Savage

  “Are, too. Is it the storm?”

  “I’m not afraid of any old storm.”

  “You ain’t scared of me, are you?” She reached over and patted my stomach.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Not a thing. Don’t get worked up.”

  All of a sudden, my bum was wet. A chill scurried up my spine.

  Jesse and I gazed at each other in the darkness.

  “Uh-oh,” she said.

  I slapped my hand down at the ground beside me. It splashed up water.

  This didn’t make a lick of sense. We were on a slope. Not much of a slope, to be sure, but enough of one so we shouldn’t have water rising around us.

  “It’s me for the high ground,” Jesse said, jamming my hat onto her head.

  As she scurried out from under our shelter, dragging the blanket after her, I grabbed hold of my Winchester and saddlebags. Then I plunged through the curtain of water spilling off the ledge and was drenched in a blink.

  On my feet, I swung around and spotted Jesse. She was already in the clear, perched on a boulder off to the right. I waded toward her, water sucking at my boots, and climbed up some rocks till I got up there beside her.

  “A real gullywasher!” she yelled.

  “We ought to…” My voice went dead as an awful roar filled my ears. The roar wasn’t thunder. I didn’t know what it might be, but I didn’t like it. “What’s that!” I shouted.

  “Flash flood?”

  “We’d best…”

  “What about General?” she yelled.

  Before I could think to answer, Jesse threw down the blanket, slipped the Bowie knife out of her boot and leaped off the boulder. I knew just what she aimed to do—cut the hobble so General could make his escape. It was what I should’ve done myself, but she’d beaten me to it.

  Now she was gone. I couldn’t see or hear her. There was just the darkness and the downpour and the awful noise roaring closer. I dashed up to some higher rocks, threw down my rifle and saddlebags, dropped my gunbelt, and hurried back to where Jesse’d jumped from. Just as I got there, lightning ripped across the sky.

  In its jittery glare, I spotted General a few yards off. He was up to his elbows in the swirling dark flood. The flash lasted just long enough to let me see Jesse burst up out of the water beside him, raising her Bowie knife.

  Well, I leaped as the dark came back. Landed on my feet and commenced to trudge through the currents, reaching out for Jesse and shouting her name. Not that she could hear my puny voice through the bedlam of thunder and that other noise which sounded like a locomotive barreling toward us.

  Just when I wondered if I could ever reach her, the water suddenly went down. Splendid! I thought, feeling it slip away till it wasn’t more than ankle-deep. I splashed on ahead, got brushed by General as he bolted past, and then collided with Jesse. We both went down splashing, her on top.

  She pushed herself off me. I sat up. Another flash of lightning came along just then. I saw her bending over, hair in her face, shirt drooping open. She reached for me with one hand while the other pushed the knife into her boot. And then a wall of water loomed up behind her.

  “No!” I yelled.

  I didn’t see it smash Jesse, for the lightning quit. I darted my hand toward where she’d been, touched something that might have been her hand, then got myself slammed down by the monster wave. It shoved me along the ground, picked me up, tumbled me head over heels, scraped me against the rocks, bounced me off this and that. Fearing my brains might be dashed out, I hugged my head with both arms. Not a bit too soon, either. I’d no quicker covered up than a blow numbed my elbows and jammed my arms together so tight I thought they might crush my head.

  I didn’t know it just then, but the mighty wave had hammered me into the rocks not very far from our shelter—head first into a narrow gap.

  It was a nice bit of luck, though I hardly considered it so at the time. I figured my arms were busted and I knew I was trapped. My arms and head were wedged in tight, the water piling over me, pushing at me, twisting my legs and shoving me up as if it aimed to snap my spine. Of course, I couldn’t breathe. But that seemed like a minor problem, as I judged the wave would likely break me to pieces before I could ever find the opportunity to drown.

  Then it quit trying to kill me.

  Like a grizzly deciding to chase after tastier prey, it let go and raced off.

  As the water receded, I sucked in a chestful of air. My knees came down on something solid.

