Take Me to the River by Will Hobbs Page B

flooded, and we floated over its tassel tops. We landed in a boiling eddy at the foot of the slope falling from the mouth of the cave. Rio jumped from his raft, tie-rope in hand. He went down hard on the muddy bank, and for a second it looked like the river had him. He managed to scramble up and over the bank without letting go of the rope. “You okay?” I yelled.
    â€œI’m okay!” he hollered as he ran limping to tie up.
    With the raft safely secured to a boulder, Rio limped back to help me land. I tossed him my rope and he steadied the canoe as I stepped out. “Safely off the river!” he declared, all pumped up. “Give me five!”
    â€œYou hurt your knee?”
    â€œYeah, but it’s nothing.”
    We clambered up the muddy slope, seventy feet or more, to the mouth of the cave. It was horizontal across the top and vertical down both sides, square as a door frame. What an amazing sensation it was to suddenly step onto dry ground, out of the weather and under the protection of that massive ceiling of limestone.
    We still had some more climbing to do. We could only hope that the slope inside the cave would lead to some usable ground above.
    What we found up there was way better than that. We came upon an almost perfect circle of hard-packed dirt maybe a hundred feet in diameter. Here and there lay a few rock slabs fallen from the ceiling, but otherwise the ground was smooth as the infield of a baseball diamond. At the rear wall we found ancient pictographs—a snake, a scorpion, a hand, and a crescent moon.
    I’d never felt so removed from modern times or so connected to people from the distant past. It was like I was sheltering in this cave thousands of years before, looking down through sheets of rain to the swollen river during a flood just like this one.
    â€œThis is a whole other river than I’ve ever seen,” Rio marveled. “This is the river that carved these canyons.”
    â€œAt the moment, the Rio Bravo looks more berserk than brave.”
    â€œRight on. The word bravo is closer to berserk than brave. Bravo means ‘fierce.’”
    â€œYou mean, your middle name means fierce, not brave?”
    â€œYou got it, primo . Bravo is a word you use to describe something wild and aggressive, like a bull running amok. When the conquistadors named this river, it was probably flooding, something like now. Rio Bravo . Fierce River.”
    We decided to bring everything up from the boats that we would need for an extended stay. We had given ourselves nine nights, ten days given the likelihood of low water throughout the journey. As it was, we were well ahead of schedule. We could wait out the storm here and get back on a falling river with plenty of time to spare.
    I went aboard the raft and began to hand the gear up to Rio. Once the raft was empty, we would be able to carry it to higher ground well out of reach of the river.
    We were nearly done with the unloading when we heard a shout. We looked upstream through the rain and saw a rowboat. A dark-haired man was at the oars and a dark-haired boy sat on the front thwart.
    The metal rowboat was pitching and bucking in the heavy water. The boy was tossing out water with a plastic milk jug converted into a bailer. “It’s them,” I said. “Carlos and Diego.”
    â€œIn a rowboat, without life jackets!” Rio exclaimed. “That’s insane!”

Chapter 16
It Was All a Lie
    C ARLOS HAD US SPOTTED and was trying to row to shore from the middle of the river. The rowboat was going by almost in a blur. I didn’t think he had a chance of breaking into the eddy. Strong as he was, though, he was gaining on it.
    At the last second the coyote managed to row out of the mainstream current and into the water surging upriver. At the moment, he was at the foot of the eddy and we were at its head, fifty yards upstream. He rested a second or two, staring at us, before he realized he needed to