wished she had more strength. She couldn't pull him out on her own. She had to have his help.

“Ma?” She looked up and saw Jeff. He was clearly anxious, and she had no heart to scold him for disobeying her. An idea occurred to her. Could she send him after another rope?

“Run back to the house,” she said, “and get another rope. And a horse.” If she did manage to pull Wade Foster out of the water, they would need a horse to carry him back to the house.

Jeff nodded, then turned and ran. Air whooshed out of Mary Jo's lungs before she started talking again. “Mr. Foster—Wade—don't let Jeff think you died for him. Don't do that, please. It will kill him, just as if he had drowned today. Please help me. You have to help me.”

His eyes opened again, slowly, as if against his will. As if he were drawing on some superhuman reserve.

“Can you take my hand?” she said. “Give me your left hand.”

She took one hand off the rope and found his, hoping he had the strength and consciousness to clasp it. “You can do it,” she kept saying. “You can do it for Jeff. Not for yourself. For Jeff. Jake is gone. You matter to Jeff. He can't lose everything. Not again. Please …”

His left hand took hers. There wasn't much strength in it, but then the fingers seemed to tighten.

“Just a few feet, Mr. Foster. Just two or three steps, and we'll be safe. Can you touch the ground?”

She could. She knew
he
could. If he had any strength left in that body, in his legs. Dear Lord, what a beating that body had taken.

“You can have that horse, Mr. Foster. You can ride out tomorrow if you want. You just have to take a step or two.” She felt hot tears mix with the muddy water on her cheek. “Please, Wade. Please help me.” His name came easily to her lips now.

His hand tightened around hers. Agony was etched in his face, but his eyes were focusing. Blood from a reopened wound mixed with the dark brown of the water.

“One step, Wade. Just one.” Slowly, he pulled away from the branch holding him, and again she felt the tug of the current. Her hand tightened around his. She was strong, but she wished herself ten times stronger. She was pummeled and battered by the water and had to fight to keep her footing. With one hand on the rope and the other clasping his, she took a step. She heard his labored breathing behind her, the low curse that she knew was a disguised moan.

But he was moving with her. One step. Another. Then she felt the ground, but it was so slippery, it was almost worse than the water. One misstep, and they both would go tumbling back into the water.

Another step. She was on solid ground. Then Wade. Dry ground. He collapsed there.

Mary Jo said a prayer of thanksgiving as she dropped next to him.

His eyes had closed again. The sling that held his wounded arm to his shoulder was dark with dirty water and blood. Mary Jo hastily amended her prayer to make one more request. “Protect him,” she pleaded. “He saved Jeff. He's a good man. I know he is, no matter what he says.”

She tore a piece of cloth from her petticoat and wrung it out, then wiped the water from his face, her fingers hesitating along the new beard forming on his cheeks. She then gently wiped the creases around his eyes.

Mary Jo didn't know what to do. She was reluctant to try to bring him back to consciousness. Dear God, how he must hurt. Just as he had days ago. But she hadn't known him then, hadn't felt so … confused by him. Then, he had not yet risked his life for her son's.

She had hurt then for him, a stranger, as she would have hurt for any wounded thing. But now the hurt ran so much deeper.

She rubbed her own face with the rag, now encrusted with mud and sweat, then with her hand took a swipe at her eyes. This was no time to become maudlin. She needed to think.

Jeff would be back any moment with his horse. Somehow they would have to get Wade Foster onto its back. It had been difficult enough to get him on the wagon. And now the arm wound had been opened, and exposed to the muddy water.

Exhausted from her physical efforts, from the fear she'd felt for both her son and the stranger who had become so important to her, she slumped beside him, taking his good hand in hers and just holding it.

Forcing life into him.

She heard Jeff's approach, his shout. Then he was on the ground next to her. He looked up. “He's not …?”

Mary Jo shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
Not yet
. “We have to get him back to the house.”

Jeff looked up at her, wonder widening his eyes. “He saved my life, didn't he?”

“I think he did, love.”

“He said—”

Mary Jo waited for him to continue.

But Jeff clamped his lips tight as if he regretted speaking. “Nothing.”

Mary Jo knew it wasn't nothing, but now was not the time to discuss it. They had to get Wade Foster back to the house, get his wound cleaned out again. Maybe she should send Jeff for the doctor this time.

She would never forgive herself if their stranger died.

Mary Jo thought about bringing the wagon here, but there were too many trees. He would still have to walk a certain distance to reach it, and she wasn't at all sure he could do that. If only he could get on the horse. “Mr. Foster,” she said again.

He moved slightly, and her heart jumped.

“Mr. Foster …”

His eyes opened reluctantly. He glared at her, and she suddenly felt wonderful. He was alive enough to glare! She knew she was smiling foolishly. His glare deepened.

“Can you help us get you on a horse?”

“You just can't let things be, can you?” he grunted.

“No,” she said happily.

He sighed in resignation and tried to move. She watched him bite back a curse. His face, streaked with dirt, went tense and white, so white she felt her own body stiffen. His hand was still clutching hers and it squeezed her fingers so tightly she almost screamed herself.

After a moment, his body relaxed. “I can make it,” he said.

And she knew he would.

Dammit. It was one thing to owe a woman when she'd helped him as she would help any stray dog. It was an entirely different matter when she risked her life for him.

In the two days that followed the near drowning, Wade didn't mention her desperate offer of a horse, though he remembered it very well. Nor did she remind him of it. He took some satisfaction in the fact that she hedged her honor some.

He didn't believe the debt had been settled when he'd helped young Jeff. It would have been settled had she not interfered again.

Wade didn't like thinking about those days after his re-injury. He still wasn't quite sure how he got on the horse. He just knew that Mary Jo Williams and the kid prodded and poked and pulled until he did. They just plain weren't going to let him die, even if they had to kill him to prevent it.

And then she stripped him of his clothes again, and there was damn little he could do about it. He did, though, insist on using the cot in the barn. It had been the only battle he'd won.

The first two days had been little more than a blur of pain. The wound in his arm had reopened, and she had resewn it and poured copious amounts of sulfur into it. She'd done the same with his leg. On the third day, his natural resiliency, or maybe Mrs. William's cooking, took over, and he had to start considering the future again. Or lack of one.

Or at least his next step. If he had choices.

He did, he kept telling himself. He had several choices; foremost was getting the hell out of here. He even had a horse now … if he was bastard enough to take her up on an offer she made while trying to save his sorry hide.

Ethics hadn't bothered him in a very long time, but Mary Jo Williams and Jeff were a different matter altogether. They had helped him without thought of consequences, even when they knew he had killed. No one did that. No one in his experience had ever done what this small family had done for him. Even the Utes. They had taken him in after he had saved a chief's son.

The parallels suddenly struck him. The Utes had taken him to repay a debt. He could do no less now.

Mary Jo Williams wanted little enough. Stay long enough to hire some responsible men for her and get a horse in repayment. He would feel a hell of a lot better taking a horse that way. He had damn little to feel good about now.

If he was discovered, if someone recognized Brad Allen, well, hell, then he would get caught. He'd already lived years longer than he had any right to expect.

He worked at getting well with new purpose. The sooner he got the ranch going, the sooner he could leave and find a place in the mountains to nurse his wounds.

Jeff mourned Jake quietly. He tried not to show his mother how much he cared. He tried to be a man.

But guilt wouldn't let him be. Mr. Foster was almost killed because of him. And Jake—Jake was dead because of Jeff's disobedience. How many times had his mother warned him about going to the creek alone?