The sound of oars against water ceased, leaving only the night sounds of chirping birds and the croak of frogs. Though Clay could not yet see the men, he knew they must be very close.

Then he heard the soft thud of what must be the hull of a boat, followed by what sounded like coughing in the distance. Of course. No wonder the old man was watching tonight. He was waiting for the Mexicans.

For what purpose, Clay could not say. Nor could he say with any assurance on which side the old man’s allegiance might lie.

With three men theoretically making their way toward him from two different directions, Clay had to think fast in order to decide what to do. The underbrush behind him was too thick to make an escape without being heard, but staying where he was meant risking discovery and being outnumbered.

Going north served no purpose other than to escape. At some point he would have to retrace his steps and come back this direction to return to the fort.

A good soldier knew when to advance and when to retreat. Until he had sufficient weaponry or assistance, any rational man would consider retreat the best option. Clay should either move north up the trail and leave these three to whatever they were up to or cross the river and go south to Quintana.

But of all the things Clay Gentry had been accused of, being a rational man was not one of them. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then began quietly making his way toward the river’s edge where he could see exactly where the two Mexicans had landed their boat.

He found the craft, a crude dugout canoe much like the pirogues the people in Grandfather’s part of Louisiana used, but it was empty. Seizing his chance, he slipped into the river. Despite the warm October temperatures, the water was almost icy.

Stifling a gasp, he set to his task. Something that looked very much like a black snake zigzagged in front of him. Still he continued to move toward the spot where the strangers had departed their craft.

With care to keep absolutely quiet, Clay grasped the rough wood and gave it a strong pull in an attempt to haul it away from the bank. When that failed, he tried again.

“Did you hear that?” came the whispered Spanish words that signaled the men had not gone far.

Clay froze, his fingers still curled around the pirogue. The black snake slithered past again, this time closer than before. He closed his eyes and ignored it. Ignored the need to flee.

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.”

“You’re imagining things, jefe,” the other said. “I will show you.”

Footsteps moved swiftly toward him. Clay took a deep breath and ducked under the water. The snake once again found him, this time swirling so close that the scales of its tail brushed Clay’s cheek as it swam past.

When his lungs burned with the need for air, he slowly resurfaced. Apparently the man’s point had been made, for neither of them was in sight.

Going back to his work, Clay tugged the pirogue free of the mud on the second try, and then gave it a shove that sent it toward the center of the river. Without their means of escape, the duo would be landlocked. There would be no returning to whatever location they set off from, at least not by means of the river.

Rather than risk meeting the Mexicans or the old man on the path, Clay swam as far as he could downstream and then cautiously climbed onto the bank. Teeth chattering and soaked to the bone, he hauled himself up to a standing position and listened for any signs of life. The surf roared to the south, and all along the banks frogs croaked softly.

A cracking noise split the night, echoing as white-hot fire slammed Clay’s shoulder and sent him reeling back into the river. Icy water covered him as another shot sizzled into the river just shy of him.

Breath failed him as he struggled to find air. An image appeared of a hand that reached toward him, but was this friend or foe?

Clay shoved away the hand and kicked against the current. The action caused him to bob to the surface, but he did not dare remain there. Instead he gasped in a deep breath of air and tried to think.

The best he could determine, the shot had come from downriver. Whether it came from a person on the riverbank or a vessel headed his way, he could not say. In either case, the only way to escape was to swim against the tide.

And so he did. Or tried, anyway, for only one of his arms seemed to be of any use.

Another shot rang out, once again landing too close. He was moving slower now, having to lift his head above water more often. Thoughts were becoming more scattered. Difficult.

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.”

That much he could recall, though he heard it now in his mother’s voice and not his own. In this moment, the God of feathers did not seem so silly. Did not seem so far-fetched, even if escape from this impossible situation did.

Clay tried to pray. Tried to form a thought that would give the Lord glory while also asking Him for help, but the words wouldn’t come.

