The Sparrow

by Kristy McCaffrey

  The cougar growled again and shifted back onto its haunches. The skittish animal wouldn’t stay put for long.

  “Nathan.” Emma’s quiet voice startled him, which he held in rigorous check.

  “Don’t move,” he said under his breath, still facing the cat.

  “I see her,” she whispered. “She’s amazing.”

  A thought struck him. “Get in the water.”

  “You just said not to move.”

  “I changed my mind. Get in the water. She’ll be less likely to attack you there. You don’t by chance have my gun?”

  “Are you going to shoot her?”

  “Not unless she attacks.”

  Cold metal touched his fingers as Emma slipped the weapon into his hand.

  Without warning, the cougar lunged toward them. In a rush, Nathan grabbed Emma and pushed her into the water. They fell with a splash and Emma’s startled scream echoed around them. Nathan quickly stood and tried to pinpoint the animal’s location. A sleek tan movement on the cliff face to their left, far past the cavern’s opening, caught his eye. Thankfully, the cat wanted nothing to do with them. The steep rock walls along the river corridor appeared impassable, but somehow the creature found a way up.

  Nathan took a deep breath as his mind accepted that danger was no longer present. His heartbeat began to return to a normal rhythm. The weight of the gun in his hand drew his attention.

  It was wet. Again. Hell.

  Emma gasped from behind him.

  He stood buck naked as the blanket floated near his legs.

  “Sorry.” He waded into the water, but couldn’t resist a glance in her direction. Wet hair clung to her head and a nice rosy blush kissed her cheeks.

  She stood. “No, I’m the one who should apologize.” She looked everywhere but at him. “I didn’t mean to intrude.” She wore trousers, but instead of the heavy white shirt only a thin sleeveless undergarment covered her top half. The dunk in the river molded it to her body and embraced her like a second skin.

  He diverted his gaze but the image of her lingered in his mind.

  She trudged out of the water. “Take all the time you need,” she said over her shoulder, hurrying into the cave.

  Nathan remained in his river bath for a long moment.

  There was no doubt about it.

  He was in serious trouble.

  * * *

  An hour later they were back on the river. Emma offered to row in the hope that exercise might take her mind off seeing Blackmore without a stitch of clothing. She tried to shake the memory from her mind, but it was impossible. His naked backside had made her heart stop and her mouth go dry. The mountain lion incident paled in comparison.

  The image of him was…compelling.

  The word whispered in her mind. She’d never seen a man bared down to nothing, the muscles and contours revealed in perfect lines of masculinity. But she had experienced this before, with the man in her visions. Reality, however, was much different.

  Reality is better.

  Emma covered her embarrassment and frustration by rowing like a fiend, avoiding Nathan’s gaze as she faced upstream. The canyon walls dwarfed them, and the river was wide and calm. A canopy of blue completed the ceiling of their insulated world.

  Pausing to catch her breath, she had a new appreciation for Blackmore’s stamina when he commanded the captain’s seat. A hawk flew high above them. She craned her neck to watch and wondered at the bird’s perspective, so different from hers. He undoubtedly saw the river as only one part of the landscape while, to her, the river consumed her vision and dictated her very survival.

  “How’d you get the money to build the boat?”

  Determined to appear nonchalant, Emma glanced at Blackmore as if he were a shopkeeper asking how much flour she needed for the week. “Two years ago a rather grand hotel opened called the Palace Hotel, so I was able to get a job as a maid. I also helped run errands for several elderly ladies who lived in our building, most of them widows. I did some cooking and cleaning, that kind of thing.” She resumed rowing.

  “You must’ve been busy. Didn’t you go to school?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You didn’t have much free time.”

  “That’s alright. Too much idleness can be a problem for me.”

  “Why’s that?” he asked.

  She couldn’t tell him the truth—that she ruminated endlessly over her visions—so she lied. “I have trouble focusing at times.”

  “What about your sister, Mary? Didn’t she live with you also?”

  “Yes. She planned to attend nursing school and studied hard, but love interrupted. As soon as she met Tom Simms, I knew she was in trouble. But he did the right thing, and married her.”

  “The right thing?”

  “She was with child.”

  He nodded.

  She pulled hard on the oars, dragging them through the water.

  “Do you have any children?” she asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “So, you could?”

  “If I do, it was never intentional.”

  “Creating a child is intentional.” She pulled on the oars again, frustration welling up inside her. “What kind of outlook is that?”

  “An honest one. I’ve never made promises to women.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked at her, his cheek flexing. “I never wanted to. I don’t like being tied down.”

  “It must be nice,” she uttered.

  “What?”

  “Freedom. But what about loneliness?”

  “You get used to it.”

  Emma stopped rowing as the vision assaulted her. Nathan, following his father’s death. A feeling of devastation. Disillusionment. Hopelessness directed at his ma.

  The insight left as quickly as it came.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Why aren’t you married?”

  Emma blinked and tried to focus. Maybe she hadn’t lied about her lack of concentration. “No one ever asked me.”

  She felt fatigued, drained by the sudden glimpse into Nathan’s soul.

