Follow the River

Jane cradled her dead friend, Little Deer. She heaved and sobbed without a care whether the scouting Indians slipped down the treacherous enclave of the falls to find her. The hiss of an arrow piercing her broken heart wouldn't be heard over the white water raging beside her.

Jane said goodbye to Little Deer and let the current take her to a final resting place below. Thoughts thundered inside her. She couldn't believe she was alive after the fall, bruised and beaten, but alive. The Indians were on the other side of the raging river. If she followed the river, she might find an emigrant train or army scouts. She pushed herself toward the forested shadows. All her thoughts now funneled toward her son on the prairie and how she needed to live for him.

Hiding in pines, Jane limped along a game trail, but not too far from the sound of the water. She imagined the Indians on the other side searching the river's edge. As she stumbled down the mountain, her muscles cramped and forced her to fall over writhing in pain. She pounded on her legs to get them to work again and then found her feet. But as soon as she stood she was light-headed with blurred vision. Every snap of a twig in the woods or bird call brought a prickly fear to her beleaguered beating heart. But she stumbled forward, one sprained foot in front of the other, until she was forced to crawl when her legs caved again.

Jane crawled into what looked like an abandoned bears den from the uplifted root of a deadfall tree. She took the black earth and rubbed it all over her to hide her scent and blend in with the scenery. Crawling out she took a broke branch, combing away her tracks until she felt safe enough to crawl into the uprooted trees cavernous space where she tucked herself into its surprising warmth. Head between her knees, she let out a low moan, like the groan of animal, attempting to quietly release the pain in her joints.

Despite the gnawing pain of her empty stomach, Her eyelids fell like steel trap doors where sleep brought its own escape from the realities of her desperate plight.


Startled awake, Jane thought she heard voices. She dug the dirt from her eyes and strained her ears to hear. All she heard was the comforting sound of the moving water, but nothing else. Sneaking a look outside like a nervous mouse, she could tell the sun wouldn't last long. She rubbed her shoulders. Her teeth chattered. Her damp clothes were like a wet blanket. She needed to find a safe place where she could spark a fire with the flintstone she found on Little Deer. She considered it a parting gift that would be needed to keep herself alive. Crawling out from her hibernation, she sensed there might be only an about an hour of daylight left.

Jane walked with a limp and kept low, masking herself with the cover of pine branches and elms. She'd stop and listen long enough to first hear the silence and then the faint sound of water. She spooked a deer chewing on a leaf, send the animal scampering through the woods and looking back at her, as if she should be feared.

The landscape changed, as shadows loomed larger on her path. It turned marshy. In some places Jane's bare feet sank in the moist, spongey ground. Gnats circled her. The critters left welts, but she persisted until she found some kind of clearing. She climbed over deadfall trees and slipped past thick ferns. As darkness blanketed the horizon, she spied a pond glowing in the moonlight, cutting off her path and leaving her without a river to follow.

The bugs were relentless, sometimes flying past her parched lips and into her dry mouth or in her ears. She stumbled over broken fallen branches until they cut her legs enough to act is a lure of sweat and blood for more gnats. Her heart clenched. She thought her eyes saw the shadow of a black bear along the murky waters edge.

Panic set in on Jane. She stumbled along in the darkness, sometimes clutching trees until her eyes caught a firelight. At first she thought it was a lightning bug on the water. She stared until her eyes ached. As she smacked her face and forehead, she decided to take a chance. She stumbled along, following the pinprick of light until it appeared as a flickering fire, and then she clearly saw a flaming tongue licking the sky of a clearing beneath a host of stars bright as silver trinkets.

Jane kept a safe distance. She circled the camp and studied the men, not knowing if she could trust them. From what she could see in the firelight, she reckoned them as former rebel soldiers. The unmistakable gray caps on a few, and one who seemed to be in charge had on a gray buttoned up coat. She wasn't sure if she could trust them more than the Indians she was running from.

She kept far enough away, so hungry it felt like her insides would cave. She was cold and couldn't stop the rattling noise of her body and feared they'd hear it. She kept to the dark shadows of the forest, swatting the bugs that thought of her as a blood sucking meal.

As the men lay in a circle with their saddles for a pillow, they passed a bottle. She hoped to wait long enough for them to get sloshed and steal some food, and maybe a horse. Icy air settled into the forest floor, building a wall of fog between her and the men.