Ahead, the river narrowed in even more, and Joe couldn’t see beyond a sharp V of rock a hundred yards ahead of them. Beyond the V there was no sign of the river in the distance. Which meant it dropped sharply in elevation.
“Oh, man,” Butch said.
Joe tried to climb up the side of the log to get a glimpse of what was in front of them, but when he did he nearly tipped Farkus into the water.
“Have you ever heard of Middle Fork Falls?” Joe shouted above the growing roar.
Butch looked over with fear in his eyes. “No.”
“I haven’t, either,” Joe said. “So maybe it’s just a drop or rapid ahead and not a waterfall.”
“What should we do?” Butch shouted.
The river seemed to rise and bunch up with coiled power, as if it were gathering to propel them through the V. The walls on both sides shot by. Joe tentatively dropped his left boot to gauge the depth of the river, but he couldn’t touch bottom.
“Keep us in the middle and hold on tight,” Joe said. “Shout if it looks like we’re going to hit something.”
Butch nodded frantically, then turned to face the V as they powered into it.
Joe shouted into Farkus’s ear: “Wake up, Dave, and hold on.”
Farkus raised his head, looked ahead, and screamed.
The first sensation as they plummeted through the V was of exploding sunshine and weightlessness. The bow of the log was suspended in the air for a moment, and when Joe glanced up the length of it, he saw not river but treetops. Then it tipped and plunged.
There was a Middle Fork Falls after all, and the log rode it almost straight down in a twenty-foot drop. Joe could do nothing other than wrap his arms around the trunk and press his face into the slick wood. The momentum of the plunge knocked his legs back until they were parallel with the log itself, and they knifed into a deep pool below-immense silence, again-before floating back to the surface.
Joe did a quick inventory. Butch Roberson was sputtering and choking on water, but had held on. Farkus was moaning and had slipped over to Joe’s side, so Joe shoved the man back up on top and in balance.
While he did, Joe almost didn’t notice that the log was once again picking up speed.
“Jesus-look what’s ahead,” Butch yelled.
Farkus shouted, “I’m holding on!”
Joe swung around and could see the river. It was a terrible sight. From where they were until the river finally made a sharp bend to the left a quarter-mile below, it was angry white foam punctuated by rocks. The pitch of the river dropped steadily toward the bend below. Joe could detect no theme to the river, no central current or deeper passage where they could safely avoid the hazards. It was as if the river itself was being fed down a rocky chute.
Joe swung himself around back into position and got his feet out ahead of him. He craned his head up to look for deeper water-the darker, the deeper-and he judged by the speed they were going they’d be literally on top of navigable water before they could see it. Running the rapids would demand split-second adjustments.
“I’ll call it out if I can,” Joe said. “If you get thrown off, just lean back in the current and keep your feet out in front of you.”
“Gotcha,” Butch hollered. “Take us through it, Captain!”
Joe almost smiled.
They flew down the rapids like a pinball bouncing from post to post, bumper to bumper. Joe called out, “Left, left, right, left, right-right-right! Left, left, right. .”
All senses on high, Joe didn’t think; he saw and reacted and yelled. The nose of the log swung from side to side to avoid rocks, sometimes riding up the side of a boulder for a moment before settling back down in the current. The chutes between the rocks were so narrow he banged his knees and thighs on them as they caromed down, and Joe’s left knee hit a boulder so hard he felt the impact all the way into his hip socket. His left leg was so numb he actually glanced down immediately after the impact to see if it was still attached. It was.
Halfway down the rapids, Farkus regained consciousness and raised his head. When he saw what they were in the middle of, he shrieked and clung even harder to the log.
Which was good. Joe had almost forgotten about Farkus.
They banked hard right around a huge boulder with Joe on the outside pushing and scrambling and Butch on the inside at pivot. When the front of the log nosed around the rock, Joe glanced up to see a hollow-eyed Kyle McLanahan, propped up as if sitting in a pile of driftwood, staring back at him. McLanahan’s torso was out of the water, and his arms were propped up on lengths of debris as if he were leaning back in his easy chair watching a football game. His head was cocked slightly to the side. His face was bone-white and slack, his mouth slightly open.
In reaction, Joe nearly lost his grip on the log, but he realized McLanahan was still dead and his body had washed all the way downriver from his fall until it caught in the pileup.
Several thoughts came to Joe at once before the current built up again and swept them away:
It still hadn’t sunk in yet, the fact that ex-sheriff Kyle McLanahan was dead.
McLanahan had been in the valley just slightly longer than Joe. They’d known each other for twelve miserable years. Although he’d schemed and plotted against Joe and had made decisions that cost good men their lives and mobility, McLanahan was a worthy adversary.
Sheriffs didn’t seem to do very well in Twelve Sleep County.
And. .
Dead bodies in cold mountain rivers took on unique characteristics of their own-the skin remained well preserved, predation was rare, they didn’t bloat. Dead bodies in cold rivers became mountain mummies, at least for a while.
They got through the worst of the rock garden with bruises, abrasions, and no broken bones. They were able to lay up in an eddy with a hundred yards still to go, and fortunately the eddy was shallow enough they could stand again on the riverbed.
Joe and Butch panted until they got their breath back and once again Joe was grateful the water was so cold. If it wasn’t, he knew, he’d be able to feel the injuries he’d sustained. When he looked down into the water, he could see several small spirals of blood coming from gashes on his left leg. The pant leg of his Wranglers was tattered, ribbons of it floating in the current. He was surprised he hadn’t lost his boot.
“I can’t believe we got through that,” Farkus said in a croak, looking back up at the rapids above them.
“We?” Butch said.
“I’m hallucinating, I think,” Farkus said. “I had this dream I saw Sheriff McLanahan sitting on some wood, watching us go by.”
With Butch holding the log in place, Joe splashed to the foot of the eddy and scouted ahead. The last hundred yards wasn’t as rocky, but it was a steep narrow flume that ended in a wide slow run before it went around a bend. After what they’d been through, it looked like a picnic.
He realized, as he gazed downstream, that there was warm sun on his shoulders. He turned. The mouth of the canyon was behind them now. The terrain surrounding them was still mountainous but softer, flatter, tamer, with folds rather than cliffs. And although the sky was thick with smoke that gave every vista a sepia-toned look, the fire hadn’t advanced this far downriver yet.
Joe felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. They’d gone through the worst. He’d never heard of anyone running the Middle Fork in August when the water was so low-probably because no one in his right mind would try, he thought. He stanched back a feeling of guilty pride.
When he returned to the log, he saw that Farkus had passed out again. Butch stood waist-deep in the water, keeping the log in place. His expression was pained but stoic, and Joe wondered if the reason was because of the many injuries he’d sustained or because he knew, like Joe did, that the campground would be less than an hour away.