The Lazy OK was an excellent hideaway. Comfortable accommodations, splendid views, bountiful breakfasts, venison and trout dinners, pleasant company. It was here that Troy planned to convalesce while Dom fished. After two days in the wilderness, his plans for vengeance had been whittled away, his fury and fears abated. If Ruby was in Idaho, so what? Let her rot. As for Charlene, she was a nightmare from a different man’s past. Arrest warrants faded to remote possibility. The serenity of the Lazy OK prompted a saner plan: a layover until his knee healed, west by jetboat to Riggins followed by a ride to Boise, and after a change of names and forged passport, a visit to Canada.
In the afternoon, Troy sat by the porch railing, nursing his knee, contemplating the splendors of the river, feeling a measure of contentment and calm. He’d exchanged boots and jeans for shorts, sneakers, and Dom’s purple polo shirt.
At the dock, a guide wrapped the line from his dory to a metal cleat. “Mr. Odegard around?” he shouted up to Troy.
Troy waved from his perch, frightened for a moment that authorities might be searching for him on the river. However, common sense prevailed. No law enforcement officer would arrive in a painted fairy boat.
Troy shambled down to the water where the four dories were docked.
“How y’all doing,” he said, his tan rugged face, sun-streaked hair, and lanky body the epitome of field-and-streamer.
The guide pumped Troy’s hand. “Looking to see Mr. Odegard.”
He hauled a canvas bag from the river into the boat. Tethered to the dory since morning, it was filled with beer chilled in the water. By the time Gus Odegard appeared, Troy had drunk a couple of Coronas and regaled his new friends with adventures from the life of Edwin Ryan.
“Idaho’s a powerful healer,” he said, rubbing his sore knee.
“Except for those kids we met, they’re having an awful time.”
“You hear about that, Mr. Odegard? Kid wiped out at Salmon Falls, lost his raft, sliced his head. He didn’t have a chance of getting through this water. We begged them to come down here but they wanted to stay at Bargamin Creek.”
“Suspicious types?” Odegard asked.
“Just upset.”
“I’ll let Corn Creek know they’re stranded without a raft,” Odegard said.
Troy took a swig of beer. He vaguely remembered a girl and boy on the cliff above Salmon Falls.
“I guess those were the same youngsters we saw,” Odegard said. “Black, Mexican, Indian, half-breed of something.”
“They look like twins but they’re cousins,” a guide said. “His family owns a vacation house in Salmon. Nice guy, college kid.”
“That was them, all right,” Odegard concurred.
“Downstream, we had some luck. We found a black rubber bag and rocket boxes in an eddy. We never saw the raft.”
“They were scouting Salmon Falls when we came over in the jetboat. So you left them where?”
“Bargamin, didn’t have much choice.”
“You should have brought them here.”
“They wanted to stay and hike up the creek into the mountains.”
Troy leaned against the post of the dock, listening to the guides and Gus Odegard discuss the storm due in. When it was time to push off, the passengers took their seats in the dories. Troy watched them drift toward a wide bend in the river. One by one, the enchanting boats began to glide away.
“Stop!” he called urgently.
“What?” a guide shouted.
“Did she say where?”
“Who?” the guide cupped his hands in the wind.
“The girl? Did she say where she came from?”
“New Mexico.” The guide mouthed as the dory contacted the swift current.
“New Mexico,” Troy said, dragging himself up the small knoll of grass away from the dock. “New Mexico, New Mexico, New Mexico.”