“Caleb promised me that he wouldn’t rest until they find him,” Molly said brokenly against her hair, Kari hearing the anguish in her voice that so matched her own.
Kari hugged her back, both of them drawing comfort from each other as her father mounted his horse, the other riders encircling him.
“The creek probably flooded with all the rain,” he shouted above the din. “Half of you take the south bank and the rest follow me along the north!”
Kari’s knees felt weak as the men rode off in a thundering of hooves, Sarah’s words from last night flying back to haunt her.
It’s not the wind you have to fear, but the rain causing flash floods that’ll rise up out of nowhere and carry you away...
Dear God, no, please tell her it wasn’t so! Reverend Thomas intoning a prayer with his wife standing beside him, their heads humbly bowed, made Kari draw Molly along with her to join them as another memory suddenly gripped her.
A tiny woman on the train speaking words not of dread and terror, but of comfort and strength.
You must be patient, child, and always remember to trust in the Lord with all your heart…even in your darkest moments.
Kari held onto them now for dear life as she, too, bowed her head in prayer.
Chapter 11
“It’s been four hours already—four hours! Oh, God, what’s happened to my son?”
Molly’s agonized cry bringing Kari at a rush to her side, she sank down next to the chair where Seth’s mother had begun to weep.
Molly had remained so strong until now, Kari knew so as to not alarm her, but the minutes ticking away on the parlor clock seemed to mock them both no matter the calming words she clung to.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart…even in your darkest moments.
Kari could not but help to think of her father’s untimely death, and then her mother’s long illness and passing…both events the darkest moments she’d ever known, until today. She had left Molly only for a short while to change out of her rumpled satin dress into the simple blue one she’d worn on her first day in Walker Creek, the calico making her miss so desperately her sisters and brother but giving her comfort, too.
She closed her eyes and imagined Ingrid, Anita, and Andreas by her side, knowing they would have bolstered her with love and prayer as Molly had so bravely tried to do until the clock had struck half past ten.
Had it been only four hours since her father had ridden out with the others into a sunrise heralding a brilliantly sunny day that seemed to mock them, too? No howling wind, no lashing rain, no lightning, only the sweet scent of wildflowers that wafted into the room from the open windows—
“Kari, did you hear that?”
She stiffened just as Molly had, both of them straining to hear beyond the birdsong and distant lowing of cattle…a low rumbling like the promise of thunder—but impossible on such a clear, cloudless day.
A rumbling that grew louder and closer into the distinct sound of pounding hooves. Molly grabbed Kari by the hand as she jumped up from the chair.
“It’s them—dear Lord in heaven, please may they have found Seth!”
Kari’s heart in her throat, she rushed with Molly out of the parlor to the front door, while Sarah and servants from every corner of the house came running. No sooner had Kari and Molly burst outside onto the porch than the air crackled with whoops and wild exultation, the men shouting and waving their hats as they rode in one clamorous bunch right up to the house.
Yet Kari had eyes for only one man as her father dismounted with an uncharacteristic grin on his face to reveal Seth astride the same horse, looking disheveled and with his left arm bandaged and in a sling—but alive!Alive!
Later, thinking back, Kari had no recollection of running to him, laughing and crying at the same time as he dismounted and she flung her arms around his neck.
Seth lifting her from her feet with his good arm and kissing her so soundly that she felt certain her heart would burst from relief and happiness. Their first kiss! His lips so warm against hers, the pressure of his mouth as life-affirming a miracle as she had ever known.
Only when she heard laughter rippling around them did Seth set her down. Kari’s face felt flame hot at the audience they had garnered—her father, Seth’s parents, ranch hands, the servants, a beaming Sarah—though Kari found herself smiling so broadly back at them that her cheeks hurt.
At once Molly rushed forward to wrap Seth in a joyous hug, though a moment later she released him, her questions peppering the air.
“Son, what happened to you? Where did they find you? Oh, my Lord, and your arm! Charles, is it broken?”
“I was more than an hour’s ride away when the flood came up,” Seth hastened to explain, sobering as he laced his fingers with Kari’s and drew her against him. “I never once saw that fool stallion. Next thing I knew Henry and I were swept downstream and swimming for our lives in the pitch dark—and then he was gone, too. Somehow I grabbed onto a tree limb lodged against a rock and that’s where I spent the rest of the night, hanging on for dear life. Didn’t realize my arm had gotten so banged up until I finally was able to swim to the bank—doggone it! Hurt like the dickens, too, but Pa said nothing’s broken.”
“That’s where we found him,” Charles interjected, clasping Seth’s shoulder. “Soaked to the skin and sleeping like the dead—”
