A Soldier's Pledge Read online

  * * *

  JACK HAD SPENT nearly three years in the mountains of Afghanistan, participating in countless forced marches carrying packs and ammo weighing upward of seventy-five pounds. Those years had made him tough. But the long weeks lying in a hospital bed when he was shipped stateside had eroded his strength. At the end of the day, he figured he’d made ten miles, maybe twelve. He was halfway to the cabin. Maybe. This was good progress. He felt his strength returning for the first time after his long hospitalization, and could only attribute this to the excellent meal Cameron had cooked for him the night before.

  He found his thoughts straying often as he hiked, and the paths they traveled always began in Afghanistan with his men and Ky and always ended with Cameron Johnson. He would wonder if his unit was preparing to depart Afghanistan as was rumored before his final ill-fated patrol almost a year after Ky had been shipped stateside. That patrol had nearly killed him and had killed several of his men, or he’d probably still be over there. He wondered if Ky could possibly have survived the bear attack and the long bitter winter, and then pushed away his nagging doubts. Of course she had, and he would find her. He wondered if Cameron had made it safely to the cabin. She’d probably reached it before noon, if her pace starting out this morning had held.

  She was very strong and a good paddler. It was possible she’d already started back for him, and could in fact be nearby. He began listening for her wolf whistles about the time he found a good place to camp near the river’s edge. It wouldn’t surprise him if she showed up before dark, and truth be told, he wouldn’t mind if she did. She’d bring food, real food, and that big comfortable tent of hers. He’d slept well last night. No nightmares. The nightmares had been a constant torment ever since the brutal firefight that had cost him three men. No therapy was going to cure him. No prosthetic leg was going to make him whole again. The army psychologist had talked to him about how to deal with the flashbacks, the nightmares and the lack of sleep, but it was pointless being counseled by someone who’d never been there, done that and then had to suffer the hellish aftermath.

  Last night, sharing Cameron’s tent, he’d had the first good night’s sleep in many months. No coming awake in a heart-thumping panic, his own shout startling him in the dark.

  Jack set up his little tent, cooked two packages of ramen noodles over his tiny camp stove, then boiled a quart of really strong tea. He ate his supper, drank his tea, imagined Cameron was dining like a king and either warm and dry in that trapper’s cabin or equally comfortable in her canvas tent. He’d never met any woman as capable and self-reliant. There was little reason to worry about her, so he didn’t. He was still hungry when he rolled up in his sleeping bag, but he had no trouble falling asleep.

  * * *

  CAMERON PUSHED HARD to reach the cabin. By sunset she was certain she must be close. When she rounded each bend in the river, she wasted time pushing through thick brush to the riverbank in hopes of seeing it there on the point of land, but all she saw was another wild lonesome stretch of water. She kept pushing because she thought for sure the cabin was just around the next corner, but as time passed and darkness began to thicken, she realized she’d be spending the night out. Her clothing was still damp, and she had no jacket and no food, but she had a river’s worth of water to drink, and around her neck where she always wore it, tucked inside her shirt, was her plastic orange whistle. On the butt of the whistle was a tiny compass, which screwed off to reveal a waterproof compartment full of waxed matches.

  Her father had taught her as soon as she could toddle to always wear this “necklace” whenever she was in the woods, which was most of the time. He’d been strict about compliance, and she’d grown up thinking the most valuable piece of jewelry any woman ever wore was an orange plastic whistle with a compass and waterproof match case.

  She was glad for that orange necklace now, because her other fire starters were in her emergency pack and her jacket. As long as she had the means to make a fire, she knew she’d be fine. She found a cut bank along the river that offered shelter from the wind, and kindled a tiny fire in the river gravel, which would reflect heat back against the bank. While enough light remained, she gathered armloads of driftwood and dragged a few dry snags to the campsite. When it grew too dark to safely move in the woods, she returned to the fire and stripped out of her damp clothing, draping her pants and flannel shirt over the mountain of firewood where the heat would dry them. She kept her underwear, synthetic T-shirt, boots and socks on and then gathered nearby stones to build a heat reflector behind the fire while her clothes dried. As long as she kept moving she was fine, but the night air was chilly, and every now and again the cold night wind would tug through the spruce and bring goose bumps to her skin.

  She checked her clothing and turned it over as if she were grilling a steak. By midnight it was almost dry. She donned it gratefully and then huddled, exhausted, in the warmth of the fire. For the first time she felt her face, hissing in pain when her fingers traced the deep gashes and scrapes. There was a tiny reflector mirror on the cap of the match case, but she really didn’t need or want to see what she looked like. She knew her face was a road map of bruises and cuts inflicted during her struggle through the branches of the spruce tree, and her left eyelid was almost swollen shut, but she wasn’t complaining. She was painfully aware how lucky she was to be alive. Spending an uncomfortable night crouched beside a small campfire was a small price to pay for her stupidity. By all rights, she should have drowned.

