Then, once again she saw him, clinging with all his strength to a clump of willows far out in the middle of the maelstrom. Crying his name, sobbing with relief, she reined the stallion to a halt and all but fell from his back. “Hang on, I’m coming!” she yelled, frantically trying to free the coil of rope that was tied onto the front of the saddle.
There-she had it in her hands. Now-she needed something to secure it to. A rock or a bush… She smacked her forehead with her palm. Of course-Cochise Red! He was a quarterhorse, bred and trained to work cattle, strong enough to hold steady against the pull of a bucking steer. Oh, but he was tired, bone weary. Would he be strong enough to hold against a flood? A swift look around told her she had little choice-there were no rocks close enough to snub a rope around, and all the bushes seemed pitifully small. It was the stallion or nothing-and if she did nothing, Bronco was going to drown.
In seconds she had the rope securely tied to the pommel of the saddle, and just for good measure, snubbed it twice around the horn. “Whoa, boy, hold steady,” she crooned, stroking Cochise Red’s neck. She didn’t know what commands to give him; she could only hope he’d understand.
Then she was running, uncoiling the rope as she ran. The bank wasn’t as high here, but the flood was much wider. Bronco seemed so far away. Would the rope even be long enough to reach him? Could she throw it that far?
He was waving his arm, shouting at her. “Hold on,” she yelled, “I’m coming!”
“Are you crazy?” Lauren shouted. “Just hold on. Don’t you
“Go!” Bronco yelled. “It’s too far! Take Red, follow the flood until you come to the road.
Lauren was no longer listening. She was sobbing, furious with him beyond all understanding, muttering over and over under her breath as she reeled in the rope one last time, “I’m
Okay, but she had to accept the fact that she wasn’t strong enough to throw the rope out to him. It seemed to her there was only one thing left to do: she’d have to take it to him. Oh, she couldn’t possibly swim against the current, she knew that-she’d only drown, and then where would Bronco be? But there was Red. The stallion was strong. If they started far enough upstream and swam hard across the current, they could make it to the middle of the flood before it carried them past the willows.
With no other options open to her, she didn’t waste time thinking about it. Climbing into the saddle, she backtracked Cochise Red along the edge of the gully, then dismounted and tied the free end of the rope around the base of the biggest strongest-looking bush she could find. Then, fervently praying, she lifted herself once more into the saddle and urged the stallion forward. Forelegs stiff and trembling, he plunged over the side of the bank. She leaned far over his neck, coaxing and encouraging, begging and cajoling. “Come on, big boy, we can make it…we can do it…”
And suddenly they were in that muddy churning torrent. She felt the water hit with unbelievable force, felt Red’s feet lose their purchase, and for a horrible heart-stopping instant believed that they were lost. Then all at once she knew that the stallion was swimming, swimming gallantly, powerfully, swimming for his life, and all she could do then was hold on and try as best she could to keep him headed in diagonal across the current, on a line toward the clump of willows.
The current was so swift! More quickly than she could have imagined, before she even had time to think about it, the willows were looming ahead, dark above the churning rapids. And then suddenly Bronco’s hand was reaching toward her, clutching at the stallion’s neck…at the saddle…at her. Through a muddy veil of water his eyes blazed at her, black and bright with fury.
“You idiot!” he gasped. “You should have left me!”
“Shut up! Just shut up!” she sobbed, her fingers tangled in his hair, in his shirt. “Did you think I’d leave you? Just shut up and hold on. We’re getting out of here.”
But to do that they’d have to pull themselves back along the rope, working against the current-and against Cochise Red, who was doggedly determined to continue on as he had been, swimming with the flow.
“Let him go!” Bronco shouted, struggling to get a better grip on the rope and on her. “It’s the only way. We have to let him go!”
Lauren gave a shriek of protest and shock, gulped water and came up choking and gagging to watch the stallion surge away from them, lunging and fighting against the waves-and then disappear from sight. But she had no breath for sobs, and no time for tears. Because almost in that same instant, the rope that was their only lifeline suddenly went slack, and she and Bronco, too, were being swept away with the flood.
After that she was aware only of churning water and Bronco’s arms around her and pain and exhaustion and terror-and something inside her. A voice, a spark, a rage that would not let her give up. And then, when she no longer believed it possible, the feel of something solid beneath her feet. She thought it must be a dream, a miracle, but she fought to hold it nonetheless, to gain a step, then another. Clinging to each other, half dragging each other, she and Bronco pulled themselves and each other inch by inch out of the clutches of the current. And then she was on her hands and knees, retching and vomiting muddy gritty water onto the sunbaked rocks.
A few feet away, Bronco lurched to his feet, swaying. “Why didn’t you…” he rasped, then crumpled to the ground.
Lauren crawled to him and gathered his head into her lap. She held him tightly cradled against her chest, sat and rocked him, peeling strands of sand-crusted hair away from his proud warrior’s face, crooning in a hoarse and half-drowned voice, “I won’t leave you, Johnny. I won’t leave you. I won’t leave you.”
“Johnny’s strong. He’ll be okay.” Grandmother Rose looked up, and for a moment her eyes glittered in her broad lined face like little black beads. Then they went back to watching her fingers cut strips from tin cans and roll them to make the “tinklers” that would adorn the large hand-woven basket near her feet. When completed, the bead- decorated basket, along with others made by Grandmother Rose’s daughters and daughters-in-law, would fetch a pretty penny from a mail-order catalogue company headquartered in Gallup. “He’ll take the sweat bath with his uncle Frank and cousin Roger,” she said. “Then he’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Lauren nodded, but it was too great an effort to reply. She felt utterly drained, limp and bone weary. She thought she might never find the energy to speak a word or move a muscle again. She felt so good here-safe and comforted and warm.
She was sitting on a blanket in a “summer shed,” a shelter made of wooden poles, open to the breezes on three sides and thatched overhead and along the back wall with willow branches. It was surprisingly comfortable there in the shade, even in the midday heat. A few feet away Rose’s great-grandson Matthew slumbered peacefully in his “cradle board,” propped against the back of the shed. His mother, Roger’s wife, Rachel, had gone into Rose’s modest but modern prefabricated house to prepare lunch; the menfolk would be hungry when they emerged from the sweat lodge. Like Grandmother Rose, Lauren was dressed in a “squaw dress,” a voluminous soft cotton skirt with a loose-fitting matching top. Lauren’s was fuchsia; the old lady’s was turquoise blue. It, too, was surprisingly comfortable and cool.
From where she sat Lauren could see the brush corral in the shade of two gnarled cottonwoods, where Cochise Red and the little gray mare were being brushed, fussed over and fed handfuls of corn and hay by a half-dozen assorted-size boys in jeans and T-shirts, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. She and Bronco had come upon the two horses a little ways downstream from where they’d managed to drag themselves from the water, standing together with heads low and flanks heaving. Red’s saddle had been hanging half under his belly; the saddlebags and blanket were gone. Of the buckskin mare they had seen no sign.
Lauren’s eyes shifted to the sweat lodge, a canvas-covered frame that had been set up on the banks of what must normally have been a small meandering stream. Now it, too, was a churning freshet of muddy water, rushing down to join the main flood. She could hear it roaring in the distance, like the rush of wind through trees. She’d always liked that sound, but now, from this day on, it would remind her of terror and panic, the feeling of utter help lessness that comes with the certainty that death is imminent.
