River Marked

Chapter 4

THE NEXT DAY, WE LEFT THE TRAILER IN THE EMPTY campground--Adam had been responsible for setting up the security, after all-- and drove back across the river, on past the oddly named town of The Dalles and the less oddly named town of Hood River to Multnomah Falls. Someone once told me there is about a ten-mile stretch where the annual rainfall increases by an inch a mile. Truth or not, not far west of Hood River the scrub is replaced by lots and lots of trees and other green stuff. A few miles farther on, the waterfalls begin.
Multnomah is the most impressive, but there are dozens of waterfalls on Larch Mountain, and we spent most of the day hiking the trails that webbed the mountainside from one falls to another. Since it was a nice day in the middle of summer, there were a lot of other people doing the same thing.
I didn't mind the company, and I didn't think Adam did, either. It felt like we were a friendly party of strangers, drawn together by the extraordinary beauty of water dropping in white sheets from rocky cliffs. There was a sense of awe that connected us all, bringing us together. The ties were not as real as the pack bonds, but it felt like the beginnings of the same thing. It was magic, just a little of it, built of fair weather and joy.
That feeling of belonging to something greater than myself was the gift Adam gave to me.
My whole life I'd been an outsider: first a coyote raised in a pack of werewolves, then a supernatural outsider in my mother's mundane household, finally an outsider who had too many secrets to really have friends. I was good at appearing to fit in, so no one really took notice of me.
Until Adam. With Adam beside me, I felt like I belonged, like he was my connection to the rest of the world. And because of him, I could be just one of these happy hikers who were out to enjoy themselves. I shook off the faint shadow that recalling my vision had left upon me. Indian or not, coyote or human, I wasn't alone anymore.
Some of the trails were easy, even handicap accessible. Not too far from Multnomah, those all went away, and the fun started in earnest. The top of the mountain is a little more than four thousand feet above the trailhead, and not much of that climb is gentle.
I HEARD THE CRYING BEFORE I SAW THEM. THINKING someone was in trouble, I broke into a jog up the trail, and Adam ran behind me.
"Honey, I can't carry you." The woman's voice was on the edge of tears. "I just can't. You have to be a big boy and help me, Robert."
There followed a boy's voice, unintelligible to me and interspersed with sobs.
Around a bend in the trail we came upon two very upset people. A frazzled woman in her forties and a boy with a tear- and dirt-streaked face.
"Hey," I said. "Sounds pretty rough. What can we do to help?"
She started to refuse help--and then her eyes fell on Adam and lit up with avarice. I sympathized with her entirely--but was happier when I realized it was the strength of his back she was excited about and not his pretty face.
Her son was not nearly as excited as his mother. Robert, his mother informed us, was eight, but he had Down's syndrome and was as wary of strangers as most two-year-olds. He wasn't happy about the idea of Adam hauling him down the mountain to the parking lot.
While his mother tried to reason with him, Adam got down on one knee and looked the boy in the eye. He didn't say anything at all. But after almost a full minute, the boy nodded, and when Adam stood up, he climbed onto Adam's back without another protest. He still wasn't happy about it, but he knew who was in charge.
"Well," said Robert's mother, flabbergasted.
"Adam's good at giving orders," I told her truthfully. "Even without saying anything."
So Adam carried one very tired and cranky eight-year-old boy who had a sprained ankle down the trail while the boy's even-more-tired mother thanked him all the way.
"I didn't know it would be so steep," the boy's mother said to me, when Adam stretched his legs a little and got ahead of us. I thought it was to stop her incessant thanks, but maybe I was being uncharitable.
"Robert was so tired of being in the car. Eugene is still a long way, and I thought it might be nice if he ran off some energy; then he would sleep the rest of the way. I hope your young man doesn't hurt himself. Robert weighs almost eighty pounds."
"Don't worry," I assured her. "Adam was in the army. He can carry an eighty-pound pack down the mountain. That's also why he knows the difference between a twisted ankle, a sprained ankle, and a break."
I wasn't going to tell her that he was a werewolf who could probably carry us all down if he could figure out a good way to make a manageable bundle of us. Adam was out to the public, but neither Robert nor his mother looked like people who could deal with werewolves at this point in their trip. The army part was true--they didn't need to know that his army life was back in the Vietnam era.
"Get his ankle X-rayed anyway," advised Adam, who'd had no trouble hearing us. "I'm not a doctor, and sprains can be tricky."
