I’m gonna kill him. Her, too, if I have to. Guess I do have to, since she heard everything I said about startin’ the fire, and she watched me draw my bead on Tom. Things can sure get into a mess with a woman around. He shoulda never let her stay. She never shoulda been so pretty in the first place.
No two ways about it, now I’m gonna have to do it.
Price expertly rolled the log under his feet to within a few yards of the cedar to which Tom and Meggy clung. “Think yer pretty smart, don’tcha?” he yelled.
“Matter of fact,” Tom replied, “I’m feeling more disgusted than smart.”
“Yeah? How’s that?” Price poled the log closer. “Should have shot you both when I had the chance.”
Tom snorted. “I should have run you off this mountain like a wild dog when I had the chance. Hindsight’s not worth much at this point.”
“Wild dog, huh?” Price snickered. “That’s real army humor, Colonel. Considerin’ that I’m the one that’s run you, and the lady, off of Devil’s Camp. Kinda makes me the one in charge, now, don’t it?”
Tom nudged Meggy’s booted foot with his chin.
“How do you figure that, Verg? None of these river pigs crawling over this mess of timber seems to be taking orders from you.”
“They don’t matter,” Price scoffed. “It’s you that matters. You an’ Miss Meggy are gonna do what I say.”
“Sure, Verg.” The log Price was walking edged alongside. Tom pressed Meggy’s foot again. When the two timbers thunked together, Meggy relinquished her hold, slid off her perch and slipped beneath the surface without a sound. It took all Tom’s willpower not to reach for her.
Good girl. Now just let us slide past before you come up.
“What the—?” Price jabbed his peavey into the river. “Where the hell is she?” He stabbed downward again, swearing in frustration.
With his last ounce of strength, Tom pushed himself up with his good arm and maneuvered his body until he sat straddling the thick cedar log. It started to roll under him, and he made a grab for Price’s cant hook.
“Oh no, you don’t,” the logger snarled. He danced backward out of reach. “No reason you shouldn’t drown right along with the lady.”
He rammed the pointed tip into Tom’s log and shoved hard. Tom felt the log beneath his knees start to turn over. He lunged for the birdcage, grabbed it up and tossed it toward Price. The terrified raven flapped and squawked as the cage sailed toward its target. “Broke-broke-more-more-nevermore.”
For the first time since he’d adopted the nestling, Tom was glad he’d taught the bird to talk. Price jerked backward in surprise, but managed to keep his balance while the cage splashed into the water and bobbed downriver. Tom watched it float out of reach, then glimpsed a dark head break the surface and a small white hand close around the rope. His heart hammered until he thought his chest would burst. Now all he had to do was deal with Price.
The peavey bit again. This time, Tom leaned toward it, grasped the tip and yanked it forward. The sharp metal sliced into his palm, but he didn’t let go. Price, clinging to the other end, shoved back, and the two men began a desperate battle for control.
Tom rammed the tool backward, forcing Price to fight for balance as the slippery log spun under his feet. Price recovered and jabbed the peavey forward, but Tom was ready for him. He let the tip slide so close to his calf he could feel the cold metal through his trouser leg.
Then, instead of thrusting the peavey away in the same seesaw pattern, he grasped it and yanked it forward, hard. The startled man lost his balance and tumbled into the water. With a cry, he disappeared.
Tom hoisted the hook, waiting for Price to surface. He’d never killed a man in anger. Army fighting had been either a cold, calculated attack or self-defense, never personal hatred. Could he take a man’s life in cold blood? Even a man who had twice tried to kill him? Had tried to harm Meggy?
Gripping the log with his thighs, he scanned the water, the peavey growing heavy in his left hand. He wouldn’t have to aim it, just push Price’s head under and keep him there until…
He dropped his arm and laid the hook along the length of his log. He couldn’t do it.
He watched the shiny surface of the river, but there was no sign of Price. Except for the ripples made by floating logs, the smooth water shone like polished satin. Then, from the far corner of his vision, he saw two things happen at almost the same moment.
In the shallows at the river’s edge, a horse—his horse, if he wasn’t mistaken—dashed forward into the water. The rider reached down to steady a sodden figure in black, swaying in waist-deep water. Against her chest she cradled a birdcage.
He opened his mouth to yell, then caught sight of something else. In the middle of the river, the logs began to jumble up like matchsticks. A center jam. It would take skilled log-walkers hours of wet, dangerous work to sort it out. He strained his eyes, waiting and watching, until finally the truth began to dawn on him.
Price was trapped underneath the pile of logs.
“Tom! Tom! Speak to me, boyo.”
The Irishman worked his way toward him across the drifting logs. Behind him, Eight-Bit Orrin’s powerful arms pushed and shoved with his cant hook to clear a path.
“Tom? I saw Price come after you. What happened?”
Tom pointed at the building logjam.
“Serves him right,” Orrin growled. “Smelled something about the man I couldn’t stomach.”
Tom held O’Malley’s gaze. “Meggy?”
The sergeant tipped his head toward the far bank. “Indian Joe’s got her. She’s safe.”
