They waited on the banks of the Colorado. On the designated day, the twenty-seventh of July, they waited, gazing all the while across the river at the narrow canyon mouth of the Escalante, watching for Clay Jenkins and wild horses.
Clay waited with Russell and his father and four others as the half-moon rode across the daytime sky. He waited with them into the night until the moon set behind the canyon walls and darkness fell, obscuring the mouth of the Escalante River.
Clay hoped they wouldn’t give up and leave. Maybe something had held Uncle Clay up, maybe he was just late.
He needn’t have worried about the Navajos giving up. They were much better at waiting than he was. Together they watched through the next day, through the heat and the endless minutes and hours. It seemed his companions didn’t even need to talk to pass the time. The river rolled by and lapped gently at the sandstone. The swallows over the river twisted, dipped, and climbed endlessly, those violet-green acrobats. Sometimes they skimmed the surface—for bugs or a drink of water? He kept wondering what had happened to his uncle, and worrying.
It occurred to him, he’d never once heard the name of Sam Yazzie’s sister, the woman his uncle had married. When he asked Russell, it was obvious how uncomfortable he’d made his friend. “It’s not good to speak the name of someone who’s dead,” Russell whispered.
They waited a second night and he watched the slow passage of the waxing moon with his friend. No figure appeared at the mouth of the Escalante other than a coyote who came to the riverbank, then turned around and splashed back into the shadows up the shallow bed of the river. “It’s good we’ve come to see this place again,” Sam Yazzie said. “Next year there’ll be no coyote here and no crossing.”
“But why not?” Clay asked. “Why wouldn’t there be a crossing?”
“Didn’t you know? They’ve been building a big dam down the Colorado for years now. It’s almost done. Next spring, they say, the water will back up into all these canyons. All these hundreds of tall canyons of the Colorado and the San Juan too. Even Paiute Creek—it’s all going to be underwater.”
“How far up these cliffs right here?”
Russell’s father pointed almost straight up. “Way up there, they say. Only the tops of these canyons will be left. They say they’re going to call it Lake Powell.”
In the morning, after they had waited as long as they could, Clay knew what he would do. When Sam Yazzie said it was time to return to the sheep camp, Clay said, “I’m going on to Escalante, if I can get across. I came this far.”
They transferred Pal’s boxes to a packhorse, as they had for the crossing of the San Juan. It would be hard enough for the burro. They didn’t want her loaded down with gear.
Russell’s mother’s brother led the way across, trailing the packhorse.
Sam Yazzie followed with Pal’s lead rope snubbed around his saddle horn. Clay and Russell and two others pushed forward in a tight ring and forced the burro into the coffee-and-cream-colored Colorado.
It was shallow at first, and the burro tolerated being driven. She had no choice. Then Sam Yazzie’s horse was swimming. Clay saw the whites of Pal’s eyes roll as the burro brayed in terror—her legs had suddenly lost the bottom too.
Clay’s own spotted horse was swimming now. Curly’s little head and ears were poking out of Clay’s shirt, and his black eyes were looking all around. One of Clay’s feet lost a stirrup but he clung tight with his legs, and clutched the mustang’s flaxen mane with one hand.
Once on the far shore, Clay set to repacking the burro. Taking his leave wasn’t going to be easy. He stowed everything away but the harmonica.
“The third canyon on the left side leads up to the top,” Sam Yazzie said. “I remember it’s got a cliff ruin in it. Maybe you won’t want to go all the way up the river to get to Escalante. You could go out a side canyon.”
“Just think, I’ll be with Uncle Clay in a couple days!” Clay said.
Everyone stood around nodding their agreement, but it seemed none of them would speak now that the parting was so close. He brought the harmonica out of his back pocket and gave it to Russell. “I hope you can learn how to play this thing,” he said. “I’m sure I was never going to.”
“Kehey,” Russell said.
“You teach those dogs of yours to sing a tune.”
Clay mounted the spotted pony and snubbed Pal’s lead rope around his saddle horn. “On a beautiful horse I wander,” he said. “With my dog Curly I wander. Toward my uncle I wander. Saying good-bye to my friends I wander.”
