“You sure about those fellows, Dag?” Remo called up from the water, once they’d all clambered down and were ready to push off.
“Yep. Just over half a mile that way.” He pointed.
Barr’s head turned. “Oh, yeah, I’ve got ’em now! Follow me, Remo! It’ll be just like old times.” His boat shot away as his paddle dipped and surged.
Remo snorted, but trailed dutifully. Whit’s voice drifted back through the fog: “Beats shifting sheep, anyhow…”
“Sheep?” said Berry.
Dag shook his head.
Long minutes slid past as the Fetch slipped downstream. Floating with the current, the banks obscured, it felt as if they’d stopped altogether in a quiet, fog-walled harbor. Running full-tilt into a snag or a big rock at five miles an hour and opening the Fetch’s seams would cure that illusion right quick, Dag thought; he kept all his senses alert.
“Them Lakewalker boys’ll be able to find their way back to us, won’t they?” said Berry uneasily.
“That’s why we put one in each boat,” Dag assured her. “They’ve made it to the island; ah, good for the narrow boat! Barr can get it right in between the trees.”
“Just so’s he don’t catch it sidewise to the current and lean too far over. He could fill it in an eyeblink that way.”
“These Pearl Riffle patrollers are up to the river’s tricks, I expect,” said Dag. “Handier than I would be. And those narrow boats are made to float even full of water. Air boxes in the prow and stern, tarred up and sealed.”
“So that’s how they do that! I always wondered.” She added after a moment, “We thought it was magic.”
Fawn took Hod and Hawthorn below to help assemble a warming welcome for the expected influx of unhappy boatmen—or boatless men. It was nearly an hour before the narrow boat appeared out of the fog astern. Two cold, wet strangers crouched in a miserable huddle in the center, clutching the thwarts nervously, but a third sat up in the bow, helping Barr paddle. Bo and Hod gave them hands to climb stiffly out—one nearly dumped the boat over in his clumsiness, but Barr kept it upright.
“Whee-oh!” said the paddling man, straightening up and pulling off a shapeless felt hat much the worse for wear. He was a lean, strappy fellow, unshaven and shoeless; his feet were scratched and his toes purple with the cold. “We sure are glad to see you folks. We hit the top of that there island broadside in the dark last night, and it just sucked our boats down under that big towhead like the river was swallowing ’em!”
Bo leaned over the steering oar and nodded sagely. “Yep. It would.” Fawn, hovering in the rear hatch, looked on wide-eyed.
They had barely hoisted the narrow boat back aboard when the skiff, too, emerged from the mist, Remo and Whit rowing strongly. The skiff rode low in the water with the weight of the four rescued men. One was not only shoeless but shirtless, the skin of his shoulders and torso scraped bloody, some hanging in ugly strips. He handed up an ash boar spear, of all the things to have hung on to in the wreck. He groaned as he was hauled and pushed up by his anxious companions, but when he found his battered feet and gingerly straightened, clinging to the upright spear, he gazed around with a lively smile. Unbent, he proved a tallish man by farmer measures, with black hair straggling down his neck, and bright, brown eyes.
“This here’s our boat boss, Captain Ford Chicory,” the paddling man explained.
“I’m Boss Berry, and this is my boat, the Fetch,” said Berry, raking an escaped hank of hair out of her eyes. “You’re right welcome aboard.”
The skinned flattie blinked at her in frank appreciation. “Well, ma’am, you folks sure fetched us out of a heap o’ trouble! We called all night from those trees as the water was gettin’ higher, till we got so hoarse we couldn’t yell no more, but you’re the first as heard us.”
“Thank the Lakewalker, here,” said Berry, nodding to Dag. “He’s the one that spotted you. We’d have passed you right by in this soup.”
“Yeah, and if we had heard you, we’d likely’ve thought you was ghosts crying to lure us to our doom in the fog,” Hawthorn offered helpfully.
The skinned flattie’s startled eye was drawn from Dag by this; he looked down at Hawthorn in bemusement and scratched his head. “Yeah, I could see that.”
“Too many tall tales,” Berry explained, cuffing Hawthorn on the ear. “Go help Fawn.” She turned to her crew. “I want at least one of you patroller boys topside with Bo.” Both volunteered, and climbed up. “And, Bo,” Berry called after them, “this time, if Remo tells you it’s a sand bar or snag, you mind him!”
His crew herded their skinned boat boss—or former boat boss—through the back hatch; Dag ducked in after, mentally locating his medicine kit. The crowded kitchen was warm and steamy, and there he found Fawn had prepared gallons of hot tea and a huge heap of potatoes fried with onions and bacon, drenched in salt butter. A basket of apples stood ready. Warmed, if not hot, water waited for washing up. Stacks of every blanket and towel the boat carried were heating in front of the hearth. The exhausted men fell on it all with moans of gratitude. The limited supply of spare dry clothes was shared around as best as might be, with blankets making up the rest.
Hot water, soap, and Dag’s kit waited by the hearth as well. It seemed he was expected to take on the injured, which he was willing enough to do. It was mostly cuts and scrapes, which he set Hod to washing with strong soap. Whit helped bandage, with a little instruction. The flattie leader was the worst off, and Dag set him on a stool before the fire and borrowed Fawn’s hands to help clean the odd injuries on his torso.
“What in the wide green world happened to you?” Fawn asked him as she started in with rags and soap. “Did that bear claw you?”
The fellow smiled back at her the way most sane fellows did, despite his winces from her scrubbing. “Not this time, missy.”
“Why didn’t you bring back the bear, too?” demanded Hawthorn of Whit, both pausing to watch this process.
“It wasn’t a cub, Hawthorn,” Whit said impatiently. “It would’ve sunk the skiff, if it didn’t try to eat us.”
Boss-or-Captain Chicory told Hawthorn kindly, “Bears can swim fine, if they’ve a mind. It’ll get itself off that island when it gets bored.” He whispered to Fawn, “I’ve got a boy about that size at home, and his little brother to keep him in trouble in case he runs out. Which he never has yet, I admit.” He raised his voice, “No, see, how it was—ow!”
“Sorry,” said Fawn, folding a cloth to pat new blood leaks from a scrubbed scab.
“Keep on, missy, I can tell you’re doing me good. How it was, was, we’d come up shorthanded just before we reached the Grace, because three of our fellows got scared at the size of the river and run off with our skiff. So we lashed the boats together, but now I think that wasn’t such a good idea, as the rig was mighty obstinate after that. We pretty much gave up and just went with the river, figuring we’d get a chance to sort out and maybe hire on a real pilot downstream a ways.”
“Had any of you been on the river before?” asked Berry, joining the circle.
“No, not down this far. Some of my hands had worked the upper Beargrass a time or two, but boats are a new start for me. My main line is hunting—bear and wild pig mostly, though my missus keeps her garden. I’m no hand at farming. Tried it once. If things are mainly going to die on a man anyway, hunting’s a more natural trade for him, I figure.” He took a long swallow of tea, warming to his tale.
“I was sitting down by the fire last night in the trailing boat, trying to get my feet thawed and wishing I was back hunting bears on hard land, where a man can at least pick his own direction, when I heard the fellows running and yelling over my head. Then we struck that towhead, thunk! I knew right off we were getting sucked under tail-end first, because the upstream side o’ the floor tilted down like a rooftop. I bolted for the hatch, which was in the middle of the roof, but the river was already a-pouring in like a regular cataract. The only other opening was this little window in the side, which we’d mainly used for dipping up water before we’d lashed the boats together.”