“Ready?” Roy poured the dregs of coffee onto the fire.
Carolyne gave an affirmative wave. Her real feelings wouldn’t help anyone. Melanie certainly didn’t need to hear how the old pro of the trip feared becoming food for the fishes.
“Well, we’re off,” Melanie said as she joined up with Carolyne.
Carolyne thought: Yeah, off our heads for doing all this crazy stuff for a living.
“Would you guess hot, lukewarm, or cold?” Charles asked. Carolyne’s what the hell are you talking about look made him elucidate. “The water, I mean. I’ve forded all kinds. A river in Iceland, within sight of the great Vatnajokull, almost boiled me alive; hot thermals had erupted through underwater vents; hot thermals always appear and disappear in Iceland, don’t you know?”
“The closest glaciers, Charles, tip the Andes, a few thousand miles to our west.” Carolyne was glad he looked and acted better, but she could do without the small talk. “As far as thermals—I’ve not seen any close, have you?”
“Chilly.” Roy had eavesdropped. “It’s the several underground streams that feed the river and cause the anomaly of current at that point that’s going to get us across.”
“I suppose a walk through the jungle will ready me for a cool swim,” Carolyne was optimistic but doubtful.
Her optimism wasn’t misplaced; Roy’s “mile” had been as the crow flies. Via human foot, along a meander of terrain that refused easy passage, it was farther, took longer, and drenched everyone in perspiration.
“Do you think we’ll lunch on the other side?” Charles was discouraged, although he should have known that distances, in jungle and desert, over hill and through dale, even along simple rural lanes, were relative.
Each time they were allowed a new view of the ravine through blockages of plants and stones, or across feeder gullies, the distance between cliff top and water narrowed. Less encouraging was the increasing width of the river surface that included no letup in the great splashing and foaming spray of rapids.
Roy’s, “This is the spot!” seemed even less likely than Brigham Young’s similar announcement to trail-weary Mormons who faced the dismal reality of the Great Salt Lake Basin by way of a building site.
“Where?” Melanie’s question confirmed that Carolyne wasn’t the only one at a loss.
“Six yards that way,” Roy pointed. “Six feet down to the river. In, for a dunking.” His finger followed the rumbling water back the way they’d come. “Out, where that ledge of stone juts into the water, over there.”
Even squinting, Carolyne wasn’t seeing it happen.
“You’re joking.” Felix, his mouth literally agape, was another disbeliever.
“Used to be the only way across in pre-bridge days.”
“Right!” Felix had progressed into Doubting Thomas who wanted proof-positive of the stigmata.
“I read about it in Luke Wentlock’s old journals,” Roy assured. “Luke was here when the indigenous Indian populations were all in place.”
Melanie was first with the connection. “Luke any relation to Gordon Wentlock, our very dead one-time guide?”
“His grandfather, a zealot Lutheran who showed up in 1841. Converts were as skimpy as hen’s teeth in a country of predominantly Catholic immigrants; so, firebrand Luke decided the heathen Indians deserved saving for God and from the Pope. A regular fixture in these parts, he ferreted out all sorts of interesting tidbits of information.”
“You knew him?” Carolyne didn’t know why she found that newsworthy. Roy had prospected the area for years.
“I knew Gordon’s father. Gordon’s mother, of course, had died long before I appeared on the scene. Missionary work in these parts was a hard life for a woman. No derogatory reflection upon the fair sex, in general, mind you.”
“All very interesting, but will it get us across the river?” Felix’s eyes hadn’t left the great churning water. He still hadn’t pinpointed this “ledge of rock” to which Roy had referred.
“I’ve done this before,” Roy assured. “Had to less than a month after I’d read it was here. Lightning struck the bridge platform that anchored supports on the other side; blew it to smithereens. It was cross here, or wait for a repair crew; a long wait, since Kyle Georni had told me there’d been no official repair crew since the Indians had moved out.”