By the time we made it down to the parking lot, Robert had recovered except for an exaggerated limp. His mother had lost the desperate edge to her voice. She thanked us again, and Robert gave Adam a wet kiss on his cheek.
"My hero," I told Adam, as they drove away. "You done here? Or would you mind going back up again?"
To my intense pleasure, Adam and I hiked for another couple of hours, then ate in Hood River. I'd never spent so much time with him without interruption. Here, there was no other demand on either of us.
I loved it. Loved watching the alertness fade and the strain of taking care of the pack, of me, of his daughter, of his business just wash away from his face and his body.
Usually, Adam looked like a man well into his thirties--though werewolves don't age at all. By the time we returned to the campground, he'd lost ten years of care and looked not much older than his daughter. Laughter lit his face in a way that I'd never seen before.
I had done this. Me. Okay, me and God's waterfalls and mountainside forest. Even though it had seemed I couldn't get through a day without throwing him in the middle of my hot water. Even though he'd had to fight vampires, demons, and waterlogged fae because of me. Even though he'd had to fight his own pack, I was good for Adam.
I'd seen him ticked off, in pain, in sorrow. It was indescribably better to see him happy.
"What?" he asked, finishing the second of his nine-ounce steaks, medium rare. "Why are you looking at me that way?"
The trendy little restaurant that occupied the old Victorian intimidated me a little, not that I'd let anyone, including Adam, see it. I don't think I've ever seen anything, except possibly my mother, intimidate Adam. But it was more than that.
He fit here. He'd fit out running around in the trails--and packing the little boy down the mountainside. For someone like me, who'd had to fight to make my own place because I didn't fit anywhere, he was ... Well, the truth of the matter was that he fit me, too.
Though, from their sideways looks, a lot of the rather affluent diners eating there obviously didn't think so. Adam might be going casual in jeans and a T-shirt, but he still looked like he just stepped off a modeling job. I looked like I'd been hiking all day even though I'd pulled the leaves out of my hair in the restaurant bathroom.
I sighed theatrically, resting my chin on my cupped hands and bracing my elbows on the table. "You are too gorgeous, you know?" I said it just loud enough that the people who'd been watching us surreptitiously could hear me.
Unholy laughter lit his eyes--telling me he'd been noticing the looks we'd been getting. But his face was completely serious, as he purred, "So. Am I worth what you paid for me, baby?"
I loved it when he played along with me.
I sighed again, a sound that I drew up from my toes, a contented, happy sound. I'd get him back for that "baby." Just see if I didn't.
"Oh, yes," I told our audience. "I'll tell Jesse that she was right. Go for the sexy beast, she told me. If you're going to shell out the money, don't settle."
He threw back his head and laughed until he had to wipe tears of hilarity off his face. "Jeez, Mercy," he said. "The things you say." Then he leaned across the table and kissed me.
A while later he pulled back, grinned at me, and sat back in his chair.
I had to catch my breath before I spoke. "Best five bucks I ever spent," I told him fervently.
HE WAS STILL LAUGHING WHEN HE BUCKLED HIS SEAT belt. "It's a good thing that we don't live in Hood River," he said. "I'd never be able to show my face in that restaurant again. Five bucks. Jeez." Adam was a gentleman raised in the fifties. He tried really hard not to swear in front of women.
"I thought it was pretty cool when that little old lady tried to give you a twenty," I said, and set him off again.
"The thing that spooked me"--he drove back out on the highway toward our campground --"was that woman at the table next to us, who looked like she bought the whole act, even after everyone else was laughing."
Ah, Creepy Lady. She'd watched us both with her eyes wide and her jaw open, and still her expression managed to be blank. I was betting she was either a total psychopath--or fae, which was sometimes the same thing. I could have gone closer for a good sniff--I've learned what fae smell like--but it was my honeymoon. I didn't want to know.
"I'm never going to be bored with you around," Adam told me. The funny thing was that he sounded happy about it.
"WANT TO GO FOR A RUN?" ADAM ASKED, HOPPING OUT of bed a few hours later.
We'd lain down to rest after our travels. Not much resting had taken place, but I wasn't going to complain. Still, every bone in my body was Jell- O, and he wanted to go run?
"Ungh," I said. That was the best I could do.
He grinned at me. "You can drop the act."
I waved a weak hand at him.
"I bet I catch a rabbit before you do," he said.
