The Soldier's Lady (33 page)

The river was not so far from the house that we couldn't plainly hear Emma's screams. The frantic cries quickly brought us all running from several directions at once.

“Is that Emma?” called Katie in alarm, hurrying out onto the porch and glancing all about to see what was going on.

“She went to the river,” I said, running around from the side of the house.

“Where's Emma and William?” yelled my papa as he ran toward them from the barn where he'd gone to prepare for milking.

“At the river,” I answered, my heart pounding in fear.

“William must have fallen in,” he said. “Let's go!”

We all sprinted away from the house in the direction of the river.

Micah Duff had also heard Emma's cries for help. At Emma's first scream he had burst out of the cabin that Papa and Uncle Ward had fixed up for him. He now flew across the ground in the direction of the sounds.

He reached the river twenty or thirty seconds ahead of the rest of us. He was just in time to see three horses disappearing around a bend in the river, two lumpy burlap bags slung over two of their saddles. He looked about hastily and saw signs of a
scuffle. Seconds later he was sprinting back for the house. He intercepted us about a third of the way there.

“Somebody's taken Emma and William!” he yelled as he ran straight past us for the house. “They're on horseback!”

Dread filled me. We had tried to keep Emma hidden and protected for so long. Had her worst fears finally come to pass? I swallowed hard as Micah continued on as fast as he could run. Just as he reached the barn, Uncle Ward rode in from town. Though his horse was hot and tired, it was already saddled. Micah grabbed the reins from his hands, and in less than five seconds was disappearing at full gallop toward the river. Uncle Ward stared after Micah in bewilderment until we all ran back into the yard a minute later and quickly explained.

Micah lashed and kicked at his horse, making an angle he hoped would intercept the three horses he had seen earlier. He had no idea where they were going, unless it was toward Greens Ford, a narrow section of river that was shallow enough to cross easily and cut a mile off the distance to town by avoiding the bridge downstream.

He reached Greens Ford but there was no sign of them.

Frantically he tried to still Uncle Ward's jittery horse enough to listen. A hint of dust still swirled in the air where the ground had been stirred up beyond the ford but on the same side of the river. He bolted toward it. If they had not
crossed the ford, where were they going? Why were they following the river?

Suddenly a chill seized him. The rapids . . . and the treacherously deep pool bordered by a cliff on one side and high boulders on the other!

He lashed the horse to yet greater speed, then swung up the bank.

Three minutes later he dismounted and ran down a steep rocky slope. He heard them now. They were at the place he feared!

Thinking desperately, he crept closer.

Suddenly a scream sounded.

“William . . . somebody help us!” shrieked a girl's voice. “Dey's got William . . . help!”

Micah sprinted down the precarious slope toward the river.

“What the—” a man exclaimed. “How did she get that thing loose?”

“Just shut her up!” shouted another.

“It doesn't matter now. Let's do what we came to do!”

One more wild scream pierced the air, then a great splash. It was followed by another.

“That ought to take care of them . . . let's get out of here!”

Seconds later three horses galloped away as Micah ran frantically out onto an overhanging ledge of rock some twenty feet above a deep black pool of the river. He saw two widening circles rippling across the surface of the water.

He ripped off his boots, stepped back, then took two running strides forward and flew into the air. With a
mighty splash he hit the water and dove deep into the river's depths. But he could only see a few feet in the murky flow and could find nothing before he was forced back to the surface for air. He shot up, breathing desperately, sucked in what air he could in a second or two, then dove again. Up and down two or three times he went, struggling for breath, swimming in a frenzy, diving as deep into the river's depths as possible and feeling about wildly with his hands and feet.

Again he burst above the surface, drew in a great gasping breath, and dove again, this time straight for the bottom.

Suddenly his fingers brushed past something! He kicked wildly to get himself deeper. There it was again.

It was burlap!

He grabbed at it and took hold, but the weight was too heavy to lift. His lungs nearly bursting, he flew again to the surface, gulped his lungs full of air, then dove straight down to the same spot.

With both hands he took hold of the bag and pulled with all his might, struggling desperately with its weight up to the surface. He felt the struggle of life inside the bag. It was a body—Emma's body—and still alive!

With all the effort he could summon, he swam toward the river's edge and lugged the bag out of the water and onto the few treacherous rocks of the thin shoreline. The moment his own footing was secure he ripped and yanked at the neck of the bag. A moment later Emma's head burst through it, gasping for air and spitting out water. She threw her arms around Micah, babbling and crying and kissing him, hardly realizing what she was doing. Then suddenly she remembered.

“William . . . where's my William?” she cried in terrified panic.

But already Micah had left Emma and was back into the river. Again he dove straight into its depth, unable to hear behind him Emma's sobbing and frantic shouts.

