Chapter Seventeen
The Search
At first light, the flood had eaten another six feet of bank. Nathaniel stood beside Caroline while she packed rope, dried meat, bandages, a lantern, and Thomas’s copied field notes into two oilskin bags.
“I can lead the search,” he said.
“You can,” Caroline agreed. “And while you do, eleven families can argue about whether the water is dangerous enough to obey Eleanor.”
“Twelve families,” Eleanor said from behind them. “Ours argues more efficiently than most.”
Nathaniel looked from his wife to Caroline. His jaw tightened, but he did not mistake concern for authority. “Who are you taking?”
“Rebecca, Mr. Hall, and Mr. Coleman. Hall knows where they separated. Coleman is strongest with rope. Rebecca understands horses and has the sense not to flatter me.”
“A rare qualification,” Rebecca said, approaching with four saddled horses.
Eleanor checked the food and bandages, then fastened the oilskin tightly. She did not tell Caroline to be careful. She took Caroline’s hand once and said, “Bring everyone back.”
Charlotte came forward with the company ledger. Caroline wrote the time, their intended bearing, and the names of the search party beneath the previous day’s entry.
“If we are not back by dark, show Nathaniel this line,” Caroline said.
Charlotte’s eyes were steady. “I will.”
Lucy pushed between two sisters and held out a strip of blue cloth. “For Mr. Reed to signal with, since he forgot his white one.”
Caroline tucked it into her pocket. “I’ll tell him you object to his preparations.”
“Tell him I object very much.”
They rode west-northwest across ground that changed from sodden prairie to shallow moving water. Hall led them to the fork, where one line of stakes continued toward a low creek bed, and another stopped at a stand of cottonwoods.
“The creek path is shorter,” Coleman said. “If Reed was trying to return—”
“Wait.” Caroline opened Thomas’s notes. His neat figures had survived beneath the oilskin. He had recorded the creek’s fall and the height of debris caught in the brush. She compared the marks with the water now pressing through the grass.
Rebecca looked down the easy path. “It’s rising behind those trees.”
Caroline set the compass flat against the field book. The cracked glass made the north mark appear divided, but the needle swung freely. “The creek turns south beyond the bend. If we follow it, the water will be between us and the ridge before noon.”
Hall frowned. “Thomas might have taken it.”
“He measured it yesterday. He would know better.”
The certainty in her own voice frightened her less than doubt would have. She pointed toward the cottonwoods. “We follow his original bearing.”
The tempting creek path followed the easiest ground. That was what made it dangerous. Caroline led the search party along the higher bearing while water gathered in every low place. Hall questioned the direction twice, not in defiance but out of fear that Thomas might have tried the shorter return.
Caroline stopped and showed him the field note where Thomas had recorded debris height. “Yesterday the water reached this mark. Today it is above it. He would not choose a path he knew could close behind him.”
“He went alone to the ridge,” Hall said.
“Because the ridge was higher.”
Rebecca studied the clouds. “Caroline is right. The creek line will be underwater before we return.”
They continued on the compass bearing. Coleman marked each turn with cloth strips and shallow cuts high on tree trunks where floodwater would not erase them.
Caroline required everyone to repeat the return direction.
She had learned from Thomas that a route known by only one person was not a route; it was a vulnerability.
When the horse appeared among the willows, Caroline's first relief—that Thomas had reached this far—gave way to alarm at the torn stirrup.
Rebecca read the animal's scrapes while Hall searched for tracks.
Caroline forced herself to listen to both before moving.
Leadership meant taking in facts even when every part of her wanted to run.
Caroline examined each mark around the horse before allowing the search to widen. One boot print faced north. A second had slid toward the flooded channel. Thomas's survey stake lay flat, but its sharpened end pointed deliberately toward higher ground.
Hall wanted to call from the bank. Caroline let him shout once, then stopped him from wasting strength against the wind. Coleman proposed firing a signal. They saved the shot until they reached the rise, where sound might carry above the water.
Rebecca found blood on the torn stirrup, only a small smear. Caroline's fear tried to turn it into catastrophe. She made herself ask whether it could have come from the horse. Rebecca showed her the scraped flank and said yes.
Facts first. Direction second. Fear could travel with them, but it would not choose the route. Caroline set the limestone bearing, and the four searchers moved upstream looking for a safe approach.
“Thomas!” she called.
Only water answered.
They spread out within sight of one another. Mr. Coleman found a second stake. Hall found Thomas’s measuring chain caught on a thorn. Caroline found a deliberate cut on a cottonwood trunk: two slanting lines above a short horizontal stroke.
She had watched Thomas use the same mark beside uncertain ground. It meant change from the recorded route.
Below it, almost hidden by wet bark, an arrow pointed north.
“The limestone rise,” Hall said. “He must have crossed toward it before the channel opened.”
Caroline looked through the trees. A pale ridge showed beyond a widening course of brown water. The direct crossing was already too deep for a horse.
Coleman swore softly. “We will need to go upstream.”
“Then we go upstream,” Caroline said.
They led the horses along the bank until dusk made the water and land equally gray. Rebecca found a shelf above the flood where they could tie the animals. Caroline hated stopping, but darkness would turn rescue into five people lost instead of one.
Mr. Hall built a shielded fire. Coleman checked the ropes. Rebecca handed Caroline half the dried meat and watched until she ate it.
Caroline sat with Thomas’s field notes on her knees. He had written numbers, bearings, soil descriptions, and one cramped line at the margin: limestone rise sound; western approach likely.
He had found the road. Now she had to find him.
She laid Father’s compass atop Thomas’s figures. One instrument bore the crack she had caused. The other record held the work Thomas had chosen to do despite every uncertainty between them. Neither was useless because it had passed through difficulty.
Across the little fire, Rebecca said, “You’re allowed to be afraid.”
“I am busy.”
“You’re always busy.”
Caroline looked toward the unseen rise. “Yes. I’m afraid.”
Rebecca nodded as if Caroline had reported the weather. “Good. Now you won’t have to spend strength pretending.”
Sleep never truly reached the little search camp. Caroline and Rebecca shared the first watch. Hall described the ridge from memory while Coleman dried rope near the shielded fire. They traced possible routes in Thomas's notes, rejecting any line that entered the creek bend.
Rebecca asked what Caroline would do if Thomas was injured. Caroline listed bandaging, litter construction, and the safest return bearing. Rebecca asked what she would do if he was not at the rise. Caroline had no list for that.
“Then we search the next mark,” Rebecca said. “One decision at a time.”
It was the advice Caroline had given everyone else for years. Hearing it from her younger sister felt strange and right. She allowed Rebecca to take the second watch without arguing and lay down for an hour. Fear remained, but it no longer had to keep her standing to prove its depth.
Before dawn, Caroline heard three faint knocks from beyond the channel. Metal against stone. A pause, then three more.
She was on her feet before the others woke fully.
“Thomas!”
The answer came weak but unmistakable. “Caroline?”
She closed her hand around the compass. “We’re here.”