Now and Forever

by Mary Connealy

  As they moved on, her walking, him hopping, the tunnel opened into a cavern. Much bigger than the one they’d woken up in. Still no sky, but Tucker pulled in a deep breath for the first time in a while and looked around. The rat’s nest had been built right at the entrance to the cave.

  The little blue flame only lit it up enough to give Tucker a feeling of space. The walls were no longer within touching distance. Tucker wondered just how lost they could get in here.

  “I think we need to sit awhile.” He sure did. “We have to figure out what this room leads to. If there’s more than one tunnel off it, we’re going to have to decide which one to take. And maybe you can do some of that while I rest my leg.”

  Tucker saw a rock about knee-high, almost flat on top right ahead of him. He pointed at it, hopped forward, and sank onto it. Shannon let him go, but then didn’t scurry off to explore. She sat right down beside him. He liked thinking he had almost as much strength as she had.

  Of course, she’d half carried him this whole time, but that was beside the point.

  He set the little cup of blue fire on the rock. “How are we ever going to see in this cave?”

  Shannon said, “Maybe we could build a bigger fire?”

  Tucker sat up straighter. “You know, I don’t think there’s as much black anymore. I think we’ve walked out of that vein of coal.”

  He was more tired than he’d thought. He’d meant to really load himself down with coal if he saw that it was running out.

  “There’s still some around, though.” Shannon pointed to a crumbled black heap where they’d just emerged from the tunnel. “Let’s start a fire here.”

  “Can you do it, Shannon? I’ll help, but I need a few minutes—”

  “No, you sit. I’ll use that rat’s nest as tinder, and a bit of fire from your cup, to get a start, then add a stack of coal. We’ll see how big we can build it and maybe light up this whole room. I could stand to take some of the chill off this cave.”

  Tucker smiled at his spunky little friend. “I thought you said you hated rats.”

  She flashed her dimples. “Well, you said they’re gone, and believe me I’ve had my eye on the nest. It will give me great pleasure to burn it up.” She made it sound purely wicked.

  Tucker laughed. She went about doing an excellent job of starting a roaring fire.

  The coal kicked off an oily black smoke, yet it rose straight up and the cavern didn’t fill with smoke. Tucker pondered for a moment why that should mean something, but he was so battered that he just couldn’t think right now.

  The light and heat drew him and seemed to take the worst ache out of his throbbing leg—so long as he didn’t move. It was all he could do not to hunker down by it and take himself a nap. He wondered if he was getting old. Maybe any day now, his hair would grow in white and he’d start to look like his friend Caleb, one of the mountain men who’d already seemed ancient when Tucker was a boy.

  Bailey found a grassy spot and staked her horse out to graze. “I’m going up to the edge on foot.”

  Sunrise nodded. “I’ll go forward a mile and do the same. I’ll mark where I start. We’ll look for sign they came out or are stranded below.”

  “I’ll go on ahead of Sunrise and do the same.” Nev walked off without another word. Bailey wanted to tell him no. She didn’t want to trust her sister’s life to a man who, less than a month ago, nearly killed Kylie.

  Nev had come back to himself a bit since he’d come west hunting Aaron, wanting revenge.

  Aaron said he could track, but would he? What if the man’s grudge against Aaron, his old childhood friend, was still alive and well?

  Aaron and Nev had grown up together, neighbors who lived right along the line where the North and South divided. Aaron fought for the Union, Nev for the Confederacy. When they’d come home to the Shenandoah Valley, their homes had been razed, their families and their livestock were dead, their land barren. Everything gone at the hands of both armies, who waged so much of their war right on top of that land.

  The war was over, but the hatred remained, and in his crazed grief Nev had tried to kill Aaron. To keep from having to shoot his friend, Aaron had left Shenandoah to start a new life. Nev, starved to a skeleton, half mad with hatred and grief, twisted from time spent in a brutal Union prison camp, had followed Aaron west bent on killing the man who was still his enemy.