  Without the wave ramming at my back, it didn’t take much work to squirm myself free. That’s when I saw the blocks of stone with the gap between them, and realized how lucky I’d been. If the gap hadn’t caught me, no telling where I might’ve been swept off to.

  It didn’t seem likely that Jesse’d met with the same brand of luck.

  The moment she entered my head, I forgot about all my hurts. I got to my feet, rather unsteady, and turned around to look for her. The rain was still coming down in a deluge. What with that and the dark, I couldn’t see a thing below me.

  Pretty soon, though, the sky lit up. Where we’d been camped was a wild, surging river. All but one of the trees was gone. I caught a glimpse of the rocky slopes just before the lightning blinked out. No sign of Jesse.

  The thunder took a while in coming, so the storm seemed to be moving on.

  Off in the distance was the freight train noise same as I’d heard when the bloody wave was approaching. I was all set to scamper for higher ground, but then noticed that the roar was fading, so stayed where I was and waited for another lightning flash.

  When it came, I looked again for Jesse on the rocks. If she was there, the short burst of brightness didn’t give me enough time to spot her.

  So I took to searching.

  I was none too steady on my legs. They didn’t hurt as much as my arms, but they were awful sore and wobbly. The rocks were slick and, except when lightning came, I couldn’t see where I was going. I fell a few times, and once even tumbled down into the water. Didn’t quit, though. Kept at it, searching low and high, crisscrossing the slope time and time again. Finally, there was no more point. Jesse was gone. That huge damn wave had carried her off.

  I climbed on up to where I’d dropped my guns and saddlebags. They were high enough that they hadn’t gotten swept away. I strapped on my belt, then just sat there in the rain.

  Jesse hadn’t been with me even one full day.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The Body

  Some time during the night, the rain stopped. I didn’t notice when it happened, though I never did fall asleep. Just sat there, mulling over Jesse, hating it that I hadn’t grabbed her before she could jump down to cut General free, remembering how she’d looked just before the wave took us, remembering everything about the hours she’d been with me, and all the while missing her, aching for her to be alive and come back.

  Over and over again, I pictured Jesse under water, trying to fight her way to the surface but always being towed down deeper by the rough current, running out of breath so her lungs burned, getting hurled along, tumbled, smashed against rocks, torn asunder until she was dead. Even after she was dead, the flood wouldn’t leave her be, but rushed her limp and broken body down through the endless desert beyond where I could ever find it.

  A few times, that night, I heard Jesse call out my name. But I knew it was only the wind howling its agony through the night, and not Jesse at all.

  Once, she came to me. She sauntered out of the dark, hair shaking in the wind, shirt flapping behind her, a smile on her face and a merry spark in her eyes. “Can’t get rid of me that easy,” she said, and my heart swelled up with joy. Then a bolt of lightning ripped through the clouds and I saw she wasn’t there at all and I wept.

  That wasn’t the only vision I had that night. In the other, I was carrying her dead body in my arms. All the region’s kites were swooping down at us. They were going for her eyes, her lovely green eyes, no longer ali
ght with mischief, but flat and dull. As my arms were full, I couldn’t fight off the buzzards. One of the big, stinky things finally perched on her chest, so I bit off its head. I left the carcass in a heap on top of Jesse as a warning to the others. They stayed away, and finally Jethro Lazarus came down the trail in his wagon. He was just the man I’d been looking for. I hailed him, and said I needed to buy a bottle of the Glory Elixir. “Sold my last bottle no more than a hour ago,” he explained. I cried out, “No!” Lazarus grinned and shook his head. “You had your chance to buy some, lad. It’s all your fault.” I shrieked, “No!” again and slapped leather and shot him.

  Except I didn’t shoot Lazarus. My slug whinged off a boulder no more than six feet in front of me and I wasn’t lugging Jesse’s body along the trail, at all. I was sitting in the rain, all by myself among the rocks.

  Those were the two visions I had that night. They weren’t dreams or nightmares, as I was awake when they came to me. After getting over the upset about each of them, I took to wondering what they might mean. They might be omens or premonitions, maybe. But I didn’t rightly believe in such malarkey. More than likely, they meant nothing. They were only just my mind going sour on me from too much weariness and grief.

