Clyde had secured the sheep and returned to his circling horses. He was crouched on his heels in one of the three-sided sheds that served as the animals’ shelter. The boy rose when he saw his mother and picked his way through the anxious, milling herd. He squeezed through the bars of the fence.
“You should be inside the house,” Clyde said to Nettie Mae. “That rain—”
“Not just yet. Have you seen Miranda?”
“I haven’t. Not since she went out to the orchard after midday.”
“Someone must have noticed which way the girl ran!”
Clyde stared beyond Nettie Mae for a moment, toward the pasture. Then he thrust himself away, sprinting hard past the shed and barn, picking up speed with every leaping stride. Cora tried to shield her eyes with one hand, peering into the blowing grit to learn what had caught Clyde’s attention.
It was Beulah. The girl was running back over the pasture, just as Benjamin and Charles had done. Her arms worked at her sides, pumping like the bars of a locomotive’s wheels. There was no mistaking the urgency in her headlong dash.
Nettie Mae took Cora by the hand, pulling her across the yard. They ran together to meet Beulah. As the girl broke through the fringed edge of the pasture, Cora cried out with hopeless agony; Beulah was clutching Miranda’s rag doll in her fist.
Panting, Beulah held up the mud-stained doll. “By the river.” She heaved for a few more breaths, then said, “On the trail that leads to the ravine.”
Cora covered her mouth with both hands, but she couldn’t hold back a scream of loss. It tore at her throat, long and sharp, and left a taste of blood in her mouth. Someone was holding her now, pulling her into a tight embrace, pressing her mouth against a bony shoulder as she screamed again. She tasted wool and sweat, and dug her nails into the flesh of whoever had embraced her.
Cora drifted in a strange, formless unreality. She was dimly aware of Clyde’s voice, muffled, as if he were speaking from a great distance.
“I’ll bridle Joe Buck and ride after her. Beulah, get everyone into the house. The storm will be directly overhead in a few minutes. There’s no time to lose.”
And in that very moment, as if his words had called forth the fury of a vengeful God, Cora heard the hollow crack and scrape of stones displaced, of willows torn up by the roots, of water crashing down through the narrow canyon that reached like a fatal wound into the belly of the Bighorns.
The flood had come.
CLYDE
When he heard the thunder, Clyde knew it was no ordinary storm.
He and Beulah had been occupied for hours with the cattle fence, thickening its wattles against the snow he could sense was coming. Winter seemed determined to fall upon the homestead weeks earlier than usual. The day had been muggy, vexatious with flies, but the sky hadn’t offered any greater threat than it had done for days, dropping its intermittent rains in daylong showers. The sudden crash of thunder shattered their quiet, contented work. It struck them as a physical blow first, the raw power of the explosion knocking Clyde and Beulah to the ground—or perhaps they both had thrown themselves down in a lurch of pure wild instinct. An instant later, the blast shook them. The thunder was more sensation than sound, a violent rending of the sky, a shuddering of the earth, a muffled whine in Clyde’s ears that blocked, for a moment, the screams of the animals and the throaty roar as the thunder spread itself out from the mountains, out across the open prairie to the south.
As soon as he knew he hadn’t been struck—indeed, he hadn’t even seen the lightning flash—Clyde pushed himself up to his knees and stared around the yard. He raised himself from the dirt just in time to witness one of his bay fillies sailing over the paddock fence. Eyes rolling with terror, she galloped toward the house.
“Horse out,” Clyde barked to Beulah. “Get in the barn where it’s safe.”
He ran after the filly, his arms thrown wide, speaking as low as he could manage with the white flare of shock still glowing in his chest. The horse tried to wheel around him and bolt, but Clyde reached toward her flaring nostrils, the hot jet of her fearful breath. The filly danced in place but allowed him to touch her neck. Stroking, soothing, he guided her back to the paddock and shut her in with the rest of the herd.
Clyde followed the filly inside and stood under one of the shelters, arms crossed over his chest in an attempt to still his quaking body. If he remained motionless, the horses would take notice and calm themselves, too—or so Clyde hoped. If any of his horses panicked again and collided with the fence, there would be precious little time to spend on another repair of the corral.
