“Rhawnie.” I felt a hand on my arm and looked around. It was Garth McClelland. “What are you doing here?”
“I must go with him,” I said. “She’ll need a woman when we find them. I want to help. Please, don’t try to stop me."
“I won’t. Are you really doing this for Gaby? Or for yourself.” His blue eyes were kind, like Steven’s, and very shrewd.
I felt myself blushing. ‘I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
“Things are very confused for me right now,” I said in a rush. “I don’t know who I am or what I want. I need to get away—can you understand? Everything is happening too fast. I love him—I don’t want to hurt anyone. I must tell you—.oh, Monsieur!—I cannot marry Steven even though I love him because I married Seth a long time ago.” I hung my head. “You think I’m terrible, don’t you? I had to tell someone. I don’t know what to do.”
His arms closed around me and he said, “You’re on the horns of a dilemma, aren’t you? And you’re afraid to tell Steve.”
“I can’t,” I said into the front of his coat. “I tried and tried, but I can’t!” I looked up hopefully. “Maybe—you! You will tell him!”
He shook his leonine head. “It has to come from you and Seth.” The Delta Belle’s whistle sounded. Garth gave me an encouraging smile and said, “You’d better get on board. They’re about ready to cast off. Don’t worry. Messes have a way of straightening themselves out. Good luck, Rhawnie. To both of you.”
I gave him a quick hug and a kiss and wiped my eyes. Then I instructed one of the workers to take my valise on board and I ran up the gangplank just as the deckhands were getting ready to pull it in. A burly sailor barred my way.
“No passengers today. Ma’am,” he said. “We’re runnin’ a race and—”
“I know what you’re doing,” I said crisply. “And I’m going with you. It’s all right. If anyone asks you—I’m Seth McClelland’s wife.”
16
The Chase
THE GREAT PADDLE wheel churned the river to froth and the Delta Belle moved swiftly upstream, past Baton Rouge, past Natchez and Vicksburg and Greenville and Memphis. Past the point where the two great rivers, the Mississippi and the Ohio, came together in a torrent of swirling, muddy water at Cairo, Illinois, and where the river was so broad that if you stood on one bank you couldn’t see the other side. Or so they told me.
Huge twin funnels belched double columns of thick black smoke. The captain of the Delta Belle shouted down to the firemen to pile on more wood. The river was swollen with rain and melting snow, and the current was swift. We had to fight for every mile. Fortunately the rains had deepened the main channel and we stood little chance of running aground. The pilot kept checking our depth, and his cry rose over the din of the boiler and the banging of pistons: “Four fathoms five! Five fathoms! Four fathoms ten!” Chunks of floating debris struck the hull and some became caught in the paddles of the wheel and were crushed into powder. Thanks to the pilot’s keen eye and the captain's knowledge of the patterns of the river's flow, we were able to avoid more dangerous obstructions.
It was noon on the seventh day out of New Orleans. We were about fifty miles downstream of St. Louis. Any minute we expected to see the smoke of the Valerie Jane, and our chase would end. Captain Seward and Seth had estimated that it would take that long to catch up with her, for although the Valerie Jane had a week’s head start, we were travelling at twice her speed and not making stops to pick up passengers and freight. After the supply of logs the men had loaded in New Orleans ran out, we stopped only to pick up more fuel.
Seth and I stood in the pilothouse with Farley Seward. We all strained our eyes, hoping to catch sight of our quarry. Seth looked drained and exhausted, his eyes bleary and sunken. He had hardly slept or touched food since we had been on the river. A cigar hung limply from his lips; he had chewed on it until it was a pulpy rag. I saw him pressing his body forward, as though he could make the Delta Belle go even faster. In just a short time he would have his sister back, and Boris Azubin would be lying dead at his feet. Neither of us doubted that for a minute.