  It wasn’t till the sun came up that I noticed the rain had stopped.

  The sunlight put a new slant on things.

  I took a notion that Jesse might not be dead, after all. I’d survived the flood. Maybe she’d lived through it, too. It was a slim chance, and I knew it. But even if she had perished, as seemed likely, I needed to hunt for her, bury her decent if I could find her body.

  Getting myself off the ground was no easy trick. Some of me was numb, the rest ungodly sore. But I made it to my feet, then stretched this way and that to get the kinks out. I felt like somebody’d taken a sledgehammer to my elbows and shoulders. They were stiff and achy, and I swung my arms around until they limbered up, then practiced drawing my Colts a few times. Once I got my arms working decent, I bent over low enough to pick up my saddlebags and rifle.

  Then I turned around and gazed down the slope. Our campsite was dry except for a few puddles which mostly seemed to be in holes where the trees had been uprooted and carried off. The rocks we’d used for a fire ring were gone, along with every trace of burned wood and ashes. The flood had also carried off my saddle, bridle, bedroll, everything.

  Nothing moved down there.

  I called out Jesse’s name. She didn’t answer. I called it out again and again, but the only sounds came from the breeze and a few birds and the creek rushing by.

  The creek, off beyond the rocks, looked more like a river now. It was swollen up to ten times its regular size, rough and muddy, sweeping bushes and sticks along toward the south.

  I commenced to climb down, groaning some with each step, and was about to jump from the bottom boulder when a whinny came through the quiet.

  It was the sweetest sound I could’ve heard just then, other than Jesse’s voice.

  It came from the left, so I snapped my head sideways. The pain in my neck fetched a wince out of me, but I had to smile at the sight of General off in the distance. He was no more than a hundred yards away, nibbling the leaves off a bush.

  I got about halfway there before he noticed me, nodded and whickered and came wandering over. He seemed no worse the wear for the last night’s near miss. After greeting him with some fond words and pats, I swung my saddlebags across his back and led him over to a rock. Using that to give me some height, I had little difficulty climbing onto him. With my rifle in the crook of one arm, I gripped his mane with my other hand and turned him toward the water.

  We followed the shore, me calling out Jesse’s name and studying both sides of the river. The sun was starting to heat things up, so steam drifted off the damp ground and the water. The mist wasn’t thick enough to hide much. It rather gave me the creeps, though. What with the stillness, the limbs and such rushing by on the dirty river, the dead critters here and there along the banks and the white shroud hanging over it all, I felt like I was riding through a wasteland fit for a nightmare.

  The flood seemed to have killed everything it met. I came upon the remains of birds, snakes, gophers, and even a three-legged coyote, all of them washed up along the shore. They had flies buzzing about them. A buzzard was working on the coyote.

  Once, a dead burro glided by on the river.

  Much as I wanted to find Jesse, I took to dreading the notion. She was bound to be dead, same as all these animals. I didn’t care to see her that way. It was my duty to keep on looking, though. Mostly, I hoped I might beat the buzzards to her body.

  Soon after the mist burned off, I spotted a pair of white legs sticking up out of a tangle of tree limbs at the other side of the river. The sight made me want to curl up and die.

  The tree was still in the water, but jammed tight among some rocks. All I could see of the body was its legs. They were bare, which made me wonder what had become of Jesse’s boots and dungarees. Maybe they’d been tugged off by the currents, or maybe she’d had time to pull them off so they wouldn’t sink her. One leg pointed straight at the sky. The other hung sideways at the knee.

  The look of that broken leg made it all worse, somehow. Bad enough she was dead, but it pained me even more to see how she’d been ruined.

  As she was across the river, I figured I was likely to drown trying to reach her. Didn’t much care, though. I couldn’t ride off and leave her there. If I got drowned, so be it.

