Gwyneth Atlee (16 page)

The panicked horse, whose mane he held, was making directly for
the stern, as if it thought it could climb up onto the ruin. Gabe realized
that if the horse swam close enough, men would try to scramble onto
it and overwhelm it. He grasped its halter with one hand and fought
to pull its head to redirect it away from the
Sultana,
but the animal was
oblivious to everything except the instinct to return to what it remembered as a place of safety. One thrashing hoof struck Gabe’s shin
painfully, and he gave up the useless struggle.

God help him, he would have to let the horse go, Gabe realized. He
scanned the river’s surface, but every floating object he saw was being
fought over by other swimmers. Even so, he pushed away from the
white beast. He had no other choice, not if he wanted to live long
enough to find—and save—Yvette.

The revolver must have misfired, Darien Russell thought. The flash
and sound of it reverberated in his skull, filling all the world with heat
and thunder, sending him reeling toward the blackness. Tumbling,
grasping, clutching. His left hand grabbed something wooden, and
with a painful jerk, his body came to rest.

It took several moments for him to realize he was hanging by one
arm from the railing. If he slipped, he’d be in the water—in the dark.
Shrieks of pain and terror splintered the air around him. Far too
many to be explained by a misfiring revolver or the young soldier’s
attack against him. Smoke thickened the air, gripping his chest as
painfully as talons. Coughing hurt, but the breeze shifted, and his
breathing eased.
Still wondering what happened, Darien reached up to grasp the
railing with his right hand. Only then did he realize he had lost his
gun. Pulling himself higher, he saw ruptured interior walls and flickering blue flames. Men were leaping pell-mell off the stern, and moans
and screams added to the nightmare quality of the scene.
Had a Rebel unit, one too stubborn to surrender, somehow fired
upon them? Or had they struck another boat? Surely there must have
been some sort of explosion. His mind worked desperately to make
sense of what was happening until he realized that his questions must
wait for later, till a time when he’d found safety.
He hesitated, wondering if he should drop into the water or climb
back aboard the
Sultana
’s deck. He shuddered at the thought of the
black and swollen Mississippi flowing beneath his feet and at the
image of Marie as she had slipped beneath its surface. He didn’t want
to go there, not with the river sprawling cold and endless under the
night sky. He’d never survive it unless he found some floating object
and kept it to himself.
Darien struggled for several minutes to pull himself back over the
rail. Panting with exertion, he scanned the gangway for any sign of
Yvette or the private who’d befriended her. Perhaps if one or the other
had been wounded, he could pitch them overboard and let nature take
its course. Panicked soldiers rushed about, desperately snatching up
anything that might float, and he knew no one would take any note of
what he did. Certainly no one would bother to try to stop a murder.
But neither one remained anywhere in sight. It seemed likely
that both Yvette and the soldier had been hurled into the water by
the blast.
“Please, you have to help me! It’s burning me alive!”
Russell turned his head and looked down. A pile of rubble pinned
a man’s midsection to a half-collapsed stretch of deck. Darien moved
closer, hoping the trapped fellow would prove to be Yvette’s friend.
But the man reaching toward Russell was gray-haired and not blond,
and Darien recognized him as one of the guards.
“Please!” the soldier repeated.
Darien hadn’t meant to come near enough for the man to look him
in the eye. Yet he had, and he nearly gagged on the sharp odor of
scorched flesh. That was when he realized the guard’s legs were covered by a red-hot sheet of twisted metal.
All around him, heaps of glowing coals gradually smoldered their
way through both the deck and fragments of shattered interior wall
that lay scattered like kindling. Flame licked at the debris that trapped
the soldier, and his pleas abruptly changed to screams of agony.
“Dear God! Dear God! I’m dying!”
A lump formed in his throat as Darien used his shoes to try to kick
some of the debris off the guard. He quickly realized that nothing in
the pile was large enough to make a proper float. Even so, the man’s
pleas prompted Darien to kick a few more times until flame ignited
the hem of his wool trousers.
After using his hands to beat out the fire, he turned away, heedless
of the rising volume of the guard’s agonized screams. Nothing to be
done about it, Darien told himself. Not unless he wanted to die, too.
Distinctive female cries drew his attention. He spun toward the
sound, hoping he would have the chance to settle accounts with
Yvette. But the woman running down the gangway was clearly not
her. The tall blonde’s eyes were wild, and by the firelight, he saw
what looked like a large red burn on her left cheek. Despite the
apparent wound and the tears streaming down her face, she was
moving with swift determination, clutching two boards as if for
dear life.
He couldn’t stay and burn to death as the guard had, and he couldn’t face the river without a float. This might be his best chance. Darien
grabbed the larger board as she tried to pass him. She shrieked and
swung the other toward his shoulder. He wrested it away from her as
well, but she clawed desperately in an attempt to regain her treasure.
With all his strength, he smashed the smaller board into her left
temple. Hard enough for the force of the impact to send shafts of pain
shooting through his arm. Hard enough to send an arc of bloody
droplets flying across the boards. Did he only imagine the sound of
the liquid sizzling against hot coals?
The woman crumpled at his feet.
His third murder.
But unlike the
others, this one had neither neatness nor precision to take pride in.
Only ugliness and the base instinct to survive no matter who stood in
his way.
Before anyone could serve him the same, Darien stripped off his
frock coat and climbed over the railing. After pitching his boards into
the water, he leapt after them, barely noticing that the screaming of the
burning man had finally ceased.