Clyde remained in the paddock for several minutes, willing the herd to settle even as his body tensed instinctively, cringing in anticipation of another burst of thunder. The midday sun faded more with every rapid heartbeat, lost behind a wall of cloud. He could hear the sheep calling, the tattoo of their hooves as they bolted from the pasture, seeking the comfort of their stone-walled pen. Clyde watched his anxious horses a moment longer. He didn’t like to leave them untended—not when they were in such a state—but if he didn’t see to the sheep himself, Beulah would take the excuse to leave the shelter of the barn. With lightning so near, Clyde couldn’t allow her the risk.
“Stay quiet, you,” Clyde said to Joe Buck. “Keep the rest of the herd calm, do you hear?”
Then he left the paddock and hustled toward the fold. Cora and Nettie Mae were crossing the yard. Both women looked pale and rigid with fright. “Clyde,” Nettie Mae shouted, “flood on the way.”
He held the fold gate wide and the flock crowded in, pressing their bodies together, craning their heads above one another’s backs. Their eyes were white with terror. There was no time to count the sheep properly; Clyde had to trust that the entire flock had remained together. He shut the gate, tying it securely, then returned to the horses, calling their names, speaking with slow and gentle words as they twitched and snorted and flung themselves into short bursts of flight down the length of the paddock fence.
By and by, Cora and Nettie Mae appeared again. They were both trembling, but Cora’s eyes were glazed and she stared unblinking into the distance. There was no mistaking the vacancy of shock, the emptiness of tragedy. Clyde slipped through the fence once more.
“You should be inside the house,” he chided.
His mother silenced him with a sharp, impatient gesture. “Not just yet. Have you seen Miranda?”
“I haven’t.” The white fear dissipated in Clyde’s chest. A sensation far worse replaced it: the cold stab of knowing, a sickening pang of loss. No wonder Cora wore that fixed mask of helpless agony. “Not since she went out to the orchard after midday.”
Something pale caught Clyde’s attention, flashing against the dark, dense atmosphere of storm and shadow. He stared past his mother to the sheep pasture. Beulah was there, running through the waist-high autumn grass, as fast as her legs would carry her.
God in Heaven, she’ll be struck out there!
Clyde left the women and ran for Beulah, his boots gouging the earth with the force and desperation of his stride. Every breath came sharp and hot in his throat, his lungs. There was no sense in going to the girl; Clyde knew that. His presence could be no shelter from the storm.
At least if lightning is to fall, it might hit me instead, and spare her life.
Clyde met Beulah at the pasture’s edge. Her face was dark with the effort of running. The heavy-lidded, half-dreaming look was gone; her eyes were as bright as candle flames, burning with urgency. She lifted a hand. Miranda’s rag doll dangled by one arm.
Cora’s scream of pain, just behind Clyde’s shoulder, was the first notion he had that the women had run after him. But he couldn’t tear his attention from Beulah.
“By the river,” she panted. Her thin shoulders rose and fell like a bellows as she struggled for her breath. “On the trail that leads to the ravine.”
“I’ll bridle Joe Buck and ride after her,” Clyde said at once. “Beulah, get everyo
ne into the house. The storm will be directly overhead in a few minutes. There’s no time to lose.”
Beulah nodded. She reached one slender arm toward the women—Nettie Mae had gathered Cora to her chest, holding her tight as she wailed with terror and grief. Like ewes obeying the calm command of a shepherd, Nettie Mae and Cora both stumbled toward the house. Beulah’s hand rested on Nettie Mae’s back, guiding and controlling. The girl called over her shoulder, “Benjamin! Charles! Come to the house at once!”
Clyde ran toward the paddock. A persistent rumble lifted from the slope above the farm, vibrating down the flanks of the foothills. For a moment, Clyde thought it was thunder, but it was too quiet, too sustained. Then he heard a hollow pop, the blow of stone against stone. It reverberated from the direction of the river, sharp as a rifle shot.
Only one force could dislodge boulders from the ravine. Only one force could hurl great blocks of sandstone as easily as Cora’s boys tossed their leather ball in the yard.
Flood.
He threw open the tack shed door. Clyde had no need to pause, no need to adjust his eyes to the darkness. He knew just where Joe Buck’s bridle hung, on the first peg inside. He scarcely paused long enough to retrieve it; as soon as his fist closed around soft leather, Clyde was running again, reins trailing behind and whipping his ankles. There was no time for the saddle. He must ride bareback, and pray he’d be fast enough to find Miranda before the floodwaters took her.