Seth had been furious with me for coming aboard. He ordered me ashore and when I refused to obey, he threatened to toss me overboard into the Mississippi. I gave him my reasons for wanting to come, stressing my own experience with Boris’ cruelty and particularly Gabrielle’s need for a woman companion on the way home. I even suggested that we might be able to salvage her reputation by inventing some lie to explain her absence from New Orleans—but only if she returned in my company. I would be her chaperone.
“Of course your own reputation is beyond saving,” he snorted. “Steve isn’t going to like this—his bride running off with the wicked black sheep of the family.”
I pushed down my anger. “He will understand. His mind isn’t corrupt, like yours.”
“That’s true. He doesn’t have my vast experience with Gypsies.”
He hardly looked at me when we were together. His resentment and dislike of me showed plainly in the expression on his face and in the set of his body. He had been hostile towards me since the concert, and now in spite of my repeated denials he still believed that I was responsible for what had befallen his sister.
I told myself I didn’t care. Even though the nature of our quest was urgent and desperate, I was delighted to be travelling again. As the distance between me and New Orleans widened, I felt my burden of confusion and doubt begin to lighten. The future would resolve itself, I thought. If I am destined to marry Steven, I will marry him. But now I felt free again. Freedom. Freedom. I could feel the rhythm of the word in the pounding of the engine and the roar of the furnace and the slap of the paddles against the surface of the water.
“More wood!“ Seth had offered to pay Seward a thousand dollars for this run, with a thousand dollar bonus if we caught up with the Valerie Jane before she reached St. Louis. One of the firemen warned the Captain that the boiler would explode if he pushed it too hard. “Explode!“ Seward cried. “My boiler can’t explode! She was cast in Hell, boy! She can’t never explode!“
“We got to stop for more wood,Cap’n!“ a hand called out.
“We ain’t stoppin’ ’til we git to St. Louis!“ Seward shouted back. “Or ‘til we catch the Valerie Jane! Tear up the floorboards! Rip off all these fancy trimmin’s!“ He was referring to the lacy wooden gingerbread that adorned the roofs and the uprights and the railings, every visible surface of the boat.
We all caught the excitement. Seth joined the dozen crewmen who had been permitted to stay on the boat in tearing up the woodwork and flooring for fuel. I offered to help but he told me curtly to stay out of their way, With a shrug, I retreated to a quiet corner and sat there until my wooden bench was ripped out from under me.
“I see her! I kin see her smoke!”
We dashed up to the pilothouse. The Captain peered through a long telescope while Seth and I squinted at the tiny speck that wavered on the distant horizon. Then the Valerie Jane disappeared around a bend in the river.
“That’s her, all right,” Captain Seward said with jubilant satisfaction. I could see his fingers twitching in his pockets and I knew he was counting his chickens. “Pour it on, boys! Give her everything she’s got! I want to catch that tub now, not in St. Louie! More fire! More steam!”
The pistons pounded, the stench of smoke and sweat filled the air. Black deck hands, their muscular backs gleaming with perspiration, wielded their crowbars with a vengeance, redoubling their efforts as the Captain promised them a share of the money.
Seth had stripped to the waist. He was drenched with sweat. His curly hair was straight, like Steven’s, and plastered to his forehead. He worked like a madman, wrenching up boards, tearing off woodwork, carrying armloads down to the furnace. Every so often he would come up to the pilothouse and watch the river in front of us. The plumes of smoke from the Valerie Jane were growing larger as we grew nearer. We would catch her.
> I put my hand on Seth’s arm. “Won’t you rest?” I asked him.
“Get out of my way,” he growled, pushing past me. Down he went to the furnace again, grim Vulcan to his forge.
Then it happened. Without any warning. I heard horrid screams from below as the boiler sprang a leak and sprayed two deck hands with scalding steam. There was a deep rumble, then a deafening explosion and a sickening splintering sound. The pilothouse tipped crazily and Seward and I skittered across the slanting floor. Flames sprang up in front of us, behind us, all around.
I ran towards the little door and plunged through a curtain of flames. Immediately I smelled singed wool and hair. I hurled myself over the side of the steamboat, and as the cool waters of the Mississippi closed over my head I heard still another explosion. The echoes seemed to follow me down, down to the bottom of the world.