  Nev had found Aaron and Kylie and nearly killed them both before he’d been stopped, and in the struggle Shannon had been shot.

  Now, with Aaron’s help and Kylie supporting her husband, Nev seemed to be healing in both mind and body.

  But Bailey couldn’t forget the sight of Nev holding a gun to Kylie’s head, or the sight of Shannon, bleeding from a head wound. Bailey still watched Nev close whenever she was near him.

  And now she was supposed to trust Shannon’s life to him? Bailey didn’t like it. She’d check up on him after she finished her own search.

  Satisfied with that, she strode to the brink of the canyon, towering high above the waterway Sunrise called Slaughter River.

  The canyon edge looked like the jagged teeth of an old woman. Bailey looked down and down and down to the rushing water. She had to walk along the jagged line, looking carefully all the way to the water. A mile in distance would be five miles walking along the zigzagging rim of the canyon.

  It would take days, maybe weeks to go along this ledge. Her sister didn’t have weeks.

  Bailey could imagine Shannon clinging to some tiny handhold, crying out for help, her grip slipping, her strength waning. Shaking away the vision, Bailey started moving again. The painstaking search was going to be unbearable. But the only other choice was to quit, and Bailey didn’t know how to quit. So she looked down, saw rushing water and nothing else, and moved on.

  Then movement caught her eye. The mountain men who’d been trailing them went along after Sunrise and Nev. These five men were going to help, too.

  Bailey’s hopes rose, and her determination hardened into granite.

  No, it wasn’t going to be unbearably long. All Bailey had to do was her mile and maybe another and another. She had help. And everyone helping was good in these mountains. Better than her. They’d find Shannon, and they’d find her alive. Bailey prayed it with every bit of faith she possessed, and that was a considerable amount.

  They’d find her and Tucker and then bring them home.

  6

  Tucker stumbled. A cry of pain escaped. Shannon held the light as she had for hours, because Tucker trembled so badly she was afraid he’d drop it—as he would have right now.

  She eased him down, keeping him from falling flat.

  He lay, sprawled on his face, breathing in broken gasps. “I’m sorry. Just give me a few minutes to rest.”

  Shannon couldn’t believe how long he’d lasted. It had to have been all day and most of the night. Of course, she’d lost track of time so long ago she could be off by hours, maybe days.

  “Yes, please, let’s rest. I’ve been trying to keep going just so I wouldn’t be a bigger weakling than the man with the broken leg, but I need to rest, too.”

  Tucker propped himself up on his elbows and glared at her over his shoulder.

  She almost smiled, but she wasn’t lying to make him feel better. She truly was exhausted. His leaning on her was the worst of it, yes. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t tired.

  “I broke my wrist once as a child.”

  Tucker, his face pale in the dim light, looked at her arms. “Which one?”

  She extended her left arm. “This one. Every move was agonizing. My ma said it was God’s way of telling me to be still so I’d heal. Well, I took God’s advice and was as still as possible for a month, then very careful for another month after that. This has to be terrible for you to hop along like this.”

  Tucker folded his arms and pillowed his face on them. “I’d as soon be tucked up in a big old feather bed, but if I want that, I think I’m gonna have to keep moving until
I find one. So there’s no use wishing for what I can’t have.”

  Shannon set their little lantern that had earned her undying devotion off to the side. She swung the pack off her back, filled the little cup back to the rim with her store of coal, and drew the canteen out. “Let’s have a drink of water and eat a bit. I wonder if we should try and rest awhile here, not just for a few minutes but maybe try and sleep. I could hunt around and see if there are any coal deposits. I’ve noticed a streak of coal every once in a while down here. Nothing like that first room, but enough I could get a bigger fire going. Maybe I could even scout out a cave and get us out of this tunnel.”

  Tucker rolled onto his right side, propped his head up on his right fist, and his left hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. “You’ve got to promise me you won’t do that, Shannon. I can feel myself falling asleep. But if we get separated . . .”

  She saw him visibly shudder and felt her own trembling deep inside.

  “We’d never find each other in here.”

