A Soldier's Pledge Read online

  He was about to start backing his way toward shore when he spied Cameron’s hat caught in the tip of the tree, pivoting in the light breeze and still nodding back and forth as if giving him a jaunty wave. Maybe jaunty was the wrong word. Her hat was taunting him. Daring him to come get it. It occurred to him that he might score some points with her if he could somehow retrieve her hat and the canoe. He could use the pole to try to snag it, but he’d have to move farther along the tree trunk, and he’d have to stand up. Navigating the thick twine of spruce branches would make it pretty difficult, and it was just a hat. Not worth wasting time on.

  He gave up on the idea.

  Then, as he started pushing himself back toward shore, her Aussie hat gave him an especially flippant wave. He paused, reconsidering. He could untie the snub line from around his waist, leave it on the tree trunk, stand up, use the pole to balance himself, and thread his way very carefully between the branches along the trunk until he could reach the hat with the pole. Then he’d just have to snag the hat by the hurricane strap, let it slide down the pole and he’d have it. Easy.

  He studied the trunk ahead of him and the placement of the branches. There were plenty of sturdy handholds to grab on to for balance if he should start to go over. It shouldn’t be too difficult. He decided to try for the hat. He could abandon the attempt and turn around if it turned out to be too risky, but he didn’t think it would. He’d get the hat first, then retrieve the canoe. When he returned to the cabin, she’d regard him as one of the most heroic men she’d ever met, certainly more heroic than her philandering ex-husband, Roy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WALT WAS SLEEPING in his chair when the woman arrived. He often napped after lunch on slow days. It was only natural to give the body quiet time to digest a meal, and a nap midafternoon had become a ritual with him the past few days. With the forest fire out, Cameron gone and Mitch still ferrying smoke jumpers back to the airport in Fort Simpson, things had been real quiet at the office.

  He was dreaming about Jeri. He dreamed about her often now that she was gone. In his dreams she was back again, and it was like she’d never left. She was making a pot of coffee like she did first thing every morning, and she was wearing those tight capri shorts, the purple Lycra ones, and the black Lycra top, the one that made her look like Dolly Parton. She smiled at him, and her smile made him feel young again. Jeri was a good-looking woman, so sexy she sizzled.

  “I’m glad you’re back, Jeri,” he said. “I really missed you.”

  “I missed you too, Walt,” she said with the most seductive smile over her shoulder before starting the coffeemaker. “I missed you so much I’m just going to have to show you.” And then she proceeded to undress herself right in front of him, which didn’t take long because she wasn’t wearing all that much, and just as she started walking bare-assed naked toward him, the knock came at the door and Jeri, every sexy sizzling ounce of her, began to vanish into the ether.

  “No!” Walt protested, struggling to keep hold of the dream.

  “Walter?” a woman’s voice said. “Walter Krantz?”

  Another knock, and then the doorknob turned and the door swung inward. A woman’s head poked around the edge of the door. Late twenties, dark hair, dark eyes, not bad looking but terrible timing. Couldn’t be worse, matter of fact. She spotted him sitting in his chair and gave a tentative smile.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you. I’m Lori Tedlow, Jack Parker’s sister, the one who’s been calling you daily and driving you crazy, I’m sure.” As she spoke, she commenced the tricky job of entering the office, a maneuver undertaken carefully because the space was so small and she was so big. Her pregnant stomach thrust out in front of her and took up half the room.

  Walt pushed out of his chair, which further shrank the space. His office at the float plane base was really nothing more than a small construction trailer. He couldn’t understand why Lori Tedlow was here. It was very annoying, especially since he had nothing to tell her.

  “I don’t have any news, nothing to report since you called yesterday,” he said. “Cameron said she’d call when she reached the Mackenzie River, so I guess she hasn’t got there yet.” He spread his hands. “I can’t tell you anything else.”

