Chapter 5
One minute Julie was peacefully asleep, dreaming of a long walk by the stream while holding Andrew’s hand.
The next, she woke with a start to find her bed was drenched because her tent was flooding.
She’d always been quick to react to things and didn’t take long to absorb the shock, grab her boots and coat, and hurry out.
She carried her lantern, trying to peer through the rain that was pouring down in sheets. It was almost impossible to see more than a couple of feet ahead of her.
“Have you seen Andrew?” someone yelled at her.
She turned to see a jacketed and hooded figure with a lantern standing near her. She shook her head. “No,” she cried over the roar of the rain and the rumble of the thunder.
“Try to get to higher ground,” the lantern holder yelled at her. “Take anything that’s important to you and head away from the creek.”
Julie nodded. Clothes were important, but her medicines were vital. All the way out here, the weight of being the camp’s only doctor was heavy on her shoulders.
The water was already ankle deep as she set off to the other side of the camp. All around her the wind blew the rain in a horizontal stripe. Soon her hands and face were cold, stinging, and raw.
Men ran this way and that, the rain making it impossible to know who was who.
Was one of the men Andrew? Was he trying to find her?
Was he all right? She prayed that he was, but her sole focus right now had to be on saving her medicines.
It was likely some men would need medical attention after this storm.
She hurried through the camp to her clinic. The tent was still standing, but it was quite close to the creek, which was creeping up its banks.
Hastily, she grabbed her dry herbs, salves, tinctures, and oils and crammed them back into the trunk they had traveled west in.
Some would undoubtedly break, but there was no time to waste.
She closed the trunk and, grabbing the handle, tried to move it.
It seemed far heavier than she remembered it being before.
Plus, the wheels weren’t made for this. They were too small to manage the mud that was sucking at her boots.
But what choice did she have? She had to save the medicine.
With a great effort, she managed to lift the trunk about an inch off the ground and moved it to the door.
Backing out of the tent, she dragged the trunk out into the storm.
“Julie!”
It was Andrew’s voice; she was sure of it.
Turning around, she looked for him but could see next to nothing in the pouring rain.
She went back to pulling her trunk. Maybe she had dreamed Andrew was calling her name.
If she was struggling, maybe he was too, trying to save his own work.
What would a downpour like this do to the mine?
Would it seep down and flood the area Andrew and his men had worked so hard to dig out?
Oh, the trunk wasn’t budging. Stupid thing!
“Julie!”
“Andrew!” She was certain it was him this time. She looked around and spotted him coming around the side of the tent.
He smiled, his face lit by a lantern. And then, as she was smiling in response, his eyes went large and round. He pointed behind her and then opened his mouth to yell, but she never heard what he said.
With a rush of wind, a wall of water came sweeping across the land. Julie had the briefest of moments to register the danger before it was on her, and then she felt her legs being tugged out from under her as she was dragged headlong into the creek.
Water closed over her head, and she had to fight to rise to the surface again.
Branches, silt, bits of tents and barrels, planks, and all sorts of other debris bobbed along in the swift current, and Julie tried to grab hold of something, anything, to keep herself afloat.
Luckily, she was a decent swimmer. Her father had always told her to float on her back in a situation like this.
He told her to turn her feet in the direction she was moving and try to keep her head above the water.
There was a large part of Julie’s mind that wanted to give into the fear, to scream like a petrified child and thrash around. However, the more logical side won out and did as her father had instructed her to so many times. She kept her head above the water and searched for something to hold onto.
Something slammed into her left shoulder, and just like that, everything changed. With her arm now numb and dead at her side, the water closed over her again, swallowing her like a greedy monster.
Popping back out again, forcing the dead arm to move, Julie gulped air into her burning lungs.
Her arm felt odd, alien and useless. Something banged into her back, and then something else hit her on the side, knocking what little air she had in her out again.
She sank down under the flotsam, and when she needed to rise, she found her way barred by debris.
The urge to panic hit her hard and she fought it back, knowing that to give in would be deadly.
Marshaling every remaining ounce of courage, Julie prayed for guidance and blindly found her way back to the surface, using only her exhausted right arm.
A log was floating right in front of her and she managed to drape herself across it.
She wrapped her good arm around it and held on tight as the water rushed her along toward a destination unknown.
At some point, she fell asleep, unable to hold back the bone-deep exhaustion any longer.
Julie woke to find a weak and watery sun glinting on a puddle of water right in front of her.
Every inch of her body ached. She was lying on soft, green …
grass? Rolling onto her side, she ran her right hand over it and confirmed for her tired mind that this was in fact ground, and that although it was damp, it wasn’t sopping wet. That meant the water had receded.
How long it took for her to be able to raise her head and sit up, she didn’t know. When she did, she found she wasn’t alone. There were several drowned rats, dead and attracting flies in the sun, and a coyote, which was alive and looked as battered as she felt.
