Merline Lovelace by A Savage Beauty Page B

her into the trees. By the time they returned, the men were up and moving.
    Lieutenant Wilkinson was still in the grip of his illness. Too weak to walk, he climbed into the boat.The soldiers manning the paddles were forced to chop and hack at the ice obstructing the channel as the river carried them along. The rest shuffled along the bank in snowshoes fashioned from bent hickory frames interwoven with strips of rawhide.
    Daniel took point and ranged ahead with One Eye. The going was slow and arduous. They’d traveled far fewer miles than either liked when they reached a wide bend in the river. Squinting through the snow, Daniel tried to see what lay beyond the turn.
    “How far to the winter camp of the Quapaw?”
    One Eye held up two fingers, thought for a moment and uncurled a third.
    Hell! Two days’ march yet. Maybe three if the storm didn’t let up. At this rate Christmas would be come and gone before they reached the camp.
    All reports indicated it was a good-size gathering. Lieutenant Wilkinson was especially anxious to meet with Cash-she-se-gra, chief of the Quapaw. The general had given his son specific orders to establish friendly relations with the chief, known by the English name of Big Track. Daniel had an idea the general was more interested in the lucrative fur trade centered around the Three Rivers area than in formal treaties between the Osage and the United States, but at this point, he didn’t much care. All he wanted was to get his ragtag band out of the cold and snow.
    He shuffled forward and had covered another quarter mile or so when he heard shouts. His stomach tightening, he whirled and plunged back through the tracks he and One Eye had just made. When hereached the others, he saw at a glance what had happened.
    The damned dugout had snagged on a submerged tree and tipped over again, dumping its occupants and cargo into the river. The current had already carried Private Wilson some ways downstream. Huddleston and Boley had gone after him. Lieutenant Wilkinson clung to the overturned boat with one arm, his other wrapped around the leather pouch containing the box with his journal and the circumferentor. Private Bradley had gone into the river, too, but he’d floundered onto the ice and was scuttling toward the bank on hands and knees. The ice splintered under him, each snaking crack sounding as sharp and ominous as a pistol shot in the cold air.
    Wind That Cries stood on the bank, unwilling to add his weight to the ice for fear it would shatter and take both him and Bradley in. It was the girl who threw off her heavy buffalo robe and stretched out onto the ice.
    “Take my hand!”
    Bradley lifted his head at her shout, lurched forward and made a grab for her arm. Their fingers touched just as the ice came apart. For a second Daniel thought Louise might have him, but their hold was too loose or his weight too much for her. With a curse that carried clearly on the frigid air, Bradley sank into the dark water.
    “Help them!” Daniel shouted to One Eye. “I’ll go for the lieutenant.”
    Dropping his rifle, he kicked off his snowshoes,tossed aside his buffalo robe and plunged down the riverbank. The hides wrapped around his boots slithered on the snow-covered ice, but he moved fast enough to make the channel mid-river before the slick crust broke under him. Gritting his teeth, he sank into the icy water.
    The cold was like a blade plunged straight to the heart. It drove the air from his lungs, stunned him into immobility. He went down, eyes open, arms dangling like dead weights at his sides. With his mind shut down and his whole body frozen in shock, he stayed under for what seemed like two lifetimes, until finally—finally!—he forced his limbs to move.
    He broke to the surface mere feet from the overturned craft. Shoving its prow toward the bank, he swam the hollowed-out log and the officer clinging to it to shore. By the time they reached the bank, Bradley was out. Wet and shivering, he