Free Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis Page A

travellers.
    Water trickled over my neck in an icy thread. It was rising fast and your trousers were soaked up to the knees as you walked around, soft boots sodden. Panic was compressing my chest worse than the wreckage. I began to wonder if perhaps you were one of the road agents Mr Goldsmith had told me about, and if you were more interested in our belongings, now scattered over a wide area and rapidly washing away. You walked past me to the place where I thought the teamster lay. Nudging him with your boot, you watched for a reaction. You turned his face from side to side and pressed your hand to his neck. Straightening, you clicked something on the rifle and shot him, right there on the river bed. I tried to rise and run. How had I been saved from the fall only to die at the hands of a looter? My legs gave out and I fell clumsily into the shallowwater on my back.
    You came back and crouched next to me, elbows on your thighs, hands hanging slack in between. My teeth were chattering with fear and the glacial meltwater. I tried to push myself upwards, but the agony, and the strictures of the corset, sent me splashing back into the wet. You were still looking at me, your strange pale eyes unreadable. I felt the beginnings of a faint coming on. My vision darkening, my chest tight, I couldn’t hear anything at all. I reached up, trying to take your hand, but your fingers slipped out of mine and I knew no more.
    Sometime later, I woke. Behind my eyes, a pulse thudded. I blinked, things taking time to come into focus. Above me, faded whitewashed planks formed a pitched roof. My left thigh hurt and a cool breeze washed over my body, smelling of pine and flowers. I shivered. Beneath my back was a soft mattress, and my hands rested on my ribs over the thin linen chemise I’d put on in Fort Shaw.
    I thought back, brain fumbling, trying to piece together the jumbled memories in my mind. Row upon row of tents in Fort Shaw. Indians. Soldiers. Campfires. Miss Adams in my room. Mr Goldsmith’s rough hand on my elbow. The rumble of the wheels. The bridge giving way, the coach slipping, smashing, everything tumbling around inside. Black.
    I tried to look around. The room was made of the same whitewashed wood. Beyond the open window, I could see blue studded with fluffy white and the smell of green, butonly that. A noise somewhere: wind through the trees or maybe water rushing. I swallowed, summoning moisture to my mouth, making my head spin. I breathed in and out slowly. How long had it been? Where was I?
    A fly landed on my cheek and I tried to lift a hand to brush it away, but couldn’t. I turned my head, wincing, and saw a canvas strap tied around each wrist. I panicked. Incoherent pleading crowded my throat.
    A door banged and someone walked into the room.
    â€˜Hey.’ You pushed the dirty hair from my face.
    â€˜Cold,’ I stuttered, not really sure I was cold. Was it just that I was wearing only a thin underdress? With relief, I realized the stays had gone and I could breathe freely for what felt like the first time in many months.
    You took a blanket, laying it over me. I strained against the straps around my wrists, drawing my knees up. You put a hand on the bed to one side of my waist, the other testing the heat of my forehead, face and throat, lifting an eyelid. It was the closest I’d ever been to a man, even my father.
    I tried to swallow again. To speak. You held a tin cup to my mouth, the other hand cradling my sore head as I gulped.
    â€˜Too fast.’ You took it away.
    The liquid trickled through my chest, cool and fresh. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
    You shook your head. ‘Thought it better if you were out of it for the journey, but the drugs made you restless. Kept on trying to get up and falling. Seen it before, so I thought this would just keep you still for a little while. Do you hurt?’
    I pulled against the straps. ‘Yes. Everything aches.’
    â€˜You were