The storm hit hard halfway through the second day and caught them at Mile 152. Everyone threw on rain gear and kept slogging. What else was there to do? They made it to Mile 147 before George signaled they should stop for the night.
Putting up tents in the rain with cold, soaked fingers was a pain. Webb didn’t complain though. He saw no point in it. Besides, he’d faced worse when he was actually living on the streets, before he’d figured out how to make enough money to pay rent at a cheap boardinghouse.
Lighting a fire was easier than he expected.
George carried chemical fire-starter paste, and even though the twigs they collected for kindling were wet on the outside, they snapped with a satisfying noise that indicated they were dry on the inside.
Webb helped George build the fire, starting with the twigs and adding thicker and thicker pieces of wood until it was roaring.
That night, Webb didn’t wander away to play his guitar. Once his hands were warm from the fire, and after eating some noodles, he slipped into his tent and strummed there.
He played without thinking, losing himself in the music as he always did. It was necessary to play. Because it kept away the thoughts of the pain that he’d inflicted on his mother.
It had been raining for twenty-four hours nonstop when the group came to a stream at the bottom of a narrow valley. Black silty water rushed through the gorge.
Webb heard a sound he couldn’t recognize. An occasional deep cracking sound.
He asked George what it was.
“Rocks,” George answered, his face grim. “Tumbling through the water. A man falls in there, he doesn’t stop rolling until he washes into a river a couple of hours downstream. And that river will be so full, it will have standing waves.”
George asked all of them to wait while he walked upstream along the stream, looking for higher ground. He returned about ten minutes later, wordlessly shook his head, and then walked downstream.
When he came back, he said, “There is a spot. But we’ll have to rope our way across. I’ll need the extra I asked you to carry in your guitar case.”
Webb grinned. “Yup. One thing that never hurts out here. Rope.”
George led them to a place where they could walk down an angled gravel bar to a spot that was only about six feet across the water from some trees on the other side.
George took out a bundle of rope from his backpack and knotted one end to the rope from Webb to double the length.
Mercifully, the rain had died down to a drizzle, and the air seemed to be getting warmer.
“First guy has it toughest,” George said. “Would be better if two went across together.”
Webb nodded. Neither of the Germans moved.
George pointed at Fritz. “You wanted adventure. Here it is.”
George put a hand on Webb’s shoulder. “This will be a piece of cake.”
Webb nodded.
George tied the rope first around Webb’s chest and then around Fritz’s chest, leaving lots of slack between them. With the rest of the length of the rope in his hands, he went to a tree and wrapped the other end around the trunk.
“If you fall, Wilhelm and I will haul you back. When you get to the other side, wrap the rope around a tree trunk and we’ll use it as a bridge to go across.”
The water was only knee deep but moving so fast that as Webb and Fritz stepped into it, it boiled up above their waists. They linked arms and braced themselves, facing upward against the water.
A rolling rock banged into Webb’s shin. He grunted with pain.
“We can do this,” Webb shouted above the roaring of the water. “No turning back.”
Inch by inch, they fought the current, with Webb first, closest to the other side.
It became too deep to continue. The tree trunks were agonizingly close but still out of reach.
“Can’t go farther,” Fritz shouted back. “Will fall.”
Webb had a vision of the two of them being swept downstream, and of the other two on the gravel bar, straining to hold on to the rope.
“Let go of me then,” Webb shouted. “I’m going to jump for it.”
“Guitar boy, you crazy?”
“No other choice.”
Webb eyed the tree that was his target. It was a little downstream. He figured that once he jumped, the water would sweep him toward it.
Without giving himself time to think about how scared he was, he pushed off and fell forward in an awkward dive, reaching out with his arms.
There!
He caught the tree trunk—barely, even as the water tried to sweep his lower body farther down the stream.
But the water wasn’t going to win. It took only a second or two to pull himself out of the water and find the shore with his feet.
The rope was straining hard.
Fritz had lost his footing and was flopping around in the middle of the stream, his head barely above water.
“Give us some slack!” Webb shouted across to George.
George understood Webb’s intentions. He reeled out some rope, and the momentum of the water swung Fritz toward Webb. He managed to get a hand on Fritz’s jacket and clawed until he had a good grip, then pulled Fritz to safety.
Fritz grinned, his face spattered with the dark silt that the water carried. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“Yup,” Webb said. “I’d say ten dollars is about the right amount.”