“Your horse’s ears are made of round com,” Sam Yazzi answered, speaking in a chanting rhythm.
“Your horse’s ears are made of stars.
Your horse’s head is made of mixed waters.
Your horse’s teeth are made of white shell.
The long rainbow is in his mouth for a bridle.
With it you guide him.”
“Come back one day,” Russell called as Clay rode away.
“I promise,” Clay said over his shoulder.
He wound his way up the canyon of the Escalante at the feet of its overtowering red cliffs, up its gentle streambed of sand between the swath of bright green willows on its banks. Pal didn’t mind the water now, it was so shallow. And it ran delightfully clear.
It was cool in the morning shadows. It was peaceful. Never in his life had Clay seen the like of these sheer red walls cut as if with a knife. He realized with a pang, he would never have the chance to share them with Mike. Next spring, water would be rising up these walls.
On some of the banks there were bright patches of clover. At every bend in the canyon, he let the mustang and the burro browse to relieve their hunger.
The canyon walls allowed him only a slice of the sky. All through the morning the slice remained a hard, bright blue. When the sun cleared the canyon rim high above, it didn’t shine for long. Tall thunderheads were boiling up in what little of the sky he could see, and they were turning dark.
Faster than he would have thought possible, the wind was blowing hard and those clouds were growing positively black.
Clay urged the horse forward and felt the resistance from Pal as the rope went taut. “Let’s get a move on, Pal,” he said anxiously. “You remember what Weston said about being caught in the bottom of a canyon at a time like this.”
He started eyeing the sides of the canyons for refuge. Nothing as far as he could see. He couldn’t remember a safe place behind him. Fifty miles of this canyon lay in front of him with side canyons coming in left and right. It came to mind how Sam Yazzie had described the world on top that these canyons drained: solid rock. This isn’t the Northwest, he told himself. No forest, no soil to hold the water back like a sponge. What would a flash flood look like roaring down this canyon?
Instantly, he could imagine one. Hung up high on a talus slope that fanned out from the base of the cliffs, a long white log was perched. Formerly a cottonwood tree, he realized, stripped of its branches and bleached out by the sun. Left there by ebbing floodwater. At exactly the same level, on the other side of the canyon and ahead, other logs testified to the same conclusion: this canyon could rage in a flash flood, and when it did, anything walking up its bed would be flushed out into the Colorado on a high-speed jet.
Clay passed the second canyon on his left. It might lead him up and out, but probably not. These canyons were so monumentally deep and narrow, most of them would likely cascade down to the Escalante in a series of pour-offs.
The wind blew harder still. The burro’s ears were swiveling faster than Clay had ever seen them, and Curly there in the little hollow on top of the load was yawning with anxiety.
“Let’s keep movin’,” Clay said. “Nothing else we can do. Getting scared won’t help. Try to think about something else.”
I haven’t named this horse yet, he thought. Russell said he’d never named him either, that I could give him whatever name I wanted. “Starbuck,” Clay said aloud. “After the little town where my mother and my uncle grew up. Steer us out of here, Starbuck. Take us up high where you came from, to the Escalante Mountains. But hurry if you please.”
The drops began to fall. They splashed sporadically in the shallow river with unlikely force, as if stones were being cast into the water. Several hit Clay’s hat, and one his face. That was a raindrop? It seemed about like a liquid baseball!
Lightning tore down between the walls with a whine like an incoming artillery shell in a war movie and he heard a Craack! that sounded like it should have been produced by the canyon wall itself splitting open. This is no movie, he told himself. This is not a movie.
Curly was running around under Starbuck’s feet, splashing in the shallow stream. The thunder must have rumbled him right off his perch. Clay dismounted and swept Curly up, got back on the horse with Curly in his lap.
There was the narrow opening of the third canyon, up ahead on the left. He knew it would lead him up onto the top. But how quickly? Should I take it or should I stay with the Escalante?
As yet the storm hadn’t broken. Keep scouring the sides of the Escalante for places to get up. Where? Where?
