Part 7 (1/2)

I s.h.i.+fted to human. ”Hey,” I called. ”You in the boat. Are you okay?”

The man's voice didn't alter. He hadn't registered my words at all.

”I think I'll have better luck reaching him from the river side,” I told Adam. ”That boat's still floating. If he's as badly hurt as all the blood I'm smelling makes me think he is, it'll be easier if we're not trying to drag him through the underbrush anyway.”

The nearest bit of clear riverbank was about thirty feet downstream. The sun long gone, the water was icy. I stumbled on a big rock on the river bottom and made a splash when I fell. I made some noise, too-frigid water on nice warm skin when I'm not expecting it tends to make me squeak. The man in the boat screamed-from the hoa.r.s.eness of his voice, it wasn't the first time he'd screamed tonight.

”It's all right,” I said, regaining my feet. ”You're safe.”

He quit screaming, but I don't think it was because he'd understood me. Sometimes fear is too big for that-so much of your being is focused on survival that anything else falls to the side. I've been there a couple of times.

The rocks under my feet were sharp, but once I was waist-deep, my weight didn't press me down on them quite so hard. If I'd been headed downstream instead of upstream, I could have swum instead. Adam paced back and forth unhappily on the river's edge.

The trees hung over the river, and the sh.o.r.e curved back under them. Finding a path through the debris that had collected in the small backwater along with the boat forced me to wade in through a bunch of underwater plants I didn't see until I was in the middle of them.

My eyesight is pretty darn good at night, but the river was an impenetrable black veil, and anything below the surface was hidden. I hated not seeing. Who really knew what was in the Columbia?

Something brushed against my leg with a little more force than the rest of the weeds, and I let out an involuntary yip. Adam, invisible on the other side of the tree, whined.

”Sorry, sorry,” I told him. ”I'm fine. Just caught my leg on one of those clumps of plants. I can't see a d.a.m.ned thing under the water, and that and this guy reeking of fear has me all hopped up. Sorry.”

The stupid plant was persistent. It clung to my calf as I approached the boat, resisting my halfhearted attempts to shake it loose. The tendency of some water plants to wrap around arms and legs of unsuspecting swimmers is one of the leading causes of drowning. However, I reminded myself, I had my feet on the river bottom, so this one was only an irritant. Nothing to panic about.

I forgot about the plant as soon as I grabbed the side of the boat and got down to business. My eyes just barely cleared the side of the boat, so I couldn't get a good look at the wounded man.

”It's okay,” I told him. ”We'll get you out of this.”

I gave an experimental tug on the boat, but I was now up to my chest in the water, and the current threatened to push me off my feet. When I pulled on the boat, it was I who moved.

I s.h.i.+fted my grip, moving nearer to the bow. If I pulled the boat the way it was designed to move instead of sideways, it should require a lot less effort. As a last resort, I could climb in and use the motor-but the tree limbs were only a few inches above the gunnel, and I didn't really want to sc.r.a.pe myself up getting in the boat.

I heard something and jerked my head up.

Four small heads poked out of the river about a dozen yards from the boat. Otters.

Great, that was just great. Just what the night needed.

”Otters,” I told Adam, my teeth beginning to chatter with the effect of the water. ”If I start screaming, it's because the otters have come to get me.”

He growled, a low, menacing sound, and the four heads disappeared. It wasn't as rea.s.suring as it might have been. But there were no sharp teeth fastened on any of my parts that were underwater, not yet anyway. The only thing grabbing me was the d.a.m.ned weed, which was still wrapped pretty tightly around my ankle.

I had a friend who swam once with sea otters just off the California coast. She said it was an unbelievable experience. They apparently were regular comrades to the divers in the area, playful and cute. They played a little rough-divers who swam with them regularly often had to replace their quarter-inch neoprene diving suits because otter teeth and claws are sharp-but most of the divers counted it worth the price.

River otters are smaller and even cuter than their oceangoing cousins. They also have the sweet temperament of a badger with a hangover. It wouldn't have worried me much-I have sharp teeth when I want them, too. But right now I was in their environment and not mine.

I couldn't see them. Worse for me, I couldn't smell them or hear them, either. I could wait around for them to attack, or I could get the heck out of the river.

I got a good grip on the nose of the boat and managed to persuade it to move out a little. Five or six feet more, and I'd have it out where the river current would push it the way I wanted it to go.

