She grabbed his canteen and crawled over to where he lay. Cradling his head in her lap, she persuaded him to open his mouth. She placed the pill on the back of his tongue and held the canteen to his lips.
“Come on, Jesse. Swallow for me.”
He swallowed and coughed, but the pill stayed down. Breathing a sigh of relief, she lowered his head to the ground and returned to their packs. Food was her next priority. She found a hook and line in Jesse’s gear. Her dad had taken her fishing when she was a child. After eating her last energy bar and persuading Jesse to take a few more sips of water, she set off to catch a fish.
She grabbed a stick for a pole and, finding a patch of soft ground, dug until she found some worms. She baited the hook, plopped it in the water, sat and waited.
She waited a long time. The sun shone high in the sky, warming muscles which still ached from her trek across the lake. Birds chirped in the trees and flew over the water, diving to catch insects. As she sat there, unmoving, a doe followed by a fawn, came up to the lake and began to drink.
Diamond took a deep breath, not wanting to scare the deer away. She was hungry and hadn’t had a bath in days, unless she counted her dousing in the lake, but for a moment she felt at peace. She still worried about Jesse. Still wondered how she would go about finding Bob and Anne. And she still missed all the conveniences of modern life, but it was beautiful by the lake. Quiet, in a way the twenty-first century could never be with airplanes flying overhead and cars scurrying back and forth. She preferred the twenty-first century, but there were things she could learn from the nineteenth.
A tug on her pole broke her reverie, and she sprung into action. In her excitement, she nearly yanked it out of the water, but then she remembered her dad telling her to go easy, to make sure she really had the fish hooked before trying to reel it in. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the deer leap into the woods, but she focused on the fish, pulling gently on the line, feeling the weight of the fish. Then the fish wiggled free, leaving her with an empty hook.
She muttered a few choice words to the fish, baited her hook once more and threw it in the water. She stayed there for hours, half dozing in the sun, watching ducks paddle by and turtles crawl out of the depths to sunbathe along the bank. By the time she returned to camp, she tallied the score as fish, three, Diamond, two. Even with the losing score, she had two fish to fry up for dinner—if she could figure out how to clean them.
Her dad must have handled the gory part when she was a kid. She hoped Jesse would be coherent enough to talk her through it, but when she returned to their camp, he didn’t appear to have moved. She froze, panic fluttering in her chest. Had he died while she was out fishing? Could she have done something else to save him?
He stirred, as if he sensed her staring at him, and her heart stuttered to a normal rhythm. Not dead. She brushed at her eyes, which had filled with moisture and strode over to him. “Jesse, I caught some fish. Can you help me clean them?”
He opened his eyes. “Diamond?”
He recognized her. That was better than this morning. She held up the two medium-sized fish. “Okay, so they’re nothing to brag about, but I will anyway. I’m feeling like a real mountain man.”
He looked puzzled, but smiled at the fish. “You caught dinner.”
“If you can help me clean them. I don’t have a clue how to go about it.”
“I don’t have a lot of practice, since we usually left it to the servants, but my father made sure I knew how to do it myself.”
Servants? Wow, she hadn’t really thought about Jesse having servants. It sounded like an alien world to her with big houses, fancy cars and designer clothes. But this was the nineteenth century. Lots of ordinary people had servants. Considering Jesse fought for the South, when he said “servants,” he might mean slaves. “My dad didn’t teach me, so I need some help.”
“I can do it. I’m feeling better.”
Diamond thought she should argue, but she was happy enough to pass on the disgusting chore. “You will probably need to build the fire, too. I couldn’t get it to catch last night.”
“Why don’t you give it another go while I take care of the fish?”
“Deal.” Diamond worked steadily on the fire while Jesse went down to the lake, but managed only a smoky flame which smothered under her kindling. “I can’t do this,” she complained when Jesse returned with the fish.
“It takes patience. Try again.”
Heaving a sigh, she pressed dried grass up against her pile of tiny twigs. It took a couple strikes of the flint, but she achieved a spark and blew on it lightly. The grass began to burn.
“Good job.”
“I can get this far, but then it goes out on me.”
He talked her through it, telling her when to add wood and blowing himself when the flame began to sputter. Together they coaxed the fire
