The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  Tom stepped into the chute, which had a good yard’s depth at this juncture. What he couldn’t tell, and what he wouldn’t know until he got there, was whether the chute remained deep enough for him to inchworm his way to the top. The width looked consistent, but the depth was harder to read as it approached the canyon rim. Truth be told, Tom wanted to cry, blink his eyes, and make everything go away—dismissed as a bad dream. But he was also a trained problem solver, something he reminded himself of to buoy his spirits. This was just another challenge. His past convinced him it was something he could do. Plus, he had a full tank of adrenaline to fuel the journey.

  Tom flattened his back against one side of the chute and lifted one boot, then the other against the opposing side, so that his weight was suspended. He flattened his palms against the wall on either side of his butt. He experimented, pushing up with one hand, while creeping upward one boot sole at a time to a higher bracing. It worked. He inched his way up a few feet, then inched his way down, to plant his feet once more on the ledge and rest before launching the actual attempt. The model worked. Tom peeked out from the chute and glimpsed the diminished glow of the campfire to give him more incentive. “I love you,” he whispered into the night air, in the direction of Gail and Roarke. Then he stepped back in and started up.

  He realized about fifteen feet up that the varying width of the chute informed the degree of difficulty. When the chute narrowed, his knees almost touched his chest. It made breathing a little more forced, but it allowed him to rest his muscles more, too. When the chute widened and he had to use his thigh muscles to force his feet against the wall to create enough tension to hold himself in place, his muscles trembled with the effort and he had to fight off mini cramps. After ten minutes of climbing, he came to a narrower stretch, allowing him to rest. He looked up and down, and judged himself to be about halfway there. The depth of the chute proved consistent, which was encouraging, but his muscles were screaming for relief. He was sweating profusely with the exertion. His palms grew ever more slippery. His heart was thumping mightily.

  When the moon ducked behind a new cloud cover, Tom’s pale form made a ghostlike impression in the vertical shaft that appeared as a darker element in a dark-gray wall. With his scrunched posture, he also resembled a fetus in a birth canal. When the moon re-emerged, Tom glanced at the river. If his body hadn’t been trembling and his limbs pulsing with fatigue, he would have enjoyed the play of moonlight on the river surface. The scuffed water of the rapids was brightening under the moon, while the darker, still pools hovered like floating ink spots against the sheer canyon wall.

  Tom took a breath and pushed on. He could see the chute cleaving a final ledge he hadn’t noticed from below, this one bristling with stunted pines and offering an easier path to the top. He inched his way toward the ledge. The width of the chute just below it widened slightly, which meant his muscles, which were losing resilience, had to work harder to maintain the tension between the parallel walls. When he got to the ledge, he reached up with his inside hand to find a good purchase. This put more strain on his wall-planted hand and the rest of his body, but it was a necessary outreach. Satisfied with his grip, he pushed back hard with his legs as he reached overhead with his other hand. He pulled his head over the ledge, pull-up–style, releasing the tension bond in the chute. It unnerved him to lose that safety position, and he sunk back so that he was once more wedged in the chute. He looked down. Because the cliff wall angled slightly back from the river, the chute appeared to fall away like a very steep, almost straight, bobsled run. Tom’s toes began to quiver with the strain of holding him in place. He processed the information that the chute was a good foot wider at the top than at the bottom. His toes started to quiver faster and faster. His calves began to spasm. His body trembled with a final shudder to maintain its braced position—then his foot surrendered.

  He cried out as he plunged downward. He knew if he lost full contact with the far wall, his descent would turn into a free fall and sure death. He pressed his palms against the wall on either side of his waist, even as he sought to maintain the fetal position that would eventually slow his descent when the chute narrowed. His shirt rode up as he plummeted down the coarse granite wall. It was like forcing himself over a cheese grater—his skin peeling off in sickening flecks. He screamed out.

