“Why not?” she asked, surprised by the urgency in his voice.
“This streamed could flood fast if this keeps up! The water washes off the hills and—”
He was interrupted by Walter poking his head up from behind them. “I’ll lead the team across!” he shouted. “I think it’s the safest way.”
Fortune could feel Aaron’s relief. “Watch your footing,” he called. But Walter was gone already, making his way back into the wagon to exit through the rear.
Fortune had expected the intensity of the downpour to diminish after a short time. To her amazement it continued unabated, as if the air itself had turned to water.
She realized that every muscle in her body was knotted like a cord and told herself to relax. Aaron knew what he was doing; worrying wasn’t going to help.
Her body refused to obey the command. She tasted blood and realized she had bit her lip until it was bleeding.
Walter went splashing past them, and a moment later the wagon began rolling forward. Aaron cursed.
“What is it?” asked Fortune.
“The water is getting higher already. Look!”
Leaning over the edge of the wagon, Fortune could actually see the frothing stream creeping up on the wheels. Without intending to, she gasped. “We’ve got to get across fast!”
“We can’t go any faster than Walter can lead us,” said Aaron. “Damn!” he added, in response to a lurch of the wagon.
“What is going on?” demanded Mrs. Watson, appearing behind them.
Before Fortune could answer, she found herself clutching Aaron’s arm for support as the right front wheel lifted over a little hump and fell into a hole. The wagon jerked to a stop, listing dangerously to the side.
“Damn,” said Aaron again. He threw down the reins and leaped over the side. Fortune scrambled down after him.
“Fortune Plunkett, you come back here!” cried Mrs. Watson. “I promised your father I’d take care of you. I—”
Her words were lost in the storm. Fortune slogged through the stream, hardly able to tell where the water left off and the air began. The lightning was more frequent now. Juliet, always nervous in a storm, was whinnying and kicking. Mr. Patchett, who had come around from the back of the wagon, was standing with Aaron. They were both studying the wheel.
“How bad is it?” she asked, stepping between them.
“I don’t know,” said Aaron. “I wish Jamie was here. He always knew what to do in this kind of situation.”
“We’ve got that long wooden bar he insisted we buy back in Independence. It’s one of the few things that didn’t fall out on the mountain that day. He said it was to pry up the wagon if we got stuck.”
“I’ll get it!” said Mr. Patchett. As he began splashing back toward the wagon, Fortune realized the water was halfway up his long legs.
“I’ll go get Edmund,” she said. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“Be careful!” roared Aaron, shouting against the storm.
Fortune started off, using the horses as a guide. I can’t even see the other side, she thought in panic. How will I get there? Her panic flared even higher when she bumped into a dark shape in the rain and it reached out and grabbed her. “Fortune! What are you doing?”
It was Walter. She had forgotten that he had gone ahead to lead the team across.
“I’m going to get Edmund,” she told him. “We need him back there.”
“I’ll go. You stay here and keep the horses calm. You’re better with them than I am anyway.” Fortune started to object, then decided he was right. She watched fondly as the giant waded toward the far bank, knowing that he was still trying to make up for the night that he had lost all their money.
Suddenly Romeo threw back his head, trumpeting in terror. The movement pulled her off her feet, and it was only her grip on the harness that kept her from being swept away by the current. She tried frantically to calm him again.
It seemed an eternity before Walter returned with Edmund. The water, rising steadily, was midway up Fortune’s thigh when she heard Edmund’s angry voice sputtering about fools who couldn’t drive.
Shut up, she thought. Just shut up and help.
Then suddenly it didn’t make any difference whether Edmund helped or not. The rain tapered off as quickly as it had begun.
Fortune almost collapsed with relief.
Mr. Patchett smiled. “Well, well—that feels as good as remembering a line that you thought you had lost.”
The moment of relief was broken by a piercing scream from Mrs. Watson.
Snapping around, Fortune saw a wall of water roaring toward them. It was far up the creek bed, but rolling forward at an appalling rate.
“The horses!” she cried. “Help me free the horses.”
Walter was at her side at once. Her fingers, chilled by the rain, felt as if they were made of lead. The straps, resisting her fumbling efforts to loose them, seemed to have taken on a malevolent intelligence of their own. Fortune thought she was going to scream in frustration. Glancing back, she could see the water getting closer. Mrs. Watson had surrendered to hysterics.
“Edmund!” cried Fortune. “Get her to shore. Hurry!”
She turned her attention back to Juliet’s harness. “Come on!” she urged the stubborn leather. “Loosen up!”
But the moisture had caused it to swell so much that it seemed hopelessly jammed.
“Got it!” cried Walter, freeing Romeo. He slapped the gelding’s rump. “Go on, boy! Get to shore!”
He hurried to where Fortune stood fumbling with one of the stubborn straps. Behind her she could hear Aaron and Mr. Patchett trying to free the wagon wheel from the hole.
“Enough!” cried Mr. Patchett. “Head for the bank!”
“I can’t leave Juliet!” cried Fortune.
