In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,19

JT was folding up the map, Mitchell strolled over, mug in hand. JT wanted to get off to a good start with the man this morning, so he called out, “Morning, Mitchell! Sleep okay?”

“Slept great,” said Mitchell. “So! How far do you think well go today?”

“Don’t know,” said JT cheerfully. “Maybe ten miles, maybe fifteen.”

“Think we can go up to Silver Grotto?”

“Well see,” said JT. “No vetoes, no promises.”

Mitchell nodded. He sipped his coffee.

“I was wondering,” he said after a moment, “if you decided what to do about the dog.”

JT checked his watch. “Just about to call Park Service, Mitchell,” he said. He reached down into the well of his boat and unstrapped the yellow plastic case with the satellite phone.

“Just worried about my wife,” said Mitchell. “Her asthma, you know.”

“We’re aware of that, Mitchell.” JT unsnapped the plastic fasteners and opened up the box. Inside, cradled in a bed of foam, lay the satellite phone, a brick-sized device with a stubby antenna that swiveled up like an action figure. He hated, absolutely hated, using the satellite phone—on the second day, no less!—but he really had no choice here. At the very least, he felt he had to report the dog.

As he punched in the numbers for Park Service, Mitchell gazed serenely downriver and sipped his coffee.

“I guess you’d say we’re not exactly dog people,” Mitchell said to no one in particular. JT expected the ranger to be more upset about the dog, but in fact he sounded mildly exasperated when JT asked him what he wanted them to do.

“You deal with it!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got three hikers who refused to listen when I told them how much water they need in this heat, and two of them collapsed halfway down to Phantom!”

The line went dead, and JT found himself staring stupidly at the phone before replacing it in its box. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, so he went to the food table and loaded up a plate.

“What’d the ranger say?” Dixie asked.

“He said figure it out.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Keep the dog,” said JT. “Find him a life jacket.”

“We’re taking him with us?”

JT drenched his French toast in syrup. “You want to hike him out yourself? Scratch that. You can’t; we need you.”

“Can’t they send someone down to pick him up?”

“Organize a whole trip to come pick up a dog? I don’t think so,” said JT.

“Then we should stop one of the motor rigs and get them to take the dog down to Phantom. There’s gotta be a hiker who’ll hike him out. There’s no way we can spend five days with a dog, JT. He’ll get into the meat cooler. He’ll chew everything.”

“We’ll watch him,” said Abo. “Chill.”

“You chill,” said Dixie.

JT scratched his chin.

“Fine,” said Dixie. “But for the record, he’s not riding in my boat.”

Abo shot her a wounded look and reached out and caught the dog by the scruff of its neck. “Such a meanie,” he crooned. “What’s your name, anyway? What do they call you?”

JT set his plate on the sand, and as the dog licked the remains, JT knotted a red bandanna around the dog’s neck. “You know what they say,” he said.

“What?”

But JT didn’t answer. Dog or no dog, he still had a trip to run. Time to clean up. Time to break camp. Time to load up the boats, and make room for the dog. If there was anything JT liked, it was a first, and this was definitely his first trip with a dog.

You name it, you love it, was what he was going to say to Abo, but JT didn’t dare articulate the truism, even to himself.

Shortly after breakfast, JT summoned the group for their first morning meeting and told them that for now they were keeping the dog.

Sam and Matthew whooped and roughed him up.

“Until we can figure something else out,” JT continued. “Its not exactly what we expected, but hey, this is the river, gotta be flexible, right?”

Mitchell and Lena turned away and conferred with one another. Mark looked at Jill and shrugged; Evelyn glanced from one face to another, as though not ready to commit to an opinion.

Mitchell rejoined the group and asked what hikes JT was planning for the day.

“I was just about to get to that,” said JT, and he kneeled on the sand and spread out his map. “If we do North Canyon, you’ll see some pretty good geology.”

Mitchell pointed out that North Canyon was not a very long hike. “How about