DOLLY WAS FAR FROM done. We flew down the canyon into the teeth of the redoubled storm. Lightning struck upstream and down. Torrents of rain slashed at us, and the wind-tossed waves attacked from all sides. Waterfalls even more spectacular than before cascaded from the canyon rims.
As we rounded the corner a mile below the cave, I slid off my seat and into the whitewater position, my knees spread wide against the hull of the canoe. I had a Class 1 rapid to put behind me. It was coming up soon, where Silber Canyon entered from the Texas side.
On a day like this, with a major rapid lying in wait only a few miles on, a Class 1 tune-up was okay by me.
Suddenly the side canyon came into view. A second later I heard the roar of flash flooding. A couple of heartbeats after that and I saw how much water Silber Canyon was dumping into the Rio Grande—hugely more than the Rio Grande itself had been running when we set out on this ill-fated adventure.
I drew a deep breath. Rio was already starting down the tongue of the rapid. The wave train waiting for him below was enormous, like a succession of rearing, white-maned horses. Class 1? No way. Class 3 was more like it.
I’ve got a spray cover, I told myself. I’m not gonna swamp. I’m also not gonna capsize. You ran Class 3 rapids back home, and you got pretty good at it.
I took a quick glimpse below to see how Rio was faring. He was riding the wave train like a roller coaster, keeping the raft straight while pushing through the troughs and over the top of each exploding wave. My eyes went to Diego, up front in the raft with Carlos, hanging on as best he could. Carlos wasn’t helping him. Carlos had one hand on the grab line that ran around the raft; the other was pointing a gun at his boatman. How insane was that for Rio?
Almost too late, I focused on my own situation. I was starting down the tongue. It was steep and it was fast. There wasn’t a chance in the world Carlos had made it through this rapid with the rowboat. He must have rowed to shore above it or swam to shore below it.
Down the narrowing tongue I went. I had to hit every roller in the wave train just right: up and down and up and down and up and down until I was all the way through. A moment’s lapse and I would capsize.
I rose onto the first wave. I had never climbed a wave this high. I paddled hard to get over the top and nearly spilled in a cascade of whitewater. Leaning to my right and reaching with my paddle blade, I was able to brace on the wave, or I would have gone over.
My roller coaster was only beginning. With the rain in my face, I battled for position in every trough, fought to stay upright over the summit of every crashing wave.
I got a cheer from my cousin, parked in the eddy, as I flew past them. Diego was safely inside the raft. So was the man with the gun.
I was able to pull into the bottom of the eddy and ride it upstream to the raft. I brought the canoe alongside.
Rio pumped his fist. “Big-time, Dylan, big-time!”
“So far, so good,” I allowed. I reached for my bailer and started tossing out water. My spray covers had saved me from swamping, but even so, some of the waves had splashed into the canoe on account of the uncovered section immediately around me. The gunman’s face, watching me bail while keeping track of Rio, was all calculation, cold calculation.
Diego was trembling, and not from the cold.
My cousin got back to business. “San Rosendo Canyon is going to come up fast, Dylan. The river should pool up at the top of Hot Springs Rapid. We’ll take out and scout on the right side, like the book says. Don’t jam me, or I won’t have time to land and catch you when you come in. And don’t float into the rapid, no matter what. You won’t have any protection waiting downstream if you do.”
“Got it,” I said.
“But if the river doesn’t pool up above the rapid, and we can’t get to the shore, I’ll have to run it and so will you.”
Diego’s face quickened with terror. The face of his kidnapper betrayed uncertainty, suspicion, and hatred. He hated us, and he hated the lack of total control.
Rio’s jaw was clenched as he pulled back into the current. He didn’t seem at a loss, like me, and he didn’t appear to be sick to his stomach. How could he not be thinking of his father, like I suddenly found myself thinking of my parents, my sisters, and my brother? Did he actually believe we were going to live through this?
Clench your own jaw, and don’t make any stupid mistakes. You might have to run Hot Springs at flood stage, real soon.
The rain slackened somewhat. The next few miles flew by all too fast. We might’ve been going ten miles an hour. After a long, straight run, the river jogged right, then left. A deep cleft in the Lower Canyons appeared on the Mexican side—San Rosendo Canyon already.
