Keeping Faith. Hannah Alexander

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      Oh, he’d changed, all right. He’d been ravaged by bitterness upon arriving back in St. Louis and finding that Matthew had for sure taken care of Victoria. He’d married her.

      And Joseph became a man who led others across country, and saved his money and brooded about the treachery of the friend he’d once trusted and the woman he still loved.

      * * *

      “My friends, it’s time to start treatment.” Victoria leaned over Luella and nodded to Joseph, Mr. Reich and Mr. McDonald, who held others over the logs, facedown. “This won’t be comfortable, but we need to try to prevent contagion if we can.” She raised her eyebrows at Joseph and they got started.

      Despite all, she couldn’t prevent a lingering look at Joseph. He appeared to have everything in hand, up to and including a threat that if the Johnston boys didn’t move their wagon they might well lose it. Buster didn’t listen.

      Despite Joseph’s deep, calm voice and manner, the anxiety in Victoria’s belly tightened like a snake she and Matthew had once seen wrapped around a man’s arm when they journeyed overseas. The man eventually lost his arm. What was this wagon train going to lose as a result of this catastrophe?

      The clouds lifted as she worked with Luella, but the sunbeams didn’t lighten her spirits. Too much could go wrong, and she felt the burden of responsibility for these people. Would Matthew have done this? Would he have had other options? When working with him, she’d felt confident in her abilities, but after losing her mentor she’d lost that confidence, despite the obvious approval Matthew had always shown for her skills.

      Luella gagged on the cup of salted water.

      “I’m sorry you have to go through this,” Victoria said, holding her friend as the poor woman lost the water she’d swallowed.

      Luella nodded and took another sip.

      Victoria watched Joseph repeat the same actions with Claude and one of the younger men. He worked with such gentleness. What a good doctor he would have made. If she’d known ahead of time the heartbreak that would ensue after she refused to accompany Joseph to his parents’ Georgia plantation, would she have gone? What a mystery about the fiancée, Sara Jane. She’d never forgotten that name, and she needed to know more. What would their lives have been like now if she’d given in to his pleas to go with him? They would never know.

      She studied Joseph’s firm-set chin, his narrowed eyes. Then she allowed her gaze to wander across the expanse of his shoulders, the corded muscles down his neck. When he’d first walked into the clinic last month, she’d nearly rushed into his arms, all dignity abandoned. It was a good thing she’d learned better self-control in her profession. Memories of her husband’s murder seven months ago, however, had returned in a tempest. Seeing Joseph had made her feel safe for the first time since her widowhood, despite old resentments from their past.

      And yet, was she safe? Were any of them safe? She could still close her eyes and see that telltale hoofprint of the horse Thames had ridden the day he’d killed Matthew. She’d seen them on this very trail a couple of days ago, that distinctive print packed into mud and left to harden.

      After her first sighting, she’d tried to tell herself the horse would have been reshod by now, but what if the horseshoe was shaped to the hoof? If that were so, then it would be easy to track him across the state. She just needed to make sure he didn’t track them.

      She would tell Joseph about the whole thing as soon as she knew for sure. Maybe she could find more tracks once they crossed the creek. Fresh tracks in the mud, perhaps?

      She was just finishing with Luella and checking the others when a whoop and a loud cry reached them from the wagon camp.

      “Oh, Lord, have mercy!” Audy Reich called out from her perch beside the fire where she’d been soaking beans to cook. She jumped up and ran through the trees toward them. “I hear some mighty cracklin’ from up north. Captain, better get that young man away from there. Something big’s coming down that creek!”

      Chapter Three

      Loud pops resounded through the forest like shots from a rifle. Hundreds of rifles in excruciating succession. But Victoria knew that sound. She’d heard the same several times when caught in an ice storm and the ice grew so thick on the branches that they broke. Limbs were breaking.

      The creek had claimed another tree, and this one was a giant. She glanced downhill at the creek and saw a huge shadow being thrust forward by the water—for sure a giant tree uprooted. Its limbs grasped out toward everything near the swollen creek, and from the vantage point of the hill on which she stood, she saw the tree wrenching with it other trees, rocks and mud, creating a dam that blocked the motion of the water.

      The creek spread and splashed far above its banks. The dam would break at any second. She could hear the creaking of wood and rumble of water under pressure. The forest blocked her sight of the place where Joseph had left Buster moping beside his wagon near the creek.

      “Buster!” Gray’s shout of horror bled into the roar of the water. He shot through the trees and down the hill toward his brother with the speed of a wildcat.

      Joseph and Reich leaped forward and raced down the hillside behind him. Heidi started to cry, and her mother put an arm around her.

      Mr. Reich’s voice rang out through the valley. “Get away from the creek!”

      The man’s voice boomed with authority, but Victoria knew how little regard Buster had for that. She left the others and followed the men, sliding through the waterlogged forest, bracing against the trees until she reached a ledge where she could see directly down the hill. What she saw terrified her.

      * * *

      Joseph caught up with Reich, bracing for a wall of water to come crashing down on them at any moment. He couldn’t forget his friend Johnston who’d scouted for Joseph a couple of years and once risked his own life to save Joseph from a rampaging brown bear. It would destroy Johnston if his sons never made it out of Missouri.

      Gray reached Buster seconds before Joseph and Reich. He grabbed his brother’s arm and gestured wildly toward the impending dam break.

      Buster turned and looked up Flat Creek. “No! We have to get the wagon first. Gray, help me!”

      “You can’t save it now, Buster,” Joseph called. “It’s too late. Get out of there or you’ll be killed.”

      Buster broke free of Gray’s hold and lunged for the wagon hitch. “It’s all we’ve got.”

      “You still have your life,” Reich said. The big man reached for Buster’s arm and dragged him from the hitch. “Now, boy. You’ve got to come now! Gray, get back up that hill. Go on!”

      Gray hesitated. “Buster, they’re risking their lives for you. Don’t let more men die for you!” His expression held fury and horror as he obeyed Reich and ran.

      Joseph heard another series of deafening cracks and looked up to see the water pour past the dam of debris. The fountain of water became a flood, and then the natural dam gave way with the sound of thunder. Joseph joined Reich to jerk Buster from the oncoming tempest of an evergreen with limbs the size of horses, which reached past the farthest edges of the flooded creek bank.

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