“I’m not going to like this.” Carolyne had thought that all along and decided to make it vocal.
Roy briefed them where they stood, because the roar of the water made conversation impossible closer to the edge. “We’ll make a raft for the backpacks, and then I’ll cross with three ropes, each of which will be tied at this end. As soon as I affix my ends to the other side, the women come first. Last man over,” which everyone, including Teddy, assumed would be Teddy, “will tie two of the ropes to the raft and come across on the third line. Together, we manhandle the raft across.” Roy was confident. “The water will do all the work. Don’t even worry if you get dunked or disoriented.”
“I shouldn’t worry while drowning?” Carolyne would beg to differ.
“You’ll get to the opposite shore on any account. The deeper the water into which you sink, the swifter the diagonal current.”
“Something to do with those underground streams that feed the river somewhere around here?” Carolyne hoped for a lengthy lecture on the interconnection of local geology and hydrology; it wouldn’t make her crossing any easier, but it might give her time to think of some better way.
“The hydro-mechanics are interesting but complex. I’ll be happy to go over them at another time,” Roy parried.
Carolyne couldn’t knock the solidness of the raft construction nor its buoyancy, both of which were tested. The raft so much wanted to float in a diagonal direction, toward the opposite bank, it was reluctant to return when they finally pulled it back and docked it.
Nor could Carolyne fault Roy’s willingness to put his life where his mouth was. When the time arrived, he waded unhesitatingly into the water.
“Dear God!” Carolyne thought him a goner. Similar exclamations, even from Teddy who was supposed to watch for cannibals from the rear, told her she wasn’t alone in her estimation.
Carolyne still thought she’d seen the last of him when everyone else insisted he was safe against the opposite shore.
“Marvelous!” Melanie clapped her hands.
Miraculous was Carolyne’s view. What were the chances of five more miracles on one and the same day? She didn’t need the odds to guess they weren’t very good, no matter Roy’s assurances to the contrary.
Roy affixed the ropes to a rock outcropping; the resulting tautness never escaped the water that continually overrode it.
Melanie said, “Good luck!”
Teddy said, “Ride the wild surf, momma!”
Charles said, “See you on the other side.”
It wasn’t until Felix’s, “Amen to all of the aforementioned!” that Carolyne realized those were her farewells. She was actually expected to stroll out into that water as easily as a suicide Ann Bancroft had done in some remembered movie whose name Carolyne forgot. Well, Carolyne had con arguments, if anyone cared to listen.
Her deep breathing didn’t help. What did help was her knowing that a balk, there and then, on her part might undermine Melanie and Felix’s determination to follow. Worse, Felix might call her “CHICKEN!”—albeit true in the circumstances—and take her place in line with a parting catcall, “We’re not all scaredy-pants!”
Well, she’d show Felix. She’d show them all. If she died, she’d lived an exciting life, to a ripe old age. Why not be remembered in stories told around camp fires? “Went into the drink like a trooper, did old Carolyne. Would have thought she was a fish the way she took to the water.” That is, if anyone, lived to tell the tale.
Yes, Charles, the water is chilly. Around her feet. Around her ankles. Around her thighs. Downright cold as it knocked her off balance and swallowed her whole.
Her lungs hurt fr
om her last lucky gasp of held air, and she lost all contact with the guide ropes. She collided with something hard that knocked the stale air right out of her. Reflexively, she inhaled water as a smiling Roy hoisted her, sputtering, out of the drink.
“Brava!” he congratulated.
She couldn’t hear him over the roar, but she read his lips and was impressed he gave the word its proper gender; she’d heard many well-educated opera fans bellow “Bravo!” in supposed compliment to a female singer.
His strong, callused hands once again had her attention as he pointed toward the natural stairway up the embankment.
Carolyne nodded and risked moving on her weak legs that almost buckled twice before she gained high ground.
