by V. J. Banis
“Good girl. Get it out of there.”
That, as it turned out, was easier to say than to do. Two times she lost the bullet in the shifting mass that was a man’s flesh. The third time, she felt gingerly around in the gash she had cut with the knife, searching, and all at once it was there, at the surface. She plucked it out with the knife, letting it roll down Morton’s back until it fell to the cave floor. She let the knife slip from her hands to the ground and sat back wearily on her haunches.
Summers held her comfortingly in his good arm. “You were wonderful.”
“I’ve never done anything like that.” She was still trembling.
“I never have either,” he said.
She sat back, staring at him. “But, you said....”
“I know. It had to be done. You’d never have done it if you thought I didn’t know anything either.”
For a moment she was furious at his deception. Then unexpectedly she began to laugh, half with relief and half with real humor. At first Summers stared, as if afraid she was losing her mind, but then he too began to laugh.
* * * * * * *
They were there three weeks while the storm raged. For a time it seemed as if Claire’s surgery had been unsuccessful after all. Morton contracted a fever and for a week lay in a delirium. Summers cauterized the wound once again with a red-hot knife blade, filling the cave with the stench of burning flesh. The infection checked, the fever began to subside.
For the most part their haven was a comfortable one. It was not necessary to go far outside to find wood for the fire that they kept going around the clock. The first day, when he had rested, Summers went out during a break in the snowfall to return pulling a sling he had filled with fresh meat cut from the body of Claire’s little pinto.
“Something had gotten part of it already,” he said. “But there was still plenty of meat left, and the snow kept it good and fresh.”
Claire, remembering the beautiful and spirited animal, crinkled her nose in disgust and turned away. “I couldn’t eat it,” she said.
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged. “We might be here a while.”
He roasted a piece for himself and ate it with obvious relish, while she made do with some jerky. By the next day, however, she had overcome her squeamishness. The meat, hung well back in the cave where it was cool and dry, lasted almost the entire time they were there.
By the end of the second week Morton was able to sit up and eat with them. A few days after that the snow stopped falling and the sky broke clear and blue overhead. It was time to push on. Though both men were still weak, they were also hardened by long years in the wilderness. Summers was now able to use his hands.
Morton said little about what had occurred. Once, on the day they were preparing to leave and press southward, Claire found herself alone with him in the cave while Summers cared for the horses.
“He says you took that bullet out of me,” Morton said without preamble.
“That’s right,” Claire replied, surprised at how proud she felt of the fact.
“Well, it was you that put it there,” he said, and carried some of the gear outside, ending the conversation, once and for all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For six weeks the trio trudged southwest, enduring the most hellish weather Claire had ever seen. She had known occasional snow and cold weather in England, but nothing like the storms that swept suddenly down upon them from the mountain peaks. They hunted continuously and with reasonable success, so though her diet of beaver and deer and mountain sheep was quite unlike anything she was used to, at least they were in little danger of starvation.
Summers led them up, attempting to find a pass through the mountains before the snow sealed off all chances until spring. The air was so thin and cold that it burned the lungs, forcing them to wear their kerchiefs over their faces. They all walked now, leading the two horses packed with their gear. They had cleared the snow from a meadow before they started upward and cut the grasses underneath, tying them in little bales to carry along. Once in the high range there would be nothing for the horses to eat. Even so, at the height of the pass, the patient beasts plodded through the snow for two days with nothing on which to feed.
They traveled deep into the heart of the mountains, each fearing what he dared not voice aloud to the others. A man might wander forever in such mountains without ever finding his way out again.
Claire had become so accustomed to the high mountain world of rocks and snow that it was a shock to mount a ridge one afternoon and suddenly find herself looking down upon a broad, rolling plain. It was punctuated here and there with huge outcroppings of rock, and even occasional patches of green and brown among the more thinly scattered snow.
Morton, coming up behind, gave a grunt of satisfaction, but Summers was quick to warn them that their hardships were not over.
“This is just the first range of the mountains,” he explained. “There’s more of them, as bad or worse, between us and California. But if we can find that Colorado River, we’ll take it through.”
As if to bear out his warnings, they had been only a day on the plain, thinking themselves at last out of the worst of the snow, when another storm struck. This one was the worst of all, for there was nothing here for protection. They took the full brunt of the wind and snow in their faces, and they lost another of the horses.
Perilously low on supplies, they pushed on. With each step the possible alternatives had narrowed until they were now faced with only two: go on or perish. And the two might well be one.
Gradually, though, the land was descending. The mountain plateau became the high desert, and in less than two days they had walked out of the snow. To their right the mountains rose ice capped and forbidding; to the south, at their left, lay a vast desert. It was a desert unlike those Claire had ever imagined. Instead of the rolling dunes of sand that she expected, there were rock formations in brilliant colors of red, purple, green, and brown. Even the land itself seemed to have been painted by some giant hand.
