The wagon was a boat, with no rudder or oars but the two black ponies. Pet and Patty snorted and paddled mightily against the current, but it was all they could do to hold the wagon in place. Then for a moment they began to gain ground. The sound of the water striking the side of the wagon box stopped. Quiet opened up like a hole around them. Caroline did not like it. Her stomach plummeted just half an inch and stopped short.
They had fallen without falling, Caroline thought without fully understanding herself, plunged into a hollow whose depth she had no way of sounding. From under the surface came an almost imperceptible tremor, and Caroline knew her answer was on its way. The creek was marshaling itself. She felt it coming, a gathering rush from upstream.
Caroline spun in her seat. The water must not reach the girls. It would pull them downstream like the willow boughs. Mary was already crouched down on the straw tick, but Laura sat straight up, her blue eyes violet with excitement. Caroline’s mouth went dry in one breath. There was next to nothing she could shield them with.
“Lie down, girls,” she commanded. They dropped as though her voice had knocked them over. It was not enough. She whipped the gray blanket down over them. “Be still, just as you are. Don’t move!”
The current came at the wagon in a great, muscular arm, caught hold of the back of it and swung it like a pendulum. The shore went swinging with it, out of sight until there was nothing but water before them. Caroline flattened herself backward against the spring seat. The whole of the creek was coming at her as though it would leap straight into her lap. It crashed and foamed against the boards, inches from her knees. Dark drops of spray shot up and dotted her skirt.
The water reared the mustangs backward, straining the pole straps that bound them to the neck yoke. They snorted and kicked and pulled, their noses inching nearer and nearer the narrow pole that joined them to the tongue. Then with a whinny the creek forced them up again. Caroline gasped and gripped the seat as the front of the wagon tipped upward, pried by the tongue.
The leather straps and steel rings would likely hold, but the wooden yoke? Caroline flinched at the thought. With the weight of two horses yanking each of its ends backward even a good hickory pole might snap like a twig broken over a man’s knee. The long tongue was only a little less vulnerable. If either of them splintered, the mustangs would come crashing into the wagon box. They must keep fighting the current, Caroline realized, if only to keep the wagon intact. Swim, she willed them, swim. But Pet and Patty were as frightened as she was. The creek had them in a chokehold. Their necks straightened, their noses pointed to the sky. Caroline could see the whites of their eyes.
“Take them, Caroline!”
The reins were in her hands and Charles’s hat and boots on the floor before she understood what was happening. He stepped one stockinged foot up onto the corner of the wagon box and sprang from it into the creek. The wagon gave a terrible lurch behind him and—
Caroline’s breath, her blood, stopped cold. The image of him leaping held itself frozen before her. It was as though her senses refused to register anything further.
But she had seen what happened next. Already she could feel the print of it on her memory.
The water had closed over his head.
Instantly the creek sealed itself as though he had never been there at all. Every ripple that belonged to Charles was gone.
Caroline waited with the reins in her hands and his name in her throat. She must not scream, must not frighten the girls, must not frighten the horses. Everything in her had dropped with him. She pulled back against the feeling and the reins tightened with her. She would hold the whole wagon afloat this way until Charles surfaced if she had to. Her eyes looked nowhere but the place where he had disappeared.
But it was not the same place, she thought with a cold flash, nor the same water. All of it was moving—creek and wagon and horses, water and wheels and hooves. And somewhere, moving with it or through it or against it, her husband. The creek might take hold of him—might already have hold of him—and sweep him away without her ever seeing.
Pet’s collar jerked to the left and she seemed to stumble, though Caroline knew there was nothing solid beneath her hooves. Caroline pulled hard on Patty’s outside line for balance. Patty’s head swerved to the right and Pet’s came with it, yanked by the crossline, but the collar did not right itself.
Something was snagged in the harnessing. The trace or the belly band or the breast strap—she could not be sure.
Caroline did not know what to do. She could not keep pulling—the bit was already notched too deeply into Patty’s cheek—and she could not let up. Whatever it was had a firm hold. She could feel it herself in the lines. It took all her strength to hold them away from the drag. Then, oh then, the water beside Pet burst open, and there he was.
Charles.
Caroline saw his breath spray from his mouth in a mist of droplets and her own lungs unlocked. He had grasped the traces and was hauling himself up along Pet’s side. His shoulder plowed up a swell of water before him.
He took hold of Pet’s throat latch. All Caroline could see of him were his head and his fist, tight under Pet’s chin. His own narrow chin barely breached the surface; the creek had him by the whiskers. Then she heard him speaking. Not the words, but the sound of them, so light and calm, they buoyed Caroline just enough that she could begin to think more than one moment ahead.
The mustangs must not give in to their panic. Not with Charles in the water beside them. She could not steer. Her arms were no match for the push and thrust of the current. But if she held the reins up high and steady, Caroline thought, Pet and Patty might not have to struggle so to keep their heads above the water.
Slowly, Caroline began to feed the lines out straight. She heard a rustle behind her and her attention splintered. Laura had come out from under the blanket. When, she did not know. Caroline did not turn around. She could not take her eyes from Charles. Until he was out of that water, there could be no room in her consciousness for anything else.
“Lie down, Laura,” Caroline said, and Laura did.