He sloshed across the gravel bar and five feet up onto what looked like the real riverbank, which was littered with shattered dead trees and muddy tufts of flattened grass. The main current was now invisible behind the bigger boulders, but it was definitely making more noise, and he could hear the sound of smaller rocks being cracked against bigger ones as the current reclaimed more and more of its channel. He felt a cold wind rise as he sat down and pulled off his soaked boots and socks. He looked west and saw the edge of a black cloud building up over the high ridge about six miles away. He thought he saw a curtain of rain sweep out of it, but it was probably sleet. Somewhere upstream, it was probably raining. Not good.
He wrung out his wet socks as best he could and then put them back on, fighting with his boots to get them laced. He had to get back down the canyon and across that line of boulders at the elbow before they, too, became submerged and trapped him in the canyon. He had no illusions about what could happen: There were clear signs fifty feet above him of how high the river could run, and it would be even higher in the narrow defile below. He got up and started downstream as fast he could go, trying not to look at that dark horizon forming above and behind him as he threaded his way through the boulder field and the snags.
54
Thirty minutes later, he sensed that the gorge was narrowing, which meant he should be getting closer to the entrance. He was sweating despite the cold air as he worked across a slope that was densely padded in pine needles. He had nothing like the clear view of the formation that he had seen back at the base camp, but the north face of the canyon was no longer terraced, and he remembered threading his way through this dense stand of pines on the way in. After this, the canyon walls would converge at the entrance. He wondered if the stepping-stone rocks were still above water, and what he would do if they weren’t.
He stepped into a hole and went down with a grunt of pain, barely catching himself on the limbs of a tree. He pulled his wet foot out of the hole and massaged his throbbing ankle. A gust of wind came down the canyon and bent the tops of the pines with a high whistling sound. He was startled by a brace of quail that flashed out of the trees some fifty feet behind him in a hard flutter of wings.
And then he heard the cough.
He froze as the hair on the back of his neck rose. Something had flushed the quail. And he’d heard that guttural cough before.
The wind rose again, bending the pines this way and that, lifting some of the needles up off the ground in little dust devils. The sunlight seemed to be changing color, turning from yellow to silver.
He couldn’t just sit there. He had to get down the canyon, closer to where the others were. They’d have discovered he was gone by now, probably at sunrise. They’d know where he’d gone. They’d be coming in, or at least Mary Ellen would. He hoped so at least.
He got up and tested his ankle. Passable. He hauled the. 45 out and checked the action. Stiff with cold, but serviceable and mostly dry. He took his bearings and began to walk east, down the slope, keeping the high stone walls on either side of his line of advance. He walked while turning in slow circles, fully aware that the cat had all the advantages in here. It should be injured after that fall, but maybe not-house cats survived falls from trees. He decided not to stop and listen-the cat wouldn’t make noise, and he couldn’t hear much over the sound of the river and the wind anyway.
Keep moving, he told himself. Keep going down. Away from its den and territory. He had a fleeting vision of Kenny’s body washing out of the little cove and being tumbled down the river gorge. He wondered if he ought to fire a shot to alert them. They had to be wondering where the hell he was, and maybe the shot would scare off the cat. Right.
He lifted the. 45 high and fired once. The noise was incredible in the confines of the canyon, the shot echoing back and forth off the rocks walls. If one was good, two was better. He fired again, this time into the pines behind him, in the general direction of that menacing cough. And then once more, make it three, the standard signal for distress in the woods.
C’mon, rangers.
He didn’t stop moving, though, continuing his ungainly pirouette through the pines, watching every shadow, where he was putting his feet, ignoring the shooting pains from his ankle, and still sweating. From exertion, he told himself. Sure. Would these damned trees never end? He realized he’d started moving slightly uphill, so he adjusted his course back down toward the now-muffled sound of the river, brushing pine branches out of his face, imagining that huge cat slinking along his trail, nose down, tail switching, unimpressed by the gunfire. He strained to hear any answering signals, but there was nothing but the sound of his own breath and the constant swish of pine branches as he pushed through the grove, the trees seeming denser now as he batted at branches with the gun barrel, always turning, watching for any signs of the tawny beast. Had it fled? Did it even know what gunfire was? How the hell had it survived that fall?
The sound of the river suddenly grew louder. He plunged out of the stand of pines into a small clearing, where at last he could see where he was. The river was a hundred yards down and to his left, hidden behind a boulder field. It sounded much stronger now. The canyon’s entrance was no more than a quarter of a mile in front of him, marked by a sharp prow of granite to his right, which curved north like a big stone paw.
Then he realized something: The river came out of the canyon and turned north. He was on the south side of the canyon. He didn’t have to cross the river. He could just keep going, right? Now that he thought of it, why in the hell had Kenny brought him that way, crossing the river not once but twice? He tried to shake the sleep out of his eyes. He sensed he was forgetting something. He was very tempted to find a warm rock and rest for a few minutes. But then he glanced back at the distant tops of the big ridge and saw that the dark cloud bank now extended in both directions for as far as he could see. Something was pumping up the river, and it had to be coming from that approaching front.
The pines ahead of him were larger, but there was lots more space between them. There’d be no getting through that boulder field until he got down to the actual canyon entrance, so he elected to keep going on the southside bank. He listened carefully for any signs that there was something following him in the dense grove at his back, but he could hear only the river. Where were the rangers? Had they heard his three shots?
He set out for the canyon entrance, keeping an eye on his back trail as he moved in among the large pines. He was conscious after awhile that the ground was rising to his right, the carpet of pine needles changing to a fine granite gravel. He passed through a blowing mist of falling water coming from a weep high up on the rock walls above him. He kept watch for the cat. He had two rounds remaining in the. 45, since for safety reasons he never carried a round under the hammer. One round had done in the previous cat, so all he’d have to do would be to hit it. Assuming he saw it coming, that is.
He stopped in midstride as he realized he could see a small slice of the river to his left and below him. Why was he climbing? He was tempted to climb one of the trees to see where the hell he was in relation to the actual entrance to the Chop. Why not? he thought. I should be able to see the base camp if I get high enough.