  Lori Tedlow smiled again, apologetically. “I thought maybe you could try to contact her, find out where she is and what’s going on. We don’t even know that she’s found my brother. Can’t you call her? Doesn’t a satellite phone work both ways?”

  “Sure, but it has to be turned on. Cameron would keep it powered down and inside the waterproof case unless she was calling me. To conserve the batteries and keep it dry,” he explained.

  “Look, Mr. Krantz, I flew into Fort Simpson this morning because I can’t sit home any longer waiting for news. I came fully prepared to hire you to fly me over the route they’re taking. Please try to understand. I’m worried about my brother, and so is my mother. We’re both worried he might be suicidal, and we both think that’s why he came up here and went into the woods. We really, really need to know he’s okay.” She put both hands on the swell of her belly as she spoke, as if trying to keep it from expanding.

  “But, you’re pregnant,” he said.

  Lori Tedlow looked at him wearily. “I know that. Believe me, I do. I’m asking you to fly me over the route my brother’s hiking, that’s all. I’m not asking you to deliver my baby. He’s not due for another three weeks.”

  “You might not fit in the plane.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll fit.”

  Walt glanced down at his watch. It was 2:00 p.m. The weather was calm, sunny, perfect for flying. “I dunno. We’re pretty busy around here, and there’s nobody but me to man the phone with Jeri gone and Cameron out hunting for your brother. It’s a three hour round-trip to get to the lake and back, then another hour to fly down the Wolf River to the Mackenzie.”

  “Then it’s a good thing it stays light so long this time of year,” Lori said. “We’d better get going. I trust you have an answering machine that will take calls while you’re gone?”

  “Even if I said yes, there’s no reason for you to go. Having a passenger along just adds to the paperwork.”

  “Having a passenger along gives you twice the search power,” Lori Tedlow countered.

  Walt pulled a foil-wrapped package of chewing tobacco out of his rear pocket and stuffed a generous pinch under his upper lip, stalling for time while he considered his options. “This is going to cost you,” he said, tucking the tobacco back into his hip pocket. “I charge by the mile, aviation fuel is pricey and there’s lots of paperwork involved, especially with a pregnant woman. Hours and hours.”

  “Don’t worry.” Lori Tedlow reached inside her purse for her wallet. “I’ll make it well worth your while.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AFTER THREE HOURS of hiking back upriver, Cameron made a vow to herself that she would never, ever walk along another river that didn’t have an established footpath, or better yet a major highway running alongside it. In fact, after three hours she made a vow that she’d never walk anywhere ever again that she didn’t absolutely have to. She’d fly a plane, paddle a canoe, ride a horse, drive a red Jeep, but she was giving up on walking. There was nothing whatsoever that she enjoyed about it. She had blisters on her feet, every muscle hurt, she was scratched and gouged from head to toe and covered with bug bites. She was so hungry that even after she was done eating her stomach growled, and it was all because of the endless struggle of bushwhacking along this damned river.

  The harder she tried to move quickly, the slower she went. There was no way to make good time. Every step had to be calculated. A single misstep could result in a wrenched or broken limb, and out here that sort of accident could be fatal. The walking had been tough yesterday and hard the day before that, and it was even worse on day four—or was it five?—though the early
-morning cold had kept the bugs down.

  Every ten minutes, she would blow five long blasts on her whistle. There was the possibility she and Jack might miss each other completely if he were in the canoe and she was bushwhacking along the shore, and she didn’t want to walk one extra step if she didn’t have to. But there was no sign of Jack and no answering whistle.

  Anxiety had twisted her stomach into a knot by the time she reached the downed spruce tree, and she was filled with dread as Jack’s camp came into sight. She saw his tent, saw that the trunk of the spruce had been chopped through, but there was no sign of Jack. No activity. No sound. She drew closer and saw the ax lying against the base of the tree. Then she spotted the snub line coiled on the spruce trunk. Neatly. As if he’d left it there, ten feet from shore. But he would never have left it out there unless he’d fallen into the river.

  Her blood froze in her veins when she realized what had happened.

