Caroline honed all her focus back into the reins. Slowly she lifted the lines, searching for the right height, the right amount of tension. Too much would signal Pet and Patty to stop. Too little and they would flail. Higher, higher—there. Just below her shoulders their heads leveled, chins parallel to the water. Now, steady, she told herself. She pulled gently, firmly, backward until the graceful curve of the mustangs’ necks began to reappear. The roar of the creek fell away from her ears as Caroline concentrated. Her arms measured the ever-changing tension in the lines and matched the two sides to each other. With Charles encouraging her, Pet was pulling harder now than Patty. Caroline slid to the left end of the spring seat, cocking the reins to soften Patty’s bit so that she might swim ahead and match Pet’s pace. Suddenly both reins softened in her hands. She wrapped them double around her fists, quick, to take up the slack.
Something had changed. Caroline felt it immediately in the lines. The leather in her hands was no longer taut with frenzy. It did not pull at her arms, but hung balanced between herself and the team. She had done it. The horses had regained control of themselves, and Caroline was driving—driving them up the center of the creek. They made no forward progress against the current, but that did not matter to Caroline. Pet and Patty had stopped straining skyward, and that alone was enough to thank God for. All the power it had taken to fuel the mustangs’ panic returned to their chests and legs, and they charged stubbornly at the water.
There was no more time than that to be thankful. Again Caroline felt a drop in her stomach. This time the sensation hovered below her navel, rolling from side to side, unable to balance. It made her want to slip from the spring seat and spread herself flat across the floorboards. The whole wagon was moving in a way it had never done before. Two months of jolting and rattling, rocking and swaying, and this was both new and wrong, a sideways sort of teeter running right down the underbelly of the wagon. Like driving down a ridgepole, Caroline thought, and edged back toward the middle of the spring seat.
It happened too fast to brace for. The wagon tipped sideways and every muscle in Caroline’s body snapped inward. Crates and boxes shifted behind her. The carpetbag on its hook swung out at her. Just as quickly the floor leveled, but Caroline did not release herself. Everything in her held its place, striving toward her own invisible center. Only her eyes dared move.
She could see no cause. Nothing had struck them. The water had not risen nor become more turbulent. She could even make out what Charles was saying to the horses.
“Come on, Pet. Gee over, Patty.”
Charles. He was trying to coax the horses away from the middle of the creek. Of course. That was why the wagon had teetered. It was too light to stand upright with its broad side exposed to the strength of the current. But the wagon must be turned to face the bank if they were to make landfall safely. There was no other chance. The thought of all that water heaving again at the sideboards whitened Caroline’s knuckles. It would either turn them or topple them—right over onto Charles.
Caroline repelled the thought. She would not, could not allow that scene to unfold—not in her mind or before her eyes. There was not even time to think of such a thing. Once the wagon began to turn, those horses must swim faster than the water flowed or the current would overtake them. Charles could not do that alone, not up to his neck in the creek. Caroline coiled up her courage and hauled the reins sideways. As the horses’ necks angled toward land, Caroline felt her weight begin to shift from beneath and knew the creek’s hold on the wagon was tightening. She slapped the lines hard, again and again. One crackling spray of water after another shot up from Pet’s and Patty’s backs. The little mustangs jolted and the wagon swung.
Caroline watched nothing but Charles, clinging to Pet. The willows blurred behind him. Water smacked and splashed at the boards, the overspray leaping up to strike sharp drumbeats against the thin canvas walls. Caroline prayed with her fists clenched and her eyes wide open.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
All at once the wagon and the creek ceased their grappling. The wagon moved as though it were a bullet careening down a rifle barrel.
“Haw!” Charles called out, and Caroline obeyed quicker than the team, quicker than thought, pulling the lines toward the western bank without knowing why. She saw it then, a brown flat place a few rods distant. The break in the trees seemed to be racing toward them. Instinct drew the reins toward her body. Safe from capsizing, they must not now cripple the horses or the wagon in landing. She could not slow the creek, but she would slow the team what little she could.
The iron tires struck and bounced against the creek bed. Caroline rocked forward, then sharply back. Charles shouted, but Caroline could not hear what he said. Sand and iron ground together beneath her. Everything from the tin plates to the churn dash rattled. Then the sound of wood scraping wood as the wagon tipped and it all skidded toward the tailgate.
Charles shouted again and there he was—rising, running, out of the creek—shoulders, back, and legs shedding water.
The shock of the wheels turning on solid ground sent Caroline’s teeth clattering down on her tongue. Her eyes clamped shut against the pain. When she opened them, the wagon was still. So still. The rushing and the flowing and the roaring, all of it was over. Charles stood panting beside the shining wet mustangs with his clothes clinging to his skin.
Caroline found herself trembling so violently she could not let go of the reins. All the terror she had not had time to feel still had hold of her; everything that had not happened suddenly fanned out before her, bright and terrible. Her voice quavered, “Oh, Charles,” and blood rose from her bitten tongue with the words. Had she been able to move, she would have had him in her arms.
“There, there, Caroline. We’re all safe.”
Better perhaps that she could not reach him, Caroline thought as she shivered and shook. There was enough thankfulness in her to crush him, and just the other side of that, a hot spurt of outrage. At him, at herself. She had known—they had both known—something was wrong, and because they could not put words to it they had gone into that creek anyway. With no one else to depend on, they had failed each other. There was no place in country like this for such mistakes, no place at all, and so she only half listened to Charles trying to soothe them all with his praise of the tight wagon box and strong horses. Brushing aside her fear had nearly just cost more than she could pay, and she would not do it again now, not if it shook her apart.
“All’s well that ends well,” Charles was saying, and that was so. But it would not have begun at all, Caroline knew, if they had listened to their own good sense. Even with creek water streaming from his whiskers, Charles could overlook that part of it. He was always facing forward, that man. Never back.