Oh. He meant a run. We'd gotten back to the campground about dusk, so it was full dark. Full dark meant that in the unlikely event that someone saw Adam as werewolf, they'd think he was a dog--helped along by pack magic that let people see what they expected to see. The magic works in broad daylight, too, but darkness helps. "Well, why didn't you say so," I grumped at him as I vaulted off the bed. I was wearing half a T- shirt--the left half--and my socks. The other half of my shirt was on the far side of the trailer. I was going to take an hour and clean the trailer really well before we returned it to its owner or I'd risk being embarrassed.
Which reminded me. "Hey, Adam?" I dropped the half shirt on the floor and stood on one foot to take off a sock. "Who loaned us the trailer? The only people I know who could have afforded it are you, Kyle, or Samuel. Samuel would not be caught dead with something this ... bulky. You told me it isn't yours. Did Kyle buy it in an attempt to compromise with Warren's desire to go camping?"
"Uncle Mike."
I froze, one foot in the air. "What?" He'd borrowed something from a fae?
Adam steadied me with a hand on my shoulder. "I'm not wet behind the ears," he told me, a little bite in his voice. "Uncle Mike called me and told me he'd heard I was planning on taking you camping and didn't he have the sweetest little trailer we could take with us."
"You borrowed from Uncle Mike?"
"Uncle Mike offered it ... Now, how did he phrase that? For services already rendered. You need to either get the sock off, Mercy, or put that foot down before you fall over."
I pulled the sock off and stood on my own two feet. "Fae never give you anything for nothing," I said urgently. "Not even Zee, and he's my friend."
The fae do things like make you pledge your firstborn child or your life's blood for a piece of bubble gum, and make it sound like a good deal at the time.
"When the fae who owns this campground called to offer it up about an hour before Uncle Mike called, I was pretty suspicious," Adam told me.
His voice had regained its usual relaxed tone, but he was irritated. I could tell by the way he stripped off his shirt. I could leave it alone ... but he didn't know the fae the way I'd come to know them.
"After Uncle Mike called," he continued blandly, "I knew they wanted us here for some reason. I could have refused--I had reservations in San Diego--but I thought you'd enjoy this more than a hotel, and I knew I would."
I frowned at him.
"I didn't promise him anything," Adam said with exaggerated patience. "You need to remember who you are now. They can't just f--" He stopped speaking for a moment, then swallowed his temper with an effort--and not as much effect as he probably wanted because the bland tone deserted him entirely.
"Mercy, they can't mess with you without messing with me and the whole pack--and Samuel--and Bran--and Zee--and Stefan probably, for that matter. I don't know what they want. Maybe they needed us to not go to San Diego--Uncle Mike mentioned San Diego specifically though I hadn't told anyone where I was taking you. Maybe they needed us to stick closer to home. We werewolves are a potential ally against political attacks now since we are the only other supernatural group who admits its existence to the general public. Maybe there is something here--" He waved his hands to indicate the general area upon which the trailer sat. "It could be something as easy as using us as a deterrent to another fae who plans on destroying what Edythe has built here."
Edythe must be the fae who owned the place. Of course it was a fae who had set up this campground, with its big trees and supergreen grass.
Adam was right. I'd forgotten that if the fae screwed with me, they were taking on the whole pack and then some. I was more than just a mechanic who fixed VWs and turned into a coyote because I had Adam, and I had friends. What a difference a year or two could make.
If he'd stopped there, I wouldn't have gotten mad. Maybe I'd even have conceded that he'd been right, and I shouldn't have worried. But he didn't leave it alone--because Adam might be gorgeous and smart, but he wasn't perfect.
"I suppose I could have driven myself crazy--" he bit out because our peculiar bond apparently wasn't doing its thing. He didn't know that I agreed with him. That he'd won. "Or more to the point," he said, "I could have let you drive both of us crazy for the past few days speculating what nefarious plot Uncle Mike has hatched up--Uncle Mike, who has proved himself to be, at least, a valuable ally if you don't consider him to be a friend. Or I could keep it to myself until your curiosity got the best of you and you asked so we could at least enjoy a couple days of our honeymoon before we started worrying about what the fu--" He was breathing harder now and had almost let that four-letter word all the way out.
I leaned forward, kissed the white line on his cheek that came out like war paint whenever he clenched his jaw, and said lightly, "All you ever had to do was tell me you had it under control, dear." I batted my eyes demurely. "I'm just the wife. I don't have to strain my poor weak brain worrying about the fae because you are here to protect me."
Yep, I was ticked, too. He was patronizing me.
I could still, however, admit when he was right: the fae certainly weren't the ones he had to worry about.
He narrowed his eyes at me. "That is not what I said. Don't put words in my mouth."
