“What happened to your mother?”
Cameron glanced up from her plate and gave a little shrug. “She went bonkers, living way out in the bush. Some people just can’t stand the isolation. She had two miscarriages after she had me, so I never did have any siblings. One day this wealthy dude from back east came to shoot himself a trophy bear. My mother was cooking for the sporting camp then, and he stayed for ten days. He killed his bear and when he left, she went with him and that was that.”
“Do you ever hear from her?”
“Nope. I have no idea what city she’s living in, but I bet it’s a big one and I bet she doesn’t miss the wilderness.”
He studied her as she concentrated on her breakfast. She was beautiful, really, even dressed in a well-worn sage, violet and pink plaid flannel shirt, synthetic zip T-shirt, cargo pants and L.L.Bean boots. Her glossy black hair was pulled back in a short braid, and she wore no jewelry, sported no piercings or tattoos. Her skin was clear and glowed with health. He couldn’t imagine any mother turning her back and walking away from her only child, leaving her to be raised in remote hunting and fishing camps way out on the edge of nowhere. But her father had done a good job raising her. She was unpretentious, down to earth and completely at home in the wilderness.
“Cameron’s an interesting name for a girl.”
“It was my mother’s maiden name.”
“Did you go to school?” he asked.
“Sometimes. I can read and write, if that’s what you’re wondering. We’d winter in Fort Simpson, and there was a school there. My dad was pretty lax about it. Said I could learn more in the out-of-doors than I could ever learn inside four walls. The only thing he demanded of me was that I learn to read because he said knowing how to read was the most important thing. He taught me math, though, because it was essential for flying.” She finished her breakfast and licked the grease off her fingers before wiping them on the napkin. “I thought school was boring. I graduated, passed all my exams with flying colors even though I hardly ever went to class. My dad said that’s because I read so much.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”
“Twenty-four.” She smiled at his expression. “You’re not the first person who thought I wasn’t old enough to legally drink. What about yourself?”
“Thirty. Old enough to drink.”
“But never married. I think I know why.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re afraid of rejection, so you never dared ask.”
“Wrong.”
“Then why isn’t a good-looking guy like you married?”
“I asked my college sweetheart to marry me before I was shipped out on my first deployment. She said yes and promised she’d wait forever if she had to. I gave her a ring. My deployment lasted nearly a year. When I got back, she was six months pregnant. She gave the ring back and married another guy.” Were Cameron’s eyes dark blue or brown? He couldn’t tell, even though he was looking right into them while he spoke.
“Wow, that’s pretty bad,” she said. “Did she break off the engagement before you got back home?”
“No, for the same reason my sister never told me what happened to my dog. There’s this perception that bad news will drive a soldier off the deep end or cause him or her to get careless and get killed. So I wrote her letters weekly while she was romancing another man.”
“Sounds like your girl might have been related to my ex-husband, Roy.”
He laughed, and she smiled in response. Her eyes dropped from his, and after an awkward moment she rose to her feet and gathered the breakfast dishes and carried them down to the river. While she was there, he rolled up his sleeping bag and packed his gear. When she came back to the camp, she was wearing a pensive expression.
“Five thousand dollars,” she said, staring him straight in the eye. Her eyes were blue. Very dark blue. “That’s what I was offered to get you safely to the Mackenzie River. And a generous bonus on top of that if I could do it real quick, because your mother’s so sick.”
“Five thousand dollars? That’s what my sister offered you?” He shook his head in wonder. “I hate to tell you this, but my mother’s fine. She’d have told me herself if she wasn’t. She’s a real straight shooter, tells it like it is. So it looks like you’ve lost your generous bonus. No need to rush things. As for the rest of the reward money, you’ll have to earn it. I’ve decided to take you up on your offer of the canoe. I’ll paddle down to the cabin and wait for you there. You can drag my three stinky socks. You’re so quick you’ll probably beat me there.”
