High Plains Bride. Valerie Hansen

was increasing, driving bits of stinging dirt and broken vegetation against his clothing and exposed hands and face. He crammed his hat on tighter, turned his back to the onslaught and fought to quiet his horse while he unrolled the slicker that had been tied behind the cantle of his saddle. The animal was clearly agitated, and well it should be under these circumstances, Will reasoned.

      “Easy boy. Easy. We’ll be fine.”

      As soon as he’d donned the slicker, he leaned low in the saddle and patted the horse’s lathered neck to try to reassure it, wishing he believed his own placating words.

      Looking south, he saw that Clint and Bob had rounded up a large portion of his herd and were driving them in a tight circle to keep them controlled. Off to his right by about twenty degrees, an immense dust cloud was rising to meet the gray, somber heavens. The wind carried the sounds of shrill bleating and the rumbling drum of hundreds of cloven hooves.

      So that’s what has my horse so riled up. Will put voice to his conclusion and patted the nervous animal again. “Buffalo. No wonder you’re so jumpy, boy. I am, too, now that I can tell what you smelled.”

      Reining hard, he kicked the horse into a gallop and raced to join his men. This was just the beginning of what promised to be one of the wildest days he’d experienced since settling in the flint hills. He just hoped he and his men survived whatever test the weather had in store.

      Amos had finally halted the Carters’ covered wagon, much to Emmeline’s relief. By that point, she had to shout at him to be heard over the howling wind. If she had not been wearing her bonnet she knew her cheeks would have already been blasted raw by the wind-driven prairie dirt and bits of broken vegetation that stung in spite of her clothing.

      “What about the other wagons?” she screeched. “They stopped a half hour ago. Are we going to turn back and join them?”

      “No need,” her father insisted. “We’ll just wait here a bit till the dust settles.”

      She couldn’t believe his stubbornness. Not now. Not when they were in the middle of nowhere and basically alone. If it had been up to her she’d have at least tried to find a rock outcropping or gulley in which to shelter. Anything had to be better than just standing out in the open and taking so much punishment.

      Hurrying to the rear of the wagon, she called to her sister Bess, who had taken up a position on the leeward side and was holding Missy’s and Mikey’s hands. “Take the twins off the trail and try to find some safe place to hunker down. I’ll bring Mama and Glory,” Emmeline shouted.

      “What about Johnny?” Bess replied.

      “Papa needs him to help calm the team.” Besides, she added to herself, instantly penitent, Johnny’s like Papa, too mean to get hurt.

      She knew such thoughts had to be a sin, but she couldn’t help herself. If there was ever a mirror image of her father, it was her thirteen-year-old brother. Thank the Lord Bess and Glory were girls!

      Emmeline watched as Bess tugged the fair-haired twins off the wide, rutted trail and into the thick stands of big and little bluestem. Surely there would be some hidey-hole out there. There had to be. Even the shallow depression of a buffalo wallow would be better than remaining in the wagon, which was already being rocked sideways by the strong winds.

      She leaned her head and shoulders in over the tailboard and shouted, “Come with me, Mama. You and Glory will be safer outside.”

      Joanna vehemently resisted as she clung to the five-year-old. “No. We’re staying right here. Your papa will take care of us.”

      “Against this?”

      Emmeline knew she was screeching at her poor mother, but she felt such tactics were necessary, given the dire circumstances. With the wind catching the fabric of her dress and petticoats and whipping them like an unfettered sail, she could barely stay on her feet. Soon, it would be impossible for any of them to successfully flee. If it wasn’t already too late.

      “Yes,” Joanna said. “I’m not moving from this wagon and neither is my baby. If you want to run off and desert us, then go. I’m not holding you here.”

      “Yes, you are,” Emmeline told her. “I won’t leave you.”

      “And I won’t leave your father.”

      “After the way he’s always treated you? How can you say that?”

      “He’s my husband. I took holy vows and I intend to honor them,” Joanna said flatly. “Come in here with us, all of you.”

      Glancing at the tall prairie grasses that were now slashing around like buggy whips and bending nearly flat to the ground Emmeline prayed that Bess and the twins had found suitable shelter. It was too late to go after them now. She’d have no chance of finding them in this turmoil.

      She swiveled slowly, guarding her face by pressing the sides of her slat bonnet closer to her cheeks. Rain was beginning to fall in drops the size of apricot pits. That meant the whirling dust would no longer be so vexing, but that was little comfort, since hail was now starting to pelt her, too. It stung her skin like an assault of vicious hornets, striking her head, hands, arms and shoulders until she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out in pain.

      That was enough to spur immediate action. Emmeline grabbed the tailgate of the wagon and leaped, hoisting herself over it and tumbling head-first into the straw-filled ticking beside her mother and youngest sister.

      They reached out and embraced each other tightly, though their respite from nature’s onslaught was brief. Larger chunks of hail soon began to puncture the canvas roof, each impact making the rends in the fabric bigger, wider.

      Wind then grabbed the loosening sheets, lifted and tore them, increasing the damage until there was little covering the wagon’s occupants except a few shreds of canvas, the bare bows and the bedding they clung to for what little protection it offered.

      “Hang on!” Emmeline screamed, grabbing Glory more tightly and holding her close to shield the child with her own body.

      Joanna was screeching, “Amos!” over and over again, to no avail.

      Even if he had been close at hand, Emmeline knew he could not have heard anyone’s cries over the increasing roar of the storm.

      It built until it was so deafening it made her ears ache and pop as if she were descending a mountain trail at a gallop. Suction from the spinning torrent pulled at her, foretelling what was about to happen.

      “Twister!” Emmeline screamed at the top of her lungs.

      She threw herself and Glory over their mother and clung to them both for dear life. Her calico skirt was tearing. Her bonnet was snatched from her head in spite of its tightly tied ribbons and her hair fanned out in a wild tangle, stinging her skin as it slapped her cheeks and neck.

      Suddenly, she sensed herself being lifted until she felt weightless. She spun. Tumbled. Cracked the top of her head on one of the bows that arched over the wagon.

      The rest of the world passed before her eyes in a fierce blur of colors accompanied by a painful, incessant battering and a dizzying disorientation beyond any she had ever experienced.

      Still grasping Glory and trying to protect her small, fragile body with her own, Emmeline was carried away from their mother, from the battered wagon and its heavy-bodied ox team.

      Praying wordlessly, thoughtlessly, she imagined that she’d glimpsed the team and wagon in the distance before she’d squeezed her eyes shut to try and stop her vertigo.

      That sight had been so fleeting, so tenuous, she wasn’t positive it wasn’t imaginary. All she knew for certain was that they had been overtaken by an enormous twister and were totally at its mercy.

      Please, God, let the others be all right.

      That was the last lucid thought Emmeline had before blackness overcame her.

      Will managed to reach his men and