I reached around him, popped the door of the trailer open, and changed into a coyote before he finished his sentence--and I was off and running.
It would take a while before he could follow because werewolves take a lot longer to change. I supposed he could have chased after me in human form--but on two feet he'd never catch me, werewolf or not. Besides that, he was naked. The campground was rendered mostly private by topography and greenery, but it wasn't completely private. Pack magic wouldn't do anything to hide a naked man running across the campground.
I took advantage of him and left before he could continue the argument.
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING, MARRYING an Alpha werewolf?" my mother had said a few months ago, as I drove us to yet another wedding-dress outlet in Portland. Who knew there were so many white dresses? Who knew there were so many horrible white dresses? The oddest thing was that it seemed like the worse the dress, the more expensive it was.
"Yes, Mom," I said, narrowly avoiding a brownish '77 LTD being driven by a grandmother who could barely see over the dash. "I've known Adam for a long time. I know just what I'm getting myself into."
As if I hadn't said anything, my mother said, "Any kind of alpha takes some serious managing. Werewolves are controlling bastards--and Alpha werewolves are worse than that. If you don't watch it, you find that you are doing exactly what they tell you to."
There was an interesting snap in her voice, and I wondered how often Bran had gotten her to do what he wanted her to. Not as often as he wanted, I'd bet, but evidently more than she was happy about.
"I know how to take care of myself." I wasn't worried. Adam was dominant--that was certainly true. But I'd more than proved to myself that I could hold my own against him if I needed to.
"I know you do," Mom said with satisfaction. "But remember, confrontations aren't productive with an Alpha. You'll just lose--or worse, make him lose control."
"He won't hurt me, Mom."
"Of course not," she said. "But a man like Adam, if he loses control, he'll feel terrible. He'll worry that he might have hurt you. Making him feel horrible isn't what you want." She paused, considered what she said, then modified it. "Unless it is useful for him to feel horrible, of course. Mostly, though, I've found that isn't productive. Men who are miserable can be unpredictable."
I wondered if my stepfather knew how lucky he was that she felt it was in her best interests that he was happy instead of miserable. Probably he did; he was a smart man.
"I am the queen of hit-and-run," I told her. "All the satisfaction, none of the danger."
"Good," she said. "Just make sure he doesn't turn you into the good little wife. You'd manage it for a while--you were the `good little daughter' in my house from the time you moved in until you went to college."
There was a little edge to her voice, as if I'd hurt her--which hadn't been my intention at all. When I'd left Bran's pack to live with my mother and stepfather, I'd been sixteen, and they'd already had a family without me. No. They'd had the perfect family without me. I hadn't wanted to disturb them any more than I could help.
"But if you try that in a marriage," she continued, "the marriage will self-destruct eventually, and there will be casualties everywhere you look."
"Adam doesn't want a good little wife," I told her.
"Of course not," she said. But she didn't know Adam that well, and I figured she was just humoring me, until she kept going. "But he was taught how to be a husband when it was assumed that his wife would be a combination cook/housekeeper/mother who would need him to provide and protect her. He knows in his head and his heart that you are an equal, but his instincts were instilled a long time ago. You are going to have to help him with that and be patient with him."
My mother would not be nearly as terrifying if she weren't right so often.
SO INSTEAD OF STICKING AROUND TO FIGHT WITH Adam, I ran to let us both cool off, and to let the hurt of his patronizing remarks ease so I could think. I can't be patient when I'm mad--unless I'm waiting to get back at someone, and I wasn't that mad. Not yet.
I ran the first mile or so as fast as I could, then dropped down to a dog-trot. I couldn't let him treat me like his first wife. I couldn't live surrounded by cotton wool.
But he knew that.
I trusted him. What he'd kept from me hadn't been life threatening. He was right. The fae would not offend the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack. One werewolf was a tough creature--but the real power of the werewolves lay in their packs. I could understand him wanting to make sure our honeymoon was worry-free.
Okay. Okay.
So at what point had our discussion turned into an argument that left us both angry? And left me with an ache in my chest that felt as if he'd punched me instead of snapped at me. He hadn't even worked up to a good rage, and I felt miserable.
A rabbit bolted right out in front of me. I hadn't really intended on hunting, but if the stupid things want to present themselves for dinner ... With a fresh turn of speed, I gave chase.
I WAS EATING THE LAST OF THE RABBIT WHEN ADAM showed up in his glorious furred form. Adam is a beautiful man, and his wolf is beautiful, too. He is colored like a Siamese cat, though in bluish grays that deepen to near black.
