Breaking Point

That would be bad.”
    They found their grips and balance on the log—Joe was on the left side of the log with his right arm draped over the top, Butch was on the right a few feet behind, and Farkus switched between the left and right side around the stump of the log depending on which way it drifted.
    “Are you guys about ready?” Joe asked.
    Before either could answer, there was a large explosion on the surface of the water between the log and the bank, and the splash slapped across their faces.
    Joe’s first thought was that rocks were being dislodged from the canyon walls and dropping down into the river. But when he squeezed the water out of his eyes, he looked up to see the silhouette of a large mule deer, the antlers in velvet, dropping through the sky right toward them. It was trailing a stream of smoke like a shot-up fighter plane about to crash.
    “
Duck
—it’s coming right at us . . .” he shouted, before letting go of the log and submerging.
    A herd of deer had been trapped, he guessed. They’d retreated as far as they could to the rim of the canyon, but there was no way to outflank the fire. They’d bunched on the rim as the flames burnt their hides until they actually tried in vain to
jump the canyon
.
    The buck deer hit the log with a concussive impact that boomed through the water. Joe looked up to see thrashing arms, legs, and hooves in a cloud of white bubbles and swirls of blood. The end of the log itself was driven down in front of his vision by the weight of the buck—before rolling out from beneath it and righting itself.
    When he came to the surface, he looked into the frightened eyes of Butch Roberson, who was standing a couple of feet away. Their boat-log was floating slowly downriver, just out of reach.
    And there was no sign of Dave Farkus.
    “You get the log,” Joe said to Butch. “I’ll look for Farkus.”
    Joe took a deep breath and again dropped beneath the surface.
    He could see two still bodies a few feet downstream, tumbling in lazy slow motion along the river rocks. One was the buck—its back broken, ribbons of blood streaming out from its snout, its hide horribly burned—and the other was Farkus.
    Joe closed the distance quickly and managed to grasp Farkus by his shirt collar. There was no resistance—no indication of life or struggle—as he pulled him up. The river was shallow enough that he could stand and breathe, and he kept Farkus above the surface by reaching under the man’s arms and pulling Farkus’s back tight to his chest. Joe backed his way to the narrow bank and lowered Farkus to the river rocks.
    The man was breathing, but his breath was soft and shallow. Farkus’s left shoulder was asymmetrical, and when Joe bent over and loosened his shirt he could see the shoulder—and possibly the clavicle and sternum—had been crushed by the impact.
    Farkus moaned, opened his eyes briefly, then passed out again.
    “Only
you
would nearly get killed by a
falling deer
,” Joe said to Farkus, hoping the power of the fall hadn’t broken too many bones inside the man.
    —
    B UTCH SPLASHED HIS WAY over with the log in tow. They lifted Farkus and placed him facedown on the log as if straddling it, with his hands and legs dangling down into the water and his head resting on its ear on the trunk itself. They decided not to bind him to the log in any way so he wouldn’t slip off, but try to keep him balanced between them. If they tied him on, Joe thought, and the log flipped or got away from them in a rapid . . .
    —
    J OE AND B UTCH walked the log into the deepest part of the river, until the current leaned into them from behind. They pushed off and raised their feet out in front a foot or so below the surface and let the log float them.
    As if he were guiding a fisherman on a drift boat, Joe kept his eyes downriver at all times. The river was technical and challenging; the trick was to anticipate the deepest runs and try to stay in the faster-moving water most of the time. But when the current looked like it would speed up and suck them into exposed boulders or dead trees or the cliff face itself, they’d have to maneuver the log so it would skirt the hazards but still keep floating.
    It didn’t take long for Joe and Butch to sync, to read each other’s thoughts and keep the log—and Farkus—moving forward. When the bow of the log started to drift to the left, Joe’s side, Butch would drop a boot deep until it caught on a rock and the makeshift craft