Twenty

The heavy rain assaulted my ears and rocked Roxie’s car. We were following the big, ponderous truck, which showered the sidewalks with enormous sheets of rainwater as the wheels rolled through puddles.

“What do we know?” Roxie asked.

Ben glanced at her. “Got a call, someone stranded by the flood. I know that neighborhood—there’s a little creek behind the houses.”

“Creek’s probably a raging river today,” Roxie replied, glancing meaningfully at flailing windshield wipers.

We stopped. The men bailed out of their truck in their big boots and splashed through dark, dirty water. When Ben lifted me down I was surprised at how cold the water was and that it came up over my paws. The rain had turned yards into standing ponds.

“This way!” Hutch called.

Up ahead, I could smell a stream moving very fast. Rain continued to pummel us. Hutch waved his hand, and a strong beam of light cut into the gloom. The light danced until it found a young boy clinging to a rock in the middle of a dangerous river.

What was he doing out there? He was smaller than Samantha, but he held on to his tiny island the same terrified way Samantha had gripped the roof of the smoky house the day I’d met her.

“Cripes, look at that.” Ben whistled under his breath.

“Hey, are you okay?” Roxie yelled.

The boy’s eyes were wild. “I’m stuck,” he shouted back desperately.

“Well, don’t try to move,” Ben called back. “Stay there. Hold on. We’re going to get you.” Ben looked uncertainly at Hutch. “You got any ideas?”

Hutch’s eyes were hooded. He gave a small shake of his head.

“Too far to throw a rope from here, and look at that creek—got to be five feet above flood stage and rising fast,” Roxie murmured.

They stood there helplessly for a minute.

“What if we bring the ladder down here?” Alvis suggested. “Extend it over the water?”

Hutch shook his head. “I don’t like it. Ladder slips and we’d lose the kid.”

“The truck?” Willets asked.

Hutch considered it. “No,” he decided reluctantly. “We’d get stuck in the mud before we got halfway here.”

“Let’s try something,” Ben proposed. He took a rope from Nance and made a loop at the end of it. “Okay, here’s what I need you to do, Ripley. I need you to take the rope to that boy. I know you’ve never done anything like that, but I want you to take the rope. Take the rope.”

I accepted the rope with my mouth and gazed at him questioningly. We’d played Bring Me the Rope all morning—Ben would walk a distance away from me, give me the command, and I’d drag the rope to him. But he was standing right next to me. What did he want me to do here?

I nudged his knee with the rope and dropped it at his feet. I wagged hopefully. Hutch snorted.

Ben surprised me by kneeling down in front of me in the dirty water. It sloshed into his boots. “Look, Ripley.” He gave me the rope again and held my head in his hands, pushing so that my eyes and nose were focused on the boy who was clinging to the rock in the river. “You need to take the rope to that boy. Understand?” He pulled on the rope, tugging it in my mouth, then swiveled my head so it was back pointed at the boy. “Do you understand?”

I looked around, bewildered. Everyone was staring at me. Nobody was gesturing that they wanted me to take the rope to them. They were all just watching to see what I would do.

“This isn’t going to work,” Hutch spat.

“We’re gonna lose the kid,” Alvis moaned.

“I’ll go,” Hutch proclaimed. He reached down and roughly snatched the rope from my jaws. “Hang on, son,” he yelled at the boy. “I’m coming to get you!”

“Lieutenant!” Roxie hissed.

“You can’t do that, Hutch. You’ll never make it,” Ben warned.

“No choice,” Hutch muttered.

Ben put his hand out and grabbed Hutch’s wrist. Hutch glanced up in surprise, his eyes hard. “Listen to me,” Ben urged. “We’ll send the dog. We lose you and we’ve lost a human. This is why we have Ripley.”

Hutch stared pointedly at the hand on his wrist until Ben released it. “All right,” Hutch grunted. “Let’s give it a shot.”

Ben took the rope back from Hutch. “Hey!” he shouted to the boy. “We’re going to send the rope across with the dog. When you get it, put the loop over the rock and pull the slipknot tight. Understand?”

I saw the boy nod tentatively.

“Can the dog really do it?” Hutch demanded. “We can’t bring a chopper in, not in this weather, not with all these trees.”

“The water’s still rising,” Roxie added.

“I think we’ve got this,” Ben replied curtly. “Ripley, come.”

I was astounded when Ben started wading out into the water, but I followed him loyally. The current was strong and cold, and I was afraid.

“Not too far, Ben!” Roxie cautioned. “That creek’s going to get you. One more step, that’s all. Stop! Don’t go any farther.”

Everyone’s tension had me completely focused on Ben. He took another step and sank a little lower into the water, and suddenly I had to swim to keep up with him. Immediately, the current tried to drag me away. I dug hard, fighting it.

“Take the rope to the boy. Take it, Ripley,” Ben told me. He handed me the rope and gave me a shove toward the boy on the rock.

Despite paddling as hard as I could, I drifted away from Ben. I turned back in confusion and swam to where my feet could touch the bottom. Panting, I returned to Ben, the rope still clenched in my teeth.

“All right, good dog,” he praised. “We need to start farther upstream to account for the current.”

He waded against the water. I struggled to keep up with him, lunging up with every step. Why wouldn’t he take the rope from my mouth? This was a new game, one that felt very important, almost as important as Search. But I wanted to understand the rules, and I didn’t.

We moved quite a distance upstream, and then he waded out a little bit again.

“Come, Ripley. Take the rope to the boy.” He gave me another shove. Once again, I was drifting, my paws beating against the cold water. “Call him!” Ben shouted, his hands cupped over his mouth. “His name is Ripley. Call him!”