Clyde shimmied between the fence boards and called for Joe Buck. The gelding peeled away from the restless herd, trotting to meet Clyde. Joe Buck carried his head high; he snorted with every stride, fearful of the storm. But he had always trusted his rider, and Clyde knew there was no braver horse in all of Wyoming Territory. Clyde fitted the bridle quickly. Joe Buck kept his teeth clamped shut for one wild moment, dancing nervously where he stood, but Clyde pleaded under his breath and the bit slid into place. He led the gelding from the paddock, flipped the reins over Joe Buck’s neck, and sprang up, pulling on the mane until he could swing his leg across the broad yellow back.
Clyde drummed his heels against Joe Buck’s ribs. The horse lit out for the pasture and the cottonwoods beyond. Clyde didn’t often ride bareback, and now, with no saddle between them, he could feel Joe Buck’s fear, the twitching of his hide and the stiff reluctance of his muscles, the short and uncertain stride. Surely Joe Buck could hear the oncoming rain and the roaring flood far more clearly than Clyde. But he had never been the sort of horse to defy his owner. Clyde held him steady, demanding that he race toward the swelling river, and Joe Buck obeyed.
The gelding’s hide had already been damp with fear sweat when Clyde had mounted. As they plunged into the tall grass of the pasture, Clyde urged greater speed, leaning as low as he could manage over Joe Buck’s neck without the stability of his saddle, and his seat grew slicker. It was all he could do to rock with the horse’s movement and keep himself astride; his body slid alarmingly from left to right or jounced back toward the horse’s croup whenever Joe Buck’s gait turned rough. Clyde entangled one fist in the black mane. The coarse hairs cut into his flesh, but he didn’t care. That grip might be all that kept him on Joe Buck’s back, and Joe Buck alone, of all the creatures on the Webber homestead, might be fast enough to save Miranda’s life. Clyde begged his horse for greater speed. Joe Buck flattened his ears and stretched his neck, pushing into a hard gallop. Wind laden with grit whipped past Clyde’s face, stinging his eyes; in the force of his flight, he could scarcely draw a breath. There was no hope of seeing the ground ahead. He could only pray Joe Buck wouldn’t set a hoof into a prairie dog hole.
They crossed the pasture and broke through the far stand of brush, the last margin of thicket before the grassland gave way to cottonwoods and riverbank. Clyde turned his horse north, toward the confluence of the Nowood and Tensleep Creek. The mouth of the ravine lay just ahead, around a shallow bend and a clump of short, scrubby trees. Joe Buck’s hooves pounded the narrow trail. To Clyde’s right, the river was already on the rise, foaming and churning as it climbed the gravel banks. The water would soon spill over, scouring beyond the cottonwoods and the hedge all the way to the middle of the pasture.
Substance’s grave lay just ahead. Clyde swallowed hard, fixing his eyes to the low mound as his horse galloped by. Very likely the grave would be washed away, and his father’s remains scattered down the length of the river. But there was nothing to be done—not now, with a child’s life at stake—perhaps not under any circumstances.
I should have thought better about the grave site, Clyde scolded himself. It was too close to the river to begin with, and the river always floods, sooner or later. I’m sorry, Father.
Substance’s resting place was a blur as Clyde shot past, but the small, pale objects scattered over its weed-shrouded surface caught his attention, sending a jolt of superstitious dread up his spine. Were those animal bones? Who had placed them there? Nettie Mae must have visited the grave without Clyde’s knowing.
But in the next moment, the grave and all thoughts of his father lay far behind Clyde. The mouth of the ravine yawned ahead. Under the flat blue shadow of the storm, the sandstone walls were forcefully red—red as the piercing of flesh. The stunted willows that grew up the canyon’s sandy sides were all but overwhelmed. Only the tops of the tallest willows showed above the roiling surface of the water. Skeletal and dark, they thrashed in the cascade, bending and dipping with the force of the current. The flood had arrived in the full fury of its power.
