The ditches had filled even more than when he took the girls to the bus that morning, and the water was spilling over the road. He drove through it, spraying fantails of brown-yellow water.
The highway was in sight, and he made it and didn’t slow down as he turned onto the wet blacktop.
JOE TRIED TO put things together as he drove. He couldn’t. He hoped like hell Marybeth had overreacted to the phone call, but he doubted it. Her intuition was always right on, especially when it came to their girls. The thing about the cell phone, that Sheridan was calling from her cell phone, tipped it.
If that bastard J. W. Keeley had his girls he would kill him, Joe vowed. Simple as that.
God, how sometimes he hated the distances. Everything out here was just so far from the next. Thirty miles to Saddlestring. Twenty-two miles from his old house. Fifteen miles to Nate’s. And thirty miles in the other direction to the first entrance to Thunderhead Ranch. Joe knew enough about Thunderhead and its proximity to the flooding river to realize that there would be only one road still passable, the road to the lower ranch, Arlen’s. The other roads would be flooded. Would Keeley take the girls to Arlen’s place? And if so, why Arlen?
No, Joe thought. He wouldn’t even try to figure out Keeley’s motivation and loyalties. That would come later. Now, he just needed to find the bus.
Even if Marybeth was able to get the sheriff on the first call and the department scrambled, it would be a half hour before they could traverse the length of Bighorn Road in search of the bus. The helicopter was grounded because of the weather.
It was up to him.
NATE STOOD ON the shoulder of the highway wearing a long yellow slicker. His shoulder holster was buckled on over the top, and he stepped out into the road as Joe slowed and stopped.
Nate jumped in and slammed the door. Joe floored it to get back up to speed.
“So we’re looking for a bus,” Nate said.
“Yup.”
“Marybeth said the guy was named Keeley.”
“Yup.”
“Jesus. One of those Keeleys?”
“Yup.”
After a beat, Joe said, “Thanks for coming, Nate.”
“Anytime, partner,” Nate said, sliding his big revolver out of his holster and checking the rounds.
JOE AND NATE passed under the antlered arch with the THUNDERHEAD RANCH sign and plunged down a hill on the slick dirt road.
“There it is,” Nate said, pointing.
The school bus was stalled at the bottom of the hill in the middle of the road. Or what had been the road. Now, though, the river had jumped the dike and water foamed around the bus and into the open bus door.
“It looks empty,” Nate said, straining to see through the wet windshield. The wipers couldn’t work fast enough to keep it clear.
Joe slowed as he approached the bus and stopped short of the water. He jumped out, holding his shotgun. The rear of the bus was twenty feet away, the level of the river halfway up the rear door. The sound of the flooding river was so loud he couldn’t hear himself when he shouted, “There’s nobody on it. They must have gotten out on the other side before the dike blew open!”
Joe visualized a scene in which J. W. Keeley herded the girls through the rising water to the other side, marching them toward the ranch buildings two miles away through the cottonwoods. The vision was so vivid it deadened him for a moment.
He wouldn’t even consider the possibility that they’d all been swept away by the water.
He looked around at the situation. They were helpless.
They couldn’t go around the bus or they’d risk stalling themselves or getting swept away themselves. Joe looked upriver and Nate looked down. There was no place to cross.
“Is there another road in?” Nate asked, shouting at Joe from just a few feet away.
Joe shook his head. All the roads would be flooded, and even worse than this.
He thought about getting to the ranch from the other direction; driving back the way they had come, going through Saddlestring, taking the state highway into the next county and coming back the opposite way. But that highway paralleled the river as well at one point. It would likely be flooded, and it would take hours to get around that way even if it wasn’t.
Joe waded into the water, testing the strength of the current to see if there was any way they could cross. Maybe by shinnying along the side of the bus, using the force of the current to hold him upright against the side of the vehicle, he could get to the other side. He was in it to his knees when something struck him under the surface, a submerged branch or length of wood, and knocked his legs out from under him. He plunged into the icy water on his back, his shotgun flying. The current pulled him quickly under, and gritty water filled his nose and mouth. He could feel swift movement as he was carried downstream. When he opened his eyes he could see only foamy brown, and he didn’t know if he was facing up or down.
Something solid thumped his arm and he reached out for it and grasped it and it stopped him. He pulled hard, and it held—a root—with his other hand. The surface was slick but knotty, and he crawled up it hand over hand, water still in his mouth, trying not to swallow, until his head broke the surface where he spit it out and coughed.
He turned his head to see Nate upstream, fifty feet away, running along the bank in his direction.
Joe righted himself until he could get his feet underneath him. He shinnied up the root until he was out of the water. He hugged the trunk of the old cottonwood like a lover, and stood there gasping for breath.
“That wasn’t a very good idea,” Nate said when he got there.
JOE WAS SHIVERING as they backed the ranch truck out and ground back up the hill.
“There is only one way to get to the ranch,” Joe said, his teeth chattering.
“The river?” Nate said.
“Yup.”
“We’ll die.”
“We might. You want me to drop you off at your house?”
Nate looked over with a face contorted by pure contempt.
“I’ll row,” Joe said. “You bail.”
JOE BACKED THE ranch truck on the side of the garage of his old house and Nate leaped out. It took less than five minutes to hook up the trailer for the fifteen-foot drift boat with the leaky bottom. The boat was filled with standing rainwater, and the motor of the truck strained to tow it onto the highway. Despite losing minutes, Joe stopped so Nate could run and pull the plug on the rear of the boat. They got back on the highway and drove with a stream of rainwater shooting out of the stern of the vessel. Joe wished he had finished patching up the leaks.
“Have you ever taken a boat like this on a river like that?” Nate asked as they backed the trailer up toward the river at the launch site.
“No.”
“This is technical whitewater,” Nate said, looking out at the foamy white rooster-tails that burst angrily on the surface. Downstream was a series of massive rollers.
“Where are your life vests?”
Joe said, “Back in the garage.”
29
IT WAS A ROCKET RIDE.
Nate was in the bow of the boat, holding the sides with both hands to steady himself. His job was to warn Joe, who was manning the oars, of oncoming rocks and debris—full-grown trees, cattle, a horse, an old wooden privy—by shouting and pointing. Joe missed most of them, rowing furiously backwards and turning while pointing the bow at the hazard and pulling away from it. They hit a drowned cow so hard that the impact knocked Nate to the side and Joe lost his grip on the oars.