Sharp, exquisite agony was all that kept her focused. Without it, the
shock of the concussion might have rendered Yvette unconscious or
stunned her until it was too late to try to swim. Her left elbow, struck
by some heavy flying object, instead drew every bit of her attention,
even as she plunged beneath the water’s surface.

The wound throbbed a dark warning. The cold Mississippi meant
to swallow her, just as it had Marie. Already its chill ebbed away her
strength and pulled her bare feet toward the bottom.

No!
Yvette rose on a wave of outrage, aided by her kicking legs and
her right arm. She refused to sink, to feed the river yet another
unprotesting Augeron. Her face broke the surface, and she took angry
gulps of air.

What in the name of heaven had thrown her off the steamboat?
What had struck her hard enough to cause such sickening waves of
pain? Putting her questions aside for later, she tried—and failed—to
use the injured arm. The effort made her vision cloud with blackness
and her head dip once more beneath the surface of the waves.

God, no! She sputtered to the surface once more and knew she
mustn’t try again to use that arm. Surely it was broken. Yet without it,
how would she ever keep herself afloat?

Gradually, she became aware of other swimmers in the water, their
heads lit intermittently by the flickering of flames upon the burning
steamboat. Some sort of fire or explosion, she decided. But right now
that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the plank she saw illuminated,
not twenty feet away.

In those first few instants, Capt. J. Cass Mason thought it a nightmare,
the result of too much worry, maybe even too much drink. But the
Sultana
’s violent shudder soon shook him awake, and he quickly
realized this was something far worse than any nightmare, far deadlier
as well.

If not for the tremendous boom, he would have thought
they’d struck a bar or snag. Either would be enough to end the
Sultana
’s life and ruin him financially. But the blast meant an
explosion, unless he missed his guess. As Mason pulled on his
clothes and shoes, he thought first of Confederate artillery. But
he soon dismissed the idea as nonsense. When he’d gone to bed
perhaps two hours before, they’d been near the river’s center,
too far from either shore for shells.

Too far, also, for an easy swim to land and safety. He would have to
calm these people before a panic led to a mass drowning. He’d seen
hysterical passengers leap to their deaths from boats that still might
float for hours more.

As he hurried from his room on the hurricane deck, he saw plumes
of steam rising into the night and flames already erupting like a
brightly colored pox. He realized then that his earlier thoughts of
grounding or artillery had been merely wishful thinking. There was
only one thing this could be.

An angry face flashed across his vision, that of R. G. Taylor, the
boiler mechanic who had come aboard in Vicksburg to set the boat
to rights.

“Why did you not have this repaired in New Orleans?” He pointed
at the leaking bulge as he spoke, his tone accusing Chief Engineer
Wintringer.

Wintringer took offense, as he had drained the boilers and had
them scraped and cleaned while they were in the Crescent City.
Afterward, he’d nursed them all the way to Vicksburg.