She paused to stare southward at this splendidly colored scene. “It’s magnificent.”
“We’re not far from the river now.” Summers urged them on. “And down that, the great canyon.”
It took them three days of steady travel to reach the walls of the canyon through which the river ran, and another to climb down to the river itself. Summers warned them that these rocky bluffs were mere hillsides compared to the canyon through which they must travel.
At last they reached the Colorado, so called, Summers said, for the reddish color of its dirty waters. Now they faced a new question—how to travel down its length. Morton was for hiking along its banks, rather than building a raft as Summers proposed.
“Water’s too low and too rocky,” Morton pointed out. “There’s bound to be rapids.”
“That there are,” Summers agreed. “But there’s places where it’s impossible to get through the canyon except in the water, as the walls come straight down to the river. And if we’re going to build a raft, better to do it here where there’s plenty of wood.”
In the end Morton reluctantly yielded. They set about gathering the wood necessary to construct the raft. They used their ropes and the last of their hides, cut into strips, to tie the logs together.
“Might as well use the bridle and reins too,” Summers said, indicating the harness that was on the last of their horses. “We’ll be lucky to get a raft to carry the three of us down this river.”
“But couldn’t we let him swim after the raft?” Claire asked.
“He’d never make it. Anyway, we’re low on food.”
Claire had, of necessity, long since overcome her scruples regarding horse flesh. But in the past the horses had been lost by mischance or wounded, so that taking their lives had been as much an act of mercy for the horse as well as for themselves. To cold-bloodedly slaughter an animal that had served them so faithfully and so well was to her one of the saddest decisions they had yet had to mak
e.
Out of consideration for her, Summers led the horse some distance away, beyond a huge boulder. Even so, tears stung her eyes when the pistol shot ricocheted among the walls of the canyon.
They were a week beside the river, building their raft and drying the meat that would be the staple of their diet over the next several weeks.
After the rigors of the mountain snowstorms their stay by the river was almost idyllic. The temperatures were warm and it was a relief to sleep at night without the wind howling about them. The river water was dirty but drinkable.
It was almost with reluctance that they moved on when the raft was ready. The thought that they might be on the last leg of their journey, and that California lay somewhere beyond the river’s bend, quickened their efforts toward the end.
The raft had been built under Morton’s instructions, for the trapper was an experienced riverman. It was a crude, even clumsy-looking affair, an eight-foot-square bed of logs lashed together with another at each side to form a low wall. The bulk of their provisions were lashed to these side walls, with the rest divided into packs, which each of them carried.
It was hardly the most confidence-inspiring craft she had ever seen. When Morton climbed aboard after her, it threatened to capsize completely. Still, when Summers had waded into the water to shove it off from shore and clambered aboard, dripping, the raft righted itself safely. It turned about twice in the swift current, then began to rush downstream.
The two men had provided themselves with long poles to steer the raft. In truth, once the swift current had taken them, there was little they could do but cling to the rough sidewalls and try from time to time to shove the craft out of the way of the rocks that thrust up from the river’s surface.
It was frightening and yet undeniably exhilarating. Claire stared upward at the canyon walls, which grew taller and steeper with each twist in the river’s course. There were dragonflies skimming low over the roiling surface of the water, and overhead she caught sight of a blue heron, flying downriver slightly ahead of them as if guiding them on their way.
Only gradually did she become aware of a distant rumbling sound. When she first became conscious of it, she mistook it for thunder and thought another storm was upon them. Then she realized that the sound was too constant. She started to ask, but the men were already exchanging worried glances.
“Rapids,” Summers said curtly. “Hold on tight.”
She followed his advice so wholeheartedly that her hands began to ache before they had even reached the rapids themselves. Suddenly, staring anxiously ahead, she saw the river vanish from sight, and she realized that they were approaching a falls.
The distant rumble had become an ear-splitting roar drowning out all other sounds. The two men were shouting at one another, but even as close as she was she could not make out their words. Apparently Morton thought they should take the craft ashore, and they began earnestly plying their poles, but it was too late. They were in the grip of the rapids now and their efforts were futile.
The raft lurched and bobbed as the river’s shrieks echoed from the sheer walls of shale and sandstone on either side of the canyon. Claire was as drenched as if she had been swimming in the red brown water, which was white now, a sea of foam.
The raft turned this way and that, so violently that the two men no longer tried to control it, but like Claire held tightly to the sides as they were swept forward. Before them lay the falls, a drop of thirteen feet. For a second they seemed to hang suspended over the edge of the water; then they were plunging downward nose first, the roar of the water drowning out Claire’s instinctive scream.
The front of the raft struck deep into the water. In a twinkling they had turned over. Somehow Claire managed to keep her grip on the raft and when it came to the surface she was still clinging to its side. Morton clung to the other side, with Summers a few feet away in the water. The raft spun around as if going out of its way to meet Summers, swimming after it. For a few minutes they rode downstream hanging on to the sides, till the white water had subsided somewhat and the water had gotten shallower, allowing the men to push the raft to the shore.
