you again. You and Ma and Janey and Kirby . . . but this is where it ends for me.”
His head fell forward. Mud covered his face, clogged his nose, choked him. He coughed and fought free of it, his instincts refusing to let him die. The rain washed some of the muck from his eyes.
And he was able to see the slender fingers reaching down and wrapping around the wrist of his outstretched right hand. Thunder boomed again and lightning flashed.
Luke Jensen blinked in amazement as he rose up as best he could, carefully turned his head, and saw the face of the angel who had reached down from heaven to lift him from earth.
It was funny. He’d always figured when he died, he’d be headed in the other direction.
CHAPTER 12
“Damn it!” the angel yelled.
Confused, Luke blinked rainwater out of his eyes. He’d never gone to prayer meeting all that much, but he didn’t remember any preachers he’d ever heard saying anything about angels cussing.
“Come on, mister!” the beautiful vision urged. “You weigh too much for me to lift you by myself. You gotta help me some!”
Understanding sunk slowly into Luke’s brain. Despite the pretty face, it was no angel above him but rather a flesh-and-blood girl. She wasn’t wearing heavenly robes and didn’t have wings, either. She was dressed in tattered overalls, a woolen shirt, and a battered old black hat with rainwater streaming from the brim.
She tugged on his wrist. “Mister, can you hear me? The river’s comin’ up. If we don’t get you off this bank, you’re gonna drown.”
After fighting on his own for what seemed like an eternity, the sheer fact that someone else was trying to save him filled Luke with gratitude and relief. That feeling was short-lived, though, because he realized she was right. “Can you . . . get help?” he croaked.
“No time!” she said. “This ol’ river comes up mighty quick when it rains like this. Goldang it, I told Grampaw I heard somebody yellin’ last night!”
“You better . . . fetch him. Has he got . . . a horse or . . . a mule?”
“Yeah, but like I told you, there ain’t enough time for that.” She dug the heels of her bare feet into the bank and got hold of his wrist with both hands. As she hauled hard on his arm, she said through clenched teeth, “Can’t you push . . . with your damned legs?”
Luke couldn’t, and he didn’t have a chance to explain it. Just then her feet slipped in the mud and she sat down hard as her legs went out from under her. With a startled cry she started sliding down the bank toward him.
She didn’t go very far. His head butted her in the stomach and stopped her. Her thighs rested on his shoulders. She put her hands on the ground and pushed herself away from him.
“Dadblast it!” she cried. “Don’t you go gettin’ any ideas, mister!”
“The only idea I have ... is not drowning,” Luke said. “Let’s . . . try again.”
The girl scrambled up and took hold of his wrist again. Luke used his other hand to grasp one of the tree roots and pulled. The combined effort was enough to break him free of the sticky mud. He slid upward almost a foot.
“Hang on,” Luke told her. “Let me . . . get hold of... another root.”
She waited until he had a good grip, and then both of them grunted with the strain as they lifted his mostly dead weight. He wound up higher on the bank.
“Here we go,” the girl urged. “We’re gettin’ it now.”
They had made some progress, that was true, but Luke didn’t know how much longer his strength would last. He was already drawing on reserves he hadn’t known he possessed.
The rain was falling harder, turning the riverbank into a swamp. Knowing there was a risk he would slide back down and lose all the ground he had gained, he reached up to grasp another root and pull himself higher with the girl’s help.
But the roots were about to run out, he saw with a sinking heart. The top of the bank was only about six feet above him, but it might as well have been six miles. The rest of the slope was nothing but slick mud.
“You’ve got to hang on here,” the girl told him. “I’ll go find a branch or something I can reach down to you!”
“You can’t hold my weight,” Luke said.
“I’ll figure out a way. It’s our only chance!”
Luke nodded his agreement and got a good grip on the last root. “Okay.”
With obvious reluctance even though it was her idea, she let go of his wrist and clambered up the bank, slipping and sliding. When she disappeared over the top, he felt a sharp pang of loss. There was a chance he would never see her again, and for some reason that bothered him as much as the possibility that he was about to die.
He hung on to the root for dear life as the rain continued to pound down on him. The river was making a rumbling sound, and he wondered if the water was already plucking at his legs. He still couldn’t feel anything below the waist.
The jagged end of a gnarled tree branch nearly poked him in the face. He looked up and saw the girl lying on top of the bank, extending the branch down toward him. All he could see of her was her head, arms, and shoulders.
“Grab it!” she called. “Pull yourself up!”
Luke let go of the root with one hand and grabbed the branch. “I don’t want to pull you over!”
“You won’t! I’ve got it! Now climb, damn it!”
Luke shifted his other hand to the branch. Its rough surface provided a pretty good grip. He looked up at the girl again, and she gave him an encouraging nod.
He didn’t see how it was going to work, since she probably didn’t weigh even a hundred pounds soaking wet, the way she was at the moment. But he tightened his hands and hauled hard on the branch, and to his surprise, his body followed. Reaching hand over hand, he continued pulling himself up.
When he glanced at the girl, he saw pain etched on her face. Supporting his weight was obviously painful. Not wanting to hurt her any longer, he summoned all his strength and energy and continued climbing up the branch.
When he was finally close enough, she reached out and grabbed his shirt, pulling hard. He added his efforts and surged up and rolled over the top of the bank. He came to a stop on his back and had to push himself onto his side to keep the rainwater from filling his nose and mouth.
“C-careful,” she said. “After all that, we d-don’t want you to drown now.”
Luke blinked water out of his eyes and looked over at her. She still wore the soaked wool shirt, but she had taken off the overalls. The suspenders were tied around the trunk of a tree while one of the legs was tied around her ankle. That was why she’d been hurting, he realized. The strain of his weight had gone through her whole body, passing through her hands on the branch to her shoulders, along her body, and through her ankle.
When he turned his head, he saw the surface of the river racing along about three feet below the edge of the bank. He almost hadn’t made it.
This girl, whoever she was, had saved his life.
“Th-thank you,” he gasped out.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “The river could still get out of its banks.”
Her hands were scraped raw from the rough bark, he saw as she sat up. Rain washed away the blood seeping from the wounds.
“I’ll fetch Grampaw and the wagon,” the girl went on. “He’s pretty strong for an old fella. We oughta be able to lift you into the wagon.” She paused. “Your legs don’t work at all, do they?”
Luke shook his head. “No, I can’t even feel them. I was . . . shot in the back.”
“Last night?”
He nodded wearily.
“Then that was you I heard hollerin’. I wanted to come see, but Grampaw wouldn’t let me. He said to let the damn Yanks and the damn fool Rebs shoot each other, that it weren’t nothin’ to us either way.”
