Joe swung himself around back into position and got his feet out ahead of him. He craned his head up to look for deeper water—the darker, the deeper—and he judged by the speed they were going they’d be literally on top of navigable water before they could see it. Running the rapids would demand split-second adjustments.

“I’ll call it out if I can,” Joe said. “If you get thrown off, just lean back in the current and keep your feet out in front of you.”

“Gotcha,” Butch hollered. “Take us through it, Captain!”

Joe almost smiled.

—

THEY FLEW DOWN the rapids like a pinball bouncing from post to post, bumper to bumper. Joe called out, “Left, left, right, left, right-right-right! Left, left, right . . .”

All senses on high, Joe didn’t think; he saw and reacted and yelled. The nose of the log swung from side to side to avoid rocks, sometimes riding up the side of a boulder for a moment before settling back down in the current. The chutes between the rocks were so narrow he banged his knees and thighs on them as they caromed down, and Joe’s left knee hit a boulder so hard he felt the impact all the way into his hip socket. His left leg was so numb he actually glanced down immediately after the impact to see if it was still attached. It was.

Halfway down the rapids, Farkus regained consciousness and raised his head. When he saw what they were in the middle of, he shrieked and clung even harder to the log.

Which was good. Joe had almost forgotten about Farkus.

—

THEY BANKED HARD RIGHT around a huge boulder with Joe on the outside pushing and scrambling and Butch on the inside at pivot. When the front of the log nosed around the rock, Joe glanced up to see a hollow-eyed Kyle McLanahan, propped up as if sitting in a pile of driftwood, staring back at him. McLanahan’s torso was out of the water, and his arms were propped up on lengths of debris as if he were leaning back in his easy chair watching a football game. His head was cocked slightly to the side. His face was bone-white and slack, his mouth slightly open.

In reaction, Joe nearly lost his grip on the log, but he realized McLanahan was still dead and his body had washed all the way downriver from his fall until it caught in the pileup.

Several thoughts came to Joe at once before the current built up again and swept them away:

It still hadn’t sunk in yet, the fact that ex-sheriff Kyle McLanahan was dead.

McLanahan had been in the valley just slightly longer than Joe. They’d known each other for twelve miserable years. Although he’d schemed and plotted against Joe and had made decisions that cost good men their lives and mobility, McLanahan was a worthy adversary.

Sheriffs didn’t seem to do very well in Twelve Sleep County.

And . . .

Dead bodies in cold mountain rivers took on unique characteristics of their own—the skin remained well preserved, predation was rare, they didn’t bloat. Dead bodies in cold rivers became mountain mummies, at least for a while.

—

THEY GOT THROUGH the worst of the rock garden with bruises, abrasions, and no broken bones. They were able to lay up in an eddy with a hundred yards still to go, and fortunately the eddy was shallow enough they could stand again on the riverbed.

Joe and Butch panted until they got their breath back and once again Joe was grateful the water was so cold. If it wasn’t, he knew, he’d be able to feel the injuries he’d sustained. When he looked down into the water, he could see several small spirals of blood coming from gashes on his left leg. The pant leg of his Wranglers was tattered, ribbons of it floating in the current. He was surprised he hadn’t lost his boot.

“I can’t believe we got through that,” Farkus said in a croak, looking back up at the rapids above them.

“We?” Butch said.

“I’m hallucinating, I think,” Farkus said. “I had this dream I saw Sheriff McLanahan sitting on some wood, watching us go by.”

—

WITH BUTCH HOLDING the log in place, Joe splashed to the foot of the eddy and scouted ahead. The last hundred yards wasn’t as rocky, but it was a steep narrow flume that ended in a wide slow run before it went around a bend. After what they’d been through, it looked like a picnic.

He realized, as he gazed downstream, that there was warm sun on his shoulders. He turned. The mouth of the canyon was behind them now. The terrain surrounding them was still mountainous but softer, flatter, tamer, with folds rather than cliffs. And although the sky was thick with smoke that gave every vista a sepia-toned look, the fire hadn’t advanced this far downriver yet.

Joe felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. They’d gone through the worst. He’d never heard of anyone running the Middle Fork in August when the water was so low—probably because no one in his right mind would try, he thought. He stanched back a feeling of guilty pride.

When he returned to the log, he saw that Farkus had passed out again. Butch stood waist-deep in the water, keeping the log in place. His expression was pained but stoic, and Joe wondered if the reason was because of the many injuries he’d sustained or because he knew, like Joe did, that the campground would be less than an hour away.

—

ALTHOUGH THE FLUME wasn’t marred by rocks, it was steep and fast. Joe felt exhilarated by the descent, which was fueled by a combination of momentum and adrenaline. He felt intense sun on his face and his hat wanted to lift off his head in the wind. They shot the pitch like seasoned professionals, Joe thought. He’d grown attached to the floating log, and thought that he’d like to load it on a trailer and take it home. Then he remembered it was only a tree trunk, although a special and much-loved tree trunk, and that Marybeth would rightly wonder why it was in the garage.

When they hit the pool at the bottom and slowed down, he secretly wanted to do it again.

—

TEN MINUTES LATER, Joe and Butch tugged the log along behind them through the warm shallows. It was no longer a boat, Joe thought, but a kind of floating stretcher for Dave Farkus.

The riverbed was soft and sandy, and the water was warm. His cuts and bruises came to life as he warmed up and slogged along, and he noticed Butch grimacing as well. Now that they were out of the rapids and falls, the price they’d paid to run them was coming due.

Joe looked downriver. The water was knee-deep and still. Behind them, the fire raged out of control, but the wind wasn’t blowing north yet. When it did, and it was a matter of time, everything he could see on both banks would go up in flames. He felt small and powerless. It was a feeling he appreciated for the pure truth of it in a situation like that.

Joe thought this was the time to talk with Butch. Soon he wouldn’t have the chance. As he took a long breath and began to speak, Butch interjected: “Joe, thank you for getting me through this. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

Joe grunted.

“I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time in the mountains. I know my way around, and I’ve put myself in situations I had to think and work myself out of. But I’ve never run a river, and I never could have done what we just did.”

Joe said, “Thanks.”

“I’ll remember this for the rest of my life,” Butch said. “I’ll remember what you did. This could have gone a bunch of different directions, I know that. But you saved my life. And the idiot Dave Farkus—you saved him, too.”

Joe didn’t respond to that. Instead, he said, “Butch, I know you had opportunities to make this go another way. You could have shoved Farkus off the log, or knocked me on the head, or just let go of the log and let me try to do this on my own. You could have escaped, is what I’m saying. It would have been easy. But you hung in there, and I appreciate that.”