lifted a leg and waggled her foot. She was in thin-soled river shoes, not hiking boots. She was hurt. Had all the breath of a…a dying moose, as Joe would say. Yeah. Hiking was out. Paddling was faster.
On the other hand, if she stayed on the water, she had to face the half mile of the Rions Eddy, followed by the steepest gradient of the trip, a drop of forty feet per mile with almost continuous class IIIs, including Jake’s Hole, where the river took a 180-degree turn between cliffs of 300 to 400 feet. The Narrows. And her paddling wasn’t exactly up to par. Nell looked at the sky, checking the weather. It was clear. The sun was warm. She had dried out considerably. She scanned the far shore again, hoping to see a hiker, signs of a campfire, anything. The hills and forest were quiet and empty.
She looked back at the water. A little more than three miles ahead was the old O & W Railway trestle bridge. There might be boaters taking a break there. Or campers. Or she might spot help before she even got there. But that meant she had to paddle the energy-draining, challenging water…She was between the devil and a deep blue crapid.
The deciding factor was Joe. If she stayed on the river, she might find him and be able to help. If she took the trail, another twelve to eighteen hours would pass before help would hit the water. So. Decision made. The river it was.
But she had to stay alert. If Joe had been standing on a rock in the middle of the river, waving his paddle and beating a drum, she might—might—have seen him in the last half mile. But she wouldn’t bet on it.
Nell knelt at her boat and pulled out the last Backpacker meal. She should have heated it with the other batch. Stupid. For now, she opened the packet and poured a bit of water into it. In an hour or so, she might be able to eat it. Instead of a real meal, she ate more trail mix, finishing off half the bag while she stretched. She should have started out with a good stretch before she hit the water. Stupid again. She hadn’t been thinking. She touched the bruised knot over her temple. It was marginally less painful. The cold, which was debilitating in every other way, had been good for the bruise.
Standing on the bank of the Long Pool, Nell pulled against muscles that were stiff and bruised, and wished for a bottle of Tylenol or ibuprofen. Of course, if she were wishing for something, it would be smarter to wish for Joe to appear, his red Pyrahna Riot play-boat cutting through the still water. But Joe didn’t materialize, and neither did a bottle of painkillers.
Feeling a bit better, she drank ten ounces of water and climbed back into her boat, strong enough this time to put the skirt on without huffing. She had to hurry. Time was passing fast. Sundown was three hours away. She had no intention of spending another night on the river.
She looked around one last time. Evidence of high water was everywhere. Strainers were piled at the shorelines, stacked against rocks in jagged knives of detritus. The water snarled and growled like a wild animal. Nature howling at the moon. Hungry.
Shoving off into the Long Pool, Nell paddled through still water, angling downstream, watching the current to the side. The eddy line was a diagonal ripple at an angle she didn’t remember from her last trip down the gorge. It flowed across the bottom of the pool and took a hard angular turn, a zig followed by a zag, as if something on the bottom was obstructing the flow of water.
She did a sweep upstream, followed by two forward strokes to approach the eddy line, then a quick peel-out just above the zigzag. She leaned downstream and braced through the current change. It was an effortless maneuver and Nell took a deep breath that, for the first time today, didn’t ache. She set up for the class IIs and IIIs of Rions Eddy ahead. The next half mile of rapids were squirrelly but not exactly MacGyver water. She told herself that she could make it. She could do this. She was able to both work the rapids and watch for signs of Joe. She put paddle to water, passing a low boulder that had dried in the sun. Two black snakes lay in the feeble heat, warming on sun-heated stone.
The boat took the first quarter mile of the class IIIs like a knife cutting through water. Clean and smooth, not a wobble or bobble. The bow of the boat slid beneath the rapids and Nell compensated, using hips, thighs and feet to reposition the kayak and prepare it for the next drop. Watching for Joe.
As always, the river was deceptive. By comparison to some western rivers, the gradient drop wasn’t much. But the water flowed around huge, vision-obscuring boulders, where short stretches of nearly flat but fast-moving water were followed by surprising drops and ledges. Unpredictable, capricious current changes and hundreds of undercut rocks, where water flowed beneath the visible part of the rock, tried to suck down any paddler who happened too near.
Between each drop, Nell scanned left and right, watchingc for a man or an emergency signal. Or a red boat. She was looking left when she should have been looking right. The water dropped out from under her and the kayak pivoted hard right and down. The short dive left her leaning upstream. She turtled over. Her helmet banged against stone. Nell saw stars. Her head pounded with a vengeance. Icy water rushed up her nose and filled her ears. Freezing her. Cold shocked her like a frozen spear to the brain.
She was in a hole between two rocks and she was stuck underwater. The current knocked her boat against rock with the hollow drum of doom. Fear billowed as the instinct to breathe fought with the presence of water.
But she still had her paddle. And she hadn’t been knocked out. Thank God.
With her left hand, she shoved at the upstream rock, then the downstream rock. Back and forth between them, working her boat out of the declivity. The water swirled her back in. Her lungs burned. She needed air. She needed—
The current caught her and bobbed her out.
But she was still underwater. Nell pulled the paddle under her. Gripped it in both hands. Twisted her torso forward for a sweep-style Eskimo roll. The water pitched her against another rock, banging her head and left shoulder underwater. Nell reacted without thought and twisted into a classic C-to-C roll. She didn’t like the C-to-C, but it worked.
And she was upright. Light blinded her. Nell sucked in a breath that was half water and leaned into the current just as she went over another ledge.
4
A glimpse of twisted limbs, wet and black. A strainer—a full grown oak, half submerged, its branches tipped with yellowing leaves and its trunk wedged between two boulders—was just ahead. Blocking her course. A swirl of water opened out river-left.
Nell slammed her hips hard left and dug in, ferrying across the strongest part of the current. Paddling with all her might. She banged against the left bolder trapping the tree and let go of the paddle with one hand. Using her palm, she shoved herself into the smaller, weaker current to the side, a cheat created by the strainer debris. She caught a glimpse of a dead animal pinned in the oak, gray and waterlogged, fur dragged by the water. And a second glimpse, an instant still-shot of her palm pulling away, leaving a trace of a bloody handprint on the branch.
And she was around, into the cheat, bashing her boat bottom in the trickle of water. She allowed the kayak to bump onto a low rock and sat in the sun, unmoving, breathing hard. Shuddering. The roar of water was partially muted, an odd trick of acoustics stifling the sound. It was like she’d been shoved into a different world. Still and quiet and safe, full of shadow.
Her breath had a definite wheeze now. Her head throbbed almost as loudly as the water had only moments ago. Nell blew the river water out of her nose and sinuses, and leaned forward to rest her head on one hand. Her ring and the cold flesh beneath were icy on her hot face.
A tickle started in her chest. Nell coughed, the coarse ratcheting sound echoing along the rock channel. She coughed and coughed, her ribs spasming. Her abdominals
