She screamed when Josh put his hand on his shoulder. When she turned, she saw in a flash of lightning that he was thinking exactly what she had been thinking, that it was no use, that the only way they’d find Tem was by accident.
“I’m going above,” he yelled, pointing to above the boulder that contained the snakes.
Carrie nodded at him, then returned to her search, but a moment later came a piercing whistle that she knew was from Josh. She went running toward it, scrambling up rocks, scraping her hands, her feet slipping.
Josh was standing on the side of a ledge, and when she reached him, he held out his hand. In it was a piece of blue cloth, and she knew it was from Tem’s shirt.
Turning away, he started climbing again, Carrie right behind him.
At the top of the rock was a ridge, a ridge that was on the side of nothing. For many, many feet down they could see nothing but darkness.
“The river,” Josh shouted, pointing down into the black nothingness.
For the first time Carrie felt cold. The piece of cloth proved that Tem had come this way, but if he’d fallen, he would have fallen down into that ravine.
Josh was moving ahead, leaving Carrie standing and looking down into the blackness. When a flash of lightning came, she turned, then screamed at what she saw.
Josh was beside her in seconds. “What is it?” he shouted.
Carrie pointed into the darkness.
Lightning came again, and then Josh saw her too. For a moment Carrie had thought the child she’d seen was a figment of her imagination, for she was just a bit of a thing, no more than six or seven years old, but she looked more like some unusual breed of animal than a child. In spite of the hard, driving rain, her hair was standing out from her head in a wild, tangled mass, and she wore torn, primitive leather clothing, her feet bare.
Stepping in front of Carrie, Josh began to walk toward the child, but when the lightning came again, she was gone. “Where is he?” Josh shouted into the darkness, the rain lashing him in the face. “Where is he?”
Moving toward Josh, Carrie put her hands on his shoulders and her head against his back.
When more lightning came, the child was there again. This time Josh practically ran after her, but she was too elusive to catch.
“She knows where Tem is,” Josh shouted. “I know she does.”
At the next lightning streak, the child showed herself again, this time standing on the very edge of the ridge, so close that Carrie held her breath in fear. As the light highlighted the girl, she pointed—and she was pointing straight down the side of the ridge.
“Is it Tem?” Josh shouted, and the girl nodded once before the dark again hid her.
“I’m going down,” Josh said as he turned to Carrie. “Stay here and wait for me. I’ll get the rope. Don’t leave this place.”
Seconds later Josh was half-running, half-sliding down the rocky slope to the horses and equipment below.
Carrie stayed in exactly the same spot, afraid to move even a step for fear of losing the place where the girl had pointed. Every time there was a flash of lightning, she looked for the girl, but she didn’t see her. Yet, she knew as well as she’d ever known anything that the child was nearby and watching them.
Josh came back up the rock with the rope coiled about his arm, but when he went to a tree to tie it, Carrie yelled at him, “No!”
“I’m going!” Josh shouted back at her.
It took Carrie a moment to make him understand that she wasn’t protesting his going, that her objection was to the knot he was using to tie the rope around the tree. Taking the thick rope from him, she expertly and quickly tied it to the tree in one knot, then looped the rope and tied another. It was so difficult talking that she didn’t try but made motions to tell Josh that she would help pull on the rope when he came back up, when he returned carrying Tem, that is.
When Josh realized what she was doing, he looked at her in a way that he’d never looked at her before: with admiration and thanks.
Holding on to the rope, Josh walked to the edge of the ridge and began to lower himself. He did it as though he’d done it many times before and knew exactly what he was doing.
Carrie stood at the top, her eyes straining to see him, listening should he whistle.
Within minutes Josh came back up the rope, climbing hand over hand with the agility of the very best deckhands, and Carrie wondered if he’d ever spent time on a ship.
There was joy on his face, such joy as Carrie had never seen before, and she knew then that Tem was all right. Tears mixed with the rain on her face.
“He’s there and he’s alive, but he’s unconscious. I have to get him up,” Josh said, shouting into her face. “I need to make a sling of sorts.”