They were all there, none the worse for his brief lapse of stewardship. Satisfied, he closed the case and set it beside his luggage.
Charles’s image was reflected in the opposite mirror, the same round shape as the small, open porthole, where the stiff breeze was beginning to penetrate the cabin. Except for the lines marking his forehead and the slight, almost imperceptible slackening of his jawline—both natural signs of getting older—his face was still that of the young man who’d fought on the losing side in the war. He parted his sandy hair on the left, not in the middle. His shoulders were still straight, his body still of medium height and weight. But nevertheless he was a totally different man. Too much had happened in the after years for him to remain the same.
The metamorphosis had begun in Canada in the logging camp. With such hurt knotted in his gut, Charles had welcomed the physical labor that allowed him to strike out at the trees.
With the starting up of the yacht’s engine, there was nothing for Charles to do but wait until the boat was out of the marina. He took off the navy-blue coat with its gold buttons and hung it up. Then he lay down on the bunk, and with the steady, soothing hum of the engines, the movement of the boat slicing through the water, Charles closed his eyes.
Long-ago images flashed through his mind: the great Canadian wilderness, with trees that reached toward the sky; logs floating in steady convoy downriver; logs jammed, the walking-across floats, the path cleared, and the small boy, struggling in the water while ten tons of wood rushed downstream toward him …
“Hey, Reb, clear out fast,” a voice shouted. “The sluice gate’s open.”
That was the warning that struck fear in every logger’s heart, especially the troubleshooters who rode the floats. But for Charles, it was an everyday occurrence, just a part of the new job he’d taken on. He was the man with nerves of steel. For him, the extra money meant little. Rather, it was a game, challenging fate since he had nothing more to lose but his life.
Barely in time, he crossed one section of logs, balancing himself with the logger’s pole. Directly behind him, the telltale roar of water announced the approach of virgin timber felled from the high country. It was a massive migration to the sawmills, like salmon rushing relentlessly to their spawning grounds.
Just as he was ready to jump clear, he heard a man’s cry. “My boy! My boy! Somebody save him!”
Downstream, directly in the path of the logs, a child’s head, encased in a red toboggan cap, bobbed up and down in the water. The anguish in the man’s voice was the same deep anguish Charles had felt on the day at Saratoga when he’d given up his own wife and child as if they were dead.
The boy had one slim chance of survival. And it depended on the man riding the logs.
Charles remained on the float, balancing himself with the pole. A sudden jolt knocked his feet out from under him and wrenched the pole from his hands, sending it into the water like a swift harpoon. The new timber had taken its place behind him.
The current was running swift because of the melting lakes of snow in the spring. Charles struggled to his knees on the slippery logs.
“Save him! Save my boy!” the voice cried again.
With the second cry, the wooded banks along the water began to fill with loggers, who put down their axes to watch the tragedy unfold. Out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw only blurs of red woolen plaid dotted among the trees, for his attention was aimed at the small blob of red almost directly in front of him.
With one, and only one, try allotted him, a wet and cold Charles poised to scoop the child from the water.
In a rapid movement, Charles grabbed the child and rolled backward immediately to keep them both from disappearing underwater as the first logs divided.
For a moment, Charles panted hard to get his breath back, while the child in his arms coughed up water. The easy part had been accomplished.
They were now in the middle of the flotilla heading mercilessly downstream, the logs ramming and annihilating everything in their path.
Charles had never ridden the logs this far downstream before. The river was much wider now, presenting an acute logistics problem in his getting to shore. As Charles debated how much longer to ride the logs before attempting it, the distant roar of a waterfall ahead decided it for him.
“Climb on my back, son,” he ordered, “and whatever you do, don’t let go.”
The child was too scared to do anything else but obey. His arms went around Charles’s neck in a near stranglehold.
Charles’s first attempt at standing was not successful. He went to his knees again as the logs shifted. Then, on the second try, he came up quickly and took a balancing step. The step was followed by another and still another, as Charles carefully wove his way across the logs to the bank.
But the bank had changed drastically in the past several hundred yards. No longer on a level with the water, it formed a ragged bluff, with the stream cutting deeper into the wilderness. A rainbow of mist caught in the filtered sunlight, announcing the peril of the falls beyond.
The few remaining logs separating Charles from the bluff gave way, and man and child plunged into the icy water. A parting blow from a log struck Charles in the side, but it was not severe enough to pry the child from his back.
They were swept along toward the falls. Charles reached out for a limb, a bush, anything that would slow their progress to certain disaster. A