At the mouth of the deep side canyon, the Rio Grande appeared to be coming to a dead end. That wasn’t possible. It meant the river was bending sharply left at the top of Hot Springs Rapid.
Rio swept ever closer to the brink, me following closer than I would have liked. Where was the eddy water, so I could put on the brakes?
Suddenly we had a strong wind at our backs, and driving rain again, right when we could’ve used a break. “You’re inhuman, Dolly,” I muttered, and laughed at my weak attempt at gallows humor.
Focus, I commanded myself, hearing the full-throated roar of Hot Springs Rapid. Whitewater was spitting up from below the first drop. The river was pooling up behind the brink of the rapid as Rio had predicted. We should be able to go to shore above the rapid and scout it.
As we drew ever closer, the roar of the rapid ever more ferocious, I had to fight hard to keep my stomach down. This was just too much.
There was no beach to land on, nothing like that. Everything was flooded. Rio found a landing spot, though, against a gigantic slab of limestone. Carlos stepped onto it, tie-rope in one hand and pistol in the other.
Carlos snubbed the raft against the boulder and told Diego to climb out. Diego did as he was told, and stood glassy-eyed in the rain. Carlos tied the raft to a nearby mesquite. Rio helped me land the canoe alongside the raft. “I sure hope San Rosendo is flash-flooding,” he whispered. “Too bad we can’t tell from here.”
Carlos returned to the raft. His backpack was on the front thwart, and he wanted Rio to hand it out to him, slowly. Rio did as he was told. The backpack was heavy, I noticed, with what was left of the canned meat we had given him, his extra ammunition clips, and maybe a jug of water.
“Take care of Diego,” Rio said to Carlos, as if in parting.
“Nice try, Texas,” Carlos replied with heavy sarcasm. “You two are going with us all the way to that ranch house. If I can’t get any help there, we’re coming back to your boat for a ride down the river. You’re stuck with me until I say different.”
“Okay by me,” Rio said almost cheerfully. “We can help make sure Diego gets out safely.”
“Let’s go see what shape the road is in. We all go together, you two clowns in front.”
I strapped the canoe to the side of the raft and stepped to the shore. Carlos gave us a wide berth and told us to take the lead. I followed Rio through the brush. It was a short walk but hard to get through unscathed in the rain. Rio slipped in the mud and went down on the knee he’d injured previously. A catclaw mesquite raked the back of my hand and drew blood.
The brush gave way as we approached the high, stony ground separating our landing spot from the side canyon. As we topped out, we were greeted by a monstrous roar. The mouth of San Rosendo Canyon, wall to wall, was filled with raging floodwater.
The kidnapper and his muddy captive joined us at our vantage point. Carlos cut loose with a torrent of Spanish curses.
“There’s nothing left of the road,” Rio said matter-of-factly.
“I see with my eyes, Texas. I don’t need a fool to say the obvious. It will be harder without the road. We’ll have to keep to high ground. Stay above the flood.”
On our side of San Rosendo Canyon, that didn’t seem possible. The talus slopes below the cliffs were radically steep and choked with cactus and spear-sharp yuccas.
The killer’s eyes were on the other side of San Rosendo Canyon. The slopes there were more barren and not nearly as steep. As far as we could see, that side of the canyon was walkable. The ranch Carlos was trying to get to, however, was twelve miles from the river. Who knows what we would run into.
“We’ll try the other side,” Carlos said.
Rio shook his head. “You can’t get there from here.”
“Not by foot, Texas.”
“How, then?”
Carlos pointed to the Rio Grande, to Hot Springs Rapid, where the flood leaving the side canyon boiled into the far greater flood coming down the river. “The answer is obvious. You take us through the rapid, we land downstream, we hike up the other side of San Rosendo Canyon.”
“Easier said than done, Carlos,” Rio said coolly.
“I have confidence in you, Texas.”
For the first time, I took a good look at Hot Springs Rapid. It was peppered with boat-eating holes where the whitewater poured over submerged boulders and back on itself.
Rio asked how it looked to me.
“Sick,” I replied.