He dropped a second rabbit at my feet and lay down in front of me, nose on his paws and his ears flattened.
Nothing says you're sorry like a dead bunny.
I remembered his first wife. Christy had made him apologize a lot, apologize for things that were not his fault. I didn't want an apology. I wanted to know why we'd just had a fight, and I hadn't even enjoyed it.
I liked to fight with Adam.
He'd been mad first.
I considered that.
Adam got mad for three reasons. The most common, and my personal favorite, was frustration. Usually, when Adam was mad at me, frustration was the spark that set him off. Adam frustrated and angry with me usually started with fireworks and ended in good ways with a lot of adrenaline engendered and spent along the way.
The second was if anyone was trying to harm someone under his protection. We'd established that the fae were probably not planning our deaths or even near-fatal entrapments.
The third was pain--physical or otherwise.
Having established that he wasn't frustrated and neither I nor anyone else was in any danger-- I must have hurt him somehow. I narrowed my eyes at him. Usually, Adam was pretty straightforward. It was one of my favorite things about him. Figuring out why he'd been mad should have been a lot easier.
He'd tried to protect me, and I objected. We did that all the time, and he seldom got mad unless or until I got hurt.
He'd tried to make sure our wedding and honeymoon were fun. He'd thought that I'd fret about borrowing the van from Uncle Mike but that I'd also have a better time out here than I would have in a more typical honeymoon.
He'd gotten mad when he thought I was going to get mad at him for not telling me about the trailer. It was his belief that I would get mad about it that had hurt him. I wiggled my hips into a more comfortable position and tried to think like Adam --a very smart person poisoned by testosterone.
First--he knew I'd get mad if he kept anything big from me, but that wouldn't hurt his feelings.
And suddenly I understood what had happened.
I got up and stepped over my kill, then over his. I licked his muzzle--and then shifted back into human.
"You made some assumptions," I told him. "Take a note: it usually works better if you wait until I do something stupid before getting mad at me." Adam stared at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.
"This building a marriage is an ongoing project," I told him. "And we'll both make a lot of mistakes along the way. I did worry about borrowing the trailer. But after a half minute's thought, I knew you'd never borrow anything from any fae without making sure you had a handle on the consequences." I blew out a huff of air. "You got mad because you thought I wouldn't trust you to know the difference. Not fair. Not fair at all.
"Me, I keep important stuff from you all the time." I grinned at him. "But I know you're a better person than I am. Still, I think that my frailty means you don't owe me an apology for doing something I would do, so we're even as far as keeping information from me is concerned."
Now it was he who narrowed his eyes at me.
"Right," I said as if he'd spoken. It was chilly in bare skin with the sun down, so I stretched out against him and let him keep me warm. "I know what I said before I took off--but I was provoked. No apologies from me or from you--but I'll take the rabbit on account. However, if you try that patronizing sh-stuff on me again, not even a fat juicy rabbit is going to stop the fight we'll have."
Since it was unfair for me to keep being the only one who could talk, I shifted back into the coyote. And since I have a policy of accepting gifts graciously, I ate his rabbit. Besides, fighting always made me hungry, and there was no chocolate handy.
He thought it was funny that I ate the second rabbit without accepting his apology--so we were okay again. I expected that we'd have a lot more fights, and mostly I looked forward to them. Life with Adam wasn't going to be boring, either.
WE WERE HEADED BACK TO THE CAMPSITE WHEN WE found the boat. On the way out, I hadn't run right along the river. Instead, I'd followed one of the ridges that lined the gorge, avoiding the few houses and vineyards scattered here and there, and Adam had followed my trail. On the way back, though, we ran along the edge of the river. The moon was new, just a sliver in the sky, and the stars reflected in the black water.
The highway on the Oregon side was always busy, and this night was no exception. Our side, the Washington side, was a lot quieter: the river was wide, the noise of the cars a distant symphony accompanying the sounds of the night. One of those sounds was made by a boat bobbing against the shore. I paused because this wasn't a place I'd have expected to find a boat. As soon as my attention was drawn to it, I could smell blood and terror-- the aftermaths of battle. A glance at Adam told me he'd noticed it, too. The fur along his spine was raised though he was silent.
The boat was tucked under the edge of three or four trees and accompanying brush that grew along the bank. From what I could see, and I wiggled a lot closer than Adam could, it was one of the small fishing boats, a bass boat, the kind that maybe two or three people could use to fish in. Small enough to row though there was a small outboard motor on the back of this one. I couldn't see into the boat because of the underbrush, but I could smell a man's fear and hear him talking.
