Read Online Wolf Mountain Moon by Terry C. Johnston - Free Book Online Page B

remained behind in the hope that the rest of their regiment would soon be joining them before nightfall. Then those left of the wagon-boat crew turned around inside their craft and dipped their spades into the river once more, pushing back toward the raft as the hundreds on the north bank erupted into a spontaneous cheer.
    When Lyman’s soldiers reached Baldwin’s raft, the lieutenant tossed them the end of another length of one-inch rope he had secured to his tilting craft still snagged near the middleof the river. As the wagon boat slipped away into the current, its crew paddling for the north bank a soldier slowly played out the rope connected to the raft. Thunking, scraping, groaning—more and more ice chunks smacked against the side of the wagon box, slid along the side with a noisy, frightening racket, then bobbed free, floating on downriver.
    Of a sudden the solitary wagon-box soldier reached the end of that rope. “Goddammit—help me, for the love of God!”
    Nearly all the rest of the paddlers dropped their shovels into the bed for those next desperate moments at midstream, every one of them clutching the rope as the current shoved against them, starting to urge them downstream in a bobbing arc.
    â€œThere’s no way we can do this, General!” Baldwin shouted above the cries of the men on both shores who watched helplessly, the soldiers trapped in both rivercraft wobbling with the icy current. “They just don’t have enough rope to make the north bank!”
    â€œTie it off there, men!” Miles commanded the wagon-box sailors, pointing to a large snag that poked its thick branches above the surface near the bobbing craft.
    â€œSecure it to that sawyer!” Baldwin echoed.
    As half the men in the wagon boat returned to their paddles, fighting to bring their craft back toward the snag against the power of the current, the rest held on to the waterlogged rope with the last of their strength, blue hands and soaked mittens gripping for all they were worth.
    Meanwhile onshore several of the officers recognized the dilemma and ordered another wagon box taken from its running gear and quickly wrapped in oiled canvas. After more than an hour and a half of watching the crews of both the raft and the wagon boat barely holding their own against the mighty Missouri, the second wagon boat was shoved into the current by some men of ? Company, loaded with several long sections of rope, the end of which was attached to a cottonwood on the north bank.
    Here at midafternoon, with Miles, Baldwin, Pope, and their dozen soldiers still stranded on the rocking raft and water continuing to swirl up to their knees, men on both banks began to cheer, for it appeared the rescue was about to takeplace … just as bigger and bigger ice floes began to bear down the river’s surface. Rubbing, jabbing, creaking against one another—blocks as big as boulders. The Missouri was beginning to fill with ice scum once more as the temperature continued to drop, and with it the late-autumn sun.
    â€œSweet God in heaven!” one of the men of I Company in the nearby wagon boat shrieked.
    The rest of the soldiers on the raft and the second wagon boat looked upstream where he was pointing. Better than a mile away they could see it coming, tumbling slowly, roiling on the river’s surface: a chunk of ice as big as a cabin itself. It’s dirty luster bobbed in the current, easily filling a third of the Missouri’s span.
    â€œDon’t panic, men!” Baldwin cheered them. “We don’t know for sure where it will go! Just hang on!”
    â€œCut the rope!” came the immediate cry from the second wagon boat as the soldiers squirmed in fear while that huge chunk of ice bore down on them.
    â€œCut the goddamned rope!” another rescuer shouted.
    Then another bellowed like a stuck calf—crying that they had to save themselves.
    â€œNo—don’t do that!”