The Lion of Farside by John Dalmas

Then Cyncaidh called to fall in and mount up. Varia and Hermiss led their horses from the stable and swung into their saddles, Varia barefoot, her still-wet boots tied to saddle rings—to get them drier, she’d told Hermiss. Cyncaidh, after looking back over the column, shouted another order, and they rode out of the inn’s muddy yard.

Until they’d left Fort Ternass, Varia had always been kept in the midst of the mounted men. But since Hermiss had been added to the party, they’d been put behind the remount string, in front of the pack string, with the horse handler the only soldier behind them, back at the very end. Apparently to give them privacy if they wished to talk.

It was Varia who opened the conversation now, telling stories about Washington County and the Macurdies, recounting the funnier things she could remember. Beginning with the time that seven-year-old Curtis had tried to ride a calf and gotten bucked off into a wheelbarrow full of mucky cow manure. He’d run howling and stinking into the house, tracking manure on the linoleum, which enraged his mother. With a grip developed by years of wringing laundry by hand, she’d taken him by the ear to the windmill. It was March, still given to freezing at night, and after stripping him, she’d immersed him in the icy water of the horse tank, which set him howling even louder, then scrubbed him with a gunny sack.

Hermiss’ peals of laughter brought a curious glance from Cyncaidh at the head of the column.

Next she told of one of Will’s “notions,” which struck him during silo filling. For years a neighbor, Deacon Stuart, had pestered Will about his non-attendance at church, hinting at hellfire. Then a skunk had taken residence under Will’s barn floor, to make nighttime forays on the hen house, so Will had caught it in a Victor #1 trap. And when the deacon was up in the silo tromping down, Will had thrown the dead skunk into the silo filler. Chopped skunk, along with the content of its scent gland, had shot up the pipe and rained down on the deacon. The silo had been only about five feet short of full, and the overweight deacon, almost overcome by the stink, had clambered over the side and hung by his hands, his feet dangling some twenty feet above the ground. Then, realizing there was little relief in that—the vile smell was as much on him as in the silo—he’d tried to climb back in and couldn’t. He’d hung there yelling for help, using language not suited to a deacon, and Will had gone up and rescued him. For two or three years after that, the deacon refused to trade work with Will, but he also stopped badgering him.

That story hadn’t worked as well for Hermiss. She knew about corn and skunks, and was familiar with a concept not greatly dissimilar to hellfire, but Varia had had to stop at intervals to explain “deacon” and “Sunday services,” “silo” and “ensilage” and “silo filler.”

She’d begun telling of a time when Charley, her father-in-law, had been hauling bundles to the corn shredder, when she saw a bridge ahead. Her guts tightened, but she continued the story until she was well out on the bridge planking. Then, with the reins and a mental command, she caused her horse to rear. Behind her, the horse handler shouted a “whoa” to halt his pack string, while Varia, as if fearing she’d be thrown, dismounted. Before anyone was aware of what she intended, she’d vaulted onto the bridge railing and leaped off.

The river was a large one, and swollen now from days and nights of rain. She knew nothing more about it. Not its name, what towns it flowed past, anything. Her assumptions were that it flowed southward to join the Big River; that it flowed fast enough for her purposes; and that there’d be boats tied to the bank here and there, hopefully with oars or a paddle. And that she could swim long enough to come to one of them.

As she plunged beneath the water, she was astonished at how powerful the flow was, how swift. The water of a normally forty-yard-wide river, now storm swollen, with flooding several feet deep on the flood plain, was pouring with a tremendous surge between bridge abutments no more than thirty yards apart. She stayed under water as she’d intended, swimming with the current to put as much distance as possible between herself and the bridge. Her hope was that the soldiers would wait to see her come up before anyone else jumped. By that time, hopefully she’d be far enough away that no one would, that the odds of reaching her would seem too poor. Maybe they’d even fail to see her, and think she’d drowned.