A solid object slammed into him. Out of instinct, Clay reached for it with his good hand and felt wood.

The pirogue. Climb in.

The first clear thought in what seemed like an eternity. Somehow he managed to slump over the edge of the pirogue and fall in. The landing was hard and painful, but he was no longer fighting the muddy river water for each breath.

Clay lay on his back and closed his eyes. His shoulder throbbed and his mind still refused to rest on more than the simplest of thoughts.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Stay very still. Ignore the pain.

These things he did as the craft jarred to a halt. He opened his eyes to stare up at the clusters of stars overhead. Though the water swirled past, the vessel remained as if rooted in place.

The shouts of men drifted over him, but his brain refused to determine what language they spoke. He tried to turn in their direction but saw only wood.

The sides of the crude vessel were low enough to offer very little protection, this much he could determine. Something zinged past.

Wood splintered. A searing pain scratched across him, though he was too numb to determine where.

Clay remained perfectly still for what seemed like an eternity. Finally the shouting and the shooting ceased.

“Unless you wish to swim out to the sandbar where it is lodged, the boat is lost,” someone said, and this time he recognized the language as Spanish. “Though you can continue to waste your time shooting at it if you wish. I’m sure the soldiers at the fort would thank you for leading them directly to us.”

“I do not, jefe,” the other said. “And I had not thought of the noise bringing the soldiers.”

“Then we go afoot and do not tell anyone how the canoe was lost, yes?”

If the other fellow responded, Clay did not hear it. There was no sound of footsteps retreating, only the rush of water on all sides and the distant sound of night creatures.

He might have closed his eyes, could have even slept, but when he awoke, the stars were still scattered overhead, only now they were not in the same location.

It did not take someone skilled in navigating by the stars to know the pirogue had moved during the night. Still, what he saw overhead made no sense. Rather than drifting southward downstream with the swift current, he had somehow gone north upstream.

The sky began to spin. Clay closed his eyes and then opened them again, though it felt like hours in between the two.

A slight lift of his head confirmed the vessel was no longer stuck on a sandbar in the river. Instead he was completely surrounded by the thick reeds that grew at the edge of the river.

Movement of any kind cost him with a pain that took his breath. Clay ignored it to look down at his right hand and saw his fingers wrapped around an oar.

Blood stained his left arm and pooled beneath his closed fist. When he opened the fingers of his right hand, a tiny feather rested there.

Tucking the feather into his pocket, Clay dropped the oar, sucked in a deep breath, and forced himself to attempt to rise into a sitting position. On the third try, he managed it. A look down sent the world spinning again.

So much blood.

Clay took in a shuddering breath and forced himself to assess the damage. Two direct hits. Something lodged in his left shoulder. The second had gone clean through his left arm. Blood trailing a line on his abdomen meant a third had come far too close to doing more damage.

But he was alive. Clay held on to that thought until it too disappeared into the fog that surrounded him. He swayed but caught himself.

Sleeping could come later. For now, he had to keep his wits.

It was impossible to see where the river ended and the riverbank began. A reach with his good hand touched only water reeds. And yet he must find land.

“I will not die here,” he said under his breath as he tried to make sense of his options.

The oar. He swiped at it only to fall forward and land on his face. The pain pinned him in place, but his fingers found what he was reaching for.

Now he could use the oar to move the boat. But first he had to find his way into a sitting position again.

Using the oar as a crutch beneath his good arm, Clay shifted position. He was almost upright again when a cracking sound split the silence of the night.

The oar crumbled beneath him, and Clay jolted backward. With his gaze focused upward, one by one the stars went out.

Then there was only darkness.

“Is he dead?” asked Lucas, the older of Ellis’s two little brothers.

Mack, the baby of the family, kneeled nearby. At barely six years old, he did not need to see such a gruesome sight. Thankfully, he was too enamored of a frog to notice.

Ellis Valmont looked down at the tattered sleeve of a uniform that might once have been a shade of grey. Crimson stained the cloth and the fingers that curled beneath it.