“Ripley! Here, boy,” the boy yelled out in a thin reedy voice. “Please, here, come here.” He slipped a little bit toward the churning waters and went rigid, clutching the rock in panic.

“Tell him to bring the rope. Bring Me the Rope is the command!”

I heard Ben saying “Bring me the rope,” but not in the usual tone of voice. Still, I started to turn back toward him. Was that the right thing to do?

“Bring me the rope, Ripley. Bring the rope!” the boy shrieked at me.

He’d said my name. He’d said words I recognized. Bring Me the Rope. And he was afraid. His fear pierced the roar of the rainfall, his voice cracking with it.

I should bring the rope to the boy. I should be with the boy when he was frightened, the way I tried to always stay next to Samantha when fear seized hold of her.

Finally, I understood what I was supposed to do.

I set out in the boy’s direction. The current seized me and was pulling me surprisingly quickly. I was frightened—frightened of the water, the noise, frightened of everyone’s fear. I could feel the rope trailing behind me, and it was dragging at me, twisting my neck.

I put everything I could into trying to reach that rock. The river had other ideas, pulling me sideways, but I was focused. The boy was still calling me.

When my front claws scrabbled at the rock, the boy reached down and snatched the loop out of my mouth. I let him have it, confused. Wasn’t I supposed to be close to him? The rock was slippery and I couldn’t get up onto it, and the water was pulling, pulling, pulling.

“Here, Ripley. Come. Come,” Ben called to me.

A new command. I turned in the water, my back to the boy. Ben was still upstream where I’d left him and was trying to climb his way back onto the shore.

I aimed myself for Ben but it was no use. The river slammed me in the chest and pressed me back. I lunged forward into deeper water.

Ben stumbled but then was on solid ground. I was dismayed at how far upstream he was, in such a short period of time. I was being carried away!

“Ripley!” Roxie cried as I swept past her.

Ben ran along the riverbank next to me, falling behind, his boots splashing in the cold muddy water. “Come, Ripley, come,” he shouted.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t make my way to him. Every time I turned in his direction, the water piled up against me and threw me back.

Then a huge wave crashed over my head and I was completely underwater. I couldn’t see anything for a moment—it was like wearing a mask during a fire.

I popped up, sputtering. I had gotten water in my nose and I sneezed. The current tugged me, trying to keep me, to drag me out into the middle of the river.

Ben! I wanted to get to Ben. I didn’t want him to be by himself. I didn’t want to be alone in the water. I wanted the two of us to be together.

I struggled, choking on the dirty water. I was tired now, so tired. The water was winning. I was getting no closer at all to Ben.

“Ripley!” I heard Ben shout helplessly.

I thought of Samantha. She needed me. If I didn’t get out of this river, I would never be able to make my way back to her.

I couldn’t let her be alone. She didn’t do well without her dog.

I abandoned trying to go upstream to Ben. It was too hard to keep paddling against the force of the current. Instead, I let the water take me, pull me. I swam in the same direction as the current, edging closer and closer toward the shore, ignoring how swiftly I was moving downstream.

All that mattered was getting out of the river. I put all of me, all my strength, all my courage, into swimming. Samantha. I needed to survive for Samantha.

Finally I felt mud under my paws. I scrambled for a foothold on the riverbank, found it, and hauled myself away from the clutches of the current. I trudged onto the bank, soaking wet, my fur heavy and trying to drag me back. I shook my sodden coat as well as I could, my feet still in muddy water, my legs trembling.

Ben was running to me. I could hear him panting. I could also hear the relief in his voice when he called out, “Ripley. Good dog, good dog.”

He gave me a click and a treat, but even better was the way he wrapped his arms around me. I loved hearing that I was a good dog.

We slowly made our way back to Roxie and the men. The boy had looped my rope around the rock, and I noticed with alarm that the rock seemed smaller than it used to be. The water was already lapping at the boy’s shoes. I wondered what would happen if the water rose up and covered the rock completely.

Nance and Alvis and several others were holding my rope on our end, bracing themselves.

“Okay, I’m going across,” Hutch announced. “You men keep the main line taut. I’ll hook a carabiner onto it with a strap to my harness. Roxie, you and Ben haul me back with the life rope when I’ve got the boy. Clear?”

Everyone glanced at one another. “Lieutenant,” Alvis observed cautiously, “shouldn’t one of us go?”

“This is my decision,” Hutch told him curtly. “I won’t ask any of you to do something I wouldn’t.” He clipped a line onto the big rope that ran from us to the boy on the rock. This shorter line was like a leash leading from a harness Hutch wore to the clip on the bigger rope.

Yet another rope sagged limply from Hutch’s harness, and Ben picked this one up, wrapping it around his arm. “I’ve got the life rope,” Ben stated tensely.

His expression grim, Hutch gingerly made his way into the water. The current hit and his legs were swept out from underneath him. The strap snapped taut and the big rope bowed as he struggled in the water. Willets grunted and all the men holding the rope leaned back.

Hutch fought the waves, sputtering, shaking his head, making slow progress toward the boy. Ben and Roxie played out their rope, keeping it trailing limply from Hutch’s harness.

Finally he was where the rock pierced the surface of the boiling stream. The boy didn’t even look up at Hutch’s arrival. Hutch leaned against the rock and started talking to the boy. I couldn’t hear what Hutch said, but the boy shook his head frantically.

Hutch kept talking.

After what seemed like a long time, the boy nodded and took his hands off the rock. He slid toward the violent waters, but Hutch reached for him with both arms and the boy clutched at him.

“We’re coming back now,” Hutch hollered.