The beach widens as they advance, wending past debris and boulders, but staying hard by the river. The driving rain gradually relents to a drizzle, ceasing its clatter, and now the only noise is the river’s rumbling. After a while they come to the widest part of the beach yet, marked by scattered rockfall and bench elevations between the river and the bluff—and there the light is. Shining within a small, blue nylon pop-up tent about forty or forty-five yards from the riverbank and a few yards from the foot of the bluff, facing downriver with the wind. Axel figures the light for a battery lantern, since only a fool would use gas or kerosene in a tent, especially such a small one, and whoever positioned the tent so sensibly is no camping fool.
They move in closer, easing up to a low outcrop about fifteen yards from the tent and affording a good view of it. Now something in the tent blocks the light—a distorted silhouette of somebody shifting around. Then the dark shape settles, seems to lie down, and most of the tent side is bright again.
“One guy, looks like,” Cacho says, just loud enough for Axel to hear him. “Don’t see no boat. You?” He hugs himself against the chilling wind.
“Could be stashed the other side of the tent.”
“What for? Hide it from all the thieves on the loose around here? If there’s no boat, he had to’ve hiked in on some trail, and that’s our way out.”
“Right. Except we don’t know where the trail is, and we sure as hell can’t just walk up and ask him. Guy could be armed, and everybody in Texas knows who wears these state-issue whites. Might shoot us on the spot, turn our dead asses in for a reward. The thing to do is lay low, wait till he packs up and heads out, then follow him at a distance.”
“And what if he sticks around a while?” Cacho says. “No telling how long he might. Another day? A week? We can’t hide here, hoping he won’t spot us. No, man, we gotta jump his ass. We move up close as we can, hide good but so we can keep an eye on the door. Soon as he comes out, take a piss, whatever, we come down on him. Make him show us the way out.”
“Could be a hard case. Say fuck us.”
“He won’t say it more than once.”
The kid’s right, and Axel knows it. “Okay,” he says. Then points to their right at an outcrop forming a rock wall at the top of a gradual slope and running all the way to the bluff. “Up there’s good cover, and we can position ourselves behind it for a straight look at the tent door. When he comes out in the morning, first chance we get we’ll take him down.”
“Now you’re talking.”
With Cacho following closely, Axel leads the way up the slope, cutting looks at the tent as they advance in a semicircle to get behind the outcrop wall. But now the wall blocks the tent glow, casting the ground on this side of it in near-total blackness, and they have to move more carefully still. Feeling his way along the wall and over the uneven footing, Axel sidesteps into something knee-high and almost falls over it.
“What?” Cacho whispers. They can barely make each other out.
Axel eases himself down beside the ill-defined structure obstructing their way.
“What is it?” Cacho says.
“Oh baaby,” Axel croons.
Cacho crouches and puts a hand to the thing, amazed to feel some sort of hard, canvaslike material. “What the hell …?”
“Got us a boat, junior.”
Axel crawls around in it, gauging its measure by feel, running his hands over it, its fittings and equipment. He grew up with boats of all kinds and recognizes this as one of the most basic. “Inflatable dinghy,” he says. “Horseshoe design, about eight by four, maybe a little bigger. Polyester fabric with PVC coating, I’d say. Thing probably doesn’t weigh fifty pounds. Separate air chambers, two each side, feels like. Braced deck, grab ropes all the way around. Transom for an outboard but there’s no motor, or else he’s got it in the tent. Pair of paddles. Aluminum.”
“All I understand you saying is it’s small and got paddles. And big enough for two, right?”
“Yeah. Some people think these things are no more than a fancy inner tube, but this one’s pretty well made. Dude was smart to put it way up here in case the river overran the bank so much he wouldn’t be able to get to it. Tied it down, weighed it with rocks. No seat, unless it’s in the tent.
“Well, let’s get the thing in the water and go.”
They remove the hold-down rocks and Axel detaches the bowline from a small boulder and drops it in the boat. He takes hold of the bow and hoists it to waist level and Cacho picks up the stern end and they begin sidestepping cautiously down the mild incline. The boat’s not much heavier than Axel guessed, but it’s a cumbersome load, and together with the darkness and unsure ground it’s tricky work to lug the thing between them. The tent light is still on. The guy isn’t asleep yet. He wouldn’t waste the battery while he slept.
