Edi was battling hair and rain to see what was going on, but she didn’t dare let go of the pole. Turning to her left, she saw that it was part of the bridge, maybe something used to ferry barges across the river. Slowly, she began to use her arms to pull herself along to try to reach the end of the bridge and the land.
As she moved, she wondered what the man was doing with Sergeant Clare. Would the old man think he was dead and make no attempt to save him? If Edi could get to him she thought maybe she could apply some modern lifesaving technique
s, and maybe she could get the water out of Sergeant Clare’s lungs so he wouldn’t die.
“Come on!” she heard a man shout. “Only another foot and you’re home.”
Her arms were killing her and she was shaking with cold and fatigue, but she looked up and saw Sergeant Clare standing there. The rain was so hard and the mist so dense that she thought maybe she was seeing a ghost. Had he died and his spirit come back to help her across the raging river?
“Come on, Harcourt!” he shouted. “Get your back into it. I’d come out there and save you but I’m too beat up. You’ll have to do something for yourself this time. You can’t always depend on me to save you.”
“You?” she managed to say. “Why you—” As anger surged through her, she began to kick with her long legs and she pulled harder on the pole. But even with her anger and her renewed energy, she was giving out. Instead of coming closer, the bridge seemed to be going farther away.
She blinked hard to clear the water out of her eyes, but things were going hazy.
In the next minute, she felt a strong arm around her. “I have you now,” she heard in her ear. “You’re safe now. Let go of that thing and let me have you.”
She obeyed the voice. Her arms fell away from the metal and went around his neck, and her head collapsed against him. She felt him carry her out of the water, and she felt someone else’s hands on her.
“She dead?” she heard a man ask.
“No,” she heard Sergeant Clare say. He was carrying her and she could feel the drag of his leg from the brace that he still wore. All she’d done was loosen the knee hinge; she hadn’t removed it.
“Your arm?” she managed to whisper as she remembered that it had been bleeding.
“I can’t figure out if my arm hurts more or my leg. The dilemma is keeping me from fainting.”
“Good,” she said as she snuggled closer to him. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.
When Edi awoke, she was in a bed on a soft mattress and there was sunlight coming through the window. Her head ached and her arm was sore, but she didn’t feel too bad. She looked about the room. It was small, with flowered wallpaper, and two beds. The bed beside hers was made up with an old quilt and fat pillows. There was a big old wardrobe against one wall and a dressing table along the other. The facing wall had a window with lace curtains.
When she tried to sit up, she was a bit dizzy, but her head cleared in a minute. She heard a soft knock on the door, then Sergeant Clare came in carrying a tray with one arm. His right arm was in a sling.
“You’re awake,” he said, smiling, then gave his concentration back to the tray when it nearly unbalanced.
“Let me—” Edi began as she started to get out of bed, but then she realized she was wearing only her peach rayon teddy. She hastily pulled the covers back over her. “Where are my clothes?”
“In the kitchen, dry and waiting for you,” David said as he set the tray down on the end of her bed, then stood up and flexed his arm. “You can stop looking at me like I’m about to attack you. It’s too late for modesty.”
Edi didn’t drop the covers from around her neck. “What does that mean?”
He sat down on the opposite bed, picked up a toast wedge, and began to eat it. “If you don’t want that food, I’ll take it.”
“I need something to put on,” she said.
Reluctantly, he got up, went to the wardrobe, and pulled out a man’s shirt. It was huge and nearly worn out, but Edi took it and put her arms in the sleeves. When she was covered, she bent toward the tray and poured herself a cup of tea. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Where are we? How soon can we get out of here and get the magazine?”
“Which answer do you want first?”
“All of them,” she said.
“The accident happened yesterday and we’re now at the home of Hamish Trumbull.”
Edi stopped with a piece of toast to her mouth.
“It seems that Mrs. Pettigrew was so sure we wouldn’t make it over the bridge that she called a neighbor who told ol’ Hamish to get down to the river to save us.”
“But you did make it over the bridge,” Edi said, sounding affronted. “If it hadn’t been for that cow—”