“Fair enough,” she said after a surprised pause. “The camp’s on the north bank of the river. Your sister said it was impossible to miss. It’s on a point of land just like this site.”
“Good.”
“Be sure to wear that personal flotation device while you’re on the water,” she said. “If you should fall out of the canoe, it won’t do you any good unless you’re wearing it. The water’s cold. Even if you’re a good swimmer you’ll probably drown.”
“Right.”
He carried his gear to the canoe, acutely aware of how slow his pace was compared to hers. She was quick and strong, and she had that tent down and packed in minutes, the canoe loaded and lashed, the campfire thoroughly doused with water from her canvas bucket. She had a routine, and it was an efficient one. It was hard not to be impressed. He’d grown up in the out-of-doors and knew how to handle himself, but his skills didn’t hold a patch to hers. He was annoyed that she regarded him as a way to earn some extra income, but her life wasn’t an easy one. The money his sister offered her must’ve been a strong incentive.
“What?” she asked as she straightened from lashing the last of the gear in the canoe and caught him watching her.
“Nothing.”
“You’re worried about something. I can see it in your face. Now listen, there are rapids, but they’re below the camp. You should have smooth sailing. The canoe has float bags, everything’s tied down and the critical gear is all in dry sacks. If you capsize, stay with the canoe and get it ashore unless you’re about to get caught in a strainer. That’s a tree that’s fallen into the river. I’m sure you already knew that. Very dangerous, those strainers. The river level should drop some during the day, but the wind’s apt to come out of the west this afternoon and slow you down. You’ll probably make the cabin well before dark. Spend the night there. There’s tons of food in that cooler, and if the camp’s a mess or a bear’s living in it, you can always set up the tent. That’ll keep you dry and out of the bugs.”
“You’re worried about me?” That floored him.
“Of course,” she said. “If I don’t get you safely to the Mackenzie, I won’t get my five grand, and I have my heart set on buying Johnny Allen’s red Jeep.”
She straddled the bow of the canoe to steady it so he could climb in. “Wait a minute,” she said as he reached for the paddle. “You’re forgetting something.”
“What’s that?”
She held out her hand. “Your three stinky socks.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
CAMERON WAS STILL holding out her hand when he handed her the paddle instead of the socks. “I’m not getting in, you are. I wasn’t really going to make you walk. I just wanted to see how bad you wanted the money.”
She took the paddle from him with a frown and watched as he shrugged into his pack. “But I can walk four times faster than you can.”
“Thanks for that compliment, but walking’s not part of your job. It’s mine. It’s how I learn to use my new leg. It’s how I’m going to find my lost dog. Your job is to find the trapper’s cabin and hang up my dirty socks.” He fished them out of his jacket pocket, enclosed in a zipper storage bag, and tossed them into the canoe. “There you go, guaranteed stinky.”
“
Take the canoe,” she said. “I’m packed light and I can walk fast.”
“I exaggerated about knowing how to handle a canoe. You probably think my genetic memory would fill in the gaps, but if I lost the canoe, how would you get me out to the Mackenzie?”
“How can anyone not know how to paddle a canoe?”
“Are you really willing to risk losing that red Jeep?”
Cameron blew out her breath. Arguing with him was futile. They were burning daylight. “Okay, you win. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can. If you wolf whistle your way down the river like you were doing before, I’ll hear you. When you hear me answer, make for the river’s edge.”
“Sounds like a plan. You’d better get going.”
Once again, she’d been summarily dismissed. She untied the snub lines and climbed into the canoe, fuming inwardly. She pulled on the life vest and zipped it up. He had his rifle and his camping gear, but she still felt uneasy leaving him behind. “It could be late tomorrow before we meet up,” she cautioned him.
“I’ll try to be all right on my own.”
His sarcastic words sparked another quick surge of anger. “Fine, then. Have a happy and healthy day.”
