“Amma made us memorize the locations of all the camps in Oleana,” Remo offered.
“Good,” said Dag. “Too bad you’re in Raintree now.” And led the boys through a list of every Lakewalker ferry camp and its location in river miles from Tripoint to the Confluence, and made them each recite it back, individually and in chorus. Granted, the obscene version of the old memory-rhyme sped the process.
The cool morning was failing to warm, the climbing sun absorbed by graying skies. Dag glanced down the river valley to see dense mist advancing up it. Berry popped her head over the roof edge.
“If you can spare one of your patroller boys to pilot duty up here in a few minutes, I’d be much obliged,” she said. “Looks like we’re in for a real Grace Valley fog, and I don’t want to run up over it into some pasture half a mile inland like in Bo’s tale. The Fetch’d look funny on rollers.”
“I’ll come up,” said Dag. “I could do with a stretch.”
He joined Berry and Whit on the roof; Bo and Hod climbed down for a turn at the hearth.
“If I’m right in my reckoning,” said Berry, “we’re coming up on a big island around this next bend that I don’t want to get on the wrong side of.”
“Do we want the right- or left-hand channel?”
“Right-hand.”
“Will do, Boss.” Dag took a sweep and matched Whit’s slow sculling—just enough to give Berry’s rudder steering-way—which they had learned how to keep up for hours if necessary. The mist thickened about them, beading on Dag’s deerskin jacket, which Fawn had lately lined with quilting to help fit his scant summer gear for fall. They followed the main channel as it hurried around the wide bend; Dag extended his groundsense to its full mile range to locate the split in the current before they were swept wrongside-to.
“Hey,” he said. “There’s somebody on that island.”
“Can’t be,” said Berry, peering into the clinging damp. They could see maybe three boat-lengths ahead, now. “With this rise from the Beargrass, that island’s under three, maybe four feet of water.”
“That could explain why they don’t seem too happy.” Dag reached, opening himself as wide as he could, ignoring the familiar, and much louder, grounds close-by. “Seven men. Blight, I think they may be those same Raintree flatties who passed us by backwards last night.” He added after a moment, “And a bear. They’ve all taken refuge from the flood up in the trees!”
“Must be exciting for the one who’s sharing with the bear,” said Whit dubiously.
“Bear’s got his own private tree.” After a moment, Dag added, “No sign of their boats. Not moored within a mile, leastways. I think those fellows are in trouble over there, Boss. At least one ground shows signs of being hurt.”
Berry drew breath through her teeth. “Bo!” she bawled. “Hod! You patroller boys, git out here! We need to get the skiff in the water afore we float too far!”
The rest of the crew turned out onto the back deck, and Berry leaned over and explained the situation. After Dag confirmed the head-count of men stranded on the island, they decided to launch both the skiff and the narrow boat, in the hope of rescuing them all in one pass; also, Dag pointed out, so the two boats could partner each other in case of snags literal or figurative. Dag stayed with the Fetch to guide it down the channel. Whit and Remo each took an oar in the skiff; Barr paddled his narrow boat.
“You sure about those fellows, Dag?” Remo called up from the water, once they’d all clambered down and were ready to push off.
“Yep. Just over half a mile that way.” He pointed.
Barr’s head turned. “Oh, yeah, I’ve got ’em now! Follow me, Remo! It’ll be just like old times.” His boat shot away as his paddle dipped and surged.
Remo snorted, but trailed dutifully. Whit’s voice drifted back through the fog: “Beats shifting sheep, anyhow…”
“Sheep?” said Berry.
Dag shook his head.
Long minutes slid past as the Fetch slipped downstream. Floating with the current, the banks obscured, it felt as if they’d stopped altogether in a quiet, fog-walled harbor. Running full-tilt into a snag or a big rock at five miles an hour and opening the Fetch’s seams would cure that illusion right quick, Dag thought; he kept all his senses alert.
“Them Lakewalker boys’ll be able to find their way back to us, won’t they?” said Berry uneasily.