Then they’re back on the flat rock beach and making their clumsy way toward the river. They’re more than halfway to the river, stepping sidelong, huffing hard, when Cacho’s foot gives way and he falls with a yelp.
“Damn, man, come on!” Axel says in low voice. He looks at the tent, sees a black shape rising inside it. The guy’s sitting up. He heard.
Cacho gets to his feet, hissing, “Fucking ankle!” He picks up his end of the boat and they start moving again, but he’s limping and can’t match Axel’s pace.
The man is scrabbling out of the tent on hands and knees.
Axel moves around ahead of Cacho so that the bow is facing the river. “Put it down and get in!” he says.
“What?”
“Get in the boat! Do it!” Axel shouts, stealth no longer necessary.
Cacho sets down the stern and crawls into the boat as Axel wraps the bowline around his hands and starts scuttling backward, pulling the boat toward the river.
“HEY! … Hey, you bastards! Stop right there! … Stop!” The man is hurrying toward them, a shadowy figure.
Axel drags the boat with all the strength and speed he can marshal, leaning back on the bowline, digging in with his heels, at times slipping and nearly falling, the bowline chafing his palms. The boat rasps over the gravelly ground, Cacho chanting, “Go! Go! Go!”
“Stop!” the man yells.
A gunshot cracks through the river roar.
“Carajo!” Cacho says. He huddles lower in the boat and hollers, “Move it! Move!”
Axel pulls harder, faster, laboring for breath. They have the advantage of being able to see the man against the lighted tent behind him better than he can see them against the dark canyon wall on the other side of the river, though it doesn’t help that they’re wearing white. Glancing over his shoulder, Axel sees that they’re almost to the river, then looks back at the man, who has fallen and is getting back up. Axel sees the flash of his gunshot, and the round buzzes just over his head.
They reach the river’s edge and Axel flings the bowline into the boat and darts around to the stern, hearing the man yelling, shooting again, the round striking to Axel’s left and sparking off the rock beach with a whine. He pushes the boat forward until the bow juts over the low lip of the bank and the swashing current is thumping on its underside, the boat teetering. But before he can get in, the next shot punctures the hull’s hindmost left chamber with a loud burst of air and knocks the boat forward, and it slides off the bank. In sheer reflex Axel dives after it, catching the transom with both hands as he smacks into the churning water and the boat veers away on the current, slinging him outward in a half-submerged and rolling twist that wrenches his left hand loose of the transom. Through the crashings of the river he hears another gunshot.
Clinging one-handed to the boat, he’s stretched out behind it, rolling from side to side, being dragged with such force he’s unable to pull himself forward or even reach up far enough with his other arm to grab on with both hands. It’s hard to keep his face out of the water. He doesn’t see Cacho and thinks he’s gone overboard. His clutching hand aches and is beginning to lose its grip.
Then hands clamp around his wrist, and Cacho’s hunched form looms over him, swaying in the tossing boat, shouting, “I got you! Let go! I’ll pull you in! … Let go!”
He’s afraid to release his hold on the boat, afraid he’ll slip from Cacho’s hands or pull him into the water too. But lacking other choice, he lets go.
Cacho fights the river for possession of him, both hands locked around Axel’s wrist, his good foot planted against the skewed transom for leverage. He lugs him up against the sagged corner of the boat. Axel’s shoulder feels like its arm is unrooting. He grabs the transom with his left hand and helps to pull himself up over it, submerging it under his weight, water pouring in as he fumbles into the swirling boat. Cacho releases his arm but still holds tightly to his shirt. Axel rises on his elbows and spews a great gush of water.
“You hit?” Cacho says. “You shot?”
He doesn’t know, doesn’t think so. He feels a variety of pains, but none of bullet severity. He knows what a gunshot wound feels like. “I’m okay! You?”
“Not a scratch! God loves us! We’re clear, bro, we’re on the move!”
The boat is awash and listing hard to its left rear side, but the other three chambers keep it afloat well enough.
Cacho shakes him by the shirt and yells near his ear, “Look up! Up there!”
The band of sky between the looming canyon walls has broken into ragged, scudding clouds brightly lit by a moon still out of their view, patches of its light playing in the higher shadows on one wall of the canyon.