She paddled away and didn’t look back. Her anger gave her strength. The canoe fairly flew downstream. For an hour she paddled steadily, keeping a sharp eye out for boulders that might be submerged in the high water, but water levels had dropped rapidly in the two days since the rains ended, and she had no problems navigating the river. Nearly three hours into the journey she spied something hung up in the branches of a tree that had toppled off the eroded riverbank on an inside curve and into the river. She leaned forward, squinting intently.
Was it? Could it be?
Yes! It was her coveted Snowy River hat. By sheer luck it had been caught by the stampede strings in the very tip of a big spruce tree that was blocking two-thirds of the river. She was tempted to try to retrieve the hat immediately but decided against it. She’d unload the heavy canoe at the cabin and rescue her hat on the upward ferry, or maybe on the way back down with Jack in the bow. He could snag it with a long pole while she handled the canoe.
Just before noon she rounded a river bend and spotted the trapper’s cabin. Jack’s sister had been right. Nobody could paddle past without seeing it. The structure was in better shape than she expected. She’d spent many a night in moldering old camps where a tent would have been a better option. This one was laid up of peeled spruce logs, weathered to a silvery gray. The roofing was sound, there was a stovepipe that looked serviceable, a door and window facing the river, and another window that she could see facing upstream, both tightly shuttered against marauding bears.
The small cove on the downstream side of the peninsula was the perfect spot to land the canoe. She heaved the bow onto the gravel spit, tethered it to a spruce, hiked up the knoll to the cabin, unlatched the door and peered inside. A quick scout and she was reasonably sure nobody had stepped foot inside since the trapper left in late winter. Everything was as neat as a pin. The wood box was full, a fire had been laid inside the woodstove and was ready for the strike of a match, the dishes were all washed and put away, the floor was swept. Whoever trapped in here was a real woodsman.
She carried the gear up the steep knoll one armload at a time and stashed it inside the cabin. The cooler was the heaviest thing. She had to unload it, carry it up and then refill it once it was inside. It took her over an hour to get everything situated and organized and to hang Jack’s three stinky socks from tree branches outside the cabin, as promised.
When all that was accomplished, she fixed herself a peanut-butter sandwich and ate it sitting on the cabin steps, resting and admiring the view. She left a note on the table, just in case, took a long drink of water from her bottle and closed the cabin door. When she returned to the canoe, she had only her emergency gear, food for the night and the tent for ballast, all of which was lashed into the bow. She’d already traveled four fast hours on the river, and knew that paddling back upstream was going to be demanding work, and much slower, but there were hours of good daylight left, and she should be able to make it back as far as her hat before running out of strength. She’d pitch camp there.
She worked the currents and eddies as efficiently as possible. On straight sections of river she hugged the bank where the current was slower, and on twisty sections she ferried back and forth, constantly seeking slower water. The afternoon wind was westering at her back, which helped some, but her arms and shoulders burned from the effort, and every half hour she stopped for a long drink of water and a ten-minute rest. By 4:00 p.m. she had reached the spruce tree on the undercut riverbank that had uprooted, toppled into the water and snagged her hat. Her timing was impeccable. She was tired and hungry and ready for a long break.
But first she’d retrieve her hat. It was hung up on the very tip of the half-submerged spruce. If she kept the canoe straight into the current and paddled past the end of the strainer, she could reach over in one quick moment and snatch the hat. Strainers were dangerous, and a paddler never wanted to get crosswise of one, but Cameron was sure if she just maintained a straight course up to the very tip of the tree, and didn’t go beyond it to the upstream side, she’d be all right.
She drew a few deep breaths before flexing her arms and shoulders and taking a fresh grip on the paddle. If she’d had a client in the canoe with her, she’d never have attempted this, but she’d use extreme caution, and if there was even a remote chance she could get into trouble, she’d abort the plan.