A quick self-assessment told her she’d dislocated her left shoulder. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. She had fallen out of a tree as a child and had her father put it back in place. She knew what to do … She just needed a tree.
With halting, painful steps that sent jolts of fire through her shoulder, she made her way to a nearby tree.
Gritting her teeth, she lined herself up, positioned her left arm with her right, and rammed her shoulder into the tree.
With an internal crunch and a jolt of white-hot pain that almost made her pass out, the arm slid back into its socket.
The pain eased ever so slightly and she sighed with relief.
Then she went to see to the coyote. The animal was in a bad way. He lay in the mud, hardly moving, and she wondered what injuries he had suffered. She wasn’t the kind of person who could leave an animal in distress, and so she tried to help.
It seemed his hind leg was injured because when she came near, he snapped at her with large yellow teeth.
“Easy now,” she said. “We have to help each other.”
After a visual assessment from a safe distance, she decided the animal’s leg seemed sprained and nothing more.
Julie reasoned that in time the coyote would most likely be fine.
She used a stick to shove a couple of the dead rats closer to the predator, in case he got hungry, and then tried to find her bearings.
“Where are we?” she asked.
It was hardly surprising that nothing looked familiar. She had only been in this part of the country for what felt like five minutes before she was swept away. She could be three hundred yards from the camp and not know it.
The best thing to do would be to head upstream. But how far could she walk without food and water? She had nothing with her, and her body ached.
“I don’t suppose you have any wonderful suggestions?” she muttered to the coyote.
It turned a beady eye on her and snarled. Julie retreated another few steps. Maybe she should lie down again and have a nap. It looked as though it would be dark soon. Maybe staying put would be better.
Julie decided to sit under the tree and have a nap. That way she could build up a store of energy for the long walk back to the camp, assuming the camp was even there anymore. Starting out fresh in the morning would be best. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift off again.
When she woke, it was pitch black and although her clothes were now dry, she was cold. She wrapped her arms around herself and wished that she had made a fire. It would warm her and lift her spirits. Her left shoulder ached fiercely.
Julie was afraid it would be a long night.
To pass the time, which seemed endless, she prayed and watched the stars cross the sky as they did every night and wished that she had paid more attention to her mother telling her that knowing the constellations beyond the Big Dipper was important.
The night sky was a carpet of light, with a few dregs of ragged cloud covering parts of it.
She heard howls in the distance and for a while contemplated climbing the tree she was leaning against. However, that seemed like a lot of effort for a threat that never seemed to come closer. Anyway, maybe it was only the coyote’s family looking for him.
Again, sleep took her, but her dreams were troubled this time, filled with monsters who swallowed her whole while Andrew tried futilely to reach her before a wave of water washed him away.
The light was fresh and clean when Julie opened her eyes, finding the sky a perfect blue. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen. Julie’s head felt a lot clearer, so she was able to think beyond what was right in front of her.
The coyote had gone, and Julie decided it was time for her to move on too.
She was stronger now, more focused. Although hungry and thirsty, Julie was certain that she could manage a walk upstream.
Setting off, she found that the flood had cleared a swath of land, leaving muddy clumps of debris piled in spots.
Her boots were gritty on the inside, which was unpleasant, and her clothes smelled strongly of river mud, which attracted every fly in the whole of Texas.
Julie was constantly swatting them to keep them off her many scratches and gouges as she walked.
After a couple of hours, when the sun was high, Julie found a clump of bedraggled black willow trees.
Their branches offered shade, and she took a rest there.
So many parts of her body ached. Her side, her back, her legs.
Only parts of her journey downstream came to her when she tried to recall how she had been injured.
It was as though her mind simply refused to remember.
Her stomach grumbled loudly, and she wished there was something to drink and eat.
To drink would be good, but she didn’t trust the water in the creek, what with all the debris befouling it.
She wasn’t desperate yet. But if she didn’t get a drink by the next day, she might not make it back to the camp and Andrew.
Andrew. She’d been so consumed with her own troubles that she hadn’t even thought about the possibility that Andrew might have been swept away too. He could have drowned.
Please, God. No. Let him be safe.
She had to believe that once she found the camp again, she would see his smile and hear his laugh. They’d only just started to get to know one another. This couldn’t be the end. It just couldn’t be. Julie had to hold onto that belief, or she would sink into the mud and stay there.
She was so tired now and dehydrated. Her tongue felt large and dry like sandpaper in her mouth.
The heat of the afternoon did nothing help her.
The flies were unbearable and eventually, Julie resorted to splashing water over herself to try to keep them off.
Exhausted, she slouched along, whispering a constant prayer.
Let Andrew be okay. Let me get to him. Let us both be okay. Please, Lord. Please, please, please, let us both be okay.