In the Heart of the Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde Read Free Book Online

about setting up their kitchen, unfolding the long metal tables, hooking up the stove, arranging all the cookware. Abo filled two plastic buckets with river water and slopped them down on each end of the cleanup table. Dixie lugged the large flat fire pan across the sand to an open spot, got down on hands and knees, and leveled things out and wiggled the grill into place for the salmon they would be cooking tonight.
    Meanwhile, JT went off to scout out a good place for the toilet system, known in river parlance as the groover. Having camped here many times before, he had a destination in mind and followed a worn path through a thick grove of feathery tamarisk, around some boulders, and finally up onto a ledge blocked off from camp by a huge boulder, with a prime view of dusty pink cliffs rising out of the glassy water. Good views from the groover mattered, a lot.
    JT would bring everyone up here before dinner to educate them in the specific how-tos. But now, after a long day in the hot sun, what he wanted most of all was a beer. He hopped down from the ledge and headed back to the camp, his flip-flops kicking up a soft spray of sand behind.
    But as he was passing through the thicket, a rustle in the underbrushstopped him in his tracks. Dang if a territorial rattlesnake wasn’t going to spoil his groover site. He peered into the brush but saw nothing and warily moved on.
    Then he heard another rustle, a quick shake, like dried beans in a pod. Now JT backed away, knowing full well that a snake encounter on their first night would set everybody on edge for the entire trip.
Fine. Keep the tamarisk thicket, keep the ledge site, you bugger. I’ll find another place for the groover
.
    But as he turned, he heard a whimper, an anxious whine that definitely did not come from a reptile. JT peered into the scrub again.
    There, panting heavily on a bed of leaves and sticks, lay a dog. Its fur was gray and matted, its nose crusted, and yellowish goop had collected in the corners of its eyes. Seeing JT, the dog trembled, and with the tremble came a quick chattering of its teeth—the sound JT had mistaken for a rattler. It was some kind of mutt, he wasn’t quite sure, but it seemed part poodle, part terrier, with loopy gray curls and a dirty wet wisp of a beard—actually, of the approximate lineage as the dog JT had had as a boy. With liquid black eyes, this direct descendant of the true and loyal companion that had slept in the same bed and shared the same bath and eaten the same bologna sandwiches as a very young JT Maroney now gazed straight into his heart.
    JT had seen a lot of animals on his 124 previous trips down the river. He’d seen bighorn sheep and coyotes and countless ringtail cats who crept around camp in the middle of the night in search of leftovers. But he’d never seen a dog. For one thing, dogs weren’t allowed below the canyon rim. He’d heard other guides tell of the occasional Navajo cattle dog showing up, especially in this first stretch, where access to the river was easy. But JT had never run into one himself. And this sure as shit did not look like a cattle dog; wash it up and put a collar on it, and it might pass for a Biff or a Molly, with a plaid doggie bed and a personalized bowl nearby. JT couldn’t for the life of him imagine where it came from. Definitely not another boating party; they could never have gotten a dog past the ranger up at Lee’s Ferry. A renegade hiker, a dog-loving Ed Abbey living in the piñon?
    JT held out his hand. The dog sniffed his fingers, then slapped itstail heavily on the bed of branches. It struggled to its feet but could not get up, so it lay back down, setting its chin resolutely between its paws.
    “Hey, boy,” said JT. “Come on. Get up.”
    The dog didn’t move.
    JT knew better than to handle an injured animal; he dug deep into the pocket of his shorts and held out a few oily peanuts. The dog sniffed, then licked them out of his hand. JT moved back a little and