Way of the Wolf (17 page)

‘Hey, this is the first raft I’ve ever made and it gets a name!’

‘Well, give me a hand meanwhile . . .’

The raft was too heavy to lift so they had to push it into the water. Beck had set the floats at right angles to the river so they acted as skids. He pushed one, Tikaani pushed the other and the raft splashed into the shallows.

The boys scrambled onto it and immediately their weight pushed the floats under. The raft bobbed but hardly any water water splashed onto the tarpaulin. Tikaani knelt and clutched the wood. The raft felt very vulnerable as it slowly began to spin out into the centre of the river. It trembled whenever one of them moved.

Beck had been expecting the random movement and was a little more relaxed. ‘Comfortable?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, just about . . .’

‘OK, tie the rucksacks to the frame. There’s not much space and we could easily kick one of them over.’

‘Right,’ Tikaani agreed, maybe thinking of all the time and effort spent carrying those rucksacks this far. ‘That would be kind of a waste . . .’

Beck dug the pole into the bottom of the river and pushed. The raft steadied a little and moved with the current.

Tikaani tied the second rucksack down and relaxed. ‘How about a bird for the raft’s name? Do you get albatrosses in Alaska?’ he asked. ‘The
Albatross
would be cool.’

‘But albatrosses aren’t meant to ever touch land.’

‘Whoa! OK, not that . . .’

‘How about the
Bar-tailed Godwit
?’ Beck suggested, not seriously. He had seen that bird in a book and the name had stuck in his memory.

Tikaani pulled a mock scowl. ‘You’re really not taking this seriously.’ His face lit up. ‘The
Ptarmigan
! That’s the state bird of Alaska.’

Beck smiled. ‘OK, we’ll pay our respects to Alaska.’

He knelt at the edge of the raft and pushed again with the pole to counter the spinning. It moved further into the river and started to turn the other way. The different lengths of the floats made it lean slightly. Finding their balance would be hard.

‘Done.’ Tikaani patted the nearest log. ‘I name you the
Ptarmigan
.’

Beck gave the pole another nudge. It was like punting. You gave the raft a push and then used the pole as a rudder. But the best way was to let the current do the work. Let the raft find its own stability. He would use the pole to keep the raft centre-stream but not to drive it. Otherwise they would spin all the way to the sea.

The two boys and the
Ptarmigan
drifted down the Kynak towards Anakat.

It had been the right idea, Beck decided. He kept an eye on the bank. They were moving faster than a walking pace. Even allowing for the time taken to build the
Ptarmigan
, they would soon be ahead.

It wasn’t a completely smooth ride. The raft wobbled more than a boat ever would. Every now and then a wave or a ripple threw another splash onto the deck, or water splattered against the underside of the tarpaulin.

But the sun was shining and its warmth reflected back off the deck. The lapping of the water was peaceful and soothing. Tikaani uncurled from his kneeling position and cautiously stretched himself out on the tarpaulin. Beck wasn’t remotely surprised when his friend’s eyes closed and it was obvious he was asleep. They were both worn out by their trek over the last three days. The only thing keeping them going was keeping going. Once they stopped moving, sleep soon caught up.

In fact, Beck could feel his own eyes getting heavy. Giving an occasional nudge with the pole didn’t take much energy. He was having to raise his eyebrows just to keep his eyes open.

‘OK,’ he muttered. He dipped his hand in the river and splashed cold water in his face. ‘Stay awake. Keep the mind working.’ It seemed to have done the trick. His mind felt fresher, less cobwebby. But there seemed to be grit in his eyes. He blinked to clear them. Still gritty. He squeezed them shut . . .

A shock ran through Beck’s body as the whole raft suddenly lurched. It was the kind of muscular spasm he sometimes got just before falling asleep.

And that meant he
had
been falling asleep.

Whoa!
he thought. He looked around. The
Ptarmigan
was spinning again – Beck was facing the bank, which was still passing by at speed several metres away. They were still in the middle of the river. There weren’t any distinguishing landmarks and he couldn’t tell how long he had been asleep for. It probably hadn’t been too long because he was still kneeling down and he still had the pole in his hands.

‘OK. Wakey wakey, Beck Granger.’ The first thing to do was straighten the
Ptarmigan
up again. He gave the pole a push against the bottom of the river.

Another jerk ran through the whole raft, though Beck was now wide awake. This time a wave of cold water splashed over Tikaani, who woke up with a yelp.

‘Hey, that wasn’t funny!’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Beck said grimly, and nodded ahead.

The river was no longer smooth. It rippled with waves and troughs. The
Ptarmigan
had just bounced through one of them. And up ahead, white foam seethed through the gaps between rocks jutting up out of the water.

The raft was heading straight for some rapids.

Beck rammed the pole into the water and heaved with all his might. He probably had less than a minute to get them to the bank. Tikaani was kneeling up and staring at the rapids. He reminded Beck of a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

The raft moved towards the bank, but it also picked up speed towards the rapids. Beck swore and heaved again, and again. The bank grew tantalizingly close . . .

The pole hit something on the bottom of the river so hard that it was almost knocked from Beck’s hands. The
Ptarmigan
moved maybe thirty centimetres to the left and a couple of metres further downstream. That settled it, Beck realized, his heart plummeting. He could steer but not push. The current was too strong. And that committed them to one course of action.

Beck swore. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t get us to the side in time. We’re going to have ride the rapids.’