  * * *

  DAWN BROUGHT MIST rising off the water like smoke, trout rising in the eddies, the clear yellow band of light over the dark forest to the east. Cameron was on the move as soon as it was light enough to see. She’d run out of firewood, and the embers of her little fire were cold. So was she. Moving forced warmth into aching muscles, and the stiffness gradually left her. She hadn’t walked thirty minutes before she came to the cabin. At first she couldn’t process the idea that, had she kept walking just a little farther last night, she’d have slept warm, dry and well fed.

  She had a fire going in the woodstove within five minutes of her arrival, and within half an hour had breakfast cooking. She ate ravenously: six eggs, three pieces of buttered toast and three mugs of strong hot tea. When she was finished eating, she cleaned up, made three thick peanut-butter sandwiches and put them in an empty bread bag. One of the dry bags had a shoulder harness, and she loaded it with enough gear to be able to hike upriver toward Jack without starving or facing another night without shelter. The pack, when she shouldered it, weighed twenty-five pounds. Two hours after she had arrived at the cabin, she was retracing her steps upriver.

  By noon she had reached the fallen tree that had almost claimed her life. Her hat was still dangling from the tip of the spruce in midair, swinging back and forth in the light breeze, taunting her. She paused long enough to eat one of the sandwiches and drink some hot tea from her thermos, then she pushed on. She had no way of knowing how much progress Jack had made the day before, but she figured she had a ways to go before finding him.

  The faint sound of a whistle over the rush of the river, less than an hour later, surprised her. She blew a long answering blast on her orange whistle, listened for a reply and felt weak with relief when it came. Tears stung her eyes as she blew once more on her whistle and heard the answering response. Her legs grew wobbly. She sank down in a heap, shrugged out of the heavy pack and surrendered to the sudden rush of emotions that overwhelmed her. She was still cradling her head in her hands when she heard approaching footsteps. She wiped her face on her shirttail and struggled to her feet just as Jack limped into view, pushing his way through the brush that choked the riverbank.

  He stopped short and stared when he spotted her standing on dry land, not paddling upriver in the canoe. “What happened? Where’s the canoe?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes stung, and her throat cramped up. He crossed the
distance between them, and when he reached her, he tipped her chin up to look directly at him. He studied the cuts on her face, her swollen eye. He gently turned her head first to one side, then the other before letting his hand drop away.

  “What happened?” he repeated. “Are you all right?”

  She blinked and swallowed hard. “I lost the canoe.” With her palms she blotted the tears that stung the scratches on her cheeks. “I’m okay. Just tired, that’s all.”

  “We’ll find a good place to camp.” He gave her another up-and-down appraisal, then glanced around. “This place looks perfect.”

  “I can walk,” she said. “The farther we go today, the easier tomorrow will be. It’s only an hour’s hike to where I lost the canoe.”

  “You sure? You look like hell.”

  She nodded and struggled to her feet. “I’m sure.”

  “I’ll carry your pack,” he said.

  “No, you won’t.”

  This time she followed him, and fell behind. He had to wait for her twice. By the time they reached the downed spruce tree that had nearly killed her, she was on her last legs. She let the pack drop from her shoulders for the second time and sat on it, pointing to the tree lying half submerged in the river, and to her hat suspended just over the water, like an ornament. “The canoe’s pinned under that tree,” she said.

  Jack shrugged out of his own pack and lowered it to the ground. He studied the tree for a long, silent moment. She didn’t have to explain how it all happened. He was plenty smart enough to figure out what she’d done.

  “Most paddlers don’t survive something like that,” he said. She waited for him to tell her how foolish she’d been to risk her life just to retrieve a hat, but he didn’t. He could have made any number of “I told you so” comments, knowing she’d almost drowned trying to do something very, very stupid, but he didn’t. Her throat cramped up again and she looked away, blinking hard and struggling for self-control. She wasn’t going to start bawling again. She was done with that.

  * * *

  JACK SET UP camp on the best spot he could find. His tent was small and didn’t need much level ground. The bugs were bad, and they had both donned their head nets. He unrolled his sleeping mat and bag inside the tent, then crawled out and sat beside her. She reached inside her dry bag and brought out two sandwiches, handing him one.

  “Supper,” she said.

  They ate awkwardly, lifting mosquito netting for a bite, letting it fall again.

  “Romantic,” he commented, and she laughed in spite of her pain and misery. They drank water from their bottles. Not a fancy supper, nor was it enough, but considering the circumstances it was more than he’d expected. “Thank you, that hit the spot,” he said when he’d finished. “Well, the way I see it, your canoe’s pinned under that tree, and we have to cut the tree to free the canoe. I have a folding saw. I’ll start on the tree trunk. You go inside the tent and get some sleep.”

  “We won’t both fit in there—it’s too small.”

  “We’ll fit. You’re used to a condo, that’s all. You’ve gotten spoiled.”

  “You can’t cut a tree that size with a folding saw.”

  “I’d use an ax if I had one, but I don’t.”

  “There’s an ax at the cabin.”

  Jack’s glance was sharp and questioning. “You made it there?”

  She nodded. “Yesterday, around noon. It’s a nice cabin, too. I unloaded most of the gear there, all the food and the cooler, before starting back upriver with the canoe. There’s an ax behind the woodstove.”

  “When did you lose the canoe?”