When I bobbed to the surface my ears were ringing. The Delta Belle was in flames. She burned quickly, and soon she was a cockeyed blazing skeleton listing into the voracious maw of the river. Over the crackle and hiss of the fire I could hear shouts, and my nostrils were filled with the reek of charred wood and flesh.
Treading water, I looked desperately around for Seth and called his name hoarsely. I searched for him, moving through the thick smoke that hung over the water, pushing past flaming chunks of floating debris. With each passing minute my conviction that he was dead grew stronger. I could see no survivors.
Then his head surfaced not ten feet away from me. His mouth was open and he gulped air and water. He sank again. I swam to the spot and dove, trying to see him through the stirred-up silt and mud. I found him at last by groping rather than seeing. He felt limp and heavy in my arms as I pulled him up with me and our heads broke water.
The shore seemed miles away. I was weak and tired, and my burden felt almost unbearably heavy. But somehow I managed to drag him along towards the distant fringe of trees. My arm was tight across his chest, and I tried to detect the flutter of his heartbeat, but I couldn’t.
I dragged him up on the bank. The ground was muddy and slimy, but the earth had never felt so good under my feet. I flopped him over on his stomach and twisted his face sideways to the air, then I threw myself on top of him and started to pump the water out of his lungs, the way I had seen Lyubov do to a Gypsy child who had fallen into a pond. We all had to learn to swim after that. The child lived, and I was determined that Seth Garrett McClelland would live, too.
“Come on, damn you!” I grunted. “Breathe! Live!” Water spurted out of his mouth as I worked, but I could detect no signs of life, no weak currents of air around his nose and mouth.
And then he gagged. And choked and coughed. And gasped. He was breathing. My face was wet, with tears or river water or sweat I don’t know. But I was filled with an almost holy joy. He was alive, and I had saved him.
I continued to pump until he could breathe by himself, and when he began to stir I lifted him in my arms a bit so that when he vomited he would not choke. He did vomit, half the river, and when he was exhausted and empty I rolled him over and cradled him against my breasts. He opened his eyes and blinked to focus them.
“Gypsy,” he said weakly. “You’re—a mess.”
I laughed down at him. Of course I was a mess. Hair streaming and mud-caked, face streaked with smoke and tears and filth, stinking of vomit and river sludge. I grinned and said, “You should see yourself, gorgio. But we’re alive, eh? It feels good!”
He closed his eyes again and moaned. I looked him over. There was a bloody cut on his head—a falling spar had probably knocked him unconscious—and his maimed left leg was red and blistered. He was burned, and badly. His hands, too, were raw and burned and he was beginning to shiver. He was alive and I had rescued him from drowning, but I might lose him yet.
I dragged him off the mud, onto a higher grassy bank near some pine saplings. There wasn’t a house, a wharf, or a sign of civilization to be seen. I took off my own sodden cloak and wrapped him in it. Then I went back to the river to search for more survivors. We had gone down in the middle of the river, and I hoped some others might have made it to the opposite bank.
A brown lump bobbed in the water about twenty feet from shore. I peered at it. My valise! With a joyous shout I plunged into the water after it. I got it back to land and opened it. Yes, yes, dry clothes and a blanket and medicines and liquor! I rushed it back to Seth and covered him with the blanket and a shawl, and then I looked more closely at his wounds.
The head wound was more of a bump than a cut, and beyond cleaning it and putting a cool rag on it to keep the swelling down, there was little I could do. I turned my attention to his burns. I knew that burns were the most dangerous of all wounds, for the tender raw skin underneath is very susceptible to disease and infection. I built a fire, using the matches I found in the valise, and piled it high with driftwood and dried grass and whatever I could find until it blazed like the hulk of the Delta Belle herself. It warmed us both and in the fading light of day gave off enough glow to see by. Seth’s wounds couldn’t wait until morning.