Tikaani looked back at him with wide-eyed, eloquent horror. The
Ptarmigan
dipped again and more water sloshed over them.

‘OK,’ his friend said bravely. ‘What can I do?’

‘Hold on!’ Beck told him.

Tikaani nodded, got a grip on the raft and looked forwards again.

The rapids were dead ahead. The raft was bucking in the current and the rocks were almost upon them. Beck wanted to stick to the tongue of the rapids, where the most water was flowing, and keep away from dips where it swirled around the rocks, forming whirlpools. Taking a deep breath, he focused on where he wanted to go and thrust out with the pole. The
Ptarmigan
shot between two rocks on a smooth ramp of water, down into a boiling pool of white rage.

Water sluiced over the deck. If the rucksacks hadn’t been tied down they would have been washed straight away. The raft surfaced like a submarine coming up for air. Both boys were gasping. The water felt icy as it streamed down their faces.

The raft heaved and bucked beneath them. Beck wiped the water from his eyes and looked around. They were surrounded by rocks and there was no obvious sign of the exit.

But the water knew where it was going and it took the
Ptarmigan
with it.

‘We’re going between those two!’ Tikaani shouted, pointing to a gap that looked only a little wider than the raft.

Beck could see that the water seemed to dip down on the left. Time to stick to the right!

The raft curved round under Beck’s guidance. One of the floats thumped into the rock on the right and the whole structure jarred. Beck winced. If something had to hit the solid lump of rocks, then he would rather it was that than fragile human bodies, but the
Ptarmigan
had to hold together. He had made it as solid as he could but he hadn’t had this kind of treatment in mind.

The raft spun round as it fell and plunged backwards into the next pool, Beck’s end first. It was a steep drop. The leading edge went under and kept going. Beck looked up and saw the rest of the raft rising above him. Tikaani was clinging on for dear life as tons of water threatened to push his end over. They were about two seconds away from capsizing.

‘Hold on!’ Beck shouted. He dropped the steering pole and scrambled up towards Tikaani. His extra weight helped push the top of the raft down again. A solid wave washed over the two boys, but the
Ptarmigan
stayed the right way up.

The pole was bobbing in the foam next to them. Beck grabbed at it and pulled it back in. The raft was spinning again. There was no way of telling which way was forwards, which way back. All Beck could do was fend them off the rocks that loomed in their way.

‘I think . . . I think we’re through . . .’ Tikaani gasped. Beck spared a glance for the way they were going. His friend was right. The water was still rough but they seemed to be through the worst of the drops. Rocks and boulders still lay in their path but the route through was clear. The raft shot between them as if eager to get away. It kicked beneath them like a speedboat. Beck steered again, keeping to where the water looked deepest, steering away from several final holes, and the sound of the rapids receded behind them. They were shaken, and soaking wet, but they were safe.

Tikaani let out a whoop of triumph. Beck joined in, but not quite so eagerly. He had felt the raft shift under them when it crashed into the rocks. He lifted up a corner of the tarpaulin to look at the nearest tie. It was looser than it had been. The raft’s whole frame was weakened.

‘We need to get to the bank,’ he said. ‘We need to dry out . . .’

He was already pushing with the pole, but the water was still moving too fast. It was like it had been before the rapids. He could steer from side to side but the speed of the current always undid his work. Well, it didn’t matter that much. The current would die down more and more the further they went, and then he could steer properly again.

‘Uh, Beck . . .’

Beck didn’t like the way Tikaani’s voice rose as he spoke. The noise of the rapids had been dwindling – but now it was rising again. And since they hadn’t turned round and they weren’t heading back to the rapids behind them, that could only mean . . .

With a sinking feeling, Beck craned his neck to find out what Tikaani could see.

For a heart-stopping moment he thought that he was wrong; that there weren’t any rapids at all. He couldn’t see any rocks or any broken water . . .

And then the truth dawned. There weren’t any rapids ahead because the river simply fell away. They were heading straight for a waterfall.

Various options flicked through Beck’s head at lightning speed. They could bail out and swim for the bank. No – at the speed the water was moving, they would probably be swept over the falls anyway. They could stay in the raft and hope it bore the brunt of their fall. No, it might well land on top of them and pin them under. They would simply be battered to death on the rocks at the base of the falls and the raft would be smashed to pieces.

And that was it. No more ideas. So, since everything was impossible, Beck had to decide what was the least impossible and go for that.

He started to push the
Ptarmigan
towards the bank again. They could maybe get close enough to jump and swim for it, without being swept to their deaths.

Or . . .

Hope surged within him. On the left-hand bank he saw a fallen tree overhanging the side of the river. Its branches drooped down, almost dragging in the water. It must have fallen down quite recently, during the winter; it hadn’t had the chance to decay. It might be their salvation.

‘I’m heading for that,’ he instructed Tikaani. ‘We’ll go under it and grab the branches.’

Tikaani had already seen the tree and nodded vigorously. ‘Got you!’

‘Untie the rucksacks and put yours on . . .’

They had barely a minute to get ready. Tikaani scrabbled at the knots he had tied, but eventually the rucksacks were loose. He pulled his on and knelt at the front of the raft, ready and poised. Beck spent the time making sure the raft was exactly aligned. He couldn’t steer and climb at the same time. The water had to carry them right under the tree without suddenly taking them off to one side.