“Bank breaks off right ahead.” Kelso was back beside us again. He spoke softly. “Keep right ahead, and you can cross the end of the island. No dead trees or fallen stuff in the way.”
Suddenly the horses went down before us, the wagon bumped, slid, then went over the edge. The horses were in the water. “Gravel bottom here,” Farley commented, “I’ve crossed here a-horseback.”
The current was strong. I could feel the thrust of it against the wagon, high though our wheels were. Once the wagon was pushed and almost swung end-wise in the current, but Farley spoke to the horses and they leaned into their collars and pulled the wagon straight.
We could almost taste the coolness from the water. Farley’s voice to the horses was low, confident, strong. How long we were crossing, I do not know, but suddenly the horses started to scramble and pulled us up out of the water. We could see the dark loom of the trees on our right, a few scattered ones just ahead. It was almost a half-mile across the island at this point, or so I remembered someone saying. We moved on, and there was no sound. Fletcher swore, slowly, bitterly. Miss Nesselrode spoke primly: “Please, sir, it is no time for that.”
Fletcher was silent, and I wondered what Fraser was thinking. Now he would have something to write in his little book. If he got through this alive. Leaves rustled softly. Kelso was guiding us through brush and fallen logs. “It’s a trap,” Fletcher said, “a bloody trap.” They came out of the trees then, a dark wave of them, coming in silence that suddenly broke into a weird cacophony of yells. Farley’s whip cracked like a pistol shot and the mustangs leaped into their harness. The wagon lunged forward, and I saw my father’s pistol dart flame.
A wild face painted with streaks of white suddenly appeared in the back curtains of the wagon as a warrior attempted to climb in. Miss Nesselrode thrust her rifle against his face and pulled the trigger. The face, and the head, disappeared.
Four
Papa’s pistol was empty and he passed it back to me and began shooting with the other. He did not shoot hastily, yet he did fire rapidly, and there was a difference, for he seemed to make every shot count. Swiftly the Indians faded from the scene. Their ambush having failed, they would try other tactics. The wagon raced on, and suddenly there was a shout. “Finney’s down! Finney’s shot!”
Deliberately Farley pulled up, and before he could speak, my father was gone from his seat. I saw him running back, I saw an Indian with a club start toward him, and my father fired; the Indian dropped.
In the vague half-light I could see Finney, or someone, pinned down by a horse and struggling to get from under it. My father raced up, fired another shot, and then offered a hand to Finney. Somehow he got him free, and together, Finney firing now, for I knew my father’s pistol was empty, they retreated to the wagon as Kelso raced back, firing.
They scrambled into the wagon and I passed the loaded pistol to my father and took the other. The wagon moved, jolted over a small log, and plunged ahead. Miss Nesselrode, her heavy rifle in her hands, waited at the rear of the wagon, Mrs. Weber beside her. Miss Nesselrode was lifting her rifle to fire when the wagon pulled up so sharply she almost fell from her seat. Looking past my father, who had again scrambled to the seat beside Farley, I could see the dark waters of the river rushing by, much swifter here, and obviously much deeper.
The western bank of the river was there, not thirty yards away, but the water looked deep and strong.
“We’ve no choice.” Papa spoke quietly. “There are too many of them back there, and by daybreak we will be surrounded and all escape cut off.” “Steady, boys!” Farley spoke gently to the team. Urging them on, he talked to them quietly. They hesitated, then plunged in. The current caught the wagon and slewed it around downstream from the team, but they fought for footing, dug in, and leaned into their harness. For a moment they simply held their own, and then they began to move slowly. Guiding them diagonally across the current, Farley pointed them toward a gap in the brush.
Slowly, steadily, they gained ground. Suddenly it seemed they were only belly-deep; then they were climbing out on to the shore and up a dry wash that emptied into the river.
“They’ll be coming after us,” Farley commented. He drew up, glancing back into the darkness of the wagon. “Is anybody hurt?”
“Verne has been shot,” Finney said.
“I’ll be all right. It is nothing.”
The team started again and the wagon rolled ahead; then, when the bank was low, they went over the edge to higher ground.
Farley turned the team southwest and started them out at a steady walk. Kelso came up beside the wagon. “She’s all clear so far as I can make out,” he told Farley. “And flat-hard desert sand and rock. No problem.” Miss Nesselrode said to my father, “Sir? If you will come back here, I can put a compress on that wound. It will help to control the bleeding until daylight.” “Very well.” My father moved back into the darkness of the wagon. All night long the wagon rolled westward and south. Sometimes I slept, sometimes I was awake. “We can’t make more than ten or twelve miles by daylight,” Fletcher was saying, “and the horses must rest.”
When I awakened, gray light was filtering into the wagon. Fletcher was asleep, as was my father. Farley had crawled back into the wagon, and Finney was driving. Crawling up beside him, I looked out at the bleakness of the desert, all gray sand and black rock in the vague light before the dawn. “Lost m’ horse,” Finney said gloomily, “and a durned good saddle. They killed him. That there was a good horse, too.”
The horses plodded wearily along, heads low. The fire was gone from them now, and I could see an angry, bloody bullet burn along one’s hip. Ahead of us was a rugged, rocky range of mountains, and I could see no way through. I said this, and Finney nodded. “Does look that way, but it ain’t so. There’s a couple of passes, such as they are.
“Doug Farley, there, he don’t make many mistakes, and he’s figured this trip mighty close. Right up yonder there’s a place where we’ll hole up for a while. A few hours, anyway. There’s water an’ grass. We’ll let these mustangs feed a mite and then pull out again.”
“Will the Indians come again?”
“Sure.” He paused, thinking it over. “Injuns are given to notions, but the Mohaves are fighters, and unless they take a contrary notion, they may follow us for days.
“Y’see, son, they expected an ambush would do it, but Farley bein’ what he is, we was ready for them and there were just more guns than the Injuns expected in one wagon.”
When I looked from the back of the wagon, I could see the gleam of the river far behind. We had come further than I would have believed, and we were higher, for we had been climbing steadily.
Farley turned the team off into a hollow among the rocks. There was a little grass, and only enough water for the horses in a small tank where the rocks captured runoff water.
Finney, carrying his rifle, went immediately to a place high in the rocks where he could watch our trail.
When I saw my father in the light, I ran to him. He was pale and his shirt was all bloody.
“Here,” Mrs. Weber said, “I’ll fix that.” She helped him off with his shirt, and we could see blood oozing from a hole in his shoulder. The shaft of an arrow with feathers on it was sticking out of his back. “I cut the head off,” Papa said. “I thought you could draw it out.”
Miss Nesselrode’s face was pale. “I’ll try,” she said. “It got in the way of my compress,” she added.
Farley came over. “Better let me do it, ma’am. I’ve done it before.” Taking a firm grip on my father’s shoulder, he drew the arrow out, carefully holding it straight so as not to enlarge the wound. I could see the sweat break out on my father’s forehead and face, and his eyes were very wide, but he made no sound. I was sad for him. His shoulders seemed so thin and frail, and I remembered them as strong and muscular when I was in his arms, only … I did not know how long ago.
“You saved Mr. Finney’s life, you know,” Miss Nesselrode said.
“Each of us does what he can,” Papa said. “We are traveling together.”