  Blackmore laughed. “Then you must not have been paying attention. There must’ve been men interested in you.” An unmistakable edge crept into his voice.

  She resumed rowing, but the boat seemed to go nowhere.

  “Tired?” he asked. “I’ll take a turn.”

  “No, I’m fine. I like the diversion.”

  “You seem irritated. I’m not boring you, am I?”

  “I’d hardly call you boring.” She squinted from the harsh sunlight, feeling light-headed.

  “Did you just give me a compliment?”

  “Did you need one?” Her head spun and she struggled to sit upright.

  “Are my charms making you faint? You look pale.”

  His hands reached out and grasped her. He shifted her to his seat, then took her vacated position at the oars. Her skin burned from where he touched her.

  “I think you’ve had too much sun. Maybe you’re more of a city girl than you think.” His eyes were dark and challenging.

  Emma looked at him and wondered why he was angry at her.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Rapid.”

  Without another word, he rowed to shore to scout the whitewater.

  Chapter Ten

  Emma resumed the position at the oars. Her dizziness had been short-lived and she decided the source must have been the man sitting across from her. As she guided the boat into the rushing water, she couldn’t help but think of giving Nathan a good dunking. To that end, she guided the boat sideways, the dory thrashing from side to side as wave after wave pummeled them, but mostly drenching Nathan where he sat at the bow.

  “Jesus, Emma,” he yelled. “Are you trying to throw me from the boat?”

  Glaring at him, she struggled to maintain control as they slipped and dipped through the rushing whitewater. In all her life she’d never been a mean-spirited person. What was wrong with her?
<
br />   Nathan scowled as another wave drenched him. “Go portside.” He emphasized the words with a jab of his hand to the left.

  “I’m trying.”

  The wooden craft dropped suddenly and Emma felt her backside fly off the seat then smack into it with a bone-jarring thud. She screamed as she tried to maintain a grip on the oars. Flung forward onto his stomach, Nathan clung to the front end of the boat. More bobbing, up and down, up and down. Panic consumed Emma when she spotted the giant boulder directly ahead of them. The river poured over and around it, pulling them toward its power and the possible destruction of the boat.

  “Move us out of the way!” Nathan pushed himself upright.

  With eyes wide and heart racing, Emma pulled hard with a right backstroke. The boat turned from a direct collision course. She immediately tried to row forward but it was awkward with the oars still in their locks.

  Nathan threw himself onto the bench beside her, grabbed the oars, and with his more considerable strength maneuvered them away from the submerged obstacle at the last minute.

  Emerging from the rapid, the boat settled into calmer water. Emma’s hat dangled from her neck and rested on her back. Her breath shook as wet strands of hair clung to her face.

  “Remind me never to piss you off again,” he said, heaving from his efforts. Rattled, Emma moved away from their cozy twosome to the back of the boat.

  Swiveling on his seat, he faced her as he deftly moved the boat along. Readjusting her hat atop her head, she glanced away. In her visions, her erotic lover never argued with her. Just one more aspect not in Nathan’s favor. He wasn’t the man she was meant to be with. He couldn’t be.

  Whatever made her think he was?

  * * *

  About four miles down, they came to a side canyon.

  “Can we stop and stretch our legs?” Emma asked.

  “Sounds good,” Nathan answered. Still baffled why he kept losing his temper more and more with her lately, he was even more surprised by her temper. While he liked women with a bit of backbone, he suspected Emma possessed more than enough to make him chew nails.

  Once they secured the boat, Emma grabbed her journal and began wandering around the canyon entrance, sketching plant life Nathan guessed. He noticed she discreetly slipped on her glasses.

  She looked pretty.

  Damn. I’m attracted to her.

  He swore under his breath in frustration.

  Liking a woman was a simple, ordinary thing. Nathan had experienced it many times. Unfortunately for him, however, this was a complication in an extraordinary situation.

  He’d never been a man driven by emotion. And he wouldn’t be now, he vowed.

  He found the leftover biscuits from breakfast along with the dried meat and waited for Emma to return so they could eat together. Leaning back against a rock, he soon fell asleep.

  The slender woman in the plain white cotton dress smiled. She reached for him, taking his hand, and led him into a narrow canyon with smooth brown and white walls. He was aroused. He wanted her. Anticipation filled him as she appeared to be taking him to a private place where they could be alone.

  Turning back to him, he recognized her now. Emma. Thank God. His need for her was becoming unbearable. Excitement coursed through him. He planned to savor every minute, enjoying her like he had never enjoyed another woman.

  Suddenly dead birds dropped from the sky, landing all around them in loud thuds. Nathan felt the wrongness at the same moment he sensed Emma’s sadness.

  “The sparrows, Nathan,” she said, her voice distraught. “We have to help them.”

  “Shoo. Git.” Emma’s voice penetrated the dream.

  He opened his eyes. She knelt beside him. “You’ve given the squirrels a nice lunch,” she said.

  He looked down at his food. Bite and claw marks were visible, the biscuits in a crumbled disarray, and the meat gone. He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” He stood, noticing from the shadows on the canyon walls more time had passed than he realized.

