Part 6
Nell took the halter from Jesse long enough to ask one question. “Who saw them last?”
“I did. Twenty minutes ago from the north bank. The cart’s upright, but one wheel is broken. Iris waved. I couldn’t hear her over the fork.”
That meant they had a location, not a route. Nell sent Alma to Dr. Venn and ran with Jesse to the tack room.
Daniel Poole reached the farm before they had finished packing ropes. He had tried the lower bridge with two county horses; the shifted deck rolled beneath them, and neither would step onto it again. Ezra arrived behind him with six mill hands, axes, block and tackle, and a wagon of planks. Venn came moments later with his medical bag, Alma following on the exhausted mare.
“Take every mule that will carry,” Poole said.
Nell chose Pike, Bishop, and Lantern. Fern had worked wet stone but never against the sound of floodwater. Two other mules had strength without enough experience on narrow ground.
“Three won’t move that cart,” Ezra said.
“We are not bringing the cart home.”
“More animals give us choices.”
Nell tightened Bishop’s pack cinch. A little more than two years earlier, she would have heard only the rising water and made readiness serve it. “Untested animals give us more things to rescue.”
Poole started to argue. Jesse handed him Fern’s ledger page. The captain read three lines, folded it, and gave it back.
“Three,” he said.
The lower bridge could not be repaired before dark. Their only approach to the south bench was an old charcoal trace that left Ezra’s mill road above the fork, crossed a steep side hollow, and descended behind the stranded cart. Poole had used part of it during the previous summer’s road work. Bishop and Fern had walked its upper mile. Pike knew the school road below. Lantern had never taken the final descent.
They set out with Bishop carrying rope, blankets, and Venn’s medical bag. Lantern dragged a narrow stone boat that could serve as a litter on the return. Pike carried only a riding pad and two coiled lead lines.
At the mill road, floodwater had already crossed the wheel ruts. Ezra ordered two men ahead with axes and sent the others behind the animals at wide intervals. No one hurried the mules from the rear.
The charcoal trace narrowed after half a mile. On the uphill side, rainwater poured from roots and stones. On the downhill side, laurel concealed a drop into brown water. Lantern placed each foot before committing his weight. The old mine had taught him to distrust a floor that sounded hollow; the farm had taught him that stopping did not bring a blow.
At the side hollow, a new stream ran across the trail. It reached Jesse’s knees and struck Pike’s forelegs hard enough to turn the mule’s shoulders.
“I’ll take him,” Nell said.
Jesse did not release the lead. “He crosses Alder Run with me every school morning.”
The water rose around his boots. Nell saw the boy in the tilted wagon, the rope around his arm, and every reason to keep him where she could reach him. She also saw Pike watching Jesse rather than her.
“Your call,” she said.
Jesse backed Pike six steps to a patch of level ground. He waited until the mule’s breathing eased, then approached the water at an angle that let him face upstream. Pike tested the first submerged stone and withdrew his hoof. Jesse waited again.
Behind them, Poole looked at the darkening sky but said nothing.
Pike entered. Jesse walked on the upstream side, one hand on the halter and one free for balance. The water pushed them two feet down the trail before Pike found the opposite bank. Bishop followed on a long line. Lantern came last, stopped where the current hid the ground, then put each forefoot into the prints Bishop had left.
Within fifteen minutes they reached the south bench.
Iris Vale had moved the children into an abandoned curing shed above the road. Her old gelding stood trembling beneath a tree with blood on one knee but weight on all four legs. The cart’s left wheel had collapsed when the road edge gave way. Walter Keene lay on two school coats inside the shed, his lower leg bent beneath a splint made from kindling and copybook covers.
He looked past Nell toward Pike. “I told Mrs. Vale he’d come.”
“Mrs. Vale sent Alma,” Nell said. “Pike followed instructions.”
Walter considered this correction and nodded.
Venn examined the leg. He found no broken skin and good warmth in the foot, but he would not let the boy walk. They lashed the stone boat into a low litter, padded it with blankets, and hitched Bishop to it with short traces. Pike would lead the children. Lantern would carry supplies and pull if Bishop tired.
The school gelding could travel once freed from the broken shaft. Iris refused to leave him, so Ezra cut the harness himself, taking care to save the uninjured leather. He had known the gelding since Iris bought him from a mill worker twelve years earlier. When the animal shied at the axe, Ezra laid it down and waited for Nell to cover his eye with her coat before cutting the last strap.
Water had climbed another inch over the road by the time they started back. Walter gripped the sides of the litter and did not cry until Bishop leaned into the first rise. Then the pain broke through his effort at bravery in short, angry sounds.
Jesse walked beside him. “You can cuss if you know any words your teacher hasn’t heard.”
Walter gasped a laugh and then cried harder. Iris did not correct either of them.
They reached the side hollow near dusk. The crossing had widened. A section of trail on the far bank sagged under a skin of running mud, and water now struck above Pike’s knees.
Poole took one end of the safety rope across on foot, braced by two mill hands. Jesse started forward with Pike and the line of children behind him.
“Stop,” he said.
Everyone stopped.
From behind, the trail looked merely wet. Jesse crouched and pressed his palm to the ground near Pike’s forefeet. Mud lifted and settled as water moved underneath it.
“It’s hollowing out,” he said. “Not there.”
“The light is going,” Poole answered. “We have a hurt boy and more rain above us.”
“Then don’t put them on ground that’s leaving.”
Ezra stepped around Bishop and looked at the bank. “There’s another line twenty yards uphill, through the young poplar.”
“Too steep for the litter,” Poole said.
“Not if we cut a turn.” Ezra pointed to three trees. “My land. My timber. Cut them.”
The men went to work. Every minute sounded expensive in Walter’s breathing and in the river below. Nell stood with Bishop’s lead in her hand, feeling the old command rise in her—to choose movement because waiting felt like failure.
Jesse looked at her. He did not ask permission this time. “Pike and I will test the upper line. Nobody follows until we come back.”
Nell opened her hand and gave him the lead.
He took Pike through the poplar, disappeared above the bend, and returned five minutes later with mud to his thighs. “Ground holds. First turn is tight.”
Nell put Lantern ahead of Bishop on a breast strap so the gray could steady the litter without dragging it sideways. Ezra and Poole took the downhill rope. Jesse led Pike and the children over the new cut. They moved the litter a few feet at a time, resetting hands and hooves before every turn.
Halfway up, Bishop’s rear feet slipped. The litter shifted toward the drop. Lantern felt the strap tighten and leaned uphill, not forward. Nell and Ezra hauled on the side rope while Bishop recovered one hoof, then the other.
No command could have improved what the gray had done. He had noticed a changed weight and stopped trying to win against it.
They reached the old trace. Behind them, the sagging section at the original crossing folded into the water with a soft sound almost lost beneath the rain.
No one commented. There were still two miles to travel.
Poole’s men lit lanterns along the last descent. The mules returned to Mercer Farm after dark, wet to the skin and flecked with foam. Liddy Ward and three mothers waited beneath the barn eaves. Walter’s father walked beside the litter into Venn’s wagon, one hand resting on his son’s shoulder.
Iris counted her students twice before she allowed herself to sit on the chopping block. Her old gelding stood beside Pike, both heads lowered, the cut harness hanging loose.
Ezra untied Lantern’s breast strap. A year earlier, he would have asked how soon the gray could work again. Now he ran his hand along the mule’s shoulder, checked for heat, and said to Jesse, “You called the ground right.” Jesse looked toward Nell. “He did,” she said…
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