unique track of the killer’s fire-red horse, she’d lived on the razor edge of fear. He’d come this way for a reason, but why?
A screech of youthful male terror reached her from a distance. She jerked, startled, spilling powdered chamomile everywhere.
Her fourteen-year-old helper, Heidi Ladue, dropped her empty teabags and caught Victoria by the arm. “Dr. Fenway, that sounds like Claude. Did you hear a splash?”
Victoria turned and tried to peer through the trees toward the roar of the flooded creek that had halted their journey today. “In that torrent? How could anyone hear a single splash?”
Another cry reached them from the direction of the creek. “The rope,” came a familiar voice. “Help me, please! Get the rope.”
Heidi scrambled from her perch on the wagon’s edge, long strands of her flax-pale hair dangling over her shoulders and the calico ruffles of her sleeves. “That is Claude. He’s in trouble!”
Victoria shoved her work aside and leaped from beneath the canvas of the Ladue wagon. “We don’t have the ropes. Your mother tied the horses with them.” They’d been unable to form a corral with the wagons on this narrow strip of land between cliffs and overflowing creek.
She ran toward the trees in an effort to catch sight of Claude but all she could see was muddy, churning water between giant trunks of oak and broadleaf evergreens. Heidi’s younger brother was not a clumsy boy. Could Thames be nearby? Could that wicked man have pushed him?
Heidi clutched Victoria’s arm and tugged. “He was with the Johnston boys earlier. Please come, Dr. Fenway. They had a rope. They were trying to make a pulley out of it to get the wagon across the water.”
Victoria allowed herself to be pulled forward. “They told you this?”
“No, ma’am, I could see it with my own eyes.” Heidi released her grip and turned toward the creek. “I heard them talking. I told the captain and he got on ’em, but they didn’t listen. They’ve been up to something, and I don’t see Claude, but right there’s the Johnston boys.”
She pointed toward Claude’s constant companions, blond-haired Buster and Gray Johnston. They stood across a narrow clearing beside a huge oak tree that shaded a section of the raging water. They were struggling mightily to straighten a tangled mess of rope that connected their wagon to the tree.
Despite stern reprimands, the boys appeared determined to float their wagon to the other bank before the floodwaters died down, like children taking a dare to prove they were men. They were proving just the opposite with their careless disregard for safety.
“Buster?” Victoria called out, clutching her funereal-black skirts and hurrying through treacherous mud toward the boys, Heidi at her side. “Didn’t you two hear your friend? He’s in trouble.”
“I know, but this here’s what he needs.” Buster held up an end of the rope in his hand. “It’s too knotted.”
Claude cried out again and Heidi turned to run toward the sound of her brother’s voice. “It’s the creek, Doctor. I know he fell into the creek!”
Buster tugged with more force on the rope, his face dripping with sweat. “I’m tryin’, ma’am, doin’ all I can, but he’s got to have this to get out!”
“Heidi, be careful!” Victoria turned back to the Johnston brothers. “Boys, please hurry. What is Claude doing in the water?”
“Hangin’ on for life right now,” Gray said.
Victoria could imagine all sorts of awful endings to this and it made her dizzy. “To what?”
“Old stump.”
“That isn’t good enough. We need your help right now.” Victoria wanted to stamp her foot. Did these young men have difficulty grasping the plain truth? She still couldn’t see the thirteen-year-old boy. “Find something else, a plank of wood, a branch. Something!”
“Gotta get this thing unwound to reach him.” Buster’s fingers slid on the muddy knots. “He’s way out there.”
Victoria wanted to thump their heads together as she watched the detritus being shoved along at a mighty pace down the widened creek. Couldn’t they get a little more excited about the threat to their friend’s life? “No stump’s going to protect him from being knocked to pieces if he’s in that creek. You need to try something besides the rope and do it quickly.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, Buster gave the snarl another tug, which made it cling more tightly to the tree.
Victoria nearly growled aloud. “Buster, now!” She could hear only Claude’s cries for help over the flood-stage roar of Flat Creek—which was anything but flat at the moment. It sounded as if an invisible giant rampaged through this southern Missouri valley, tearing trees from their roots to thrust them out of the racing, muddy water. And now Heidi, too, ran dangerously close to the edge of the steep bank.
Victoria turned, slid and nearly fell in the thick mud. “Heidi Ladue, you get away from the water! Help me find something long enough to reach him.”
Heidi came rushing back, her dainty, even features tight with fear, pale hair flying out behind her in the breeze. “He’s too far out, Doctor. We can’t reach him.” She grabbed Victoria’s arm. “I’m scared,” she said, her voice catching.
“Round up help from the camp. Now, my dear.” Victoria gave her a quick hug and urged her up the hill, but as she looked over the girl’s shoulder she finally caught sight of Claude. He was being flung back and forth in the water, choking and spitting, his head barely above the surface as he grasped the stump. “Get the adults quickly!”
As Heidi ran up the muddy track, Victoria raced along the side of the creek. “Hold on, Claude, we’ll get you out!” She searched for a thick limb or a length of vine she might use to reach the boy, but the limb she picked up immediately broke. The vine fell apart. Everything was too soaked to hold up under Claude’s weight.
She glanced over her shoulder to see if the Johnston boys were having any luck with the rope, but Buster and Gray were now in some argument she couldn’t make out.
“Boys, grow up and get to work!” she called, but they didn’t seem to hear her. With the sound of the water, she could barely hear herself.
She closed her eyes and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Gentlemen! Help!” Those young men should never have been allowed to leave home without their father. Instead of eighteen and sixteen, they behaved like eight and six. Why had Joseph chosen them to help build his town in Kansas?
She turned and ran toward Claude again. “We need more men on this trip,” she muttered to herself. How would this group cross the state border safely into Kansas Territory if the Johnston boys kept pulling stunts like this?
With a glance uphill, she searched for the one man who claimed to always be there for help and protection, though she couldn’t see proof that he practiced his assurances. “Captain Rickard?” she called at the top of her voice. “Trouble! Help us, please.”
But Joseph was nowhere in sight. According to Heidi, he was helping collect wood for the fire, a job Claude and his friends were supposed to be doing. Instead of helping, Claude had hovered near the creek with Gray Johnston,