Wet, weary, and bedraggled, the three stumbled onto the river bank. Yet for all their exhaustion, there was a sort of exhilaration too. Their makeshift riverboat had passed a critical test. They had survived their first rapids.
* * * * * * *
They rested for the day and set out again early the following morning. They had learned from their first encounter. When they approached their second rapids, Summers moved to the rear of the raft with Claire. The added weight to the rear made a difference, and though this rapids had an even greater drop, they managed to stay afloat.
Claire could now give some attention to the land through which they were traveling. This was indeed Summers’ “great canyon,” with walls that towered at least a mile above them. Sometimes the walls were miles apart, and sometimes they crowded in upon the river so that there was no shore at all, only sharp rock ledges hanging out over the water.
It was even more colorful than the painted desert they had seen a few days before. Every color of the rainbow was represented, not only in the canyon walls but in huge agate boulders—reds and blues, lavenders and bright green. And everything was on a scale so grand that she felt Lilliputian.
Their third day was largely uneventful, through small rapids that may have concerned her earlier but were now too tame to warrant real concern after what they had been through. The canyon opened into a wide valley with trees and prickly cactus.
Late in the afternoon they found a place to beach the raft, a narrow strip of sand and rock surrounded by towering cliffs. Somewhere ahead they could hear the now familiar rumble of rapids, which they decided to attempt fresh the following morning.
Summers found a path that led part way up one of the cliffs before coming to an abrupt end. It provided, however, a fine view of what lay beyond the river’s bend.
Ahead of them lay rapids worse than any they had traveled thus far, stretching on for a considerable distance and disappearing out of sight without a break in the white water. There was a drop perhaps twice as deep as the worst they had yet encountered, with a rock island in the center as an added danger.
“The raft’ll never make it,” Morton declared flatly. “Some of those ropes are giving out already from the strain.”
“There’s no other way,” Summers said. With the exception of isolated sand bars, the river ahead cut straight through the sheer walls of the canyon. It would be impossible to walk around the rapids without climbing to the top of the canyon, which was equally impossible. “We can’t go back, we can’t go up, we can’t go around. We’ve got no choice but to go through.”
This grim knowledge made for a restless night’s sleep, and by the first light of dawn all three of the travelers were ready to go. The raft itself seemed to shudder as they pushed off into the water. Summers moved to the rear beside Claire and to her surprise put one arm about her.
“Will we make it?” she tried to ask over the noise of the water. He shook his head grimly, but whether this was an answer to her question or whether he had even heard her she could not say.
The next moment they were caught in the rapids. The raft was jerked violently to and fro as if on strings manipulated by some giant hand. It thudded into a huge boulder and for several seconds sat motionless, until the current wrenched it from the place and sent it hurtling forward. The raft was shaken and battered so badly that Claire wondered if they would even last to the falls. Then they were hanging suspended in space, staring down into a veritable abyss—thirty feet or more straight down, with the shining island of black rock in the center. The raft creaked and groaned beneath them, and in a flash Claire knew as they began to plunge downward that the raft would never survive.
They hit with a monstrous crash, sending broken logs and passengers flying in all directions.
Claire thrashed about helplessly in the churning water. She broke the surfa
ce, gasping for air, and at once vanished beneath the water again.
Something caught at her skirt. For a second she imagined some horrible water creature but this was a human hand.
Summers! She stretched, reaching, her fingers closing in the others, the two of them fighting the water together. The water, violent, rushed onward, turning and flinging them about till her lungs were burning with the need for air.
“Hang on!”
Not Summers’ voice, but Morton’s.
“Summers!” She tried to call his name but the sound ended in a gurgle of water. Morton, his face contorted with the effort of trying to keep them both afloat, was pulling her against the current, swimming with her.
In a moment he had grabbed hold of a log, one from their own raft, and was shoving her against it. “Hold on to it!” he shouted.
She held on as well as she was able, though the river fought her, trying to pry her from the log. Morton was clinging to the other end, shouting something at her, but she could not hear him over the dull and angry roar of the river. From time to time the log would roll, and she would slip beneath the water, only to come up again.
It was a nightmare struggle. She could feel her strength draining from her and knew she could not hold out much longer. All the while she was thinking of Summers, who had vanished with the raft.
Morton was shouting again. She tried to catch the words over the din: “...for shore,” was all she made out.
She looked and saw that the river had carried them a considerable distance down the rapids. They were past the area where the cliffs cut straight downward into the water, and now she could make out a sandy shoreline at the river’s edge.
She was no longer sure that she had the strength to swim so far. It looked horribly distant. She tried to shake her head, but just then Morton let go of the log and it spun round violently, dragging her under the water.
This time she might really have drowned, but somehow Morton got to her. She felt his strong arm about her, under her arms, holding her up.
