him in a violent spray of sand, which in turn sent him sprawling on his stomach. In the meantime, Dixie, with less weight and more forethought, made it to her boat before JT reached his. JT managed to hurl himself at her boat.
“Don’t lose him!” she yelled as he pushed them off.
To his left, steep dark walls loomed out of the water; to his right, the sandy boat beach tapered off. And about a hundred feet ahead of them was the dog, his head poking up out of the roiling surface, the stick firmly clamped between his jaws.
“Stay to the left as far as you dare!” JT shouted. On the footbridge ahead of them, hikers were waving their arms and pointing to the dog, who was being carried toward the cliffs. And then, just when it looked as though he was going to slam straight into the ancient wall of pre-Cambrian rock, the invisible current swirled just enough to the right to carry him down under the footbridge.
“Go right!” JT shouted, but it was pretty much beyond their control at this point. JT thought he knew every river-foot of this canyon, but he’d forgotten that just beyond the footbridge, the canyon wall dropped off suddenly to a flat area beyond. Please, he thought, please let there be a nice little eddy. Please let the eddy snag the dog. Please let us all end up on this second beach with its access to the Bright Angel Trail and those nice hikers waiting back up at the boat beach.
But whatever eddy might have existed did not do its job, and the dog continued floating straight down the middle of the river, stick in mouth.
“Switch!” yelled Dixie, and with lightning speed they traded places. JT grabbed the oars but remained on his feet to put the full weight of his torso into each push, because if they didn’t catch up to the dog by the end of this second beach, they would have Pipe Creek Rapid to contend with. It wasn’t a big rapid, but it was big enough to threaten a dog without a life jacket.
The beach zoomed past. A little island zoomed past. And then the river carried them around a bend, and he could hear the lower frequency of the rapid.
They skittered through the waves, Dixie standing at the helm, shifting to keep her balance. He knew there was a strong eddy coming up at the bottom on the right, so he rowed as hard as he could to stay left, and he was wondering how far down this damn river he was going to go in search of the dog—was he some kind of Ahab or Colonel Kurtz?—when he looked to the right and there, being gently carried upstream in the eddy, was Blender.
JT had just enough time to pull into the small camp below the eddy. Once they hit shore, he yanked free a sleeping pad, tossed it into the water, flopped on top of it, and paddled out to get the dog—who, after all of this, still held the stick clenched in his teeth. His nostrils flared, and his dark eyes regarded JT with an immense sense of calm, as though JT were completely, unquestionably in tune with him, about things in general but specifically about this sixteen-inch stick, which was, as JT must know, the be-all and end-all of life itself; so that when JT grabbed hold of the dog’s bandanna and paddled back to the beach and the dog felt solid ground under his feet, he did not run about and sniff, or dance for JT’s approval, but rather sat himself upon the sand, head high, stick in mouth, proud of a job well done.
Within a short time the other boats arrived. First out was Sam, who threw himself upon the dog. Jill and Mark followed, looking anxious. Matthew remained in the boat. Slowly the others disembarked and straggled onto the cobbly beach.
“If you’re wondering, he’s in time-out,” Mark declared.
“Who?” asked JT.
“Matthew! For throwing the stick!”
JT looked over at Dixie’s boat, where Matthew sat with his back to them.
“You don’t need to do that,” said JT.
“By golly,” said Mark, “he can’t keep himself out of trouble.”
“He did what any kid would do,” said JT, who hated to see people punished (unless by his own doing) on one of his trips. Still, he didn’t like to go against parents’ directives, either.
“Mark wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to discipline his kid, though,” Jill remarked. She tilted