CHAPTER 54

Spud had lost track of time. Had they been marching for three hours? Four? Five? His internal clock had stopped ticking, frozen like his toes and his fingers. The pain in his back blazed through every muscle and turned his shoulder blades into rusted steel wedges. Pip’s weight, along with the backpack, was too much, but Spud was determined not to show it. He would swallow the pain anew with every step. He would not fail.

Pip, for his part, had been a perfect traveler, keeping his body still on Spud’s shoulders, leaning forward, his head low, his chin on Spud’s crown. Every once in a while a pine sprig or the crooked tip of a birch branch would scratch at the boy and he would let out a whimper. When Spud asked if he was all right, Pip answered that he was fine. That wasn’t true and Spud knew it.

Reed had told him that they would cross a river at a place called the Devil’s Cascade before they set up camp for the night. The promise of that river—that camp—had Spud straining to hear the rush of water in the night breeze. Up yet another hill and down the other side, across another slough, painful step after painful step—the Bataan Death March, Jesus’s walk to Calvary—all of it muddled together in Spud’s dazed brain.

Then he heard it, the sound of falling water in the distance, growing louder with every step. The sweet noise of a cascade lifted out of the darkness, swirling around them. Soon, the trail opened up into a campsite, flat and open atop a large hill, the stone surface of the crest disappearing as it fell into a chasm, the unmistakable roar of the Devil’s Cascade rising up from below.

Reed had taken off his pack by the time Spud and Pip joined him. Spud unloaded the boy and his backpack, and though he wanted nothing more than to crumple to the ground in exhaustion, he willed himself to stay on his feet. He walked to where Reed stood at the edge of the precipice, the land dropping a good two hundred feet. It didn’t fall straight down like a cliff, but it wasn’t far off. In the thin light of the gibbous moon, Spud could see the froth of white water as it crashed over rocks.

“Devil’s Cascade,” Reed said. “We’ll cross down there.” Reed pointed downstream from the cascade, where a line of boulders appeared to form a chain across the water. “Then we’ll camp.”

“Can’t we just camp here?” Spud asked, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt.

“We need to cross that ridge.” Reed pointed to the crest of a hill where the trees spiked in silhouettes against the starry sky.

“You can’t expect Pip to cross that river at night. It would be dangerous enough in the daytime. Let’s just hole up here until morning.”

“Christ, you’re an idiot. This is a public campsite. Anyone could stumble by.”