  “I’ve yet to see a tunnel fork off this main one. I could watch carefully, make sure there isn’t a side tunnel. I’d always be able to find my way back to you, even in the dark.”

  “Promise me you won’t go. If we have enough coal, we could fill that cup . . . no, what if we slept too long and it burned out?” Tucker’s eyes sagged closed. “We can’t both sleep at the same time. We don’t have enough kindling to start a new one. We have to keep the fire going.”

  Shannon wished now she’d stopped and picked up a bigger supply of coal the last time she’d seen some. Why hadn’t she planned ahead? Because she’d thought they’d keep going, no matter what. She thought this tunnel would end long before now and they’d find a way out. She’d been foolishly hopeful.

  Shannon unscrewed the lid to the canteen and offered it to him. It was awkward with him sideways, and he didn’t sit the rest of the way up. Somehow he managed a good, long drink.

  By the time he was done with that, Shannon had beef jerky for him and some for herself. They ate and drank some more.

  “Now you sleep first.” The tunnel they were in was narrow, so the little light did a good job of flickering off the walls and pushing back the blackness.

  “Are you sure you won’t fall asleep?” Tucker’s eyes looked so heavy, Shannon didn’t think he could stay awake, no matter what her answer was. And when she considered his pain, that was a grim comment on how exhausted he was.

  “I will sit up.” She bent her legs around, sitting with her elbows on her knees, her chin propped on her fists. “I can’t sleep like this, and if I nod off, I’ll tip over and wake up when I hit the cave floor. Now get some rest.”

  Tucker looked skeptical, but let his eyes fall shut anyway, obviously unable to keep them open. He was soon breathing evenly.

  The minute she was sure he was asleep, she did what she knew she had no choice but to do. She picked up the tin cup and started down the tunnel forward. She had to find more coal. She had to start a large enough fire to keep burning for a few hours, because she knew she couldn’t sit there quietly for more than a few minutes and not fall asleep.

  They had more matches and a bit more kindling in Tucker’s haversack. There was coal enough that maybe they could get another fire started. And maybe not. It would be a very close thing. It had been hard to do in the full light back where they’d gotten out of the river. And they’d had a lot more wood to build up a hot enough fire to make the coal catch.

  In here, with much less wood to burn, it would be a chancy thing. It was possible that if she fell asleep and they woke up in the pitch-dark, it would stay dark.

  Her decision to stay put might end up killing them.

  She just needed to stay in this tunnel. Keep her eyes wide open for it to split and look for a supply of coal, grab it, and get back to Tucker.

  Tucker had demanded she promise him she wouldn’t leave. She wondered if he’d remember that she’d never said the words.

  She moved carefully, lighting the way with painstaking care. All she wanted was coal, enough to light a good-sized fire. What she feared was a divide in the tunnel. Then she risked getting lost. She ran her hand along one wall and kept a careful eye on the other. It didn’t split. She kept going until the tunnel opened into a cavern. They’d found several as they were walking along. A few had more than one way out, and though they’d fretted over which way to go, in the end, so long as they’d stayed together, Shannon didn’t let it torment her if they’d picked the wrong tunnel.

  Now here she was in a large cavern. She wished they’d kept going longer so Tucker could have rested here. If there were lots of choices of ways to go, she could have chosen one, gone along it, come back to this central place, then chosen another. But as it was, now she feared getting back here and not knowing which tunnel would lead her back to Tucker. She just didn’t trust herself to go on. In fact, she didn’t even like leaving the entrance to the tunnel.

  Thinking it over, she decided to take off one of her boots. It was either that or her shirt, and it was a little cool down here for that. She left the boot in the mouth of the tunnel she’d just exited.

  The floor wasn’t smooth, every step tore at her foot, and the chill worked at numbing her toes. She didn’t dare go without a boot for long. But she did thoroughly explore the room. There were three openings leading away. One of them seemed cooler. Shannon thought the air had a fresh smell, maybe even a hint of a draft.

