Whatever it was
On the move through the wilderness with their pioneering friends, Valentine entered the tributary first. He was caught by surprise to have to discipline the horses causing fits and so could not hear his wife yelling behind him. Even if he had, he would have ignored it, for if he were to bend to her now, he would lose everything for the strong currents. Winded and wet, he finally was on solid footing and turned around. When he saw the gash in her forehead, he pivoted the horses around to a bull’s eye view, alarmed even more so by the catastrophe of her bun and bonnet. Her hair tangled and heavy. He scanned the wagon and began to count. He did it again. For once in his life he wanted to poor at math and memory.
His son Henry was already running the river bank, scanning for his little sister, promising his mother that he would not go into the water if it were white capped, even though she could not hear him confirm he understood the danger. He followed the edge, unaware as to his progress, realizing that he was out of sight of the caravan when he saw her limp body caught in a jam of felled trees. Balancing himself, he determined that he would not allow himself to fall. But to reach Cornelia and get her onto the log, he would have to find a heroic strength in his arms. He did his best to keep them dry. He tried not to look at her sweet, sleeping face and prayed to God for stamina. There they were, together in a holding pattern that he could manage. He held her in his arms the way he wanted his mother to see them when they would be found, as if he was reading to her.
It took a chain of two or three men to wade into the water to turn Cornelia over her mother, who found another reserve of tears.
Henry, though, didn’t need assistance and wanted to be stealth as he quickly found dry pants. Someone would have to dig a grave and he wanted to do it by himself, then he wanted to start the fire by himself, and then he wanted to brush the horses by himself, and then he wanted to trim and twist the grave markers by himself. When it came time to sleep, he dragged his blankets as far from the crowd as possible, inching away more and more, determined that he would not allow himself to fall in for the disturbance trying now to throw him off, wondering if what he experienced that afternoon was the nature of frontier business transactions.
Either way, he wasn’t going to let it make him more wet, whatever it was.