  He dropped forty feet before his bracing efforts and the narrowed chute slowed his fall. His body stopped two yards above the ledge from which he had started—his knees pressed almost to his chest, his boot soles flat against the far wall—his body wedged like a cork in a bottle. His hands and his back throbbed. His breathing came in compressed gulps. Below him, the first blood from his flayed back began to hit the ledge in little splatters. The drops came faster and faster as the blood seeped out of his abraded back and followed gravity downhill. Tom closed his eyes. This time he allowed himself to cry.

  ** ** **

  Gail’s eyes popped open in her dark tent. She wasn’t sure when she had fallen asleep; the overload of bad news and bad scenarios had finally short-circuited her brain and she had gone black. But now she was sure there was something wrong in her space. A form loomed over her. All at once, Terry’s face was inches from hers, his breath redolent of whisky. Gail yelped. Her body tightened.

  “Mom?” Roarke’s anxious, small voice pierced the blackness.

  Terry clamped a huge hand over Gail’s mouth. It covered her like a surgeon’s mask, revealing only her eyes, shimmering with fear. He moved his other hand down her sleeping bag, groping her between her legs. Gail struggled, but Terry pressed his substantial weight onto her, pinning her to the ground. He leaned even closer to smell her, his hand still covering her mouth

  “Mom?” Roarke sat up in the darkness, his pale face visible in the oval of his bound, blue mummy sack. The sight of his mother being violated, on top of the specter of his father’s death overwhelmed him. He cried and yelled out at the same time, “Get off her! Leave her alone!” He struggled to loosen or break his restraining rope.

  Terry glared at the boy and pushed him roughly. “Shut the fuck up.” Roarke tumbled into the side of the tent. Terry returned his gaze to Gail. His eyes undressed her. The thought of Gail naked filled his face with an ecstatic leer. His expression changed when he felt the barrel of a .22 pressed to the side of his head. He slowly rolled off Gail and confronted Deke, glaring at him. “The fuck’s the matter with you?”

  “She gives me a bone.”

  “The fucking knotty pine gives you a bone.” Deke tapped Terry’s forehead with the gun barrel. “You gotta start thinking more with this head.”

  “You just want her for yourself.”

  “You’re dumber than river rocks,” Deke told him. “Don’t you get it? Leave her fucking alone until she gets us off this river. Is this so fucking hard to understand?!

  After the fucking rapids you can do what you want to her. Fuck her in the trees. Fuck her in the water. Fuck her to death if you want. But just leave her a-fucking-lone till then!”

  Terry glared at Deke before skulking off. Deke looked at Gail, cowering in her sleeping bag. He touched the barrel of his .22 to his forehead pretending to tilt up the brim of a Stetson in the traditional cowboy gesture: At your service, ma’am. Deke climbed out of the tent and zipped the front flap shut behind him.

  Roarke rolled next to his mother. His face was wet with tears. “You okay, Mom?”

  “He didn’t do anything,” Gail told him. She rolled onto her side so they were face to face in their bound sleeping bags. She kissed him and moved her head lovingly against his. “Are you okay?”

  “I can’t believe Dad’s … dead.” He heaved out the words between deep sobs.

  Gail pulled her face back far enough to look him in the eyes. “I don’t think he is,” she whispered.

  “You’re just saying—”

  “No. I mean it. In my gut I think he’s alive. My gut’s pretty truthful.”

  Roarke’s eyes sparkled with hope. “Real
ly?”

  “Really. Dad’s okay.” She managed a smile. “You’ll see…. We’ll see.”

  ** ** **

  A sad-eyed Maggie stared down from the canyon rim at the remaining red glow of the campfire. She rested her muzzle on her crossed paws as dogs do. She whimpered, got up and paced a few feet away and collapsed in a heap once more, muzzle upon paws.

  Not a quarter mile away, Tom inched his way downriver along the ledge. It turned a corner with the wall, where the sheer face started to recede from the river’s edge. Tom made it as far as the ledge went. From this new vantage, he could look below to where the rapids gave way to the next long run. Just off the ledge, a crevasse angled up, filled with soil, pebbles, and several stunted pines. More promising, it led to another, wider shelf that led to a trail that angled upward toward the rim, like a ramp. The problem was getting there.

