Meteoric stars shot across John’s vision as he looked for Caitlin. He swept between two boulders that protruded menacingly from the water and then caught sight of her. She struggled with a length of orange and black cord.
He yelled, and she turned in his direction. Drawing back her arm, she cast the line toward him.
It fell far short.
He swam toward it, trying to reach it before the next set of rapids.
Caitlin was already into the run when John managed to get a grip on her line. He looped it around his left hand as they tumbled through the cold, muddy water. Although the line was no more than forty feet long, he rarely saw her for the first few minutes.
He lost track of the number of times the current slammed him into boulders, but twice more he hit them so hard that the spasms of pain shooting through his chest caused him to lose his grip on her line. Each time it slipped through his numb fingers until it reached the end he’d looped around his wrist. Each time he had to restart the torturous process of slowly pulling them closer together.
Breathing became difficult. The pain in his chest massed into burning agony with each inhalation and for the first time, he realized that he could die. Not tomorrow. Not years from now. But in the next minute. He could feel the panic seize his heart.
But panic could kill him faster than the river. He forced it from his mind and concentrated on closing the distance between them.
After an indeterminable period, his hand brushed something at the end of the rope. It was Caitlin. He pulled her to him. Her eyes were closed, her face slack. An angry welt blossomed above her right eye. John gripped the back of her vest and looked for an eddy.
In the raft, he could spot eddies without much trouble. But that was with his eyes three or four feet above the water line and, in the raft, he had the power of the oars to push whatever direction he chose. Here, they were under the surface of the river as often as not and had almost no ability to push in any direction.
They must have been miles farther downriver before John saw an opportunity to hit an eddy. It was a small eddy and John didn’t see it until they were on top of it. He almost let it pass, but he was beyond fatigue and couldn’t go on. He’d been knocked into near unconsciousness on several occasions and had swallowed enough water to float the S.S. Minnow. No matter how small the eddy was, he knew it had to be this one or none.
They entered fast, too fast. Their momentum nearly carried them through the eddy, but John got a grip on one jagged edge of a boulder and held tight, as it felt like his shoulder would separate. Every cell in his body screamed at him to rest, but he knew he had to keep moving. With one hand, he pulled them along the boulder until they reached the back of the eddy.
His feet found purchase on a sandy bottom. He staggered to the water’s edge and then up a small embankment where he collapsed to the dirt. He was desperate to rest. His muscles ached more than he could ever remember, but he had to check Caitlin first.
She was still breathing. He felt her limbs and torso for breaks, nothing seemed broken.
It was late afternoon, but the sun had long since dropped below the rim of the canyon, and with the heavy rain, there was next to no light. John took the small Mag-Lite from the clip on his belt and twisted it on. In its light, he could see splotches of red on her clothing. As he played the beam over her, he realized the stains were from the lacerations on his hand. Blood flowed freely from the hand he’d used to grip the rock. He shined the light directly on his palm. There were several gashes crisscrossing its surface, but none looked serious.
He sat down beside her and pulled her eyelids back. Her pupils were dilated unevenly.
John shined the light around and found they were at the mouth of a small canyon. He turned upstream hoping for some sign of the rafts, but there was only the river.
Standing there in the rain, John realized how cold he was. Even with all his exertion, the river had sucked the heat from his bones. He was beginning to shiver. He...They needed dry clothes and fire, but all he wanted to do was lie down and rest. He couldn’t, not yet anyway. If he lay down now, neither of them might live to see the sunrise.
He made sure Caitlin couldn’t roll back into the water, and then walked up the gorge following the muddy stream that flowed through it. The gorge widened significantly, and he soon found a copse of juniper and piñon with enough dead wood for a good fire, but everything was wet. A little farther on, he found an overhang that provided protection against the driving rain. There he also found a little dry wood. The protected area was small, but it would have to do.
He returned to the river.
When he bent to lift Caitlin, a stabbing pain went through his ribs like an eight-inch butcher’s knife. He screamed and dropped to his knees. When the wave of pain receded, John tried again. She weighed no more than one hundred and forty pounds, but even with the thick layers of striated muscles that won him the state heavyweight wrestling championship in high school, he couldn’t lift her.
John took a firm grip on her vest and dragged her up the canyon. Each step caused him to grimace in