Now he stood at the mouth of the third canyon. It had a dirt bottom and a tiny creek flowing out of it. Box elder trees and cottonwoods. Didn’t he have to try it? How many side canyons could dump into the Escalante in fifty miles? All their waters would be combined this close to the Colorado. Wouldn’t he have a better chance in one smaller canyon, especially if he could go fast and get up and out? Sam Yazzie mentioned a cliff ruin up this canyon. How far? Could he climb to it? Could he reach it in time? Could the burro and the horse?
Don’t think anymore. Thunder’s rumbling, lightning’s snapping. Go. Go as fast as you can.
The rope back to Pal tightened. Pal was planting her feet. Now’s not the time! He kicked the mustang forward and dragged the burro on.
Pal wasn’t breathing right. She was wheezing and her sides were bellowing in and out. What could be wrong?
A half mile up the canyon, the sky broke loose with heavy, stabbing rain and the cliffs spouted waterfalls within a minute. The bottom of this narrow, narrow canyon was running a rich, muddy red.
Wrong choice, Clay realized. You don’t leave a wider canyon for a narrower one. The water’s going to come through here deep and fast real quick, and I don’t have time to get back to the river, or do I?
He turned them around, and that’s when he saw it through sheets of rain. The cliff dwelling hadn’t been visible from downcanyon. Safe haven if he could reach it! His eyes traced a possible route up through the ledges to the delicate cluster of cliff houses nested under an arching stone roof.
He heard a roar and saw a surging wall of water coming their way. Starbuck was already climbing.
With agility to rival the burro’s, the mustang scrambled and clawed his way up and out of reach of the floodwater now raging below them.
Up, up, up. At last they gained the safe, dry, chalky floor of the alcove. Trembling, Clay got off his horse and set the tiny dog down. Curly shook himself out and looked around. Clay spun as he realized Pal was lying down with her pack fully loaded. She’d hadn’t done that since the second day. “What’s wrong, Pal? We won’t go any farther today, okay? We should be safe here.”
The creek was racing, flooding, rising. Walls of red water overtook previous walls of red water. This was the sort of rain that carves these canyons, Clay realized. Higher and closer toward them the red waters rose. He pulled Pal back to her feet and unloaded her. The canyon walls reverberated with thunder and the rain slashed at the wall across from them for another half hour. It was strange to see the bright foliage of trees in the red torrent. Every few minutes entire trees would come floating by, and underneath them you could hear an ominous grinding as boulders walked their way down down to the Escalante. Even though his mind told him they were safe where they were, his heart pounded with terror and excitement.
The rain quit suddenly. Still, the waters rose until finally they crested safely below the ruin. For a thousand years this place had remained intact. A thousand years and an afternoon. Thank you, Ancient Ones.
He could breathe easily now, he could look around.
Clay crawled into the little rooms and looked out the keyhole-shaped doorways to the flooding creek. Suddenly he felt himself back in time, and a chill ran through him. Others had sheltered in this same place a thousand years before and survived floods like the one he’d just witnessed.
At the rear of the alcove he found pictures left by those long-vanished cliff dwellers painted in white pigment on the rock. Handprints, trapezoidal human figures with antennas like spacemen, animal drawings that looked like deer or maybe sheep. He found spirals chipped into the stone.
Pal was lying down again. She was breathing heavily, panting. Obviously she was sick—it must have been all that clover she ate. She’d always seemed fat, but now she looked bloated like those cows you hear about that get into feed that’s too rich and then bloat up with gas until they burst and die. The only thing you could do was lance them with a knife, if you knew how, and let the gas out. But he wouldn’t know where to begin!
Curly was sniffing around Pal’s backside, and now Clay could see that Pal had one of those back legs up in the air and was kicking the air with it. Her sides were heaving and she was breathing harder, groaning. She was going to die in a minute! He pulled out his pocket knife—what was he going to do?
Curly seemed awful excited there, by Pal’s tail, and Clay took a look.
“Holy cow,” he whispered. A little burro face and two little hoofs were coming his way out Pal’s backside, all wrapped up in a filmy sack, alive and wide-eyed.