  Tom removed his knife, opened the sturdy can-opener blade and began cleaning out the pebbles that clogged the lower portion of the crevasse in reach. All he needed was one good handhold to get to the lowest pine—that led to a succession of handholds, which led up to the broad shelf. Satisfied with his housekeeping, Tom closed and pocketed his knife. He pressed his body flush to the cliff wall and reached out with his left hand. He groped in the crevasse until his hand found a suitable nub to hold onto. He gauged the distance once more from that handhold to the pine above. It seemed reachable; in Tom’s judgment, a better option than returning to the chute. He waited for the moon to come out once more, and to work up the nerve. The whole surface of his back throbbed with the kind of penetrating pain a severe burn generates. If his brain wasn’t focused on an even more powerful force—survival—he might have surrendered and lay down in a heap.

  When the moon was revealed behind the racing clouds, Tom reached out once more and grabbed the nub. He took a breath and leaned off the ledge, as gently as he could. His body swung into space, seventy-five feet above the rapids. His feet scratched for support to relieve the weight on his left arm and shoulder as his right hand joined his left in the crevasse, groping for a suitable grip. He was glued to the wall in four points. He looked up and eyed the pine limb he had to reach. He pulled with his left hand and stabbed his right hand upward. It fell inches short of the pine and the momentum of the effort collapsed his body once more to the first, dangling position. Tom groaned. There was little strength left in his left arm and hand—enough for one more try. He returned his right hand to the crevasse to relieve some of the weight on his left side. He gathered himself for a do-or-die leap. He began rocking his body gently against the wall once, twice, like a kid on a swing trying to get higher. On the third swing, Tom launched himself upward. His toes scratched for even the smallest purchase. He pulled down with all his might, his right hand slapped overhead, and his fingertips grazed the limb. He groaned and willed another inch of trajectory. His right hand settled around the limb, which bent with the weight, but held. He released his left hand, shook it out once, then swung it overhead for a two-handed grip on the pine. The little tree creaked beneath his full weight, and a handful of dirt and pebbles popped out of the crevasse. The root mass pulled slightly out, spilling more dirt, but held. Tom knew time was of the essence. He planted both feet against the granite wall, and surged upward once more. He reached the second stunted pine and then the third, which allowed him to step onto the upper ledge.

  He sank to all fours on the wide ramp. His arms throbbed. His back was on fire. He puked with the exertion. He lowered his head into his hands. When he was rested, he scrambled up the gently sloped stone ramp and disappeared into a cavelike opening. It was pitch black until the moon shone bright once more—visible in the open-air lid carved out of the cavern ceiling. Tom easily climbed over the rounded boulders that time had eroded and left like a stack of cannon balls just below the canyon rim. Pine trees stood at the edge of the void, their roots poking through the thin topsoil like old, gnarled fingers. The ground was coated with pine needles. The night was pine scented. Tom looked down at the River Wild—a silver ribbon far below. He peered downstream, where he knew he had to go. In the dark, the surrounding mountains looked soft and almost rounded. Way beyond, at the farthest place his eyes could see, the lights of Great Falls glimmered like a bed of scattered coals.

  23

  Tom might have taken heart if he had known that somewhere in that urban bed of scattered coals State Police Detective Lieutenant Bobby Long was looking in his exact direction, on a map. Ranger Thompson Littlebuck stood to one side. Trooper Billy Heston hovered nearby. The clock on the wall indicated it was a little before midnight. Littlebuck pointed to a location on the River Wild. “This is where I saw them.”

  The lieutenant held up mug shots of Deke and Terry. “These guys? William Patterson and Terrance O’Reilly.”