  I stopped General upstream a ways, dismounted, and shed my clothes. Then I raced into the water. It splashed up, wrapped around my shins, and climbed higher until I couldn’t run any more, but only trudge along. It was a mite chilly, though not cold enough to bother me much. The current shoved at me. I was near halfway across and still on my feet when a branch came scooting along. I had to backstep to keep it from hitting me. As it slid by, I grabbed hold and let it tow me downstream till I was just above the caught tree. Then I let it go and got sucked down. I was shoved and tumbled for a bit. When I finally got my feet planted firm on the bottom and stood up, I found myself just below the tree. The water was no higher than my waist.

  Leaning into the current, I worked my way back to the snagged tree. Its trunk was half submerged. I hung on to the top side of it and stood in the water, catching my breath and trying not to look at the legs. I could see them out of the corners of my eyes, though, off to the right. Even after I was breathing easy again, I stayed put. I just didn’t want to do what had to be done.

  Finally, I judged as how waiting wouldn’t make it any easier.

  So I boosted myself up onto the trunk and crawled along its top, crawled straight for the legs and couldn’t help but look at them. They were scratched and bruised. They had an awful bluish-gray color. The leg that dangled sideways from its knee was the closer of the two, and made me wish I could’ve come from the other side.

  The body was stuck in the fork where the trunk branched out. It was caught at the waist, actually. More than just her legs were out of the water. Those parts had been out of sight, hidden by some branches, until I’d climbed onto the trunk. I wished I couldn’t see them now, but there was no way around it.

  They put me in mind of the time I’d walked in on old Mable about to climb into the bathtub. I was seeing what I shouldn’t. Shame got mixed in with all the other miseries I was feeling.

  Jesse’d been mighty riled yesterday about the notion that I might’ve spied on her at the creek. I’d hankered to do just that. Now, here I was. And here she was.

  The sight of her private areas made me feel sick and sad and guilty.

  The tuft of hair down between her legs was dark, not shiny gold the way I’d imagined it might be. Her rump was heavier than it had seemed when I’d watched it through the seat of her dungarees. Close up, she didn’t look near as good as I’d supposed.

  All at once, I caught on to how I was studying her and how I was disappointed she didn’t look good. If I’d felt
lowdown before, now I was no better than a snake.

  A sidewinder, that’s what Jesse would’ve called me.

  I got to my feet so quick I almost fell on her, but found my balance in the nick of time. Standing with one foot on each side of the fork, I bent over, picked up the broken part of her leg. It felt wobbly, the skin tight and cool. Holding that leg by its ankle, I reached out and caught hold of her other ankle.

  I brought her legs together and gave them a pull. But she was still wedged in tight. I had to move in closer, stepping out along the branches. I had to hug the legs against my chest and push with my body. It was horrible. I was naked. I couldn’t keep my own legs together and still keep my footing, so I had to shove at her with my chest and belly and couldn’t help but rub her with my lower parts. I sure did wish I’d kept my trousers on.

  I shoved and tugged upward and finally she came unstuck, so quick I wasn’t ready for it. All of a sudden, she jumped upward. I yelped and let go of her legs and waved my arms and pranced, but it was no good. I tumbled sideways through a thicket of limbs and plunged headfirst into the river.

  Before the current had a chance to rush me away, I grabbed a chunk of rock on the bottom. That halted me till I could plant my feet.

  Just as I started to stand up, something pounded against me and knocked me down again. I knew it might be Jesse, so I flung my arms around it. As soon as I pulled it in against me, I knew it was the body, all right. I had it by the waist, and felt its back against me.

  As we got rushed along, I kept heeling the bottom, trying to stop us with my feet. But we kept being towed along backward. I reckoned I might drown if I didn’t let go of her so I could break the surface and find a breath. I just couldn’t do it, though. Figured I’d rather drown than lose her.

  That’s how it might’ve ended, too, but somehow we got swept toward the shore. Just when my chest felt ready to explode for want of air, my bum slid over some rocks and sunlight heated my face.

  I scurried out from under the body, wheezing, blinking to clear the water from my eyes, and grabbed hold of her under the armpits and stumbled backward, dragging her toward the shore.