  “Jack!”

  Her shout would have wakened the dead, but there was no response.

  A wave of weakness nearly dropped her to her knees. Cameron’s worst fears had come to pass. Jack had drowned trying to retrieve her canoe. She was sure of it. He was dead, and all because of her incredible stupidity. She stood for a few moments, numb with shock. Then she closed the distance to his tent at a stumbling run, shrugging out of her pack and letting it drop behind her as she ran. She fell to her knees at the tent door. She was struggling to breathe, trying to process what she was looking at in the dimness of the tent’s interior as she reached for the zipper, but it was already open.

  He was lying facedown, feet toward the door, as if he’d crawled in and collapsed. His arms were up around his head as if cradling a pillow. Was he breathing? She couldn’t tell. She grabbed his ankle. The pant leg was wet. His boot was wet. She crawled inside, her hand on his leg, on his back, his shoulder. He was soaking wet, head to toe. He’d fallen in the river, and that water was like ice. He was like ice. Like death.

  “Jack!” She shook his shoulder. He was unresponsive. Was he even alive? Had he already died of hypothermia? She rolled him over in the tight confines of the tent. She had to get him out of those wet clothes, get him warm. She worked swiftly on the buttons of his shirt and paused when his head moved and he moaned, then coughed. She let him roll onto his side as he succumbed to a fit of coughing. She pounded his back. “That’s it, cough up that water,” she said. “I know just how you feel. That river almost got me, too. Cough!”

  She glanced around the inside of the tent and saw his sleeping bag, neatly rolled up next to his pack. She saw something else, too, and a jolt of disbelief made her gasp aloud. Her hat was resting on top of his pack. The hat she’d almost died for. The hat that had been caught in the very tip of the downed spruce tree. She reached out and touched the damp felt crown, stunned, then a flash of anger surged through her.

  “How could you be so stupid? That hat nearly killed me, and now it’s nearly killed you, too! I hate that hat, do you hear me, Jack Parker? I don’t want it. You risked your life for nothing! Don’t just lie there moaning and coughing. You’ll get no sympathy from me. I won’t let you die—you aren’t going to get off that easy.”

  Fear and anger gave her strength. She rolled him on his side, got one arm out of his shirt, rolled him over and got the other arm out, stripped away the wet fabric and tossed it behind her. He wore a thermal top under the shirt, and she jerked it up, fed one arm through, then the other, then got it over his head. She unbuckled his belt and stripped it off. She was working in a blind frenzy, her movements strong and sure, fueled by anger and fear. He was hypothermic, seriously hypothermic, and she knew how dangerous that was.

  “I should sue you for causing me such emotional trauma,” she said as she struggled to remove his hiking boot. The other one and his prosthetic leg were missing, which was a good thing because she had no idea how to get it off. “I should get a good lawyer and sue you. You’ve taken years off my life. I’m practically an old woman now because of you. I bet my hair’s turning gray.” She managed to get his pants off and was unrolling his sleeping bag, unzipping it, wrapping it around him, rolling him in it. He was almost completely unresponsive. This was bad, really bad.

  Her hands were trembling. She was shaking all over. “What am I supposed to tell your dog, Jack? She’s waiting for you back at the trapper’s cabin. That’s right, Ky’s alive. What am I supposed to tell her if you don’t come back with me?” His skin was cold, ice-cold. She knew of only one way to warm up a hypothermic victim out in the wild, and she stripped down to her underthings, draped her wool blanket over her shoulders and plastered herself against him under the sleeping bag. “I found your dog, Jack, do you hear me? I found your dog. She’s alive, so you can’t die now. That would be the stupidest thing you could ever do!” Was he still breathing? She laid her hand flat against his chest. Felt the shallow rise and fall. She pressed her ear against it and heard the faintest of heartbeats.

