Chapter 35
Mist burned off the river, and the air softened from sharp cold to a manageable chill.
By the time they reloaded the canoe, Rachel had changed how everything was secured.
Each pack sat in its own section of hull, tied off so a single tug would free it.
Nothing would slide loose if the canoe tilted.
The system was clumsy and slow, making supplies nearly impossible to reach while they were traveling.
Rachel still preferred it to trusting the current with everything they owned.
They pushed off again with a caution that slowed every motion.
Rachel kept the canoe close to shore, where the current ran slower, and obstacles were easier to spot.
Her shoulders ached from the near spill, and every submerged log tightened her grip on the paddle.
The vulnerability felt new and unwelcome.
On foot, losing a pack meant walking back for it or accepting the loss.
In the canoe, one bad moment could take everything at once.
Sophie noticed the footprints first. Fresh impressions marked the mud at a small landing Rachel had been about to use.
The tread patterns were clear, and the prints showed where the people had come from.
Rachel altered course without a word. They passed the landing without slowing.
Ten minutes later, men’s voices carried from the trees behind them.
The words were too distant to make out, but the sound was close enough to prove that stopping would have brought company.
At a fork in the river, the channel split around a wooded island.
Rachel nearly took the eastern branch. The map was unclear, the landmarks didn’t match what she could see, and the current favored the wider channel.
Sophie remembered the couple saying to keep right at the island when the water was high.
Rachel turned the canoe. The western branch carried them into calmer water that ran straight for the next two miles.
The man in the brush appeared first as a shift in the shadows. Rachel had been watching the water, the banks, and the sky for weather. Sophie had been watching the trees. Her paddle paused mid-stroke. Her gaze fixed on a point thirty yards ahead, where the undergrowth thickened along the shoreline.
“Someone’s there,” Sophie said.
For several seconds Rachel saw only brush, dead leaves, and the disorder of an uncut riverbank.
Then the shadows resolved into a man crouched beneath a low branch.
He hadn’t moved. He watched the channel and carried something long and dark across his lap.
It might have been a rifle or a shotgun broken at the breech.
Rachel paddled harder and angled the canoe toward the center of the channel, where the current ran fastest. The man in the brush didn’t move. He watched them pass.
By midafternoon, Sophie’s usefulness had become impossible for Rachel to dismiss as luck.
The girl saw what Rachel missed because they were looking for different things.
She watched for threats and obstacles. Sophie watched for the signs that came before them.
The distinction mattered, and Rachel felt chastened that she’d valued it so late.
The family appeared around a long bend where the river widened into a broad, slow pool.
They had pulled the remains of a raft onto the near bank.
Logs lay twisted apart, and the rope that had once held them together had stretched and frayed.
A man and a woman stood beside it, worn down by delay and worry.
Between them, a teenage boy sat on a folded blanket with one leg extended.
He winced each time he shifted his weight.
Rachel guided the canoe toward the bank.
The father approached before they’d fully grounded.
His hands were empty and raised slightly from his sides.
“My son. His leg. We were crossing when the raft came apart. He fell between the logs, and something caught him. Maybe a branch, maybe one of the lashings. He can’t put weight on it, and it’s swelling above the knee,” he said.
Rachel stepped out of the canoe. The boy was fifteen or sixteen.
His mother’s features and his father’s height had settled into a frame that still looked unfinished.
His right leg lay extended on the blanket.
The knee was visibly swollen beneath torn denim, and the skin around it had reddened.
Infection might already have started, but he didn’t complain.
He watched Rachel approach with a guarded stare.
“Across the river. There’s a settlement on the far shore. It’s small, maybe eight or ten families. One of them is a retired nurse. She’s been treating people since this started. If we can get him there…” the father said.
“You don’t have a way across,” Rachel said.
“The raft’s finished. We tried to repair it twice. The rope won’t hold, and I used the last of our cord trying to keep it together the first time.”
Rachel looked at the canoe. It had room for two people.
It didn’t have room for five. Overloading it on water that cold would risk everyone, including Sophie.
She felt Sophie watching her before she turned.
The girl stood beside the canoe with one hand on the gunwale.
Her posture had gone rigid, and her face had tightened with the objection she was already bracing herself to make.
“Don’t,” Sophie said.
Rachel kneeled beside the boy’s leg without answering Sophie.
The swelling felt firm and hot under her fingertips, and that worried her more than the redness.
Infection moved fast without antibiotics.
A leg injury that stopped him from walking could turn dangerous within days.
She opened the medical pack and took out the last antiseptic wipes, the dry gauze she’d saved from the morning accident, and the roll of medical tape. It was half their supply, maybe more.
The boy held still when she cleaned the torn skin above his knee.
The wound was worse than she’d expected.
It was deep and ragged, and the edges had started to close around angry skin.
She packed it with gauze, wrapped the knee firmly to limit movement, and gave his father two of their remaining pain-relief capsules. She told him to space them carefully.