I cleaned the burns as best I could with water and vodka and covered them with some special Gypsy ointment and clean strips torn from a chemise. I was thankful he was unconscious, for even so the sting of the alcohol on his open sores made him cry out. When that was done I piled more fuel on the fire, wondering fleetingly about how flames could be the tools of destruction and devastation one moment and a saving source of warmth and comfort the next. Then I lay down beside him and held him in my arms. We both slept soundly until morning.
I found another body on the shore the next morning— Captain Seward. I stripped him and buried him, then washed his clothes and dried them in the sun. At least Seth would have something to wear. They were about the same size. I foraged for food. Aside from many charred chunks of debris, the riverbank yielded only a half a bottle of bourbon, a square of tattered canvas awning, and a few bits of rope. I salvaged them all.
My patient was feverish and delirious. I bathed his whole body with cool water and hoped that he would be strong enough to fight off the sickness. I doubted it, because of the way he had been driving himself the past week. No food, no sleep, no resistance, I thought mournfully. I was hungry myself, but I didn’t want to leave him for very long. So I told my rumbling innards to be quiet and patient. I had a few jars of caviar in my valise, but caviar did not strike me as particularly appropriate.
I changed the dressings on his burns frequently, watching them closely for signs of infection. By noon I had to use the canvas to shade him from the sun, which if not intense was still warm enough to make him uncomfortable in his feverish state. And I waited, telling myself that it was no good to hope for this or that or to have regrets about one thing or another. I would simply have to do my best with each hour that passed.
I gave no thought to loving him, and I even told myself that I would do as much for any human being or any animal. But of course that wasn’t true. While he was ill I felt that part of me was ailing, too. When he stirred or moaned or cried out, I felt searing pains in my leg and hands and body. He was part of me as I was part of him. That’s just the way it was with us.
A savior appeared in the afternoon in the person of a farmer who was on his way to St. Louis to buy grain. I heard the rattle of his wagon and raced towards the sound. I found myself on a road—a dirt track, really—and I’m sure I scared the wits out of the poor man when I materialized in front of his mule. I waved my arms like a demon-woman and shouted for him to stop. He followed me back to my small campsite and agreed that we should take Seth back to his farm at once. It was a three-hour ride and we could make it before dark.
I sat in the back of the wagon, holding Seth in my arms, trying to absorb the jarring bumps and jerks as we lurched along the rutted roadbed. I crooned and whispered to him, much as I croon to horses, and it seemed to soothe him.
The farmer’s name was Kurt Geller. He was silent, spare, and mournful. But he was kindly and
generous, as was his wife. They took us in, praising God on our behalfs that we had been spared in the catastrophe. They were German immigrants and they were delighted that I could speak their language.
When they asked if this man was any relation to me, I told them the truth, that he was my husband. And they kindly let Seth and me have their own small bedroom during the period of his convalescence.
Herr Geller rode thirty miles for the doctor that same night, and thirty miles back again. There wasn’t much the doctor could do that I hadn’t already done. He left some more ointment for the burns, and told us that Seth would probably live if he could survive the next few days.
They were anxious ones for me. Frau Geller relieved my vigil from time to time so that I could get some sleep, but most of the time I tended him myself, washing and soothing and watching over him. Then the fever broke and we knew he would be all right. I cried a little, because I was so relieved.
His first words to me were, “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go after them?"
I sighed. What can you do with a man like that? Naturally he was eager to resume the chase, and he fretted because he was too sick and weak to travel, because he couldn’t bend his fingers, because his leg throbbed, because he couldn’t sleep with me in the same bed.
"Why in hell did you tell them we were married?" he growled one night.
"Because it was the truth," I said. “You know these God-fearing Christians, if they thought we weren’t married they wouldn’t let me touch you." I undressed, slipped a warm nightgown over my head, and crawled into bed beside him. “Don’t worry," I said archly when I saw him stiffen, “I won’t rape you. But I’m not about to sleep on the floor, either."
Dangerous Obsession Page 40