“That’s why we put one in each boat,” Dag assured her. “They’ve made it to the island; ah, good for the narrow boat! Barr can get it right in between the trees.”
“Just so’s he don’t catch it sidewise to the current and lean too far over. He could fill it in an eyeblink that way.”
“These Pearl Riffle patrollers are up to the river’s tricks, I expect,” said Dag. “Handier than I would be. And those narrow boats are made to float even full of water. Air boxes in the prow and stern, tarred up and sealed.”
“So that’s how they do that! I always wondered.” She added after a moment, “We thought it was magic.”
Fawn took Hod and Hawthorn below to help assemble a warming welcome for the expected influx of unhappy boatmen—or boatless men. It was nearly an hour before the narrow boat appeared out of the fog astern. Two cold, wet strangers crouched in a miserable huddle in the center, clutching the thwarts nervously, but a third sat up in the bow, helping Barr paddle. Bo and Hod gave them hands to climb stiffly out—one nearly dumped the boat over in his clumsiness, but Barr kept it upright.
“Whee-oh!” said the paddling man, straightening up and pulling off a shapeless felt hat much the worse for wear. He was a lean, strappy fellow, unshaven and shoeless; his feet were scratched and his toes purple with the cold. “We sure are glad to see you folks. We hit the top of that there island broadside in the dark last night, and it just sucked our boats down under that big towhead like the river was swallowing ’em!”
Bo leaned over the steering oar and nodded sagely. “Yep. It would.” Fawn, hovering in the rear hatch, looked on wide-eyed.
They had barely hoisted the narrow boat back aboard when the skiff, too, emerged from the mist, Remo and Whit rowing strongly. The skiff rode low in the water with the weight of the four rescued men. One was not only shoeless but shirtless, the skin of his shoulders and torso scraped bloody, some hanging in ugly strips. He handed up an ash boar spear, of all the things to have hung on to in the wreck. He groaned as he was hauled and pushed up by his anxious companions, but when he found his battered feet and gingerly straightened, clinging to the upright spear, he gazed around with a lively smile. Unbent, he proved a tallish man by farmer measures, with black hair straggling down his neck, and bright, brown eyes.
“This here’s our boat boss, Captain Ford Chicory,” the paddling man explained.
“I’m Boss Berry, and this is my boat, the Fetch,” said Berry, raking an escaped hank of hair out of her eyes. “You’re right welcome aboard.”
The skinned flattie blinked at her in frank appreciation. “Well, ma’am, you folks sure fetched us out of a heap o’ trouble! We called all night from those trees as the water was gettin’ higher, till we got so hoarse we couldn’t yell no more, but you’re the first as heard us.”
“Thank the Lakewalker, here,” said Berry, nodding to Dag. “He’s the one that spotted you. We’d have passed you right by in this soup.”
“Yeah, and if we had heard you, we’d likely’ve thought you was ghosts crying to lure us to our doom in the fog,” Hawthorn offered helpfully.
The skinned flattie’s startled eye was drawn from Dag by this; he looked down at Hawthorn in bemusement and scratched his head. “Yeah, I could see that.”
“Too many tall tales,” Berry explained, cuffing Hawthorn on the ear. “Go help Fawn.” She turned to her crew. “I want at least one of you patroller boys topside with Bo.” Both volunteered, and climbed up. “And, Bo,” Berry called after them, “this time, if Remo tells you it’s a sand bar or snag, you mind him!”
His crew herded their skinned boat boss—or former boat boss—through the back hatch; Dag ducked in after, mentally locating his medicine kit. The crowded kitchen was warm and steamy, and there he found Fawn had prepared gallons of hot tea and a huge heap of potatoes fried with onions and bacon, drenched in salt butter. A basket of apples stood ready. Warmed, if not hot, water waited for washing up. Stacks of every blanket and towel the boat carried were heating in front of the hearth. The exhausted men fell on it all with moans of gratitude. The limited supply of spare dry clothes was shared around as best as might be, with blankets making up the rest.