WE WOULD HAVE SLEPT in, but the heat drove us out of the tent by eight. The river was up and running. The rain had run off the desert like it was an iron skillet.
By nine we were back on the water. Swallows by the hundreds knifed this way and that, working the river for bugs. A few miles down the river we passed under a formation called Lizard Rock. With a stretch of the imagination I was able to make out the two-hundred-foot iguana climbing the cliffs.
It was a good thing Rio wasn’t going to have to drag the raft through Boquillas Canyon. The heat was blistering. It was so hot that the turtles wouldn’t leave the water to bask on the rocks. From time to time they poked up their heads. It was easy enough to see how the temperatures made summer the off-season for river running.
I made sure to drink lots of water. My guide guaranteed smashing headaches if I didn’t. To cool off, we swam alongside our boats every so often. Back on the boats we stayed comfortable as long as our clothes stayed wet.
The surface of the river was mirror calm, reflecting the cathedral-like walls of Boquillas Canyon. The aura of tranquility didn’t last long. We heard the sound of an approaching helicopter, unbelievably loud in the confines of the canyon. Here it was, one of those Black Hawks, flying low with a gunner at the side door. He waved; apparently it wasn’t us they were after. Before long the gunship had chopped its way out of sight downriver.
Needless to say, our mood pivoted in its wake. We had a lot to chew on that seemed more than a little ominous. Apparently the manhunt was still on, and we were inside the search area.
Forty minutes later the gunship returned, headed upstream, and forty minutes after that, here it came again, patrolling downstream. This time we were having lunch on the shore, on a rock shelf on the Mexican side. The Black Hawk slowed down, and it hovered above us. The gunner dropped a small sack of something just down the beach. He waved, we waved back, and they took off.
“What do you suppose it is?” I asked my cousin.
“No idea,” he said, running to pick it up.
A message is what it was, weighted in a bag of pebbles. BEWARE OF SUSPICIOUS PERSONS, it said. CAMPING ON MEXICO SIDE BETWEEN RIO GRANDE VILLAGE AND HALLIE STILLWELL BRIDGE NOT RECOMMENDED.
I fetched the mile-by-mile guide for Boquillas Canyon from the canoe. From our present position, the Hallie Stillwell Bridge was twenty miles downstream. The army was figuring that the river downstream of the bridge was beyond the reach of anyone fleeing the scene of the crime in the Sierra del Carmen. Twenty more miles, and we could breathe easy.
I asked Rio if he thought the killers would head toward the river.
“Unlikely,” he replied. “This direction, everything would be practically straight down, and rugged beyond belief. The safest way for them to ransom their victim would be from inside a Mexican city. If the army thought they were headed for the river, we would be seeing more than this one helicopter.”
“I wonder what the getaway plan was.”
“My guess is, they had a vehicle stashed a few miles away.”
“In a vehicle, wouldn’t they run into roadblocks like the one we ran into last night?”
“Not if they were quick enough, not if they had a small plane waiting not very far away. Remote ranches have airstrips, and so do abandoned mines. Who knows where they are by now.”
“Something could have gone wrong with their plan. Maybe they bailed out on this side of the mountains, just running for their lives.”
“I guess the army isn’t ruling that out. That possibility would explain why the army assigned one of their Black Hawks to patrol the river, and why they warned us about ‘suspicious persons.’”
We put back on the river, anxious to put the miles and the nerve-racking Black Hawk behind us. In the afternoon the clouds boiled up and dumped buckets of rain, which cooled things off and raised the river some more. We kept going.
After an hour the rain let up. The Black Hawk was back, and so was the heat. Overhead, vultures were circling. Our goal for the day was to float the entire length of Boquillas Canyon—sixteen miles. Tomorrow we would put the bridge behind us.
I had the guidebook in the canoe and kept referring to it. Ahead, a tower of stone with a peculiar top rose from the Texas side. For obvious reasons, the formation was called the Oídos del Conejo—Ears of the Rabbit. Opposite the Rabbit Ears was the last marked campsite in the canyon, but it was on the Mexican shore. Rio knew of an unmarked campsite on some ledges a few miles farther on, at the very end of the canyon. He knew this stretch like the back of his hand.
Half an hour later I was eager to call it a day, get out of the canoe, and ease my aching back. I kept scanning the Texas shore in search of those ledges Rio had talked about, but saw only cliffs and rockslides.
Rio wasn’t looking left. His eyes were on the right, on the Mexican side.
I paddled close to the raft to see what he had in mind. “That ledges camp you’re thinking about . . . it isn’t on the Mexican side, is it?”
“No campsites on the Texas side,” he replied tersely. “None on public land, anyway, that we could reach before dark. After the canyon, the river goes through a floodplain where the banks are solid cane, both sides. The camp I’m shooting for has some nifty sleeping shelters under an overhang, which will be handy if the weather comes up during the night. We’ll be fine.”
My cousin was feeling lucky about not running into any bad guys. Me, not so much. Side by side, we drifted on. The very end of the canyon came in sight. So did some people, on the ledges on the Mexican side. “Hey, Rio, there’s some men down there.”
