Despite stern reprimands, the boys appeared determined to float their wagon to the other bank before the floodwaters died down, like children taking a dare to prove they were men. They were proving just the opposite with their careless disregard for safety.
“Buster?” Victoria called out, clutching her funereal-black skirts and hurrying through treacherous mud toward the boys, Heidi at her side. “Didn’t you two hear your friend? He’s in trouble.”
“I know, but this here’s what he needs.” Buster held up an end of the rope in his hand. “It’s too knotted.”
Claude cried out again and Heidi turned to run toward the sound of her brother’s voice. “It’s the creek, Doctor. I know he fell into the creek!”
Buster tugged with more force on the rope, his face dripping with sweat. “I’m tryin’, ma’am, doin’ all I can, but he’s got to have this to get out!”
“Heidi, be careful!” Victoria turned back to the Johnston brothers. “Boys, please hurry. What is Claude doing in the water?”
“Hangin’ on for life right now,” Gray said.
Victoria could imagine all sorts of awful endings to this and it made her dizzy. “To what?”
“Old stump.”
“That isn’t good enough. We need your help right now.” Victoria wanted to stamp her foot. Did these young men have difficulty grasping the plain truth? She still couldn’t see the thirteen-year-old boy. “Find something else, a plank of wood, a branch. Something!”
“Gotta get this thing unwound to reach him.” Buster’s fingers slid on the muddy knots. “He’s way out there.”
Victoria wanted to thump their heads together as she watched the detritus being shoved along at a mighty pace down the widened creek. Couldn’t they get a little more excited about the threat to their friend’s life? “No stump’s going to protect him from being knocked to pieces if he’s in that creek. You need to try something besides the rope and do it quickly.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, Buster gave the snarl another tug, which made it cling more tightly to the tree.
Victoria nearly growled aloud. “Buster, now!” She could hear only Claude’s cries for help over the flood-stage roar of Flat Creek—which was anything but flat at the moment. It sounded as if an invisible giant rampaged through this southern Missouri valley, tearing trees from their roots to thrust them out of the racing, muddy water. And now Heidi, too, ran dangerously close to the edge of the steep bank.
Victoria turned, slid and nearly fell in the thick mud. “Heidi Ladue, you get away from the water! Help me find something long enough to reach him.”
Heidi came rushing back, her dainty, even features tight with fear, pale hair flying out behind her in the breeze. “He’s too far out, Doctor. We can’t reach him.” She grabbed Victoria’s arm. “I’m scared,” she said, her voice catching.
“Round up help from the camp. Now, my dear.” Victoria gave her a quick hug and urged her up the hill, but as she looked over the girl’s shoulder she finally caught sight of Claude. He was being flung back and forth in the water, choking and spitting, his head barely above the surface as he grasped the stump. “Get the adults quickly!”
As Heidi ran up the muddy track, Victoria raced along the side of the creek. “Hold on, Claude, we’ll get you out!” She searched for a thick limb or a length of vine she might use to reach the boy, but the limb she picked up immediately broke. The vine fell apart. Everything was too soaked to hold up under Claude’s weight.
She glanced over her shoulder to see if the Johnston boys were having any luck with the rope, but Buster and Gray were now in some argument she couldn’t make out.
“Boys, grow up and get to work!” she called, but they didn’t seem to hear her. With the sound of the water, she could barely hear herself.
She closed her eyes and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Gentlemen! Help!” Those young men should never have been allowed to leave home without their father. Instead of eighteen and sixteen, they behaved like eight and six. Why had Joseph chosen them to help build his town in Kansas?
She turned and ran toward Claude again. “We need more men on this trip,” she muttered to herself. How would this group cross the state border safely into Kansas Territory if the Johnston boys kept pulling stunts like this?
With a glance uphill, she searched for the one man who claimed to always be there for help and protection, though she couldn’t see proof that he practiced his assurances. “Captain Rickard?” she called at the top of her voice. “Trouble! Help us, please.”
But Joseph was nowhere in sight. According to Heidi, he was helping collect wood for the fire, a job Claude and his friends were supposed to be doing. Instead of helping, Claude had hovered near the creek with Gray Johnston, both of them in apparent awe of Buster Johnston’s glowing presence.
Victoria scowled at the thought, but she realized that, deep down, she’d been as hopeful as Buster that there would be a way past the flooding so they could cross, though they each had widely divergent motivations. She knew Buster wanted a fresh start as far from home as he could get, and he was in a hurry to get there. He’d suffered deeply after knocking over a lantern where he worked and burning down the general store in their town. A man had died because of Buster’s clumsiness. Anyone his age would go in search of a new life after that. What she feared was that the clumsy bear cub would leave a path of destruction behind him.
She, on the other hand, wanted to scout ahead of the others and scour the fresh mud for familiar tracks. For the first couple of weeks she’d been able to put aside her thirst for revenge as she’d settled in with the friendly people of the wagon train, especially the Ladues. Last week, however, she’d seen evidence that the killer, Thames, had been through the town where the Johnston boys had joined them. She’d seen the unique hoofprint three times along the trail they now followed—a horseshoe that had an inch of length broken off on the right front hoof of Thames’s crimson-colored horse.
She owed Matthew so much; finding his killer was the least she could do to honor his memory. She knew Joseph had wanted her to come with them as their physician—though she felt herself to be a poor substitute for her late husband—but she had her own reasons for coming, and the murdering slaver was never far from her thoughts. He terrified her and he enraged her, and she couldn’t tell which emotion controlled her at any given time. What she knew, however, was that she could not rely on her emotions. They could betray her as ruthlessly as Joseph had done a decade ago.
But Joseph didn’t belong in the same league as Broderick Thames. A man who killed for the simple pleasure of beating his political opponent was a monster, indeed. What would he do if he knew this wagon train was filled with abolitionists set on building a slave-free community in Kansas Territory? He would find a way to destroy them all, and he had the connections to do it.
“Someone, please!” Heidi’s high-pitched voice echoed down to Victoria as she searched around the camp. “Dr. Fenway, look!” The girl’s voice spiraled upward in terror, echoing against the cliffs that halfway surrounded the wagon train on the eastern side of the flooded creek.
Victoria saw Heidi pointing and turned to find that Claude no longer held on to the stump. Only a lone hand stuck out of the water. It grasped upward, much farther downstream than expected. The stump floated away, roots pointing toward the sky as if they were hands grasping for a firm foundation. The water was carrying Claude.
Before she could catch up with his progress, he shoved away from the tumbling log and lunged toward the bank, at least fifty yards from where the Johnston boys continued to wrangle with their rope.
She