She walked down the hall and through the kitchen, where the maid turned from her dough-rolling, nonplussed, and shook her head. And then Mrs. Brady saw the back door, the inside slick with raindrops. Her daughter’s leg brace lay on the tiled floor, and her riding boots were gone.

* * *

• • •

Margery and Beth trotted hard down Main Street, a blur of hoofs and spraying water. Around them the unfinished road sent water sweeping down the hill and over their feet, while gutters gurgled, protesting against the weight of it. They rode with their heads low and their collars up, and when they got to the verges they cantered, the horses’ feet sinking into the boggy grass. At the lower reaches of Spring Creek, they split to each side of the road and dismounted, running to each front door and hammering on it with wet fists.

“Water’s rising,” they yelled, as the horses pulled back on their reins. “Get to higher ground.”

Behind them, a straggle of occupants began to move, faces peering around doors, out of windows, trying to work out how seriously to take this instruction. By the time they were a quarter-mile down the road some behind them had begun hoisting furniture to the top floors of those houses that were double-storied, the rest loading wagons or trucks with what might be protected. Tarpaulins were thrown over the backs of open vehicles, small, querulous children wedged between gray-faced adults. People in Baileyville had had enough experience of floods to know that they were a threat to be taken seriously.

Margery hammered on the last door of Spring Creek, water plastering her hair to her face. “Mrs. Cornish? . . . Mrs. Cornish?”

A woman in a wet headscarf appeared at the door, waves of agitation rising off her. “Oh, thank goodness. Margery dear, I can’t get my mule.” She turned and ran, motioning to them to follow.

The mule was at the bottom of his paddock, which backed onto the creek. The lowest slopes, boggy on the driest of days, were now a thick slick of toffee-colored mud and the little brown and white mule stood immobile, apparently resigned, up to his chest in it.

“He can’t seem to budge. Please help him.”

Margery pulled at his halter. Then, when that made no difference, she placed her weight against him, trying to tug at a lone foreleg. The mule lifted his muzzle, but no other part of him moved.

“You see?” Mrs. Cornish’s gnarly old hands wrung together. “He’s stuck fast.”

Beth ran to the other side and tried her best too, slapping on his rear end, yelling, and placing her shoulder against him, to no effect. Margery stepped back and looked over at Beth, who gave a small shake of her head.

She tried again with her shoulder against him but, apart from his ears flicking, not a part of the mule moved. Margery stopped, thinking.

“I can’t leave him.”

“We’re not going to leave him, Mrs. Cornish. You got your harness? And some rope? Beth? Beth? C’mere. Mrs. Cornish, hold Charley for me, will you?”

As the rain beat down, the two younger women ran for the harness, then waded back to the mule. The water had risen even since they had arrived, creeping upward across the grass. Where for months it had been a sweet-sounding trickle, a sunlit brook, now it rushed in a wide, unforgiving yellow torrent. Margery slid the harness over the mule’s head and fastened the buckles, her fingers slipping on the wet straps. The rain roared in their ears, so that they had to yell at each other and point to be understood, but months of working alongside each other had granted them a shorthand. Beth did the same on the other side, until both shouted: “Done!” They buckled the traces to the surcingle, then looped the rope through the brass hook at his shoulder.

Not many mules would tolerate a strap from their girth running through their legs but Charley was smart, and needed to be reassured just once. Beth attached her traces to her horse Scooter’s breastplate, and, in unison, each began to urge their animal forward along the less waterlogged ground. “Go on! Go on, Charley, now! Go on, Scooter!”

The animals’ ears flicked, Charley’s eyes widening uncharacteristically as he felt the unfamiliar dead weight behind him. Beth urged him and Scooter forward while Margery tugged at the rope, yelling encouragement at the little mule, which flailed, his head bobbing as he felt himself being pulled forward.

“That’s it, fella, you can do it.”

Mrs. Cornish crouched on the other side of him, two broad planks laid on the mud in front of his chest, ready to give him something to brace against.

“Come up, boys!”

Margery turned, saw Charley and Scooter straining, their flanks shivering with effort as they dug into the ground in front, stumbling, mud clods flying up around them, and realized with dismay that the mule really was stuck fast. If Charley and Scooter kept digging down with their hoofs like that they would be stuck soon too.

Beth looked at her, her own mind already there. She grimaced. “We gotta leave him, Marge. Water’s coming up real fast.”

Margery placed a hand on the little mule’s cheek. “We can’t leave him.”

They turned toward a shout. Two farmers were running toward them from the houses further back. Solid, middle-aged men Margery knew only by sight from the corn market, in overalls and oilcloths. They didn’t say a word, just slid down beside the mule and began hauling at the harness along with Charley and Scooter, boots braced against the earth, their bodies at a forty-five-degree angle.

“Go on! Go on, boys!”

Margery joined them, put her head down, placing her whole weight against the rope. An inch. Another inch. A terrible sucking sound, and then the little mule’s near front leg was freed. His head lifted in surprise, and the two men hauled again in unison, grunting with the effort, their muscles bulging against the rope. Charley and Scooter staggered in front of them, heads low, hind legs quivering with the effort, and suddenly, with a lurch, the mule was up, flipped on his side and pulled along the muddy grass a couple of feet before Charley and Scooter knew to stop. His eyes were wide with surprise and his nostrils flared before he stumbled to his feet, so that the men had to leap backward out of his way.

Margery barely had time to thank them. The briefest of nods, a tip to a wet hat brim, and they were gone, running back through the deluge to their own homes to retrieve what they could. Margery experienced a brief moment of pure love for the people she had grown up alongside, those who would not see a man—or a mule—struggle alone.

“Is he okay?” she yelled at Mrs. Cornish, who was running her weathered hands down the mule’s mud-covered legs.

“He’s good,” she shouted back.

“You need to get to higher ground.”

“I can take it from here, girls. You git on now!”

Margery winced suddenly at a complaint from some previously unknown muscle in her belly. She hesitated, doubled over, then stumbled toward Charley, as Beth unhooked the traces.