“I see ’em. They’re right where I wanted to camp.”
We were out of the main current and drifting slowly. Another minute, and there was a lot more to see. Three men were working at a large metal vat erected over a fire pit that was open on the side facing the river. One of the men was stoking the fire while the other two, with long sticks, poked or stirred whatever they were boiling. Weeds, apparently: four huge mounds of bundled weeds lay close at hand. Some burros were grazing the grass at the edge of the cane.
The men stirring the vat suddenly noticed us. One dropped his stirring stick and ran along the bank, beckoning for us to come to shore. “Beware of suspicious persons,” I reminded Rio.
“Those guys don’t look suspicious,” my cousin replied.
“Are you out of your mind? See those machetes at their waists? They look like bandidos out of central casting.”
“I agree, but do they look like killers and kidnappers?”
“To me, I guess—yeah. I’ll say yeah. They look exactly like killers and kidnappers.”
Rio put the oar handles under his knees, leaned back and laughed. “You’re way wrong. They look exactly like candelilleros.”
“Candle-ee-AIR-os . . .?”
“Wax makers. They’re making wax from a weed called candelilla. This used to be a wax camp years ago . . . the wax plants have grown back, and they’ve come back to harvest them.”
“Wax? Wax for what?”
“Candles, match heads, chewing gum—you name it.”
By now we were within a hundred yards of the wax camp. The one trying to call us in was beckoning more urgently than ever. “They need help, or they want to talk,” Rio said.
“Let’s not and say we did,” I pleaded.
“I guarantee you, Dylan. These are the nicest, most generous people you’re ever going to meet.”
“You mean, you know them?”
“Not personally.”
Hmmm . . . , I thought.
Rio kept rowing toward the Mexicans. I couldn’t believe it. My cousin waved and smiled as he drew close.
They caught his boat and held it against the shore. They were beside themselves saying thank you, and smiling, and adding more thank yous.
I hung back in the canoe, ready to back-paddle fast as I could.
Rio motioned me to come to shore.
I did, without taking my eyes off those machetes.
Now they had ahold of my boat, too. Their beards were unkempt and their clothes were badly soiled. On their gnarled feet they wore tire-tread sandals. “They lost their rowboat,” Rio told me. “They think mojados took it—people trying to cross to the U.S. to find work.”
“Did they see them take it?”
“No, they were asleep.”
The wax makers wanted us to look for their rowboat—downstream, on the Texas side. They were pretty sure we would find it pulled up in the cane grass. Behind the cane, Rio told me, there was a dirt road that led to a paved road and eventually to Marathon. From Marathon the crossers could jump a train to either San Antonio or El Paso.
Rio promised them we would bring their rowboat back across if we found it. We said good-bye and angled across the river. On the way, Rio explained that without their rowboat, they wouldn’t be able to sell their wax. They had a Texas buyer all lined up, but now they wouldn’t be able to smuggle their product across.
“Smuggle? Those guys are smugglers?”
“Only as far as Mexico is concerned. It’s illegal for them to take it out of the country. But they make more money if they can sell it across the border, so they do it whenever they can. It isn’t illegal for the American buyers because the U.S. doesn’t charge a duty on candelilla wax. Unlike those quilts from Boquillas, it doesn’t have to go through customs.”
“When they cross to our side, how come they don’t get picked up as illegals?”
“They would if they got caught. Check out where we are. Nobody’s looking.”
On the Texas side, we hugged the shore, keeping our eyes peeled for their rowboat or the slightest indication of disturbance in the cane. We came up empty. The wax makers were going to have to sell their wax in Mexico, Rio said, or else wait a couple of months for the water to come down. By October, most years, they’d be able to wade this stretch of the river again.
The day was pretty well shot, and now we were passing through a wide, low valley—the floodplain Rio had talked about. Both shores were choked solid with a wall of the bamboo-like cane soaring up to twenty feet high and overhanging the water. Dusk was gathering and we were anxious to get off the river.
The only excuse for a campsite we could find, a couple of miles after we floated past the national park boundary, was on the Texas side. The guidebook had it marked as an old cattle ford. The place sure enough reeked of cattle, and it was littered with fresh pies. PRIVATE RANCH NO TRESPASSIN, the sign said. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE.
“Hmmm . . . ,” I said. “What do you think, Rio?”
“It’s public land again after a few more miles—Black Gap Wildlife Area—but we’d be nuts to float in the dark. Let’s stay here, but not set up the kitchen, in case we need to beat a hasty retreat.”
“From the landowner?”
“Or his heat-packing hired hands, or an aggressive bull. If we have to get back on the river we will.”
The wind was stirring and a thunderstorm was brewing. We ate a can of tuna apiece and then we pitched the tent.
The stars stayed out, no cattle appeared, and neither did cowboys packing heat. We woke to day three and an incredible view of the Sierra del Carmen upriver. It was a huge relief to have put those mountains behind us.
We wondered if the manhunt was still on, but we didn’t have to wonder long. We were eating breakfast on the boats—Raisin Bran with rice milk—when the Black Hawk flew by. Within minutes it was headed back upriver.
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