Tom’s stomach muscles clenched, then began to uncoil. “Guess I’d better go tell her about Price.”
O’Malley snorted. “Guess you’d better go let Fong fix you up, first. Pardon me for puttin’ it like this, Colonel, but…that’s an order.”
Fong lifted Tom’s broken arm and bound it between two splint boards. Though he made little noise, every strangled moan that escaped Tom’s tightly compressed lips brought tears stinging into Meggy’s eyes.
She held his left hand tight in both of hers, but the sight of his sweat-beaded forehead and the occasional gasps that escaped his whitened lips felt like knives slicing into her belly.
Oh, how wrenching it was to care for someone!
How blithe and foolish she had been only a few short weeks ago when she’d come out to marry Mr. Peabody, a man she had never even been introduced to. She hadn’t given a thought to whether she could ever care for him. At the burial, staring down at his stiff body lying in the coffin, she had felt nothing at all. She had not known Mr. Peabody, as she now knew Tom. Had not loved him.
She turned her face away. She couldn’t bear to see Tom’s face twist with pain.
Lord, what a puzzle life was. Only fools and spinsters like Aunt Hattie escaped the agony of watching someone they loved suffer. Meggy closed her eyes at the thought.
You, Mary Margaret Hampton, were neither raised to be a fool nor destined to be a spinster. And for that awakening, she had Colonel Tom Randall to thank. She blushed at the unbearably sweet memories she had locked away in her heart.
But what now?
Tom lay half-conscious in the back of a wagon, crushing her fingers every time Fong laid his quick, sure hands on him. When the cook was finished with his ministrations, the men would hitch up a team and drive the colonel into Tennant, where there was a doctor.
From the smoke and ash hazing the air, she knew the fire still burned up on the mountain. Mr. O’Malley had told her the wind was now pushing it east, away from the town and the sawmill five miles downriver at Dixon Landing. It would likely burn itself out before morning.
The crew had finally managed to break up the center jam and form the timber into a huge floating log boom. “Held together with manila rope and spit,” the Irishman joked.
Price’s body had not been found. The only other casualty, besides her realization of a perilously vulnerable heart when it came to the colonel, was the colonel himself.
“Now,” Seth Claymore bragged, “both Colonel Tom ’n me are wounded.” Young men did grow up with the oddest ideas of what constituted manly honor. If she ever had a son…
The thought stopped her heartbeat. “Oh,” she murmured aloud. But first they must be wed!
And Tom had not proposed.
Perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he had gotten too strong a taste of how stubborn and difficult she could be, and he was thinking better of it.
She glanced down at him. Two blue eyes were fixed on her face. “Meggy,” he croaked.
She bit her lip. “Yes, Tom?” She waited an eternity for him to speak. “Yes?”
“Meggy, I’m sorry. That was an awful thing for you to have to undergo.”
“It wasn’t awful, Tom. It was frightening and unsettling, but it never did get to ‘awful’ until this very minute.”
“Had I known—ouch! Do that again, Fong, and you’re fired.”
The slim Chinaman rocked back on his heels. “You not fire me, boss. No, never. Too much exciting happen all time, keep you too busy.”
“Huh.” Tom snorted.
“Besides, you terrible cook. Men not stay one week to cut trees if I not do cooking.”
Tom closed his eyes with a groan. “Meg, tell me. What is it that’s awful about this very minute?”
She would tell him, right here and now. Just blurt it out. Mama would pitch a fit at such unladylike behavior!
Well, she couldn’t help that. She had told him she loved him, right before the fire jumped the river, and when they came up for air he’d never mentioned it. That was what was awful. He hadn’t even acknowledged that he’d heard her!
That was no way to start a proper life together.
O’Malley stepped to her side. “Tom, can you hear me, boyo?”
Tom grunted but didn’t open his eyes.
“Whaddya thinkin’ to do, Tom? After we get you to the doctor, I mean.”
“You mean if the doc doesn’t kill me or truss me up like a Christmas goose so I can’t move?”
The sergeant grinned at Meggy. “Well…I mean, what were you thinkin’ about that fine log boom the crew manhandled together? Just leave it fer the beavers?”
“Tomorrow we’ll push it on down to Dixon Landing.”
“And then what?”
Meggy stilled. Yes, and then what? Was he going to propose or not?
“Then we’ll move on to Number Two Camp and cut some more timber.”
“All of us?” O’Malley gave her a sidelong glance.
“All of us. We’ll keep the two Claymore boys with us. Seth’s going to make a fine skid greaser, once his arm heals. Besides, sending them off to another crew might be dangerous for the young one.”
Meggy resisted the impulse to drop the man’s bandaged hand and stomp away into town on her own. How could he forget about her like this? Why, he didn’t so much as mention her name! Had a few hours in the river made her invisible?
Meggy closed her mind and tried her best to quiet her plunging heart. She would not let it matter. She would lift her chin and straighten her spine and conduct herself like a well-bred Southern lady, even if it killed her.
But it does matter. What would an Oregon woman do?
The sergeant turned toward the men beginning to straggle up from the river. “Load up, boys. Let’s get the colonel into town.”