  If she had the nerve, she’d have gone down this tunnel to see if it led to the surface. Finally, with a sigh of relief, she found a vein of shining black coal in one wall. Enough had broken off that she could scoop up a large supply in her shirttails. Tucker would be furious with her when she got back with the coal, because she was going to build a big fire and get some sleep. He’d know what she’d done, but she would let him scold. She could tell he felt terrible being such a burden on her, unable to help.

  He’d fuss at her. She knew how to put up with a fussing man; she’d lived with her father all her life. Tucker couldn’t hold a candle to Pa. When he got it out of his system, they’d come to this room and take this tunnel, or if his leg was hurting too much, maybe her success with this coal hunt would convince him it was safe to let her go exploring.

  Tucker rolled over, and the pain in his leg woke him . . . again making him sorry he’d been born.

  Then he felt something warm under his hand and flexed his fingers and wasn’t so sorry after all. He had Shannon Wilde in his arms.

  That woke him up even more, and the fact that a roaring fire had the tunnel well-lit wiped the last bit of sleep from his head.

  She’d found coal.

  She’d waited until he’d fallen asleep, and then she’d left him and found coal. She’d promised not to, but she’d broken that promise and risked her pretty neck and found coal anyway.

  And now they were both well-rested, warm, safe, and he wanted to strangle her. Instead, he studied the fire. It looked like it would burn with no trouble for a long time yet. He’d yell at the little liar later. She’d risked both of their lives. It was rash and foolish and dangerous. With a wry smile, Tucker knew it was the kind of thing he’d do himself.

  But that was different. He was supposed to be a risk-taking man, wild. She was supposed to be a sensible woman. A sensible woman who’d throw men off cliffs, knew doctoring, and dressed like a man and let her sister go around talking about her as if she were a “brother.”

  Maybe not so sensible after all.

  When she finished sleeping, he’d definitely scold her for being so foolish. But for now, he pulled her just a bit closer and went back to sleep.

  “I can’t!” A scream jarred Tucker awake. The pain clamped like hungry jaws on his left ankle.

  “No! I can’t! I won’t!” Then another scream that bounced off the walls of the narrow tunnel.

  Shannon, having a nightmare.

  Tucker ignored his leg, took her by the shoulders and shook her, firmly, but careful no
t to hurt her. She wasn’t broken like he was, yet she was probably as battered and probably having nightmares about going over another waterfall.

  “Not the saw. No! Don’t make me!”

  “Saw?” Tucker decided shaking wasn’t enough on its own. “Shannon, wake up. You’re having a dream. Wake up.”

  She wrenched against him and managed to kick his broken leg. He thought about shaking her ten times harder—to wake her, of course. Probably the wrong thing to do, because he might accidentally enjoy it.

  “Shannon!” He roared her name.

  “What? Who’s there? What’s wrong?” The cave was light enough from her illicitly built fire that he saw the moment her eyes flickered open.

  “Are you awake?”

  Gasping for breath, she was a while answering him, but she quit fighting and there was no more screaming.

  “What in the world was that about? ‘Not the saw’? What kind of dream is that? You saw something? Or do you mean a saw, like to saw down a tree? Why would that give you nightmares?”

  He felt her shudder so deep it went to the bone.

  “Not tree limbs, human limbs.” She wrestled herself away from him and sat up, looked around, then crawled to the canteen. Without looking at him, she took a sip of water. When she was done, she brought it to him. “Have some.”

  Tucker took a swallow, careful not to overdo it, wondering how long it might have to last. “Have another drink. Your throat must be sore from all that screaming.”

  Shannon closed her eyes, but took another quick drink. “I do that sometimes. Have nightmares. Doesn’t everyone?”

  She put the cap back on the canteen and set it aside.

  “Come back here.” He pulled her close. “I don’t think I’m quite ready for it to be morning yet, no matter what time of day it is. Can you sleep a little longer?”

  Tucker knew he was still exhausted, and he knew from all the work Shannon had done that she had to have slept hours less than him.