Chapter Ten #2
Sarah turned in time to see Brady running along the bank, out of sight of Violet, who had gone to speak with Charlotte. The boy had kicked off his shoes and stockings. His feet flashed pale against the mud.
“Brady!” Sarah called.
He looked back over his shoulder. “I’m only—”
His heel slid.
He went into the river without finishing.
At first Sarah saw only his head and one arm. Then the current caught him. It pulled him away from the shallow edge and turned him over once.
“Brady!”
Her scream tore across camp.
Violet came running. “Brady!”
The boy surfaced farther out. His mouth opened. No sound came from it. He struck at the water with both hands, fighting it as if he could beat it still.
Clay was already moving.
He dropped his hammer and ran down the bank, rifle and hat falling away behind him. He hit the water without stopping to take off his boots. The river shoved against him at once. It was not deep near shore, but the current ran hard where the banks narrowed around a bend.
“Clay,” Sarah said, though he could not hear her.
He reached Brady just as the boy went under again. Clay caught the back of his shirt and hauled him against his chest. The current dragged at them. Clay planted his feet, slipped, found purchase on a stone, then shoved them both toward the shallows.
Samuel came down from the other side and waded in up to his waist. Together they got the boy out.
Violet fell to her knees in the mud beside him.
Brady lay limp for one terrible second. Then he coughed hard. Water came up. He began crying, thin and angry.
Violet gathered him against her, holding his wet head under her chin.
“You wicked, foolish child,” she said, though her voice shook. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
“I was swimming,” Brady sobbed.
“You were drowning!”
Clay sat back on his heels a few feet away, breathing hard. Water ran from his hair and down his jaw. His shirt clung to his chest. He looked at Brady, then at Violet.
“He’ll be all right,” he said.
Violet looked up at him. “Thank you.”
Clay rubbed a hand over his face. “Keep him warm. He swallowed some water.”
Sarah had not moved. Her hands were clenched around the wet hem of her skirt.
Clay looked at her then. Only for a moment.
“You all right?”
She nodded too fast. “Yes.”
He studied her as if he did not believe it. Then Brady gave another cough, and Clay turned back to the boy.
The whole camp seemed to have gathered. Men stood on the bank, silent now that there was nothing left to do. Charlotte came with a blanket. Tucker pressed close to Sarah’s side, his face pale beneath the dust.
The rest of the day passed with Brady wrapped in blankets near Violet’s wagon. He objected to being made to rest. Violet did not yield. Each time he tried to sit up, she put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down again.
Clay came by in the afternoon with a cup of hot broth.
“Drink it,” he told Brady.
Brady eyed the cup. “It smells like onions.”
“It is onions.”
“I don’t like onions.”
Clay sat on the wagon step. “You nearly drowned today, and now you’re fixing to be defeated by an onion?”
Brady’s lower lip stuck out.
Tucker appeared beside Clay, holding the wooden horse. “You ought to drink it. Clay says onions make a man strong.”
Brady took the cup with both hands. “Will I be as strong as Clay?”
Clay’s ears went a little red. Sarah saw it from where she sat beside Violet, as she mended the torn cuff of his shirt.
“You’ll be as strong as Brady,” Clay said. “That’s plenty if you use it right.”
Brady drank the broth, making a face after every swallow.
By late afternoon the sun had warmed the river stones. The wagons still stood where they had that morning. Samuel had decided they could spare the day. The animals needed rest, and one wheel on a family’s wagon had to be reset before they moved.
Clay led Tucker and Brady downriver, where the water slowed in a broad, clear pool beneath a stand of cottonwoods. Brady had been granted permission to leave Violet’s side only after he promised, three times, that he would remain on dry ground.
Sarah followed at a distance with Violet. Neither of them spoke at first.
Clay sat on a stone at the edge of the pool. He had changed into dry trousers but had not found another shirt, so he wore his damp one open at the throat. Tucker crouched beside him. Brady sat cross-legged on the bank, wrapped in a blanket despite the warmth.
Clay showed them the fishing line.
“You don’t throw it where the water’s loud,” he said. “Fish don't like fighting the current any more than you do.”
Brady looked at the ripples. “How do you know where they are?”
“You watch.”
“For what?”
“The little breaks in the water. Shadows under the bank. Bugs landing.”
Tucker squinted at the pool as if the fish had offended him personally by hiding.
Clay baited a hook with a bit of worm and passed the line to Brady. “Hold it loose. Don’t jerk.”
Brady took it with great care.
“What if one bites me?” he asked.
“Then you’ve got the wrong end.”
Tucker laughed. Even Brady smiled at that.
Clay rested one hand lightly over Brady’s smaller one, guiding the line into the water. He did not crowd the boy. He only showed him where to hold it, then took his hand away.
Sarah watched Clay’s face as he watched the boys. There was patience in him that he did not seem aware of. He could talk his way through an argument, take up a rifle, mend a wheel, wade into a river after a child. He did each thing as if it were simply the next thing required.
A fish tugged the line.
Brady gasped. His whole body went rigid.
“Easy,” Clay said.
“It’s pulling.”
“Let it pull. Now lift.”
Brady lifted too sharply. The line snapped back empty, flicking water across his face.
He stared at the hook. They tried again.
Violet stood beside Sarah, arms folded close over her middle. “He’ll follow Clay now.”
“He already does.”
“Not like this.” Violet watched her son. “He’s been without a man looking after him for a long while. His father was gone before he could remember much.”
Sarah looked at her.
Violet kept her eyes on Brady. “A boy notices what he notices.”
Clay helped Tucker untangle the line from a willow root. His hands moved quickly. When Tucker made some bold claim about catching a fish bigger than Samuel’s arm, Clay did not laugh at him. He only said, “Then we’ll need a larger pan.”
Something tight shifted in Sarah’s chest.
She lowered her eyes to the shirt cuff in her lap. Her needle had stopped halfway through a stitch.
Clay looked up then, perhaps feeling her stare. Across the strip of water and the stones, his eyes found hers.
Sarah should have looked away.
Clay smiled. It was small. Not teasing. Not the grin he wore when he wanted to draw a sharp answer from her.
Sarah bent over the cuff and pushed the needle through. Her fingers were not as steady as they ought to have been.