The man in the boat began thras.h.i.+ng. It took me a second to realize he wasn't just panicking-he'd gone for the pull on the engine. As the sudden roar of the engine broke the night, I grabbed onto the boat as hard as I could and let my feet leave the river bottom.

The boat lurched forward, and the weed around my ankle tightened painfully, and for a second I felt as though-But no weed is that tough, and the boat jerked me out of its hold and drove about fifteen feet downstream before I pulled myself into the boat. By that time he'd collapsed again, and his hand fell off the tiller just as I grabbed it.

I balanced on the seat and turned the boat back to sh.o.r.e, where Adam paced.

The man grabbed my arm, and I almost tipped the boat over before I braced against his weight. If I'd had shoes on, my feet would have slipped off the wet wood, and I'd have landed on him.

”Got to get away,” he said. His skin was as dark as mine-he was Indian, too, now that I finally had a good look at him-and still his lips managed to look pale.

”Got to get you to sh.o.r.e,” I yelled at him over the noise of the engine. ”Before you bleed to death.”

There was a crunch as the bow of the boat hit the sh.o.r.eline, then a mighty jerk as Adam grabbed a bowline I hadn't seen or else I'd have used it. He pulled us up and all of the way out of the water onto the bank.

I managed to kill the engine because I'd already started the motion, and when the boat stopped suddenly, I used the momentum to roll all the way out of the boat and onto the ground. My other option would have been to land on the man we were trying to rescue. The drop was not far. I hit the ground with my unprotected shoulder, which was going to bruise, but mostly managed not to hurt myself.

Adam came over to me.

”I'm fine,” I said. ”Check him.”

He raised himself over the side of the boat to look in. I got up at the same time. Either blood loss or the shock of seeing a huge wolf with big sharp teeth had finally driven our man, who was bleeding from the remaining half of his right foot, unconscious.

Adam glanced from me to him-and then bolted. In that brief glance, he told me to stay put while he went for help. Wolves communicate much more clearly than humans do in an emergency.

Adam would run all out, but we were probably five miles or more from the campsite. It would take him ten minutes to get there, maybe ten more to change back to human if he pushed it. I had no idea where the nearest hospital was or how long it would take for them to get the man there. Adam would figure it out.

With the sun down, the air was chilly, the river cold, and both the wounded man and I were wet and freezing. But there was nothing I could do about that at the moment.

I pulled him back down in the boat and propped up the damaged foot on the wooden cross member that doubled as a seat. The wound was just oozing blood, which seemed odd to me. Maybe the cold was useful, even if it was dangerous.

I was debating the benefits of s.h.i.+fting into coyote and sharing what warmth my wet fur would gain us both against trying to figure out how to get his wet s.h.i.+rt off and use it to bandage his foot without a knife. Both moves were likely to be useless or worse ... when I heard the hum of an engine out in the water.

Lights tracked over the sh.o.r.e and stopped on the white boat I was standing in. I waved my arms to call them in to sh.o.r.e. There were excited voices, but I couldn't tell what they were saying because the sound of their engine drowned out the meaning. A small but much sleeker and more modern boat complete with lights approached us at speed.

Help was here. Unless these were the guys who'd sliced off the man's foot. And me wearing nothing but Adam's dog tags. Ah, well, it couldn't be helped; my modesty wasn't worth a man's life.

The boat hadn't quite beached itself when three men hopped into the river. One of them grabbed the bowline, and as soon as he did, the fourth man, who'd been staying the boat, cut the engine and jumped in, too.

”Benny?” ”Faith?” and ”Who are you?” gradually resolved themselves into Hank and Fred Owens, Jim Alvin, and Calvin Seeker-introduced to me by Jim Alvin, easily the oldest of them though only Calvin qualified as young.

It was only after the Owens brothers pulled out a first-aid kit and started to work on the wounded man that I realized we were all-victim, me, and the four in the rescuing boat-Indian.

Jim Alvin was in his sixties and smelled of woodsmoke and old tobacco. Calvin was somewhere in his late teens or early twenties. Hank and Fred were around my age, I thought, and close enough in appearance that they might well have been twins, though Hank didn't talk at all. I don't know if I would have noticed their dog tags if I hadn't just received Adam's. But I would still have noticed that they had some sort of emergency training by the efficiency of their movements and their focus as soon as they saw Benny Jamison.

Benny was the hurt man.

Jim interrogated me-for all that his questions were softspoken and quiet-while the Owens brothers did their best to save Benny.