P Deutermann - Spider mountain

About an hour before sunrise, we came upon a whitewater rafting outfitter’s place situated between the road and the stream. There was a log lodge building, which advertised tickets and supplies, and a dirt parking lot with chains across the entrance and exit. We stopped to catch our breath and then looked at each other. A raft ride would be a whole lot easier than jogging down the road. And it would eliminate our spoor.

We snuck around to the back of the place and found canoes hanging upside down on racks and a row of inflatable rafts stacked on their sides, big ones, medium ones, and even two-man jobs, all attached to a large oak tree by a cable with a padlock. The wire and lock were mostly there for show, because the wire ran through individual rope handles on the rafts. I cut out one of the medium, eight-man rafts, and we pushed it down to the ramp. There were paddles strapped inside as well as life vests. We unstrapped two paddles, put on some damp life vests, loaded the shepherds, and pushed out into the stream.

“Ever done this before?” I asked.

“Once,” she said. “In Colorado. Much bigger raft, with professional guides. I was just along for the ride. Never felt so helpless in my life.”

“Those are big rivers. This stream shouldn’t be too bad. I think we can mostly drift with the current.”

“So is there a reason that place called itself a whitewater rafting outfit?” she asked pointedly.

“Probably in the spring when this thing is up and running,” I replied, with more confidence than I actually felt. I’d been out a couple of times but would have to admit I knew next to nothing about navigating real rapids. Fortunately, it was late summer and there shouldn’t be enough water in the stream to build any real rapids ahead. If there were, we could always get out and resume our cross-country marathon.

“Do you think this will slow up the pursuit any?” she asked, again mirroring my own thoughts. I was dragging my left foot, sock and all, in the cold water. It felt wonderful. Getting the boot off had not been wonderful. I’d cut away the laces and then let the weight of the water pull it off.

“If they use dogs, they’ll know we hit the river with a raft. Then they’ll have to search both sides to find us, and the dogs won’t be of much use.”

“Is that a yes?”

My mind was foggy, and my foot was getting a good start on becoming a block of ice. I realized that getting into the raft was mostly going to be a comfortable break in an otherwise precarious escape plan. Once M. C. Mingo got a look into Rue’s truck, every cop in the entire country and all the black hats would be on our trail. And getting into Carrigan County wasn’t necessarily going to solve our problems. Mingo could fax over some crime-scene photos to Sheriff Hayes’s office and we might get rounded up and handed right back over to our nemesis. I ducked her question.

“What else did Rue reveal on the way to Grinny’s cabin?” I asked. “She say what they planned to do with you?”

“Mingo knows I’m not with the SBI anymore,” she said.

“Which meant he was worried enough to check.”

“Yes, I suppose. I tried to bluff her, tell her there’d be consequences when I got back.”

“And?”

“And she said something along the lines of ‘Honey, it ain’t like you comin’ back.’”

“Well, there you are,” I said. “Now she’s dead instead of you.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, right,” I said wearily. “It was still pretty awful.”

“Worse because it was a woman getting shot?”

I had to think about that for a moment. “Yes, I think so. That’s probably not PC, and I know she was a snake, but…”

She moved closer to me in the back of the raft. Under other circumstances it would have been a very pleasant ride through the soft night. The stream was about sixty feet wide, and the raft was just sailing along peacefully. We were both in the back, and the shepherds were at our feet. The raft would bump into the occasional rock or one of the banks, spin lazily, and rejoin the current. We’d stowed the two sweeps, and I’d shoved the shotgun into two nylon safety harness loops on the side. Large trees overhung the banks, and the dim moonlight peered in and out of the leaves. We’d seen no vehicles on the road above, and after ten minutes or so I think we both fell asleep.

Which is how the waterfall surprised us. I awoke to feel the back end of the raft coming up and the front tipping down dangerously. By the time I got my wits about me we were over the edge and dropping like the proverbial stone. I grabbed a safety loop with one hand and Carrie with the other about the same moment that we hit the water below with a surprisingly painful thump. Both shepherds slid forward to the bow of the raft and were catapulted back to the middle when the raft folded up into an inflatable sandwich for an instant. I think the only reason we all hadn’t gone into the water was that we had been grouped back at the stern of the raft.

Carrie swore as the raft did a giddy three-sixty and we got a look at the falls, which fortunately were only about six feet high. But now we found out why they called themselves a whitewater rafting company. The river’s banks were closing in, and the current was beginning to really assert itself.

“Reveille, reveille,” I said, reaching for one of the paddle sweeps. I hauled the dogs back to where we were, and Carrie pulled out a sweep.

“What do we do?” she said, shouting because the water was getting noisy. The raft hit a big boulder and whipped around, sending us backward down the increasingly turbulent stream.

“Not this,” I yelled, and began to sweep with the paddle to get us going bow first before we hit something again. Carrie copied what I was doing, and we fought each other for a minute before we realized what was happening.

“Get up front,” I called. “Try to keep us from hitting anything dead-on.”

She scrambled to the front of the boat as I finally got the damned thing across and then aligned properly in the current. The dogs were staying low and giving me reproachful looks. I wondered if shepherds got seasick.

Ahead was a long, straight channel of high, slab-sided rocks and whitewater. This stretch must be really something in the spring, I thought, as we went over another low waterfall neither of us had seen in the darkness. Carrie gave a whoop and then disappeared in a blast of spray and bad language. If it had been daylight this might have even been fun. The good news was that we were making good distance in the suddenly strong current. The bad news was that we were effectively out of control, since neither of us knew what we were doing. And it was starting to get light, which meant that soon there would be eyes on the shore trying to find us.

We were shoved sideways to one side of the main stream, and the boat hung up on something, which resulted in cold water pouring over one gunwale in alarming quantities. The dogs scrambled instinctively to the other side, and the weight shift dislodged the boat before either of us was ready. Once more we were rolling downstream backward. I didn’t know much, but I knew that was a prescription for disaster, and I yelled at Carrie to pull hard on her sweep. She called back that she was trying, and then the damned boat lunged sideways and settled into a whirlpool, spinning us sickeningly in three complete circles before spitting us out into the main channel again.

And then it was over. The river catapulted us out of one final, narrow stone chute into a broad expanse of black water and went back to sleep. I didn’t know how long we’d been in the rapids, such as they were, but it had seemed forever. The river widened out again and entered a long, deep curve, once more embraced by large trees on either bank. We were both wet and, even in the late-summer dawn, cold. Frick and Frack were disgusted at our ineptitude and wouldn’t look at me.