  “Late yesterday afternoon, on the way back to meet you. I tried to make it back to the cabin, but I ran out of daylight. My clothes were wet. I’d have frozen to death if I hadn’t had matches on me.”

  “Remind me to thank your matches,” he said. “Get some sleep. Take my sleeping bag. It’s warmer.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I could sleep on a bed of nails,” she mumbled, unzipping the tent door, pushing her blanket and fleece through, then crawling inside. “Hurry up. The bugs’ll fill the tent. You can cut the tree tomorrow after we get the ax.”

  Jack didn’t need a second invitation. She was right. The bugs were bad, and he was tired. Within moments they were situated head to toe like two sardines in a can. “I apologize in advance if I talk in my sleep,” Jack said, but there was no response. Cameron was already out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SECONDS LATER, IT SEEMED, her voice woke him and her hand was on his shoulder.

  “Jack. Jack, wake up. There’s a bear right outside the tent! Where’s your rifle?” For some reason she was whispering.

  “My what?”

  “Your rifle!” she said urgently. “You brought it in here last night. I saw you.”

  Jack struggled to sit up and shrug out of his bag. The tent was so cramped he could barely move. She was crouched at the door, looking out.

  “Where’s the bear?” he asked, crawling up beside her.

  “It’s right there, right in front of you. Can’t you see it?”

  Jack stared out the screen door into the darkness. He saw something big moving nearby, a very large, bulky object that appeared to be approaching the tent. He heard the roll of gravel under its huge paws and the lung-deep breaths of a very large animal.

  “You’re right, it’s a bear,” he said, rubbing his hand over his face. “But they’re mostly all bluff. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  She made a noise of frustration and crawled to the back of the tent as the bear approached the door. Jack shouted, “Hey bear! Hey, go on now, leave us be,” and clapped his hands together, but the sounds didn’t prevent the bear from seizing Cameron’s dry sack in its jaws and dragging it several paces away. She crawled up beside him with his guitar case in hand.

  “If this is a rifle, it’s mighty light, and keeping it inside a case is dumb,” she muttered as she struggled to open it. He heard the zipper being jerked open, then another noise when her hand encountered the contents. “What the hell’s this thing?”

  “That’s a Martin classical backpack guitar.”

  “A guitar? You’ve been carrying a guitar on this trip? A guitar? You’ve got to be kidding me.” She thrust it into his hands. “What use is a guitar when a grizzly bear’s tearing our camp apart?”

  “There’s a can of bear spray in the side pocket of my pack. Get it, in case this doesn’t work,” he said. Then he unzipped the door of the tent and crawled just outside. The bear was a mere ten feet away, enthusiastically plundering her dry sack and ignoring the two of them. He remained on his knees for balance, tucked the guitar against his hip and drew a deep breath.

  * * *

  CAMERON HAD A healthy respect for bears. She’d seen firsthand what they were capable of, the speed at which they moved, the aftermath of their brute strength when combined with fear, aggression or fury. That’s why she carried the .44 Magnum pistol, which she’d have in her hands right now if it weren’t inside the dry bag that was lashed in the nose of the submerged canoe, along with her cans of bear spray and the noisy bear bangers.

  When Jack crawled out of the tent to confront the bear with nothing but a guitar in hand, she dove for his pack and started searching frantically in the side pockets for the can of bear spray, but before she could find it, he created a blast of noise with strings and belted out Elvis’s “Hound Dog” in a deep tenor voice, a very impressive voice, matter of fact, that drove her back on her heels. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin all the time...!”

  The bear lifted its head, startled by the sudden outburst of noise, then reared onto its hind legs, making it appear at least nine feet tall in the darkness. Jack never paused, just kept belting out the song and thrashing hard as he could on the guitar strings. He h
adn’t finished the first stanza before the bear dropped to all fours, wheeled and ran off so fast it ran headfirst into a small spruce, flattened it and kept on going. He played and sang a few more stanzas before stopping and looking over his shoulder to where Cameron cowered inside a tent that was rapidly filling with mosquitoes. She was holding the can of bear spray in her hand, arm extended and pointed toward the door.

  “You’re crazy,” she managed.

  “You complaining?”

  “No.”

  “Good. We should’ve hauled that pack of yours up into a tree when we made camp, but I don’t think that bear’ll be back. It didn’t like my singing.”

  “I’d haul it now if I had some rope.”

  Jack crawled back inside the tent, and she zipped the door behind him. He opened a side pocket in his pack and came up with a roll of parachute cord, which he handed to her. “You sure you want to go back out there?”

  “Stand by with your guitar and the bear spray.” Cameron crawled out of the tent, crossed to the duffel, tied one end of the cord to the straps, tossed the roll of cord over the nearest high branch and hauled the bag aloft, tying it off to the base of the tree. She wasted no time returning to the tent and zipping the door behind her. “At least if that bear comes back, it’ll be focused on getting that pack out of the air and not eating us.”

  They hunched side by side in the gloom. Jack rested the guitar by the door. “Just in case,” he said, then flopped back onto his sleeping bag. She heard him slapping at mosquitoes as she lay on her stomach, propped on her elbows so she could keep watch out the door. She was still holding the can of bear spray.