"Don't let it find me. Don't let it find me." Over and over again, very softly, barely even a whisper. I hadn't been able to pick up his exact words until I was within a stone's throw of the boat, and I have very good hearing. The boat hitting the rocks with the gentle rise and fall of the river's waves was louder than his voice.
I backed out of the brush and met Adam's eyes. Naked was going to be hard to explain, and I knew all about what those bushes were going to do with my skin. But Adam took too long to change, would be equally naked--and if whatever this man was afraid of came back, Adam the werewolf was our best defense.
Maybe other people wouldn't have automatically assumed that whatever this man was afraid of would need a werewolf to fight it. There were no werewolves around here, vampires tended to be more of an urban monster, and the fae reservation was an hour the other side of the Tri-Cities--two hundred miles or more away from us. But the sheer magnitude of the terror he still felt made me think I wasn't being paranoid.
I shifted to human. "Hey," I called. "You in the boat. Are you okay?"
The man's voice didn't alter. He hadn't registered my words at all.
"I think I'll have better luck reaching him from the river side," I told Adam. "That boat's still floating. If he's as badly hurt as all the blood I'm smelling makes me think he is, it'll be easier if we're not trying to drag him through the underbrush anyway."
The nearest bit of clear riverbank was about thirty feet downstream. The sun long gone, the water was icy. I stumbled on a big rock on the river bottom and made a splash when I fell. I made some noise, too--frigid water on nice warm skin when I'm not expecting it tends to make me squeak. The man in the boat screamed--from the hoarseness of his voice, it wasn't the first time he'd screamed tonight. "It's all right," I said, regaining my feet. "You're safe."
He quit screaming, but I don't think it was because he'd understood me. Sometimes fear is too big for that--so much of your being is focused on survival that anything else falls to the side. I've been there a couple of times.
The rocks under my feet were sharp, but once I was waist-deep, my weight didn't press me down on them quite so hard. If I'd been headed downstream instead of upstream, I could have swum instead. Adam paced back and forth unhappily on the river's edge.
The trees hung over the river, and the shore curved back under them. Finding a path through the debris that had collected in the small backwater along with the boat forced me to wade in through a bunch of underwater plants I didn't see until I was in the middle of them.
My eyesight is pretty darn good at night, but the river was an impenetrable black veil, and anything below the surface was hidden. I hated not seeing. Who really knew what was in the Columbia?
Something brushed against my leg with a little more force than the rest of the weeds, and I let out an involuntary yip. Adam, invisible on the other side of the tree, whined.
"Sorry, sorry," I told him. "I'm fine. Just caught my leg on one of those clumps of plants. I can't see a damned thing under the water, and that and this guy reeking of fear has me all hopped up. Sorry."
The stupid plant was persistent. It clung to my calf as I approached the boat, resisting my halfhearted attempts to shake it loose. The tendency of some water plants to wrap around arms and legs of unsuspecting swimmers is one of the leading causes of drowning. However, I reminded myself, I had my feet on the river bottom, so this one was only an irritant. Nothing to panic about.
I forgot about the plant as soon as I grabbed the side of the boat and got down to business. My eyes just barely cleared the side of the boat, so I couldn't get a good look at the wounded man.
"It's okay," I told him. "We'll get you out of this."
I gave an experimental tug on the boat, but I was now up to my chest in the water, and the current threatened to push me off my feet. When I pulled on the boat, it was I who moved.
I shifted my grip, moving nearer to the bow. If I pulled the boat the way it was designed to move instead of sideways, it should require a lot less effort. As a last resort, I could climb in and use the motor--but the tree limbs were only a few inches above the gunnel, and I didn't really want to scrape myself up getting in the boat.
I heard something and jerked my head up. Four small heads poked out of the river about a dozen yards from the boat. Otters.
Great, that was just great. Just what the night needed.
"Otters," I told Adam, my teeth beginning to chatter with the effect of the water. "If I start screaming, it's because the otters have come to get me."
He growled, a low, menacing sound, and the four heads disappeared. It wasn't as reassuring as it might have been. But there were no sharp teeth fastened on any of my parts that were underwater, not yet anyway. The only thing grabbing me was the damned weed, which was still wrapped pretty tightly around my ankle.
