Buckskin Brigade by Jim Kjelgaard

Author:Jim Kjelgaard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Colonial Period (1600-1775), Frontier and Pioneer Life, Juvenile Fiction, Exploration & Discovery, Children's Literature, General, Historical, America, Short Stories
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 1947-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

A cake of ice heaved itself like a seal over a corner of the raft and was gone again. The current gnashed white teeth at them, and a little cascade of water surged around their feet. But they were almost halfway across, approaching a small, treeless island that from shore had appeared to be a large ice floe. Then, upriver, a great mass of ice blocks separated and swept down on them. They both strove frantically to steady the raft with their setting poles. But the ice heaved all about them now, gnawing at the logs and ripping the bark away. Out of the corner of his eye, Gist saw the younger man's pole, caught in the ice's inexorable jaws, snap straight up. There was a lurch to the raft, a splash, and Washington was in the river. He disappeared from sight.

But almost instantly he was up again, gasping with cold, clinging desperately with all his strength to the raft. The next cake would crush him. Gist clambered frantically over the ice that had slid up on the raft, reached down, and pulled him aboard. But the raft was dangerously tilted now, with ice below and under it. Footing was precarious, and any sudden movement would throw them both into the water.

For a moment, clear black water showed between them and the island. Gist's decision was instantaneous. With one arm around Washington's shoulders, he slid from the end of the raft into four feet of ice water, and began to push his numb companion toward the island. The water shoaled beneath their feet, and they climbed up on the barren, treeless island. Washington slumped forward, then caught himself and struggled to his feet.

"Keep moving," Gist said sharply. "Stamp your feet. Run around. Keep warm."

"I am warm," Washington mumbled drowsily. "Only tired."

"Listen to me!" Gist said harshly. "Keep moving, or you'll freeze to death. Keep moving, I say!"

"I'll try," said a voice that seemed to come from very far off, from some warm haven that only the speaker knew. "I'll try."

With his own numb hands, Gist beat Washington's already freezing clothing. He pounded the young man's chest, his back, his arms—and kept him walking. His own hands, striking the icy clothing, soon lost all feeling, and he knew his fingers were frozen. But within him rose a fear that dwarfed frozen fingers. Providing they survived the night, could they reach the other side of the river when morning came? To try to swim was death. But, if no other avenue of escape opened, they must try to swim. As if to mock him, the ice cakes, on their way downstream, gritted their frigid, monotonous tune as they scraped past the island.

All night they walked, with only short periods of rest. And to keep them both awake, Christopher Gist talked as he had never talked before. As they kept their lonely vigil with the cold, the hardy frontiersman told of his early years in Virginia and Maryland, of his life on Wills

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