Watching Melanie follow didn’t clarify Carolyne’s dim memory of her heart-stopping journey across, anymore than having watched Roy had prepared her for the ordeal. “Once again, it just wasn’t your time, Carolyne, old girl,” she decided. “Some things are just not to be questioned, lest the Good Lord hear and think He made a mistake.”
She was still woozy in a commandeered patch of sunlight when Melanie joined her.
“Whoever patents that ride for some amusement park has himself a gold mine!” Melanie finger-combed her hair to expose separate strands of it for drying. “Say a prayer tonight for scribe Luke Wentlock, Lutheran missionary, wherever he is!”
“I wonder if Gordon was the last of the Wentlock line.” He hadn’t reminded Carolyne of any son of a son of a firebrand religious man. Of course, she had no real basis for comparison.
“He never mentioned any brothers or sisters,” remembered Melanie.
“Did he mention a wife?” If anyone would know, it was Melanie.
“A wife?” Melanie’s tone was answer enough, but she supplemented, “I shouldn’t think so.”
Charles was in the water; they watched him. It seemed almost commonplace when he bobbed to the surface at the right place, at the right time.
“It’s funny how you can spend time with some people and never know much about them.” Carolyne wanted conversation.
“Mmmmm.” Whether Melanie was in agreement or disagreement, it was hard to say. Her head was thrown back, her face toward the sun, her neck a graceful arc, her hair a damp cascade of wet, brown strands.
“Have you met Teddy’s parents?” Carolyne asked.
“Oh, Teddy doesn’t have parents.” Melanie didn’t open her eyes. She shook her head slowly to loosen more strands. “I mean, they’re dead. Happened when he was a child. Why?”
“Just something he said to Charles when they were off on their little adventure, bonding.”
Charles hadn’t appeared atop the embankment. The trip, so close on the heels of his dysentery, left him utterly exhausted. Roy had reserved a spot for him at the lower level, off to one side.
“What exactly did Teddy say?” Melanie was interested.
“Some insinuation that his father was bedridden near the end,” Carolyne said.
“I’ll ask Teddy about it.”
Carolyne was flabbergasted. “Oh, I wouldn’t want him to think I was prying.” So, what if she were? “Charles was just curious. Blame my asking you on him. I told him you might know.”
“Count on me to be diplomatic,” Melanie assured. “Besides, I’m curious. All Teddy’s sad tales have included very few specifics of mater and pater. I think his mother was a housewife; his father made shoes, or, maybe, repaired them.” She shook her hair vigorously.
Felix was in the water; his danger seemed so minimized that neither woman was much concerned.
Melanie turned from the sun to Carolyne. “Do you find it strange that Teddy keeps his family history from me? Our being engaged and all.”
What could Carolyne say to that?
Melanie continued. “I’m no longer as good a catch as I would have been had I located a supply of Lygodium cornelius and discovered a cure for cancer, but I’m more than good enough to offer him job security and social connections. It’s not likely Crystin Companies will go under any time soon, or that a Ditherson will be struck from the Seattle social register.”
“I find modern relationships a little hard to follow.” Relationships in Carolyne’s prime hadn’t been any easier. Would things have been different if she’d slept with Cornelius when she’d had the chance? Could she have worked bedroom magic to seal him to her so that Margaret went unnoticed? The thought of her as a femme fatale made her almost laugh.
“Teddy couldn’t have killed Gordon,” Melanie had decided from the start.
Carolyne didn’t follow the logic. “Even if he thought Gordon and your relationship was developing into something serious?”
“I’ve flirted with other men before. There have been fights before, usually in very public places as part of Teddy’s she’s mine and the world better know it mentality. Yet, he and I remain together. Do you think there was something serious going on between Gordon and me?”
Carolyne certainly had thought it at least possible.
“It was a game, like all the other men I flirted with were games,” Melanie assured. “Murder was never a part of it. It would risk Teddy losing me, screwing up his hard-won career, letting him face prospects of god only knows how many years in some dirty South American jail full of AIDS-infected perverts.”
