Sampson picked apart every tree and bush, but he could not place a man on the ridge or the ledge at the top of the rock formation. He was about to take another step when he heard a shriek of laughter come from well behind him and down on the river, somewhere in the long straight before the bend above the rapids.
Then he heard another shriek of fear and joy, followed by children screaming and yelling, “Here we go, Mom! Here we go, Dad! Into the jaws of death!”
Chapter
92
On the west side of the river, I was gasping for air after getting caught in a nightmare of blown-down charred trees and having to climb straight up a nearly sheer face to escape and find the bridle path we’d seen on the OnX maps.
It was lightly raining and cool with a slight breeze, but I was sweating like a horse when I finally found the trail and began to ease down it, heading north with the ten-gauge pump-action shotgun held at port arms, peering with the binoculars across the open burns and through the groves that survived the fire.
By then, three hours into my hike, I was almost in line with the rapids but several hundred vertical feet above the narrowest point of the canyon. My pace slowed to a creep.
Every few feet, I paused to use my binoculars to look back upriver through the light rain, then down the trail, then down through the trees toward the narrows. No sign of men I could see. And the lack of tracks in the muddy trail said it had been a few days since a horseman rode through there. I wondered whether Sampson was having better luck on the other side of the river and began to question our plan to split up.
Where the hell are Durango and his men? It would make sense they’d wait for us here. Maybe they’re farther north? But how much farther? And where’s our raft? It should have been here by—
I stopped short, staring at the trail ahead of me and the mud and the tracks of a huge animal that had left the trees and walked right up the path, heading in the same direction as me. I took a few more steps and saw the tracks were fresh. Very fresh. There was hardly any rainwater in the deep, oval tracks, which looked almost like an old-time catcher’s mitt had been pressed deep into the mud—an old-time catcher’s mitt equipped with claws that were as long and as thick as my fingers.
My throat constricted. I’d never seen anything remotely like those tracks before, but I knew in my gut what had made them.
Then I smelled something putrid in the air and knew for certain, because Bauer, the packer who’d brought us into the wilderness, had told us they often “stink to high heaven” from eating rotting carcasses, animals they’d either killed themselves or blundered onto.
“That’s a grizzly bear,” I muttered. “A big one. He’s got to be right here in front of me somewhere.”
For several moments I did not know what to do. If I kept moving, I might run into one of the cartel men, but given the freshness of the tracks, I was more likely going to walk up on a six-hundred-pound apex predator with a reputation for extreme nastiness.
No matter what I did, I could not calm my heart, and I felt nauseated as I peered ahead with my binoculars. I saw nothing moving directly ahead of me, but when I turned the glasses back upriver, I caught a flash of blue that became our raft, a half a mile away, spinning slowly in the current, bouncing into rocks, but moving steadily closer.
From this far, those dummies look real, I thought, smiling. If the cartel men are ahead of me, I’m going to know it the second the raft drops into the rapids and—
A shriek of laughter cut my thoughts. I heard it again before kids started screaming, “Here we go, Mom! Here we go, Dad! Into the jaws of death!”
I moved the binoculars to the river much closer to me, seeing a family of four wearing camouflaged rain gear and riding in a dark green raft. They were coming toward the rapids, a hundred yards from the bend, a young boy and a girl forward, the dad at the oars, the mom behind him.
“Into the jaws of death!” the father bellowed.
The mom shrieked again and they all started laughing.
How did I miss them? The rain? The camouflage? Looking too far upriver for our raft?
I had a feeling it was all three of those reasons before I realized they were heading into the narrows. I began to panic.
What if the cartel men or M’s men see the raft and just start blazing?
Part of me wanted to start sliding down the slope toward the narrows to try to warn the family off. But there was no time. I would not make it before they hit the tight spot.
Another part of me wanted to shoot my gun and yell from there, but then whatever flavor of bad guy was waiting to my north would know my position, and the element of surprise we’d planned and worked for would be gone.