Still, she could see enough of the fabric to know this man was with those who arrived at Velasco just yesterday. What was he doing here?

The dark-haired soldier lay in the pirogue as if he was sleeping, though his face was pale and his lips nearly blue. Had Ellis not seen the uneven movement of his chest as the stranger struggled to breathe, she would have thought him dead.

“Who’s dead?” Mack called as he forgot about the frog to hurry over in their direction.

“No one is dead. Lucas, go and get Mama and Mr. Jim.”

“What if they’re busy?” he asked.

“Tell them I need their help and that it is more important than anything they’re doing. Can you do that?”

“Sure,” eight-year-old Lucas said with a lisp caused by his missing two front teeth.

“All right, then. Get on with you, and hurry.” As Lucas trotted off, Ellis moved to shield the youngest Valmont from the gruesome sight. “And take Mack with you.”

“I don’t want to go,” Mack whined. “I want to see who is dead.”

“No one is dead,” Ellis said in a tone she hoped would indicate she no longer wished to argue the point.

She turned the little boy around by his shoulders and gave him a gentle push. Of all the Valmonts, she might have the reputation as the stubborn one, but little Mack would likely soon surpass her.

Mack hated to be told what to do and despised the fact that the honor to do things first generally fell to older siblings. As much as he hated these things, however, there was one thing he hated more: He hated to lose. At anything.

Ellis knelt down beside him and looked into the little boy’s eyes. With his flame-colored hair and green eyes, he was her carbon copy. “Mack,” she said gently. “What if you were to beat Lucas back to the house? Then you would be the one to fetch Mama, not Lucas.”

His eyes widened. “I would, wouldn’t I?”

“See how slow Lucas is walking? I bet if you hurry you can beat him.”

Those wide eyes narrowed and his smile returned. “I am gonna beat him. You just watch me.”

“You run fast now,” she said as she stood. “I’ll watch.”

Off he went, easily catching up with Lucas. A moment later, he headed into the thicket with Lucas trailing behind.

Ellis waited until both boys disappeared down the path. The house wasn’t far from here. Still, she ought to wait for Mama and Mr. Jim.

“I can’t just stand around doing nothing,” she said under her breath as she turned back to the river.

The pirogue where the man was lying looked very much like the Cajun-style dugout pirogue that had been stolen from a neighbor a few weeks ago. She made a note to check and see if that vessel had been found. If it hadn’t, this man might be the culprit.

Perhaps the Grey changed his mind about his service to the cause of Texas. That would certainly explain why a man who was assigned to a regiment quartered at the fort would be wandering the river during the night.

Whether or not he was a thief, the man was in need of medical care. She took a step to the left to see if she could determine a way to pull the flat dugout vessel onto dry land. The pirogue had been lodged on a sandbar in the reeds for what appeared to be a few hours, for the sand was already collecting on the downstream side.

Worse, the thing was wedged right into the place where Papa swore the black snakes nested. Ellis looked around for a stick but found nothing she could use to move the pirogue.

Praying Papa was wrong, Ellis knelt down and reached across the distance to give the pirogue a tug. The soldier inside made a soft groan.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, “but you cannot stay out here in the water. Whoever you are, we’ve got to get you out before the snakes come out at dusk.”

The black snakes that hid in the reeds and slithered along the river’s edge after sunset where Ellis’s worst nightmare and greatest fear. She’d been bitten once, but once was quite enough. As the story went, Mama’s cure was the only reason she survived.

Another tug and Ellis decided she would never be able to budge the pirogue from the bank. Ignoring her fears, she lifted her skirts just enough to edge out beyond the bank to where the muddy brown water swirled around her legs and ruffled the reeds.

From her vantage point she could see the soldier’s face. And, though splashed with streaks of blood and marred by a nose that appeared to be broken, it was a handsome face. A memorable face.

Ellis gasped. She had seen this man before.