The thought kept bombarding Amy’s brain while she trampled in the rain alongside Michael. How was she going to explain all this to Dieter? She and Michael hurried to catch up with the Scouts. She held her thin jacket collar tightly around her neck, but it wasn’t the rain creeping down between her shoulder blades that bothered her. She was fuming about the stupid strategic mistake the scoutmaster had made.
When they met up with the Scouts backtracking on the trail and nearby woods, they were calling out Michael’s name. Scoutmaster Farmington was shocked to see Amy although more than thrilled at the sight of Michael. As if the boy was Jesus returning, she thought.
She felt like announcing to him the First Principle of Hiking—don’t lose anybody!
The scoutmaster’s apologies were weak but abundant. The Scouts, drenched from the rain, trudged back toward the camping area at the waterfalls.
“We’re almost there,” Farmington barked for the third time. They had hiked in the frigging rain for an hour and the scoutmaster no longer had credibility on the topic of how far they had left to go. Amy walked in the center of a single file of exhausted Scouts while Farmington hung back at the rear. Paul Struthers—introduced to her as a volunteer father—was in the lead when they came on an open field by the river that ran wide and deep. Farmington announced that the patrol cabin was just ahead.
Something was wrong.
It was hard to make out the image through the downpour. When she got closer, the figure of a man emerged, crouching on the bank. He was gripping a rope that coiled around his arms and chest like a python and was leaning back, straining, as if playing tug-of-war with someone in the river.
Josh Pendleton?
She jogged toward him, but began to run as soon as she spotted his blood-soaked trousers and the panic in his strawberry face. An agitated llama stood by his side. In the middle of the river a man was half-submerged with a loop of rope around his chest. He was about to lose hold of a log stuck between large boulders jutting above the surface. Through the sheets of rain she couldn’t see the face of the drowning victim but knew who it had to be. Glancing at Michael and then back to the river, she gazed in fright at how close the brim of a gargantuan waterfall was to Dieter, who struggled on the other end of the rope.
Josh was planted like a Ponderosa pine on the bank. A llama—poised to attack anyone who approached—stood guard.
Farmington made the first move toward Josh. The llama snorted and lowered its head, its nostrils flared and ears pinned back. When he took another step, the excited animal charged and rammed him in the groin, sending him on the run back through the mud.
Michael slipped between the Scouts to the front and moved toward the llama. “Hello, guy! Hey, boy!” He spoke softly, holding out his hand. The llama arched its head and thrust out its tongue, tasting the tips of the boy’s outstretched fingers. It licked his hand and wrist and worked its way up his arm. Michael reached up and displayed a fist stuffed with Juicy Fruit gum, still in wrappers.
“Can you take him up to the trees?” Amy shouted.
Michael grabbed the llama’s lead and moved away, whispering to it as he patted its neck. He doesn’t recognize his dad out in the river, Amy thought. Mr. Struthers rushed to Josh’s side and covered his head and shoulders with his own plastic poncho to shelter him from the downpour. He then uncoiled the rope from around Josh then twisted it about his own waist as he dug in with the heels of his boots to anchor himself in the mud.
The scoutmaster and four of the older boys ran down to the bank to help Struthers pull. They grabbed onto the rope and tugged in an attempt to pull in the slack in the rope that had bowed against the force of the current. Together, they tugged, backpedaled, tugged. When one fell to the ground, he tripped over another. Three more Scouts joined in to help.
Amy watched in terror as the river swelled above Dieter’s neck and beat at his face, pinning him against the boulder. She shook her head in exasperation, realizing that the Scouts somehow had to overcome the ungodly drag of the rope against the current. Otherwise there was no chance in hell to haul him in.
The Scouts huddled on the bank in single file, each holding tightly with rope-burned palms and fingers to the rescue line while the older ones moved into the rushing river. Those in back squatted into the mud. Farmington was in front, up to his waist in water. He turned toward Amy on shore and yelled. “We can’t keep going! It’s too dangerous.”
Jesus, no!
Michael ran down to the edge of the river, suddenly aware it was his dad out there, drowning.
Amy shouted back at Farmington. “Hold on, Leonard. Give me just one more minute.” She seized Michael by his jacket before he waded out. She clamped her arms around him and carried him back to shore, flopping down with him behind the group. “I want you to help with the rope, Michael. When I tell everyone to pull, give it all the muscle you have. Do you understand?”
He was panting, wildly staring back at her through streaks of rain. When he nodded, she rubbed his wet hair and rushed back to the river’s edge, where she waved toward Dieter with both arms high above her head. Uncertain if he could see her, she folded her arms around her chest and threw her hands out away from her body with her fingers spread open.
She repeated her action with exaggerated gestures, grabbing her chest, tossing her hands out harder, faster. Let go, she thought, mouthing the words.
Let go of the log!
She flung out her arms, back to her chest and out again, hoping and praying he could see her through the rain.
“Let go, Dieter,” she cried above the roar of the falls, gesturing again and again. “Let go… let go! For God’s sake, let go!”
He waved back. Holding onto the rope with both hands, Dieter dived upstream against the current. The river surged into his face as he reared back his head.
A younger boy at the front of the group fell into the water and Mr. Farmington grabbed him from behind. The other Scouts slipped in the mud, but still clung to the rope, refusing to turn loose.
“Pull, men,” Amy yelled. “Pull like crazy. Head for the trees behind you and pull!”
Calling encouragement to one another, they shuffled back away from the river and toward the trees, everyone in sync like one monster gear.
Dieter was losing the battle, drifting toward the waterfall. Amy gasped and cupped her hands to her mouth. The force of the current towed the Scouts along the bank until Dieter swung on an arc out over the falls with his legs flailing in midair.
He came hurling back. His chest smacked the water and his head narrowly missed another boulder that jutted above the surface.
The Scouts rushed for the trees, hauling Dieter through the river. He slid into shore and slammed his face into the gravel, gradually skidding to a halt. When the Scouts braked, they rolled into a human ball, cheering and yelling.
Dieter lay buried in the mud. A rumble roared in from above and river water sprayed into the air like a small tornado.
The noise pierced Dieter’s skull. His wet clothes flapped in a torrent of wind. Voices. Commotion.
Someone was shaking him, shouting. He wallowed in the warm mud, completely spent. A blurred figure of a man with a handlebar mustache checked his breathing and pulse. “He’s okay. Just scratched up a bit.”
Amy crouched over Dieter and squeezed his face with the soft hands of a nun… or an angel. Michael lay with his arms around Dieter’s waist and his head glued to his dad’s belly.
Too exhausted to move, Dieter could only watch rescuers bring out stretchers from the helicopter and rush to get both him and Josh inside the craft. After hooking up an IV to Josh onboard, the rescuers stripped away Dieter’s soaked clothes and boots and slipped him into a jump suit. They wrapped him in a blanket and applied a heat pack under his neck before locking him in next to a window.