  “Those two, positively. Plus a couple and their kid. The husband’s face was a mess. They must have beat the shit out of him. He told some story about getting tossed out of the boat in the rapids, but you don’t look like that … plus, now that I think about it, his wife said she was a guide, so I doubt he would’ve gotten tossed with her rowing—if she was rowing …” He paused to remember. “The big guy, Terry, had the kid off to a distance. That was pretty weird. But when you’re trying to get off the river and you’ve talked to fifty campers, it doesn’t register as it does now, when you have time to think about it.”

  “You think they were gonna spend the night there?”

  “Looked like it,” Littlebuck said. “Plus it was pretty late in the day. They were all soaked. It’s a moderately rough stretch of water they came through.”

  “How far from there to takeout?”

  “About eight miles.”

  The lieutenant studied the map below the campsite. “What’s the last part of the river like?”

  The ranger traced the final segment down to the takeout. “You’ve got four miles of slow water and steep canyon below them. Then there’s Indian Gorge, the toughest rapids on the river, except for the Gauntlet, which nobody runs. Least, nobody sane. Below Indian Gorge, you’ve got some gentle meadowland, then you hit the last two miles of canyon and you’re out.”

  The lieutenant’s wheels were turning. It was the lead he needed—the addition of luck that sometimes rewarded good police work. Bobby Long burned brightly with new energy and ideas. Standard procedure would likely still win the day, but for the first time, intuition took the lead. “You ever been down the Gauntlet?” he asked Littlebuck.

  The ranger smiled. “Not all us Indians are drunk and crazy.”

  The lieutenant smiled. “You know anybody who has?”

  “A few guides and white water hounds. It’s about as challenging a descent as you’ll find in the States.”

  “You said the woman was a guide.”

  “That’s what she told me, before she was married.”

  “Think she’s ever been down the Gauntlet?”

  Thompson shrugged. “Not recently, I don’t imagine.”

  “Did you get her name, by any chance?”

  “Gail, something,” Littlebuck said. He paused to think, shook his head. “I meet a lot of people.”

  “Think hard,” the lieutenant said. “It could be important.”

  “I remember she gave me her married name and then … as I’m remembering it now, she gave me her maiden name. Didn’t seem weird then, but maybe she was trying to pass information to me.”

  “Gail’s not going to do it.”

  “What did she look like?” Heston asked.

  “Blond. In her forties. Attractive … though on the river people tend to let go.

  “Definitely fit.”

  “How tall?”

  “Five six, five seven, maybe. Their son could have been ten to fourteen, I guess. The other guy, Terry, had him off at a distance.”

  “That’s something we might be able to work with,” the young trooper told him.

  “She mentioned she’d been down the river a million times,” Littleb
uck added.

  “So someone’s going to know her,” Heston said, hopefully. “I checked with Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. It’s a river you have to win a lottery to get on. Lot of the same outfitters specialize in running it—some of them with an annual permit allotment. If she’s been on it a lot, she was probably with one of the major outfitters. That’s easy to check.”

  “One of the names was Anderson,” Littlebuck blurted, “though I can’t remember if that was the married or maiden name. I think she said it second, which would have been the maiden name.”

  “So, this Gauntlet … it’s doable?” Bobby Long asked.

  “Doable?” Littlebuck snorted. “Let’s say people have done it. Bunch more drowned trying to do it.”

  The lieutenant pointed to the logging road that switch-backed into the river below the Gauntlet. “You ever get to the river on this road?”

  “Couple times. The stretch below isn’t as beautiful as the stretch above … or as long, but a few folks like to put in there and take it all the way to the Missouri. It doesn’t get fished as hard.”

  “Let’s go back to the last takeout before the Gauntlet. Show me where that is, exactly.”

  “Right here. Canyon Gorge. The cliffs rise up kind of like gates and that’s it.”

  “Say these guys, for obvious reasons, weren’t planning to let that family go at the takeout. After she got them through the rapids. Say they were going to leave them,” he grimaced, “one way or the other above the takeout. Where would be the best place to get some men in?” Littlebuck pointed to the meadows below Indian Gorge.

  “This would be the easiest place onto the river itself. Only problem is there’re no road in.”

  “Helicopter?” Billy Heston piped up.