Before she could say another word, the water was upon them. It struck her like a falling tree, sweeping her feet off the river bottom. She clung to Juliet, but the horse staggered and fell, too. Then the wagon went over. Fortune could hear the wood cracking and splintering.
I’ve got to get this undone or Juliet will drown! The fear seemed to give her a strength she had never known before. With one last burst of effort she managed to undo the harness.
Juliet thrashed desperately, trying to get to her feet. Fortune continued to cling to the horse’s neck.
Together, they were swept away by the flood.
Chapter Twenty
Fortune, her fingers twined in Juliet’s mane, tried desperately to keep her own head above the rushing water. It seemed that no sooner would she break the surface, gasping for air, than the water would close over her again. It was as if she were in the grasp of some great and powerful god who was picking her up and tossing her down at his whim. She fought in vain against the merciless rush of the current, the tangling of her sodden clothes, the desperate need for air.
Juliet’s terrified whinnying rang in Fortune’s ears as she struggled against the freezing brown water that swirled around them. Her efforts were nothing in the face of the flood’s power. A sense of crushing helplessness overwhelmed her. She was sure she was going to die until suddenly…there was hope.
As she pieced it together afterward, what saved her was that Walter had clung to the harness traces when the flood swept over them. Rather than fighting the water, he had let it carry him away—perhaps because, unlike Fortune, he had nothing solid to hang on to. That had changed when the current thrust him against a tree standing in the flood path. With great effort the giant had managed to get himself on the far side of it. Struggling to keep his head above water, he wrapped the leather strap around the trunk.
That was all the help Juliet needed. When the harness caught, there was a wrenching jolt. Then the mare braced herself against it. For a long time her hooves were unable to find sure footing. But by bracing against the strap she was able to lunge up out of the water so that she—and Fortune—could breathe.
Fortune had strug
gled desperately to hold on and keep her head above water as much as possible. Long after that day she would wake in the night, remembering again the muddy smell of the flood, the force of it against her body, the fierce chill of it on her skin, the roar as it surged past her.
And then, as rapidly as it had struck, the worst of the current had passed by. They would learn later that what had caught them had been more than just a foothills flash flood. A few weeks earlier two miners attempting to get at more gold had temporarily diverted part of the stream from its normal bed. The heavy rains and rapidly rising water had broken their dam, and it was the freeing of that pent-up water that nearly cost the troupe their lives.
She hadn’t known that at the time though. She simply knew she was wildly grateful when the dreadful pounding stopped and Juliet was able to stagger to her feet.
Then she saw Walter’s body, dangling from the lowest branches of the tree. She began to scream, convinced that he was dead. At the same time Mr. Patchett, Edmund, and Aaron—who had been pounding along the bank, trying to keep up—came splashing through the water toward them. Edmund grabbed Juliet and led her to safety. Then he splashed back out into the stream, because though Mr. Patchett had freed Walter from the tree, it took Edmund’s strength as well to drag the big man back to the bank.
Fortune saw them struggling with Walter’s body as Aaron was lifting her from the water. After that she collapsed and became unconscious.
An hour or so later, when she awoke, the first thing she did was reach into her dress for Jamie’s letter, which she had carried with her throughout the winter.
It was nothing but a sodden mass of ink-stained paper.
Tears welled up in her eyes. She had read the letter every night before she went to sleep. Now it was gone, and she mourned its loss even more than the loss of their faithful old wagon, which had been shattered by the flood.
At least she still had the nugget.
They decided to backtrack to Centipede Hollow. Though they had left it by only a few miles, it was morning by the time the weary band staggered back to the top of the last hill that overlooked the town.
When they looked down on the place, saw the desolation, Fortune heard a small groan. It was a moment before she realized that it had come from her own lips. After yesterday’s disaster, the catastrophe below seemed too much to bear.
Water covered every street in the town, as if the place had been built in a lake to begin with. Here and there could be seen the remains of a building that had been put up too rapidly, or with a shoddy foundation, and was now nothing but a heap of rubble. The hill on the other side of the main street was dotted with tents and makeshift shelters.
The sight drew a collective moan from the group. They had managed to get through the last twenty-four hours partly on the belief that they would find food and shelter when they finally made it back here. They hadn’t been expecting to stumble into yet another disaster area.
Still, bad as the situation was, at least they could find some kind of help.
Besides, there was nowhere else to go.
Fortune knew she should probably be concerned about the townspeople and what they had suffered. But when she had groaned, she had been thinking only of her stomach. Wearily, the five who were still on their feet trudged down the hill. Aaron was leading Romeo. Walter, semiconscious, half delirious and gibbering about Hamlet’s ghost, was slung over the horse’s broad back.
Fortune dropped back to examine him. Walking beside Romeo, she put her hand on Walter’s shoulder and whispered, “I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for you, old friend.” She wondered if he could even hear her. “Oh, Walter, do you feel like you’ve redeemed yourself yet? I stopped being angry long ago. Don’t leave us. Not now. Please!”
She shook her head, fighting back the tears, then whispered again, “Please!”
The mere act of walking through Centipede Hollow was a major effort, since water still stood in all but the highest spots, and where there wasn’t water there was mud—clinging, catching, holding mud.
