Across Death Valley by Mary Barmeyer O'Brien

Author:Mary Barmeyer O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762755943
Publisher: TwoDot

CHAPTER 29

Back home, she never thought of six miles as a long distance. She had walked twice that far on the leafy, winding trail along the St. Joseph River to nurse her sick cousin Lila. But tonight the stark miles seemed to sprawl out forever. She tried to add up the number of steps in just one mile of dark, stony desert, but couldn’t figure the simple sum.

Johnny and Columbus drooped beside her.

“Six miles. That’s far, isn’t it, Mother?” Johnny’s words were indistinct.

“A little far, yes.” She wanted to say more, but it was such an effort to talk. She forced her words past the cottony swell of her tongue. The night air hurt her raw dry throat, and she tried to swallow.

“We’ll have a drink at the end, though?”

“Yes.”

“How will Kirke take a drink if he won’t wake up?” Col’s eyes were downcast and his voice trembled. He sounded as though his mouth were filled with dry bread.

“Your father will find a way.” She wished she felt as certain as she sounded.

She desperately wanted to hurry ahead and help James find the water that could save Kirke’s life. But Johnny and Col were stumbling badly and their tongues protruded from between their dry lips. If she tried to hurry them, they wouldn’t last the distance. She waited for them to inch their way through the black expanse, stopping every twenty yards or so to rest their wobbling legs.

It was as if she were locked in her old recurring nightmare, the one that made her awaken with a panicked cry. In her dream, she would feel a desperate need to flee from some terrible unseen danger, but her feet would not move. She would be frozen in place, frantic with the urge to run.

She tried silently reciting verses to soothe the frenzied knot in her middle but couldn’t remember the familiar lines. Once she tried to carry Johnny when he stumbled and fell, but he was simply too heavy and she was too weak. On hands and knees, she searched out the trail—a hoof print here, an overturned stone there. The night—and the miles—seemed to go on forever.

It was halfway between midnight and dawn, she estimated, when she thought she smelled water. She wondered if her brain was playing tricks again, as it had when she smelled plum pudding, but a little while later she could make out a high, silhouetted bluff and what looked like leafy undergrowth.

“I hear it!” Johnny cried. “I hear water! Where is it, Mother?”

Unexpected golden firelight flickered off the cliff, and without a moment’s hesitation, the boys began to stumble toward it. Juliet followed. There was an unusual stillness, and she realized that, for once, the cattle weren’t bawling.

She drove her legs toward the firelight. There were few things in life she felt she could never bear, but one of those was the loss of a child. If Kirke had perished for want of water, she knew she would never forgive herself—or James. She lifted her face to the heavens, praying for a miracle.

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