Carol Arens - Rebel With A Cause

Missy snuggled into the cocoon-like shelter. The rain on the canvas had slowed to a steady splat.

Hours must have passed. It ought to be morning since the absolute black inside the tarp had given way to shadowed gray.

She felt rested … even energized. Such amazing things had happened in twenty-four hours. Her fingers fairly itched to write them down.

Zane’s slow, even breathing told her that he was still asleep … with his arms around her and his chin resting on top of her head! She could only hope that Muff would not need to get out. It would be fine to lie here until the rain quit, feeling the slow rise and fall of her hero’s chest, heartbeat to heartbeat against her own.

Last night, she had taken his advice and gone to sleep at once. Her emotions and her body had been tumbling in confusion and delight. A few hours’ rest to figure them out had been what she needed. Luckily, sleep always came easily, as sweet as a little bird settling into a nest.

Zane didn’t know it, but his vow to put her on the first train home had been wasted breath. It was a wonder that he hadn’t felt her silent bubble of laughter.

Out here in the West, free of the restrictions that Edwin had put on her behavior, she was an independent woman. Yes, indeed, free as a feather on the breeze. She certainly hadn’t come to Nebraska to have Zane Coldridge take Edwin’s place.

Suddenly, Zane sat up. The canvas cocoon burst open with a rush of cold, wet air. Missy noticed his hand reach for his gun even before he had come fully alert.

“What’s wrong?” she sputtered against the rain tapping on her mouth.

He didn’t speak. He touched her lips with two fingers and cocked his head to the left, listening.

She felt a slight rumbling in the ground a second before she heard a great roar and boom pound the air. Muff exploded from the folds of the canvas, trembling and barking.

Zane leaped to his feet and grabbed her hand. He yanked her up and pulled her along toward the rise of the hill.

Through the rain she looked down on the flood that engulfed Green Island.

Water lapped at the front porch of the hotel. While she watched, a wave washed inside the lobby. A man ran out, lifting his feet high in an attempt to clear the water. Luckily, her belongings were on the second floor and likely safe.

“Damn it all to hell,” Zane whispered under his breath and this time his curse didn’t sound at all colorful.

Missy followed his gaze upriver to see a massive chunk of ice floating on the current.

“The gorge up in the narrows must have burst.” He gripped her fingers tighter. “We’ll be safe enough up here.”

He scooped Muff up from the ground and stuffed him in the big pocket of her borrowed coat.

Upriver, several boulder-sized ice chunks bobbed after the first. The river was jammed with them, jouncing and crashing into one another, piling up on the shoreline then breaking loose with furious screeches and cracks.

Zane glanced backward, toward the flattened shelter of the canvas. He let out a shrill whistle, barely audible over the thunder of the ice. A second later his horse trotted into view with mud caked on his large black hooves.

He gripped the horse’s reins tightly in his fist. If it was truly safe on top of this hill, why did Zane seem to lean toward the horse as though ready to leap upon its great wide back at any second? Why did a silent shiver race through his arm and into hers?

The first of the giant ice floes hit the Congregational Church. Its tall spire shook but the building held … for a moment.

Hit by three more vicious blocks of ice, the structure left its foundation in one piece. It floated gracefully away with the current. A bend in the river took it out of view. Only the white steeple bobbed in and out of sight behind a grove of bare-branched trees.

The snap of shattering wood splintered the air. The church steeple tipped, then vanished.

Even over the rumble and thunder of the river, Missy heard the splitting screech go on and on. The church must have broken, shattered like toothpicks among the trees downriver.

Missy looked back toward the hotel. The man who had run outside had taken refuge on the roof. He called out to a group of men running and waving their arms on the far bank.

A pair of ice floes hit the hotel and sent it floating after the church. The man flopped down on his belly and rode the peak of the roof.

“God protect him,” Zane mumbled. Missy barely heard him over the shriek of splitting buildings.

In only a few moments the river had robbed Green Island of every building but one, and that one looked half caved-in and fully flooded.

Many of the structures floated away whole, only to be shattered to bits around the bend. A few others broke apart before her eyes.

Still, the worst wasn’t the ruined homes and businesses. It was the men, women and children clinging to rooftops, floating doors or any other surface to keep from being sucked into the turbulent water or crushed by a random shift of ice.

People from Yankton, the town bordering the north side of the river, ran along the shore, shouting and waving their arms, helpless to do anything more because of the treacherous current.

On the side of the river where Missy and Zane stood, a roof floated past carrying a family of five. They held tight against the violent lurch and sway.

The roof split down the middle when a jag of ice, pushed to the river bottom by a downward wave, suddenly lurched up again. One member of the family, a little girl of no more than three, clung to the separated piece.

The child’s mother tried to scramble into the water but her husband prevented her, holding her down with the weight of his body.

In only a moment, the family’s screams faded, carried away downriver along with the rooftop. The baby’s wail of terror grew louder when the current swirled her fragile section of shingles toward the shoreline not thirty feet below.

“Stay here,” Zane ordered.

He placed the horse’s reins in her hand then ripped the ribbon from his hair. He placed the worn scrap of lace in her fist then curled her fingers around it.

In the second that it took him to scramble down the bank, the roof snagged on the shoreline. It bucked and heaved against the current. It reminded Missy of a drawing she had seen in a dime novel of a wild horse trying to dislodge its rider.

The little girl held on as well as any bronco-buster she had ever read about.

But, Lord have mercy, her strength would be no match for the huge hunk of ice set on a dead aim for her fragile section of roof.

The wood roof pitched upward just as Zane lunged for it. A splinter of wood that felt like a two-by-four stabbed him under his thumbnail. He bit down on the pain and pulled up with straining arms until he got one leg over the rooftop.

A wave from behind washed him up and over. From an arm’s reach away the little girl looked at him. Big brown eyes blinked through hair plastered against her face.

“Hold on, baby, I’ve got you.” He hung on to the slippery roof with his injured hand and ignored the gush of crimson washing from his thumb. He stretched his arm out, straining at the shoulder to touch the child.

He’d just grabbed on to her tiny wrist, cold and slick with water, when a wave tossed her up. Her hand slipped out of his grip. She flew up, over his head. He caught a flash of calico skirt and yanked her back by it.

In the instant that he wrapped her to his chest he spotted the hunk of ice carried in the wave’s wake.

“Hold on.” She looped skinny arms about his neck then squeezed as tight as any binding rope would have. “Good girl.”

The jag of ice crashed down on the roof. It tossed him airborne. Turning and twisting, he dug his fingers into the child’s dress.