  “If only I’d set out first thing this morning, I’d have been here hours ago,” Cameron said, shivering with remorse and cold. “I should have come first thing. I should never have let you come back here by yourself. Stupid of me, stupid! Everything I’ve done has been so stupid.” She wrapped herself around him like a warm blanket, tucked the sleeping bag around them both. “I’m in good company, though, because you did a stupid thing, too, Jack. It was a sweet stupid, but it was a huge one. Going after my hat. We’re both stupid.”

  For a long while she lay pressed against him, willing him to keep breathing. It was like cuddling with a corpse. She listened for his heartbeat, counting the beats silently. She was shivering with the cold of his body, with fear, with shock. She had no idea how much time had passed—minutes, hours—when she heard a faint sound that was very familiar. It was the drone of an approaching airplane. Walt’s plane, the de Havilland Beaver, her plane. She knew the sound of that Wasp engine, the rattle of every loose rivet in that old workhorse. Walt was looking for her, flying slowly along the river just like she’d known he would.

  Hallelujah! They were saved!

  Cameron wriggled out from under the sleeping bag and crawled to the door of the tent. She had to signal Walt that they were in serious trouble and needed help. The zipper on the tent’s door stuck, and she jerked at it frantically as the sound of the plane grew louder. At the last moment, she ripped the zipper up and crawled out, rising to her feet just as the big red-and-white plane came into view from downriver, flying low and slow down the broad river valley. She moved a few steps away from the tent and waved her arms over her head, back and forth. He’d spot her. There was no way Walt could miss this bright colored tent right on the shore and her standing there nearly naked in her black Victoria’s Secret lingerie, waving her arms at him.

  The Beaver passed overhead and began a long banking turn up the wide valley beyond the campsite, came back flying just as low and slow, while Walt had another long look. She waved her arms again and jumped up and down, and he dipped the wings back and forth in response.

  “Oh thank you, Walt, thank you!” Cameron called up to him, throwing him kisses with both hands. “I’m sorry for all the times I was bitchy with you, and I’ll never complain about being overworked and doing endless amounts of paperwork for you again, I promise!” she shouted after the plane. “Any time you want me to fly, I’ll fly, just send help quick! We’re in a bad way down here.”

  Walt made one final pass, gave her one more reassuring wing wag and then set course for home. He was probably already on the plane’s radio, calling for a team to mount a speedy rescue mission by boat from the lake. He might even send in a helicopter that could lower a basket and haul them to safety.

  “We’re saved,” an emotional Cameron told the unresponsive Jack as she crawled back into the tent and under the sleeping bag. “That was Walt. He spotted us and we’re saved. Hang on, Jack, you can’t die on me now.
Help is on the way. Hallelujah!”

  * * *

  WALT HAD A hell of a time adjusting the seat belt to fit his pregnant passenger once he got her into the plane, which was no easy feat in and of itself. He was having second and third thoughts about the whole thing right up until the moment the plane was airborne, whereupon he figured he was doomed and submitted passively to his fate. She’d go into labor halfway to the lake. The bumpy flight would cause her water to break and bring on the contractions. He’d end up delivering a baby at Kawaydin Lake in the back of the plane. The paperwork would take him the rest of his life, but maybe she’d name her kid after him. Walter Tedlow. Had a nice ring to it.

  He racked his brain for the entire flight, trying to dredge up his first-aid training, stuff he’d learned through the years. His ex-wife had given him a daughter, but he hadn’t been in the hospital for the delivery. He’d been overseas. She’d sent him photos that made him squeamish and uneasy enough to question the health of the baby, which had seriously pissed her off. She named the baby Madeline, Maddy for short. Cranky Maddy. The first time he held her she did nothing but cry, and come to think of it, she’d been mad at him all her life. Maddy was a perfect name for her.

  His daughter was married now with kids of her own, living in Calgary near her mother. She married a tall, skinny guy who monitored website security for a big insurance company and liked to golf and collect beer steins from Germany. Most boring person Walt had ever met, but Maddy wasn’t exactly normal, so he supposed it was just lucky they’d met each other.