Charles and Felix appeared at the top of the embankment. Felix gave Charles a helping had, but both men were wheezing.
“Charles, are you okay?” As far as Carolyne was concerned, Felix’s friendly enough send-off to her, on the other side, didn’t erase past wrongs.
“Feel like a drowned rat!” Although he preferred a spot next to Carolyne and Melanie, Charles was too pooped to protest when Felix led him off to one side.
It was Teddy’s turn in the water, and Melanie brought the conversation back to him. “He really wanted this expedition to succeed. I was prepared, and still am, to commit millions of Crystin Companies’ dollars to develop and exploit possibilities hinted at by my preliminary research. Teddy knows he’s scheduled to be part of that project. He’d have cut off his nose to spite his face had he killed Gordon and sent us all scurrying home prematurely.”
Felix’s shadow usurped sunlight already claimed by the two women. “Are either of you as worried as I am about all our supplies suddenly on the opposite side of the river?”
“A point well-taken,” Carolyne begrudged him; the most opportune time for an enemy strike was when his opponent overconfidently considered the foe outwitted. Their supplies would be permanently out of reach if someone suddenly, now, cut their tenuous links to them She got to her feet; Melanie joined her. “We’d better lend a hand in hauling the raft across.”
“Carolyne, give me a hand up, will you?” Charles called.
She could have told him not to bother, but he wouldn’t like the insinuation, no matter how much and loud his moaning and groaning, that he wasn’t strong enough to make a measurable contribution. Besides, whatever little he could manage might make the difference.
Felix went ahead. Melanie followed with Charles and Carolyne.
CHAPTER FIVE
Their combined efforts launched the raft and pulled it onto the course they’d all rode before it. It started to disintegrate mid-channel. Cries of dismay rose above the roar of the water, and everyone pulled harder. The additional strain on the collapsing construction caused a faster breakup. The first of the backpacks tumbled into the river.
Carolyne watched her pack shift precariously and drop off. She was furious, not only that this was happening, but that she had, against all intelligent reasoning, been lulled into assuming it wouldn’t.
She was surprised when Roy dipped into the nearby water, just missing the dangerous collision of several free-floating raft logs with the ledge of rock upon which they stood, and successfully rescued one of the backpacks. He swung his dripping prize behind him where Teddy waited to beach it.
Five of their six bags were similarly retrieved as a result of the river curren
t and Roy’s fast action. Four of the five were intact; the fifth had dumped most of its contents as Roy tugged it from the water.
They stayed put long enough to know the last bag wasn’t going to be recovered. They carried what they had up the embankment.
“Cut through!” It was Melanie’s comment on her bag which was the worst for wear. “Check these flaps; all sliced open, slick as a whistle. A knife, not river rocks, did this.”
“Does look that way,” Roy confirmed.
“Were the raft ropes cut through as well?” Felix had progressed to the next logical step.
“We all checked before we started across,” Teddy insisted. “Everything was tied and secure.”
Roy didn’t find that contradictory: “Someone could have come in low from the jungle, kept the raft between us and him or her, and done the deed while we concentrated on getting all of us across safely.”
“Why didn’t this someone just cut the guide ropes, after we were all across, and keep the load for himself?” Teddy wanted to know. “No way could any of us have gotten back to stop him.”
Carolyne had an answer: “That wouldn’t have made it look like an accident.”
“This cutting of my bag’s flaps makes it look like an accident?” Melanie denied and flicked one of the cut flaps in question.
“Did you believe, when the raft went under, that we’d salvage all we did?” Carolyne supplied the missing pieces. “How could the saboteur have known we’d fish incriminating evidence out of the drink?”
“Who the hell is doing all of this, anyway?” Teddy wasn’t alone in wanting the answer.
“Whoever it was killed Gordon,” Melanie had it figured, “and tampered specifically with my bag to make sure any possible photographic evidence possibly to link someone to the corpse wouldn’t make it through to this side of the river.”
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