Susannah knew the river; she blanched.
One of her friends frowned. “Why are they trying to catch him? He’s so strong—surely he’ll be able to—”
“It’s the gorge.” Susannah cut her off, her voice harsh. “Oh, God. If they miss him…”
She grabbed up her skirts, climbed the bank, and started running downstream.
“What is it?” Margaret called.
Susannah turned and called something back. Minerva stopped listening. The girl, still weakly struggling, cleared the bend.
She turned and looked downriver. “Royce! She’s coming!”
Standing in the shallows around the next bend, just visible from where she was, he raised a hand in acknowledgment; no longer wearing his coat, he waded deeper into the river.
Minerva hurried down the bank, then along the water’s edge, where the men had stood. Susannah’s other friend, Anne, held her tongue and went with her. Minerva ran, but the current whisked the girl along faster; long braids floating on either side of her small white face, the poor child was almost spent. “Hold on!” Minerva called, and prayed the girl could hear. “He’ll catch you in a minute.”
She slipped and nearly fell; Anne, on her heels, caught her and steadied her, then they both dashed on.
The bobbing rag doll the girl had become was swept around the bend, out of their sight. Gasping, Minerva ran faster; she and Anne rounded the bend in time to see Royce, sunk chest-deep even though he stood on a spit in the streambed, lean far to his right, then launch himself across, into the swiftly running current; it caught him in the same moment he caught the girl, hoisting her up onto his chest, then onto his right shoulder where her head was at least partly clear of the increasingly turbulent water.
Minerva slowed, her fingers rising to her lips as she took in what lay beyond the pair. The river started narrowing, funneling toward the gorge, the water tumbling and churning as it battered its way on.
There was only one spot, another spit, where the pair, whisked along, could be caught, one chance before the building pressure of the water swept them into the gorge and almost certain death. On the spit, Royce’s Varisey and Debraigh cousins were linking arms, forming a human chain, anchored by Henry and Arthur, the lightest, together on the bank. Each held on to one of Gregory’s arms. Gregory had his other arm linked with Rohan’s, who in turn was waiting for Gordon to link his arm with his, leaving Phillip at the end.
Minerva halted, put her hands about her mouth. “Quickly!” she screamed. “They’re almost there!”
Phillip looked, then shoved Gordon toward Rohan, grabbed one of Gordon’s arms, and waded into the stream.
The current swung away, around the spit, carrying Royce and his burden along the other side of the riverbed. Rohan yelled and the men all stretched…Phillip yelled to Gordon to hang on to his coat. As soon as he had, Phillip lunged out, stretching as far as he could, reaching out.
Just as it seemed the pair would be lost, Royce’s arm lashed out of the water—and connected with Phillip’s. They both gripped.
“Hold hard!” Phillip yelled.
The dragging weight—not just of Royce and the girl, but now Phillip as well, all drenched and sodden—tested the other men. Muscles bunched, locked. Henry’s and Arthur’s feet shifted; they both leaned back, faces grim and set as they hauled their kinsmen in.
Then it was over. Royce and Phillip, swung downstream and in toward the bank, got their feet under them.
Royce stood, breathing hard, then, shaking his head like a dog, he hoisted the girl free of the water, and holding her to his chest, walked, slowly and carefully, across the rocky riverbed. Phillip staggered up, then followed alongside. He reached over and lifted the girl’s hair from her face, tapped her cheek—and she coughed. Weakly at first, but when Royce reached the bank and laid her on her side, she retched, coughed hard, then started to cry.
Minerva fell to her knees beside her. “It’s all right. Your mother and father are coming—they’ll be here soon.” She glanced at Royce; his chest was rising and falling like a bellows, and water ran off him in streams, but he was unharmed, unhurt. Alive.
She looked up at the other ladies, gathering in an anxious, exclaiming knot on the bank above. Anne had come to stand beside her. Minerva pointed at the shawls some of the others carried. “Shawls—the woolen ones.”
“Yes, of course.” Anne climbed the bank partway and reached up, beckoning.
Two ladies surrendered their shawls readily, but Aurelia sniffed. “Not mine.”
Royce had bent over, hands braced on his knees. He didn’t bother looking up. “Aurelia.”
His voice cut l
ike a whip; Aurelia all but flinched. She paled. Her face set in sour lines, but she shrugged off her shawl and tossed it at Anne—who caught it, turned, and hurried back to Minerva.
She’d stripped off the girl’s hat and sodden pinafore, and had been chafing her small icy hands. She stopped to take one of the shawls—Aurelia’s large warm one. Shaking it out, with Anne’s help she wrapped the girl tightly, then wound the other shawls about her hands and feet.
Then the girls’ parents and the rest of the farmer’s party arrived; they’d had to backtrack to cross the river by a wooden bridge higher up.