Lake of Fire Read Free Page B

into three channels by gravel bars. “He ought to be able to carryus both across this.”
    Knee-deep, then belly-deep, the horse followed Cord’s urging into the rush. Dante’s feet left bottom, and the river poured into Laura’s boots and climbed her calves.
    A few strong strokes, and the horse trotted up onto the first bar. Water streamed from his flanks. Though the second channel flowed deeper and wider, Dante took it easily. Laura almost relaxed, but the farthest stream appeared the swiftest and deepest.
    She took a grip on her precious journal, making sure it rested in her coat pocket.
    Dante waded in and began to swim gamely, but the current caught him. He stretched his neck and pulled harder, swept downriver faster than he could move across. Laura watched the far bank recede, feeling the water’s cold transmitted through her bones so her pelvis ached.
    The horse’s head surged up. Kicking frantically, he began to founder.
    Water came up around Laura’s waist, and she began to shudder. Try as she might to hold fast, she found her hands free of the solid strap of Cord’s belt. Her fingers brushed the hem of his sheepskin coat; a fleeting touch, and the Snake River seized her.
    Wet clothing dragged Laura under, intense cold numbing her from head to toe. She kept her lips pressed together and forced her eyes open. Ahead, she made out a blurred tangle, but before she could fend off, she slammed into something solid. The air she’dbeen holding in expelled with a whoosh.
    As she was scraped along through a twisted jumble of jammed logs, a thick trunk caught her across the middle.
    All her muscles clenched, and she hung motionless, while the swift current pressed her against the log. Seconds passed like hours, and she fought the rising urge, first a sly whisper, that perhaps she might be able to breathe underwater. It gave way to a raging scream in her chest.
    Then slowly, she felt her head and shoulders pushed forward until she tumbled free. Upside down, water seeping up her nose, she looked for the light and couldn’t see her way.
    Something seized her leg.
    In a rage, she reached to tear at whatever held her. Slippery evergreen branches, covered in algae, bent in her hands. Her eyes were still open in the rushing water, but sparks of light like diamonds began to break up her vision.
    Once more, with waning strength, she reached to break the branches.
    Free again, she exhaled the last air in her lungs and followed her bubbles. When her head broke the surface, light exploded into her eyes.
    She opened her mouth to breathe, but her chest muscles had seized in the cold. Flailing, she felt her boots brush bottom.
    Though the shore was just there, the rounded cobbles gave no purchase and she fell back into the current.The numbing cold was almost benign, the temptation to lie back and let herself float insinuated itself into consciousness.
    “No!” She spat water. She hadn’t watched Angus and the outlaw die just to lose her own life.
    Arms and legs slapping, Laura fought her way into an eddy close to the bank. She grabbed an eroded ball of tree roots.
    For a long moment she lay gasping, with cold water pouring over her legs. Her brain as empty as her reservoir of energy, she was loath to move … but oddly, what made her was the man who had rescued her at the coach.
    What if he needed help?
    Step by painful step, she staggered up the cut bank of the Snake River. Hand over hand, she grasped the pungent pale sage to pull herself up. At the top, she fell to her knees.
    River water rushed from her mouth. Though she was shivering, sweat peppered her face. Doubled over with her forehead touching the ground, and her wet hair hanging in strings around her shoulders; streaks of bright light seemed to stab at her. Helplessly, she retched.
    Clamping her tongue between her teeth, she forced herself to breathe evenly, in and out through her nose. The richness of earth dampened by melting snow rose, redolent of dung and the