I had a friend who swam once with sea otters just off the California coast. She said it was an unbelievable experience. They apparently were regular comrades to the pers in the area, playful and cute. They played a little rough--pers who swam with them regularly often had to replace their quarter-inch neoprene ping suits because otter teeth and claws are sharp--but most of the pers counted it worth the price.
River otters are smaller and even cuter than their oceangoing cousins. They also have the sweet temperament of a badger with a hangover. It wouldn't have worried me much--I have sharp teeth when I want them, too. But right now I was in their environment and not mine.
I couldn't see them. Worse for me, I couldn't smell them or hear them, either. I could wait around for them to attack, or I could get the heck out of the river.
I got a good grip on the nose of the boat and managed to persuade it to move out a little. Five or six feet more, and I'd have it out where the river current would push it the way I wanted it to go.
The man in the boat began thrashing. It took me a second to realize he wasn't just panicking--he'd gone for the pull on the engine. As the sudden roar of the engine broke the night, I grabbed onto the boat as hard as I could and let my feet leave the river bottom.
The boat lurched forward, and the weed around my ankle tightened painfully, and for a second I felt as though--But no weed is that tough, and the boat jerked me out of its hold and drove about fifteen feet downstream before I pulled myself into the boat. By that time he'd collapsed again, and his hand fell off the tiller just as I grabbed it.
I balanced on the seat and turned the boat back to shore, where Adam paced.
The man grabbed my arm, and I almost tipped the boat over before I braced against his weight. If I'd had shoes on, my feet would have slipped off the wet wood, and I'd have landed on him.
"Got to get away," he said. His skin was as dark as mine--he was Indian, too, now that I finally had a good look at him--and still his lips managed to look pale.
"Got to get you to shore," I yelled at him over the noise of the engine. "Before you bleed to death."
There was a crunch as the bow of the boat hit the shoreline, then a mighty jerk as Adam grabbed a bowline I hadn't seen or else I'd have used it. He pulled us up and all of the way out of the water onto the bank.
I managed to kill the engine because I'd already started the motion, and when the boat stopped suddenly, I used the momentum to roll all the way out of the boat and onto the ground. My other option would have been to land on the man we were trying to rescue. The drop was not far. I hit the ground with my unprotected shoulder, which was going to bruise, but mostly managed not to hurt myself.
Adam came over to me.
"I'm fine," I said. "Check him."
He raised himself over the side of the boat to look in. I got up at the same time. Either blood loss or the shock of seeing a huge wolf with big sharp teeth had finally driven our man, who was bleeding from the remaining half of his right foot, unconscious.
Adam glanced from me to him--and then bolted. In that brief glance, he told me to stay put while he went for help. Wolves communicate much more clearly than humans do in an emergency.
Adam would run all out, but we were probably five miles or more from the campsite. It would take him ten minutes to get there, maybe ten more to change back to human if he pushed it. I had no idea where the nearest hospital was or how long it would take for them to get the man there. Adam would figure it out.
With the sun down, the air was chilly, the river cold, and both the wounded man and I were wet and freezing. But there was nothing I could do about that at the moment.
I pulled him back down in the boat and propped up the damaged foot on the wooden cross member that doubled as a seat. The wound was just oozing blood, which seemed odd to me. Maybe the cold was useful, even if it was dangerous.
I was debating the benefits of shifting into coyote and sharing what warmth my wet fur would gain us both against trying to figure out how to get his wet shirt off and use it to bandage his foot without a knife. Both moves were likely to be useless or worse ... when I heard the hum of an engine out in the water.
Lights tracked over the shore and stopped on the white boat I was standing in. I waved my arms to call them in to shore. There were excited voices, but I couldn't tell what they were saying because the sound of their engine drowned out the meaning. A small but much sleeker and more modern boat complete with lights approached us at speed.
Help was here. Unless these were the guys who'd sliced off the man's foot. And me wearing nothing but Adam's dog tags. Ah, well, it couldn't be helped; my modesty wasn't worth a man's life.
The boat hadn't quite beached itself when three men hopped into the river. One of them grabbed the bowline, and as soon as he did, the fourth man, who'd been staying the boat, cut the engine and jumped in, too.
"Benny?" "Faith?" and "Who are you?" gradually resolved themselves into Hank and Fred Owens, Jim Alvin, and Calvin Seeker-- introduced to me by Jim Alvin, easily the oldest of them though only Calvin qualified as young.
It was only after the Owens brothers pulled out a first-aid kit and started to work on the wounded man that I realized we were all--victim, me, and the four in the rescuing boat--Indian.