Fortune had been hoping that they would find a doctor when they got back to the town. But though there was urgent need of one, since broken bones and fever were everywhere, no medical man had settled here.
“I wish we were home, back where it’s civilized!” said Fortune angrily. She was speaking to Edmund and Aaron. The three of them had spent hours combing the town for someone to help Walter. At one point, her nerves frayed beyond endurance, Fortune had found herself standing in the middle of a street, screaming at the mud to let her loose. When she had finally realized how stupid she must look, she had glanced around, then begun working quietly to free herself.
They were standing now in the lobby of the hotel where she had browbeaten the clerk into letting them have a room on credit because their money, along with their props and their clothing, had been lost with the wagon.
Actually, she would gladly have parted with all of it to have Walter recover. They had lost everything before, and regained it. The only thing that had disappeared in the flood that couldn’t be replaced was her letter from Jamie.
Wearily, the three dragged themselves to their room, where they found Mr. Patchett and Mrs. Watson, seemingly numb beyond response, sitting beside Walter’s cot, silent and staring.
Two days later they were sitting down to breakfast when Edmund suddenly bolted from the table. Fortune hesitated, then ran after him to see if he was all right.
She found him kneeling in the street outside the hotel, vomiting. Her stomach churned at the smell.
When he was done, she helped him to his feet, holding her breath against the odor.
That was the first sign they had of what others in town had already discovered during the night. The cholera had arrived, as it so often did in towns that had suffered a flood.
Poor Edmund’s supercilious elegance failed him utterly as the disease took over his body, racking him with fever, causing him to spew out liquids violently.
Mrs. Watson was next to fall. The disease devastated her. It wasn’t the thought of dying—it was the simple betrayal by her body, the humiliation of losing control of her functions. Fortune’s heart ached for Mrs. Watson when she heard her sobbing in her bed.
Walter and Aaron followed in rapid succession. Because of Walter’s weakened condition, the disease seemed to strike him hardest of all.
Only Fortune and Mr. Patchett remained untouched.
Fortune now found herself cast in a role she had never expected to play: nurse to the sick and the dying.
Few residents of Centipede Hollow escaped the touch of the disease. Of those who did, many fled, their terror of contracting the scourge outweighing any compassion they might feel for those who had already been stricken by it.
Fortune longed to flee, too. Centipede Hollow had become one vast sickroom, and it brought to mind all too painfully the memories of her parents’ last hours.
Shame-faced, Mr. Patchett suggested it to her.
“Maybe we should go,” he said late one afternoon. “There’s too much death here.”
Fortune nodded. She had seen too much death, and it was weighing heavily on her.
But as she started to pack her bags, something stopped her. In her mind, she imagined Jamie being struck down by the cholera, and wondered if anyone would nurse him if that should happen.
She went back to where Mr. Patchett was waiting for her.
“We’re staying,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged.
Rolling up their sleeves, they walked among the dead and dying, and did what had to be done.
Chapter Twenty-One
To her amazement, Fortune found the work of nursing the sick very rewarding. Though she was exhausted, terrified, revolted by the filth and the suffering, when she entered a room and the moaning creature that lay on a cot saw her and, for a moment, seemed to be free of the fear and the pain, she felt something she had never experienced before, something that struck deeper e
ven than the applause she had learned to love.
In a matter of days she had become the stuff of legend. The miners referred to her as “The Angel of Centipede Hollow,” and many a miner would claim in later years that he survived the cholera because he lay in his bed day after day “waiting for his Fortune,” unwilling to die until he had had his chance to see her that day, and too filled with hope to die once he had.
Fortune herself never fully realized the impact she had on those men. Traveling the streets in an old blue cloak that one of the other women had given her to wear, she would come in from the fog or the darkness, her golden hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes filled with compassion, and suddenly make life seem worthwhile again.
Her world became an endless round of the sick and the dying, a sea of mud, an overwhelming stench of disease and filth that could not be escaped no matter where she went.
Yet she would have been content, were it not for her fears for her friends. Edmund, with remarkable strength, had thrown off the disease in less than three days. Weak but willing, he joined the nursing effort by helping with the preparation of food for the victims.
Fortune, astonished, said nothing.
Jamie was on her mind constantly during these days. Every time she ministered to a sick miner, wiped someone’s brow, or fed him broth, she wondered if Jamie was well, and if he was not if anyone was caring for him.
She wondered, too, what he thought of her, if he ever thought of her at all.
Sometimes she wondered if he was even alive. That thought, when it came, was ruthlessly purged. She would lift the chain that hung about her neck, cup the golden nugget in her palm, and try to keep from weeping. Even when not holding it she was aware of the heart-shaped nugget where it rested against her own heart.
She tried to console herself with the knowledge that Plunkett’s Players had been lucky. By rights, more of them should have lost the battle with cholera. But Edmund was almost fully recovered, and Aaron and Mrs. Watson were both doing well. The troupe had beaten the odds. Yet she was greedy. She wanted all of them to survive.
And it seemed clear that Walter would not.
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