Papa and Uncle Ward had jumped on a couple of horses bareback, taking time only to pull bridles over their heads. Papa leaned down to take my hand and pulled me up behind him onto the horse's back. Uncle Ward did the same with Katie, and off we flew in the direction Micah had disappeared. It was all I could do to keep from falling off as I hung on desperately around Papa's waist.

It wasn't hard to follow the sounds—first from Micah's galloping horse, then as we drew closer from Emma's frantic and terrified cries.

We reached the river, hurriedly dismounted, and ran down the steep and treacherous slope as carefully as we could. Ahead of us we heard the splashing and thrashing of water in the midst of Emma's wails.

We reached the edge of the cliff where Micah's boots lay. What we saw did not look good.

Micah was diving again and again into the river, disappearing for thirty or forty seconds at a time, then flying up past the surface, gasping for two or three breaths, then disappearing from sight again.

Uncle Ward quickly threw off his boots. “You
never did learn to swim, did you?” he said to Papa.

Papa shook his head.

“I learned in California,” replied Uncle Ward. “The hard way.”

“Then I'll ride back and get a length of rope!” said Papa. “We're going to need it to get them up out of there.”

Even as Papa began making his way back up the incline to the horses, the splash of Uncle Ward hitting the water sounded behind him.

Suddenly it seemed to get real quiet. Emma's sobs at the water's edge had softened to a quiet whimpering. Katie and I stood and watched in silence. Even though it was the hottest day of the year so far, a chill swept through me.

Micah and Uncle Ward were under the water so long that everything stilled around us. It got so quiet we began to hear the birds in the nearby trees. Then suddenly Micah burst again to the surface with a cry and gasp for air, then swam frantically toward Emma. Behind him he was hauling another burlap bag.

“William!” shrieked Emma, “William . . . you found my William!”

By now Uncle Ward had also resurfaced and swam after him. Exhausted from the effort, Micah struggled onto the rocky edge of the river and fumbled desperately to open the bag. Its weight, it was now clear, was not merely from William but from several large rocks that had been added to it.

Gently he lifted William's limp form out of the
sack. Emma's hands and lips were desperate to grab and fondle and kiss her son, but somehow she knew she must leave him in Micah's care awhile longer. Micah was probing the tiny mouth with his finger. He laid William on his stomach across his legs and whacked on his back two or three times. Still there was no movement. He turned William over and now bent down and placed his own mouth over William's and blew into it. He continued to do so for several minutes.

All of us held our breaths, not realizing how much time had gone by until Papa appeared with the rope.

Finally Micah slumped back and handed William's body to Emma. She clutched him to her breast, weeping frantically and rocking slowly back and forth.

Micah glanced up to where we stood and slowly shook his head.

Katie drew in a sharp breath of shock and disbelief.

“Oh, God . . . please, God—no!” she said under her breath.

My eyes stung. The next moment Katie and I were sobbing in each other's arms.

Papa had already tied off one end of the rope and was dangling the other down to them. Uncle Ward took the rope first, then struggled to climb up the cliff as Papa pulled from above. Stones and dirt showered down as he scrambled to find footing on the rocky surface. When he neared the top, Papa kneeled
down and grasped Uncle Ward's hand, helping him up over the edge. Then he tossed the rope back down to Micah.

As gently as he was able, Micah took William from Emma's arms, set him down briefly, then eased her to her feet, tied the rope around her waist, told her to grab the rope above her, then nodded to Papa.

“Hang on, Emma,” he said down to her. “You just hold on to the rope and we'll pull you up.”

She reached us, her eyes glazed over in shock. Katie and I took her in our arms and we all wept another minute. Beyond us I saw my papa nod to me in the direction of the slope. Katie and I began helping Emma away from the river and back up to the level ground, while the two men now brought Micah with William in his arms, up the cliff.

As they turned to go, Papa's eyes spotted something crumpled up on the ground a few yards away. He stooped down, picked it up, and showed it to Uncle Ward with a look of question.

Katie and Emma and I were all crying as we reached the house. We had walked together the whole way. The men had followed some way behind us on the horses, William in Micah's arms.

Josepha was standing outside waiting for us. She knew while we were still some distance away that something was terribly wrong.

When she saw her, Emma burst away from us and ran straight toward her.

“Josepha,” she wailed in a sobbing voice, “William's gonna wake up, ain't he? Josepha . . . you kin
help him, Josepha, you gots ter! You an' Miz Katie—you always knows what ter do—you'll help him, won't you Josepha . . . you gots ter help him wake up!”

Josepha looked past Emma at all the rest of us, saw Katie and me crying again, saw the limp form in Micah's arms, and knew the truth.

“Oh, Emma chil'!” she said, giant tears spilling from her eyes. She folded Emma in a huge motherly embrace, her hands gently stroking Emma's wet hair and kissing her forehead and eyes and cheeks. “Emma . . . dear Emma chil'!”

Emma was whimpering and saying William's name over and over as Micah walked up behind them.

Emma turned and saw him carrying William. A great wail burst from her lips.