Jim Alvin was in his sixties and smelled of woodsmoke and old tobacco. Calvin was somewhere in his late teens or early twenties. Hank and Fred were around my age, I thought, and close enough in appearance that they might well have been twins, though Hank didn't talk at all. I don't know if I would have noticed their dog tags if I hadn't just received Adam's. But I would still have noticed that they had some sort of emergency training by the efficiency of their movements and their focus as soon as they saw Benny Jamison.
Benny was the hurt man.
Jim interrogated me--for all that his questions were softspoken and quiet--while the Owens brothers did their best to save Benny.
"No sign of anyone else?" he asked me, after I told him how Adam and I had found the boat--and how Adam had run back to camp to get help and left me to do what I could.
"No." I pulled the blanket they'd given me more securely around myself.
Benny woke up briefly when they started wrapping his foot with vet wrap. It sounded like it hurt.
Jim sighed. "Benny's sister, Faith, was with him out fishing. They were supposed to be home for dinner. Julie, Benny's wife, she called Fred tonight when Benny didn't answer his phone. We were docking, but the Jamisons are good folk. We put the boat back in the water and started looking. What tribe did you say you were?"
I hadn't, in spite of the fact that they had introduced themselves that way. All of them were from the Yakama (with three a's, though the town was spelled Yakima) Nation. The Owens brothers were Yakama. Jim Alvin was Wish-ram and Yakama, as was Calvin Seeker. I didn't think of myself that way. I was a walker and a mechanic, both of which served more often than not to make me separate from other people. I was Adam's mate, which connected me to him and to the pack.
I was also cold and tired. It took me too long to remember.
"Blackfoot," I said, then corrected myself. "Blackfeet."
"You don't know which?" asked Calvin, speaking for the first time--though he'd been watching me since they came ashore. I'd almost forgotten I was naked until I saw his face just before I'd been tossed a woolen blanket. I supposed polite disinterest was too much to ask from everyone. Three out of four wasn't bad.
"I never knew my father--my mother is white. He told my mother he was from Browning, Montana," I told them. The wool was doing a good job of warming the skin it covered.
Naked wrapped in a blanket among strangers didn't use to bother me. Maybe if Calvin would have quit staring at the various pieces of me that the blanket didn't cover, it still wouldn't have bothered me. As it was, I did my best to keep Jim between Calvin and me.
"So you were raised white," said Calvin in disapproving tones.
I should have told them I was Hispanic and any Indians in my bloodlines were South American and unknown. Half of my customers thought I was Hispanic. Telling them I was Hispanic felt like it would have been less of a lie than telling them I was Indian. As if I were claiming ties that weren't there.
"Browning, Montana, makes him Blackfeet," Jim told me kindly. "Piegan. The Blood and the Siksika are Blackfoot."
I knew that. It just hadn't tripped off my tongue.
"What were you doing out here? It's an odd place to be running around at this time of night." Jim didn't say naked. He didn't have to. "Boy," he said abruptly to Calvin. "Don't you make your mother ashamed of her son."
The young man's mouth tightened, but he looked away from me. A few years ago his regard wouldn't have bothered me the way it did now. But things had happened since that made me uncomfortable standing nearly naked with four strangers--five if I counted Benny, which I didn't.
"I just got married," I told him, reminding my too-jittery self that Adam would be on his way back by now. If something happened, and I had no reason to think it would--especially as they had handed over a blanket to cover me without a word--Adam would be here before anything too bad happened. I wouldn't be caught in the trap of assuming all men were bad--but I wouldn't have been human if I weren't wary. "We were swimming."
"Good thing for Benny," said Jim. "We've been by here twice. It would have been morning before we could have seen that boat under the trees. And morning would have been too late for him."
Fred (I could tell because he wore a red flannel shirt, and Hank wore a gray one) left Benny to his brother and came over.
Evidently he'd been listening because he said, "I called 911, Jim, and they had already gotten a call from her husband. There is an ambulance on its way. I told the operator that we could get Benny up to the road. It'll be a rough trip. The road's only a half mile or so as the crow flies, but this is horrible country for a fast trek in the dark. But they'd have to make the trip twice that we need to make once."
"What about taking him on the boat?" asked Calvin.
Fred shook his head. "We might get him to the hospital faster that way--but the ambulance will have medical personnel on board. He'll get faster medical care, and time matters. If he stays in shock, we could lose him--but when he warms up, that foot is going to bleed like a fountain."
"Whatever you and Hank think best," said Jim, which seemed to make the decision for everyone.