Jen's Legacy.

Royce was almost where he intended to spend the night by the river, maybe an hour away; two, at the most, but he would need to take care going down to the river. He’d brought his rope for that; for the more difficult descents, and other bits of climbing equipment, and then would recover them when he climbed out again the following morning to pick up again where he'd interrupted his journey to fill in another memory-milestone on this personal journey.

With all of the many ridges, benches and valleys hiding everything, one glimpsed the river only rarely.

He paused, seeing one of those small strips of the river below him, and watched two of the multi-hulled yellow rafts pass by, hundreds of feet below him, seeing the third raft, farther back from them, and just beginning to enter the rapids. He could hear the raised voices of girls and women over the noise of the rapids. They were shouting to each other, laughing, and then screaming as they were thrown around, getting splashed with cold water as they charged into the standing waves. Such fun!

He snapped a few photographs with his phone camera as he progressively zoomed in, not sure why he bothered to take any more photographs.

It was difficult to be sure at this distance, but they could all be women. Then he became convinced of it. They 'were', all women! His heart ached. He wanted just one woman, and not just any woman, but she was no longer in his life as she once had been, though she was still a part of it.

They were so occupied with keeping clear of the rocks, that they would know nothing of him watching them from the rim, or of the thousands of other watchers high in the air; flitting in the bushes along stretches of the shore, on the canyon walls, on the river’s bank, or even in the river itself.

He saw the accident unfold; had seen the raft get caught on the edge of a rock just below the surface and saw it spin.

The woman standing at the rear to control their course was wielding a long paddle, serving as a rudder. That paddle also caught up on a rock as the raft spun, sweeping her to one side knocking her off her feet, pinning her under it and down against the raft. Fortunately, she was cushioned by both the flexibility of the rubber hull and protected by her bulky lifejacket, but might still have broken something, or been injured, internally.

They were hung up there, stuck on both sides.

Another one on the raft, the only one facing the stern and seeing what had happened, let go of her safety rope and dropped back to help; lifting the paddle off her, freeing both her and the raft.

Once freed, the raft spun back again, sending the helper overboard and into the water behind the raft to follow it down the rapids.

He was now concerned. There was almost a mile of rough water to contend with, and no one could do anything to help her. In any case she was even then washing up onto a lower rock in the middle of the river, and crawling onto its upper surface projecting out of the water, watching the raft with her companions disappearing away from her, out of sound and sight.

There was nowhere the raft could stop and wait for at least a couple of miles, nor had they time to toss her a lifeline. She was on her own.

That water was rough, and cold, and a few minutes in that was enough to begin the hypothermia from which a body would not easily recover out here.

On the raft it had been hot, in the full blast of the sun, and only those toward the bow needed to wear the waterproof coats that they all had access to or sat upon, with their towels always at the ready.

It was almost as though no one had seen her go into the water. No lifelines were thrown out for her to grab; probably the job of the woman at the helm, but she was struggling with her own problems. The woman in the water was on her own. If they didn’t soon notice her she would be dead. There was no raft following that one to pick her up.

They couldn’t stop in that stretch of the river with rocks on both sides, and rough water. They would have to keep going and wait for her farther down.

To survive, she would have to get to the bank.

He watched anxiously, seeing her floundering at first, unable to change anything or attract any attention over the noise of the river. Now, she was hung up on a rock in the middle of the current, but would soon have to take to the water again as she tried to get to the bank or to catch up to her waiting companions. If they could wait for her.

Royce observed it all, his mind racing ahead, as his training to deal with emergencies kicked in, submerging that other reality of his life which would now have to be put on hold as he had no choice but to rise to this challenge and rescue her, somehow.

The river took a long sweep around a broad, deeply-incised meander at that point. If he got across the neck of land and could get down to the river on the far side just as he’d intended, depending upon how soon she took to the river again, he might be able to help her out.

The descent would take an hour anyway, if he took care over it, but this time another person’s life depended upon him getting down there before she struck out into the river again as she would have to.

He set out at a brisk pace, almost a run, to cross the half mile of the plateau to the place he knew about, down to the river, wasting no time and going over in his mind how he would manage to get down without injury.

He’d planned on leaving his rope at the last sandstone bench, above the river, so that he could climb back up again the following morning to get out, but he’d need the rope to save them both when he got to the river, so it would be going all the way down with him, as would his pack. He’d figure out how to get back up, when he needed to.