  “It’s different down here, isn’t it?” She squinted as she spoke. “It has a rhythm all its own. It’s almost hypnotic.”

  Maybe that explained the strange dream. This place was starting to get to him. Or maybe it was just the woman beside him.

  He was beginning to think the two were inexplicably tied together.

  * * *

  They made good time through a sharp east-to-west bend in the river, running another rapid in the process. The tension between them abated, giving Emma an enjoyable afternoon. Nathan spoke about his training in the army and his friendship with Matt Ryan, while Emma related different aspects about the city of San Francisco—where she lived on Nob Hill, how it was only a ten block walk to the Bay where she could watch ships with tall spindly masts sit in the harbor.

  After several miles, they came to the head of a very lengthy, yet fairly mild rapid. While scouting it Emma noticed, very high up on one side of the cliffs, ancient Indian structures.

  “I wonder why they built houses way up there,” she said.

  Nathan craned his neck to examine the dwellings. “They probably used it to store food. It would be impossible to live up there. They couldn’t have had many predators around here.”

  “You mean mountain lions don’t count?”

  He smiled. “They probably learned to live with them. But how would you store food and keep the squirrels away?”

  “You wouldn’t have been very good at that, Nathan.”

  “Next time, I won’t bother to save you from the cougar if this is how you show your gratitude.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “next time I’ll just leap into the river myself.” She turned away, remembering Nathan’s definite lack of clothing during their morning swim.

  Emma moved to scout the river before they started arguing again. She realized she much preferred them getting along. Intelligent and insightful, Nathan was easy to talk to when he wasn’t trying to irritate her.

  Glad that she didn’t have another vision of the ancient Indians who might have built the food storage dwellings, they soon took to the rapid and were on their way. Another three miles and they decided to make camp for the night at a slightly more challenging stretch of whitewater.

  Much like the previous night, Emma sat by the fire and worked in her journal. But instead of servicing the weapons, Nathan prowled around until he found an appropriate size of driftwood, then proceeded to carve out another oar.

  “Ever have any dreams of dead sparrows?” he asked.

  Emma jerked upright, knocking over her small bottle of ink. Quickly she righted it, scooting back from the dark stain on the ground. “What did you say?”

  “I had a really odd dream today when I fell asleep, about dead sparrows.”

  Emma didn’t know what to make of it. Could Nathan be sensitive to the forces at work around them? She wasn’t even sure that what she experienced with the Indian boy and the birds was truly a vision.

  “When I found you unconscious in that side canyon two days ago,” he said, “you mentioned something about sparrows. Do you remember?”

  “Not really.” She pretended to concentrate on her journal.

  “It was a very vivid dream I had.”

  Unsure how to proceed, she asked hesitantly, “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “Some of it was personal.”

  “Oh. It’s none of my business then.” Relief suffused her.

  He attempted to tie a smooth, horizontal piece of wood to a longer one with a piece of twine. “There were dead sparrows falling all around us and you said we needed to help them.”

  Apparently, he still wanted to talk. She looked up from her journal and thought for a moment. “Do you believe in things you can’t see?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  She had to step carefully, she knew. It was unlikely Nathan understood the idea of living in two worlds. But the dream appeared to disturb him, so sh
e needed to try and help. In truth, her experience with the sparrows bothered her on a level she still didn’t understand, but she didn’t think sharing this with him would be of benefit.

  “Maybe there’s an energy in this place that transmits to people in their dreams,” she said. “Maybe the sparrows have been ill in this place.” As soon as she said it, she knew it to be true. They were speaking to her, and now to Nathan, of their plight.

  Nathan laughed—a sarcastic, derisive sound—then shook his head. “Now you’re talking like a ghost-lover.”

  She fixed her gaze on him. “Do you think that everything in this world can be seen with your own eyes?”

  “Yes.” His answer was resolute. “Worrying about spirits and messages from beyond is a waste of time. This life is hard enough.” Anger crept into his voice.

  Trying to brush aside the sting of his words, Emma wondered how to proceed. “Maybe,” she conceded. “Then why are you so concerned about a dream you had?”

  “Just making conversation.” He wrapped twine around the oar head.

  “Have you ever had an experience you couldn’t explain?” she asked.

  He waited so long to answer that Emma began to wonder if he ignored her.

  “Once, I suppose,” he finally said. “Last year, when I rescued Matt in Mexico. He’d been held for months near the Texas border, by a man we’d both been hunting for some time. I’d followed as many leads as I could track down. I’d done all sorts of things…” His voice trailed off as he remembered. He put the oar aside and laughed as he scratched his face. “One night I did peyote with several Apache Indians who scouted the area from time to time. I was sure it was the most senseless thing I’d ever done, but desperate men do stupid things sometimes.”

  Emma remained silent and waited.

  “It was very unsettling, the visions.” Nathan’s demeanor became solemn. “I didn’t like it, and I certainly didn’t understand it. But I did see Matt, and I saw how to find him. And the next day, when I could sit a horse without falling off, I went and found him.”

  An undercurrent of violence and pain touched the periphery of Emma’s awareness, but she didn’t press for more information. She was reluctant to know the details.