Free Wolf Mountain Moon by Terry C. Johnston Page A

boys—let’s cut ourselves free of the south bank there. Just cut the damned rope … that’s good. Now, pull away for all you’re worth! Make for the north shore!”
    As the rope attaching them to the south bank was freed, the ungainly raft rocked against the river’s surface all the more, listing at an even more precarious angle in the strengthening current. Baldwin’s dozen began to scramble into position as the huge craft bobbed. Ahead of them the soldiers in the first wagon boat dipped their spades into the river and began their crawl toward the north shore—slowly, steadily slaving over their exertions as the river ice bore down on them.
    â€œPull now!” Baldwin ordered as the men on the raft came up and took their places along the ice-coated rope securing them to the north bank. “Pull as if your life depended on it!”
    There wasn’t a man there who didn’t realize their lives did depend on it.
    â€œThere’s no one else going to free us from this snag now,” Miles reminded them as he took up his own place along the line. “We must do for ourselves, boys!”
    Hunching over their work, the soldiers fought for balance on the rocking raft while water splashed and danced up to their waists. Then came the first loud creaking.
    At first Baldwin feared their flimsy craft was breaking up—the strain simply too much for that wood and rope. Butin that next moment the raft lurched sidelong in the current, pitching some of the soldiers to their knees, sliding toward the icy current as others on the raft shouted, every man holding out his hand to another. Together those fifteen kept one another from being hurled headlong into the river.
    Into the frozen, slushy Missouri—where a man might have as little as half a minute, no more than two minutes at the most, to fight alone against the river before he was too cold to struggle any longer. Each of them knew if they were swept into the current that it would be a sure, quick sentence of death.
    The minutes crawled past as Baldwin’s men strained beyond human endurance at their icy rope, Miles and Pope in among them—no officers and enlisted here. They were all in it together. Either they would reach the shore as one, or they might well drown in the cold Missouri, one, by one, by lonely one.
    â€œGoddammit—pull you sonuvabitch!” one soldier grunted, then quickly glanced up to find the colonel was the one to whom he had just given that profane order. “B-beg pardon, Gen’ral!”
    â€œApology accepted, s-soldier,” Miles grunted with the rest. “The rest of you bloody well heard this man! Now, pull—goddammit!”
    Foot by foot felt like inch by inch as the surface seemed to rise about them and the edge of the raft came free of the sawyer. Now they were level once more on the surface of the Missouri, no longer captive of that huge Cottonwood snag embedded in the river bottom. Now it was just the fifteen against that raging, icy river. What strength those soldiers still had in their aching shoulders, their trembling arms, the burning muscles in their legs that cried out in protest and quaked as the men braced themselves against the overwhelming roll of the powerful river … and what indomitable will.
    Yard by yard now they were beginning to make some headway.
    â€œThat’s it, boys!” Baldwin cheered, feeling the burn of tears at his eyes.
    A final third of the river’s width to go.
    Onshore the hundreds of soldiers and civilians were jumping, cheering, calling out their encouragement, waving,pounding one another on the back, darting here and yon in a growing, swelling crowd that began to surge downstream, slowly following the raft as it was relentlessly whirled downriver by the current. Already at least half a hundred were sprinting in among the frozen willow and cottonwood saplings, helping the soldiers in the second wagon boat leap ashore,