“But they weren’t bulging or leaking earlier,” Wintringer insisted.
“Can’t you patch them up enough to last us to St. Louis? We’ve got to
get on quick if we’re to make our load here.”

“If I do anything at all, I will make a job of it or have nothing to do
with it,” said Taylor as he stalked off the boat.
Mason had ordered Wintringer to go after him, and somehow his
chief engineer had changed Taylor’s mind. While the men had quickly patched the bulge to stop the leak, Mason had kept busy securing
every passenger he could.
Securing passengers that might die because of his decisions.
As he expected, the deck was a chaotic swirl of motion. Men leaping
overboard, fighting for the largest and sturdiest-looking boards and
planks. He edged past a gaping hole blown in the deck. Steam and
smoke billowed out of it as though it were a shaft down into hell.
Apart from his own room, much of the Texas cabin, where the boat’s
officers slept, had been blown to bits. He tried not to think of the men
who had been sleeping there.
He had only one priority left now, the responsibility of saving as
many as he could. Nothing else mattered. Especially not his life.

Absurdly, Gabe thought the small boat was coming to save him—
him alone, among the hundreds now struggling, dying in the water.
He would climb aboard the rescue and find Yvette in time.

The delusion exploded as he realized the men aboard—crewmen,
by their uniforms—were beating with oars at other hopeful
swimmers as they grasped at the boat’s gunwales to pull themselves
inside. One shrill voice cut through the cacophony of moans and
screams and pleas.

It was only then that Gabe understood. These crewmen had taken
the sounding yawl, the boat sometimes used to test the depth of
channels for the steamboat. They were stealing it and abandoning
everyone else. Even one man’s wife.

As he clutched the empty cracker box he’d found, he thought again
of Yvette, tried to imagine leaving her—or any of his friends.
Impossible. If he found any of them, he would rather drown than live
without them.

He heard a shrill scream, one he thought he recognized. Was that
Yvette he saw in the water? He saw only a dark head, smaller than the
others. He kicked frantically, trying to maneuver the crate nearer.

As he began to close the distance, he could make out the plank
that she was clutching and the two men trying to wrest it away
from her.

“No!” she screamed, as fierce as either of the men. But one of her
arms dangled limp and useless, and it was obvious the men would
overpower her.

“Yvette!” Gabe tried to shout, but instead, unexpectedly, his mouth
filled up with water as arms clamped around his ankle, the arms of a
drowning man, dragging him beneath the water’s surface.

Pain turned to fury as a second man grabbed onto the plank she
held, then shoved her away.
“No!” she shouted.
She tried to regain her hold, but it was useless. If she stayed and
fought here, they would drown her. She was neither big enough nor
strong enough to stop them. Resentment boiled in her veins, nearly
overcoming the chill water. If she’d ever had any illusion that Yankee
chivalry existed, this behavior cured her of the notion!
As no Southern gentlemen were present to rescue her, she would
have to use her head to save herself. Reluctantly giving up the struggle, she kicked away from the two men. She saw other floating debris
nearby, each piece surrounded by groups of struggling soldiers. Every
moment, dozens more splashed into the water. Some clutched each
other, as if their bodies might form a raft. Instead, they writhed, then
sank almost immediately beneath the river’s surface. Yvette looked
away, sickened by the sight.
She’d have no chance at all here. The best thing to do would be to
swim into the darkness, away from the
Sultana.
She thanked God for
the summers she’d spent with her family at Grand Isle and for her
mother’s insistence that every one of her children learn how to swim.
Since she was ten years younger,
Maman
made sixteen-year-old
Pierre give her lessons. Annoyed and impatient, he had tossed his little
sister into the waves beyond the third sandbar.
Frightened half out of her mind, she splashed and clawed uselessly,
then sank twice beneath the warm Gulf waters.
Pierre had dragged her out. “First lesson: never panic, or you die.”
A harsh lesson, but one she had never forgotten.
Grimly, she forced her mind to calm. With careful deliberateness,
she put her later lessons into practice, using only legs and her
uninjured arm. She began to make slow progress, trying to ignore
the question that throbbed at her left elbow:
How long can I possibly
go on?