Joe Buck sat back on his haunches, skidding to a halt, and Clyde fell heavily against the horse’s muscular neck. Only his grip on Joe Buck’s mane saved him from crashing to the earth. Clyde pushed himself upright as Joe Buck squealed and tried to turn away. Relentless, Clyde kicked his horse onward and pulled the reins hard across his neck, struggling to keep Joe Buck from bolting.
“Miranda!” Clyde shouted. The roar of Tensleep Creek swallowed his voice.
The smooth, compacted sand of the riverbank was rapidly disappearing under a rising froth of red mud, flotsam, and small drowned animals. Clyde scanned the shore for footprints—and yes, there they were. One small set of prints, tiny boots, headed toward the canyon. The chop and rush of water consumed one footprint, then another, but a few still led on. Clyde hissed to Joe Buck, forcing him closer to the narrow ravine and the thick red churn that poured from its mouth.
Thunder fractured the sky, the shock of it stealing Clyde’s breath, but as lightning flashed across his vision, it drove back just enough of the storm’s darkness for him to see the small figure crouched on a flat boulder at the canyon’s mouth. Miranda stared back at Clyde—huddled, hugging her knees to her chest, silent and paralyzed with fear.
The rising water had pushed a bare, gnarled branch onto the stone where she crouched. As Clyde blinked hard, trying to clear a searing violet echo of light from his eyes, he saw the branch shift and turn, ponderously slow. The flood was rising faster, and faster still. In moments it would sweep Miranda away.
“Climb higher,” Clyde shouted to the girl.
But even as he spoke, he knew his words were wasted. The sandstone wall at Miranda’s back was sheer and smooth. Not even a grown man could have pulled himself up that unfriendly face. The flat rock, Miranda’s only refuge, was surrounded by leaping waves, the water red brown, silted by its own violence.
Clyde examined what remained of the riverbank. If he could find some route to the rock, no matter how perilous, he might—
Miranda screamed, a pathetically small and thin sound, like a featherless hatchling swept from its nest. A surge of water carried the girl and the gnarled branch off the rock into the river.
“No!” Clyde shouted. Then, as he wheeled Joe Buck around to race downstream, he bellowed even louder, the only advice he could think to give the girl. “Hold on!”
Grateful to leave the canyon’s roar, Joe Buck galloped down the path. Every leaping stride threw up a spray of water, for the river had cons
umed the banks and was now encroaching upon the trail. Clyde gritted his teeth and kept his eye on Miranda. She did as Clyde had instructed; with both hands the girl clung to the twisted snag, holding her pale, frightened face just above the surface.
Joe Buck ran as swiftly as the flood, but Clyde knew his horse couldn’t keep up the pace indefinitely. Unless he could devise some trick to snare Miranda and pull her to the shore—or unless God granted a miracle—he would watch as the flood carried her downstream, beyond Clyde’s reach, beyond any hope for salvation. Still Clyde rode, urging his horse on, shouting encouragement to Miranda whenever he could draw a breath. They passed the broad clearing, footed with smooth, flat river stones, that marked the trail back to the homestead. The farm dwindled in their wake.
Beyond the homestead, the Nowood broadened, and though the water still rose, its surface ran more smoothly. Clyde narrowed his eyes at the grassland ahead, scanning for anything—a long branch, a length of discarded, long-forgotten rope—anything he might use to pull Miranda to safety. The girl’s face was white as winter, her mouth clamped shut, her eyes huge and pleading behind the branch to which she still held fast.
The ever-broadening river flowed around a bend. A mass of branches and sagebrush had compacted near the middle of the Nowood—a jam, probably embedded in a bar of sand or gravel below the surface. Miranda’s branch flowed past the mess of flotsam.
“No,” Clyde pleaded—with God, with the river, with anything that might be listening. “Catch her. Please!”
Just as he feared the willow branch would avoid the jam, one end snagged. The branch held, kicking a spurt of water over its mass, obscuring Miranda from view.
That snag won’t hold long. And if it does, she’ll drown anyhow.
Clyde reined in his horse opposite Miranda, then guided Joe Buck farther upstream. He slid to the ground, splashing into the rising water, but his legs scarcely held him.
“Don’t you go nowhere,” he shouted to Joe Buck. He knew his voice was pleading, desperate, girlish and high. He didn’t care. “Don’t go nowhere, Joe, you hear me?”
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel Page 22