She ferried across the river and approached the spruce from downstream. The hat was dangling in midair from a branch near the very tip, as if the tree was holding it out to her, but she knew it was only because the water level had dropped since the hat had gotten hung up. She kept the bow straight and paddled strongly into the current, drawing almost abreast of the hat before making the grab. To make sure she had time to reach for it, she gave one more strong push forward with the paddle. She didn’t lean much at all, just reached with her arm, but when she tugged on the hat, the stampede string didn’t come free, and so she reached a little farther. The second, stronger tug caused just enough of a deviation in the bow that the current snatched hold of it. The canoe snapped around so suddenly she lost the paddle, lost her balance, and in that awful moment she knew she’d made a terrible mistake.
The bow was pulled hard against the upstream side of the strainer, the canoe tipped sideways, filled with water and was sucked beneath the tip of the tree by the powerful current in a matter of seconds. She made a desperate grab for the upper branches to pull herself out of the canoe, but the current grabbed hold and pulled her under. Instantly she was suctioned into the deadly tangle of branches beneath the water. She struggled to fight free, but the branches were thick and strong, and she was pinned against them by the powerful current.
The canoe was right beside her, a smooth solid object pushing against her. It was moving forward and downward, being pushed beneath the strainer, and she caught desperate hold of a thwart and pulled herself down and half under the overturned canoe. Her lungs burned as she reached blindly for the next thwart and tried to haul herself ahead. The canoe jerked forward again, pulling her with it, but something snagged her life vest and held her back.
She struggled to wrench herself free and couldn’t. Her lungs were burning and for a moment panic overwhelmed her, then a strange calm prevailed. She unzipped the vest and stripped out of it one arm at a time, never losing her grip on the thwart, and as soon as she was free of the PFD, the canoe was pulled down farther until it wedged between the river bottom and the tree. She wriggled alongside of it, flattening herself against the smooth stones of the river bottom and hitching herself along the gunnel until she had cleared the strainer.
The moment she was free of the tree branches, the current swept her downriver. She thrashed to the surface, gasping air into bu
rning lungs, then struggled to reach the shore as she was slammed against a submerged rock and sucked into an eddy. She choked on mouthfuls of water, felt gravel underfoot and lurched to her feet, fell again and was tumbled farther downstream. By the time the river straightened and the current slowed, she was more than half drowned. With the last of her strength, she dragged herself onto the bank and lay there, legs still trailing in the river, coughing and retching up swallowed water.
At first she was only vaguely conscious, then she became aware of a strange, high-pitched sound and realized the noise was her lungs struggling for air. She lay motionless until her breaths came easier. Her hands were clutching at the vegetation along the riverbank. She unclenched her fingers with great effort. She heard the river rushing past, the wind in the trees, felt the warmth of afternoon sunshine on her hands. She was alive. She shouldn’t be. By all rights she should be dead, but she was alive.
She pulled herself forward until her legs were out of the water and then rolled over and sat up. She was bleeding from half a dozen wounds caused by frantically clawing and forcing her way through the submerged branches in the strainer, but she was more focused on how close she had just come to drowning.
She sat for what seemed like hours on that riverbank, looking back up to where the tree lay halfway across the river, her hat still dangling like the brass ring on a merry-go-round, dipping back and forth into the water. Somewhere under that tree was her canoe and her warm fleece jacket and all her food and emergency gear, including Walt’s satellite phone in the waterproof case, her pistol and the tent. But she wasn’t trapped under there with her gear. She was sitting right here in the afternoon sunshine, breathing in and out.
Alive. She was alive. It was a miracle, considering her stupidity.
Jack would be all right on his own. He had everything he needed to camp out, but she was soaking wet, badly beat-up and needed to get back to shelter. She unlaced and pulled off her boots, emptied them of water, wrung out her wool socks, replaced socks and boots on her feet, got up and started walking back downriver. Her clothing would dry as she walked. If she was lucky and didn’t break an ankle, she’d reach the cabin well before full dark.
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