The little girl held on as well as any bronco-buster she had ever read about.
But, Lord have mercy, her strength would be no match for the huge hunk of ice set on a dead aim for her fragile section of roof.
The wood roof pitched upward just as Zane lunged for it. A splinter of wood that felt like a two-by-four stabbed him under his thumbnail. He bit down on the pain and pulled up with straining arms until he got one leg over the rooftop.
A wave from behind washed him up and over. From an arm’s reach away the little girl looked at him. Big brown eyes blinked through hair plastered against her face.
“Hold on, baby, I’ve got you.” He hung on to the slippery roof with his injured hand and ignored the gush of crimson washing from his thumb. He stretched his arm out, straining at the shoulder to touch the child.
He’d just grabbed on to her tiny wrist, cold and slick with water, when a wave tossed her up. Her hand slipped out of his grip. She flew up, over his head. He caught a flash of calico skirt and yanked her back by it.
In the instant that he wrapped her to his chest he spotted the hunk of ice carried in the wave’s wake.
“Hold on.” She looped skinny arms about his neck then squeezed as tight as any binding rope would have. “Good girl.”
The jag of ice crashed down on the roof. It tossed him airborne. Turning and twisting, he dug his fingers into the child’s dress.
Upside down and spinning, he thought he saw Missy rushing toward the river, towing Ace behind her. That couldn’t be since he’d told her to stay put. Surely it was only a jumbled illusion that she wasn’t safely on the hilltop.
Hour-like seconds passed before he crashed back down into the water.
The wonder was that he hadn’t been hit by a deadly object coming down. The horror was, that he was down, way down under the water, still tumbling and turning and not knowing which way was up.
His hip crashed into something and then his shoulder. The little girl struggled in his grasp, needing air.
The current dragged him across the river bottom then slammed his back against a solid object. It knocked the breath from his lungs. Bubbles floated in front of his face. He loosened one arm from around the baby to grip the solid thing that he had hit. He pulled upward following the bubbles.
He broke the surface and lifted the child high against his shoulder. Her terrified screech filled his ear. Thank God.
It turned out to be an uprooted tree that he’d collided with. He wrapped one arm around a wide twisted root.
“It’s all right, sweetling. Hang on tight.”
His words must have sounded confident because the child clung to his neck like a summer vine twined around a post.
The tree, his only lifeline, shifted in the current. It wouldn’t be long before it ripped loose or debris racing downriver crashed into it.
More than twenty feet of turbulent river lay between this unstable sanctuary and the shore. If he let go, made a swim for the bank one-armed, he and the child would likely drown.
“Hush now. Everything’s going to be fine.” Somehow.
“Zane!” He barely heard Missy call his name over the rumble of river rushing past, carrying its cargo of deadly debris. “Zane!”
“Get back!” The child whimpered against his neck, probably startled by his outburst, but he couldn’t believe what his eyes told him. “Get out of here!”
Six feet out from the shore, with the insane tug of the Missouri pressing and heaving, Missy sat atop Ace. She urged him forward against any instinct the animal had of self-preservation.
“Hold on!” she cried. A wave splashed over the toe of her delicate boot. “I’m nearly there.”
“You’ll get yourself and my horse killed! Get back!”
“Don’t let go!”
Rain beat down on her. The coat blew open revealing her white lace corset with its droopy blue bows. Her dog poked his wet head out of the coat pocket, quiet for once.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he mumbled. But she didn’t look like an idiot. She looked brave and beautiful and too fragile to be urging Ace on through the torrent.
After a few more of those hour-long seconds, Ace stood beside the log in belly-deep water, holding steady. Missy reached down. He lifted the little girl into her arms.
“I’ll be back.” Missy shouted. “Hold on.”
“Damn it, no! Get to shore and stay there!” Ace was strong, but it was only luck that he hadn’t been knocked down by debris hidden in the current.
He watched Missy’s mouth open and close with some words that he guessed meant he’d wasted his breath on insisting she stay put, but a sudden crack of ice close by drowned out the sound.
She turned Ace’s head toward shore and whispered something to the little girl. A second later she glanced back, her face set in an expression that would excuse her brother tying her to the bedpost.
She’d come back all right, and probably die trying.
He lunged for Ace’s tail. By Heaven’s own luck he caught it and tangled his fingers in the thick, wet mass.
The horse’s first step toward shore made Zane swing wide into the current. He hung on, wincing against the pain from the splinter lodged in his thumb.
The brave animal didn’t protest the weight hanging on his tail even when a slap of water washed over his haunches. He whinnied then pointed his soaking black nose toward the shore.
It was a miracle. Missy had heard the declaration from the mouths of everyone she encountered that morning. Not a human soul had perished. Livestock and buildings had been washed away to their doom, but each and every human had been reunited with friends and loved ones.
Amazingly, the family of the little girl had claimed her a few moments after Zane crawled out of the river. He had barely caught his breath before the child’s mother hugged it out of him again.
With each soul accounted for, people now focused on retrieving their lost goods. Along the riverbank, families hunted under rubble and up in tree branches for pieces of their shattered lives.
Missy lifted a splintered scrap of lumber and peeked underneath it. Scattered about in the muck were the remains of the hotel. Surely she would find one or two of her belongings.
A timid finger of sunshine teased her shoulder blades without offering any heat. Muff, napping in the coat pocket, did warm one side of her knee.
“You’ve been searching for three hours.” Zane lifted a window frame and peered underneath it. “You won’t find anything.”
Maybe not, but it was a day for miracles, even small ones like finding a dress or a matching pair of shoes.
“Did you hear the church bell ring?” Missy asked, stopping for a moment to arch her back against a cramp.
“The church didn’t have a bell.” Zane tossed a piece of lumber aside and lifted a muddy hat up for Missy to see.
“Not mine.” The ache in her back tightened with the stretch. “And yet half the town of Yankton heard it.”
Zane placed the hat on a mangled tree branch sticking up from the mud. “Even if there had been a bell, no one could have heard it ringing.”
“They could if it had been a special bell … Oh, look at this.” She lifted a milk pail and hung it on the branch near the hat. “A natural bell couldn’t be heard, but a supernatural one could.”
“Darlin’, that might happen where you come from, but out here bells are pretty