Page 54 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“Oh, Lord! Ben’s found her!”
He half swam, half pushed along the bottom, dragging Juliette by the collar behind him. When he could stand, he lifted her in his arms and stumbled toward the shore.
No one spoke. When Ben came out of the water, he turned Juliette in his arms, then went down on one knee and dropped her across the knee that was raised. A great gout of water shot from her mouth. But she wasn’t breathing.
Zoe clung to Clara. “She’s dead!”
When Zoe could bear to look again, Ben and Tom had placed Juliette on the ground, her head turned to one side, and Tom was pushing on her back. With each push, water gushed from her mouth. The other men who had participated in the rescue staggered out of the water and hurried to the fire Tom had ordered built on the shore. Mrs. Eddington was there, passing towels and blankets as the men stripped off their clothing. Ice had formed in their hair and mustaches.
Tom looked up and waved Zoe and Clara forward. “She’s alive, but just barely. Get those wet clothes off her. Ben? You, too. Get out of those clothes before they freeze on you.”
Clara pulled Juliette to a sitting position. Her face was as white as a corpse, her head lolled on her shoulders. With each weak cough, water and bile dribbled from the corner of her lips. She looked dazed and disoriented, but she was breathing.
A sob of relief caught in Zoe’s throat, then she fumbled at Juliette’s coat while Clara jerked off her boots and reached under her skirts to yank her stockings down and off.
Standing to one side, Tom helped Ben out of clothing that had begun to freeze and stiffen. Ben was shaking hard enough that bits of ice showered from his beard and hair. When he was near naked, Mrs. Eddington ran forward and pushed a towel and blanket into his hands, then hastily turned her back.
“Mein Gott,”Clara muttered, after she’d torn open Juliette’s bodice because the buttons were frozen tight to the fabric. It would take too long to free and open them. “She’s wearing a corset! I thought we all decided not to.”
Wearing a corset into the Yukon was so like Juliette that Zoe would have laughed if she’d learned about iton another occasion. But Juliette was half-dead. Zoe didn’t need a doctor to tell her Juliette’s condition was very grave.
They were down to Juliette’s chemise and knickers before Zoe sucked a breath between her teeth and stopped Clara before Clara ripped off the chemise. “Being naked in front of several hundred men would be her worst nightmare!”
Clara held her gaze a moment, then shouted to Tom and Mrs. Eddington to raise a blanket in front of Juliette for privacy. “Good idea,” she muttered, tearing off the rest of Juliette’s clothing.
Her body was mottled with cold and shook uncontrollably. Her teeth chattered in a staccato cadence. Zoe combed ice out of Juliette’s streaming hair while Clara toweled her off.
“Can you stand?”
Juliette stared as if she had no recognition of knowing them. She didn’t seem to understand what Clara had asked.
Stepping behind her, Clara grasped her under the arms and lifted. And suddenly Ben was there. A towel wrapped his waist, a thick blanket covered his head and body.
He opened the blanket and pulled Juliette against his naked chest, then closed his blanket around them both.
The only thing Zoe said was, “Are you warm enough yourself to warm her?”
Clara dropped a second blanket over Juliette’s wet head. “Rub her arms and back.”
Now Zoe became aware of the voices of the spectators. Later, when she remembered what happened next, she would recall several kind and gentlemanly comments. But right now, the only voices she heard were those making salacious and suggestive comments.
“What are they doing under them blankets?” Followed by laughter.
“I sure wouldn’t mind being under there with a wet woman.”
“I’d make her a lot wetter.”
That was it for Zoe. Trembling with fury, she rushed toward the man who had made the last comment. His name was Jake Horvath, if she remembered correctly. “You’re talking about a respectable woman, you swine!”
Her brothers had taught her not to make a fist around her thumb. If you didn’t want to get your thumb broken, you tucked it tightly on the outside against the first and second knuckles.
She hauled back and drove her fist into the man’s nose hard enough to feel something crack. Blood spurted from his nostrils, and he stared at her in shock.
“Good for you, little lady. He had it coming!”
“Oh yeah? He didn’t say nothin’ the rest of us weren’t thinking.”
A fistfight broke out on Zoe’s right, then another to her left. In less than a minute, all hell broke loose. Three hundred people were shouting and fighting along the icy shore of Crater Lake.
