Dad stood up and started clearing the table. “Mom will need several hours there, so I thought we’d do some exploring while she works. We don’t get down this far on the lake very often. I’d like to check out a few of the canyons. Maybe do a little hiking.” He looked at Rick. “As much as your leg can stand. ”
“It’s really doing quite well,” Rick said. “I’m putting more and more weight on it.”
“Okay, then,” Mom said. “Dad called Don, and he’ll go with us.”
“He’ll stay there at Rainbow Bridge with Mom while we go exploring.”
“So, let’s get this cleaned up,” Grandpère said. “Angelique would like to leave as soon as possible so she can catch some of the morning light.”
Rainbow Bridge is one of the world’s largest known natural bridges. Jutting out from a solid red-rock cliff, it majestically spans the dry wash below at a height of nearly 300 feet, about the same length as its width. Though our family has been there many times, I never grow tired of it.
You have to leave the boats a ways from the bridge and hike in. We went far enough from the boats so Rick could see the bridge, and we took a few pictures. Then Dad helped Mom find a good place that wasn’t visible from the trail and got her set up with a beach umbrella. Don, our guardian agent, as Cody called him, took up a station where he could see her but not be too intrusive. Dad promised we’d be back in about three hours, but Mom said she wanted four or five, and so he quickly agreed. Since Don had come in his own boat, it wasn’t a big deal either way. If Mom finished early, they could go back on their own. Leaving them both plenty of water and some snacks, we were on our way again in less than an hour.
Back out in the main channel, Dad turned the boat left and we started downstream. Only a few miles downstream from Rainbow Bridge is Dangling Rope Marina. Roughly halfway between the dam and Bullfrog Marina, it is an important facility in the Lake Powell support system. We stopped there to gas up, go potty, and replenish our water, pop, ice, and snacks.
As we got back in the boat, Dad got out our Lake Powell map and spread it out. “Where do you want to go?”
We all bent over the map and studied it. Then I had a thought. “Hey, Dad. Do you remember the name of the place where Clay said they found the boat those three guys abandoned?”
“Uh ... it was ... I remember it was in Warm Creek Bay, but ... no, I don’t.”
“It was Crosby Canyon,” Grandpère volunteered.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Dad agreed. “Crosby Canyon.”
We found Warm Creek Bay on the map and started searching. Cody saw it first. “There. Almost to the end of the bay.”
“Show me,” I said.
“Yeah, look,” Rick said. “There’s a road that comes right down to the lake.”
Cody was looking at the channel marker numbers. “It’s only about twenty miles from here,” he said. “Let’s go check it out.”
“What’s on your mind?” Grandpère asked me.
I knew if I tried to pass this off as just a whim, they would never buy it. So I decided to be straight with him. “If I was right there on site, maybe I could get some impressions about those guys. You know, like I did when we were near Robbers Roost that time.”
“Even if they’re not there anymore?” Cody clearly thought this was a dumb idea.
“Butch Cassidy has been gone for more than a hundred years, but I still felt something when we got close to Robbers Roost. So, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? Maybe, with the help of the pouch, I might sense which way they went. Where they are now. Then we could call Clay and tell him. We’re just killing time anyway waiting for Mom.” I turned to Grandpère. “Think how relieved Mom would be if they caught those guys.”
He and Dad exchanged looks, and then finally Dad shrugged. “Why not? I’ll call Don and let him know what we’re thinking. If for some reason he says no, then that’s the end of it, agreed?”
I nodded. Happily, Don said everything was quiet there and that Mom had already told him she wanted about four more hours. So I won out.
The lower end of the lake was much busier than up around Bullfrog, I guess because Wahweap Marina is the largest of all the marinas. Houseboats were parked along the beaches of Warm Creek Bay, and the water was dotted with all kinds of watercraft. But as we went farther north into the bay, it thinned out quite a bit. I was studying the map as we went.
Identifying Crosby Canyon was easy. The gravel road coming down to the beach was visible from the lake. Dad turned the boat that way, and soon he had to slow down as the water rapidly grew more shallow. Cody and I went up on the bow, making sure he wouldn’t hit any big rocks as we approached the shore. About twenty feet out, Dad cut the engine, hit the button to pull the props up out of the water, and gently nosed the boat up onto the sand.
Cody stood up and grabbed the anchor and was about to toss it over the side, but Dad stopped him. “Hold on, Bud.” He turned to me. “Are you feeling anything, Danni?”
That caught me by surprise. I was so focused on what we were seeing that I had forgotten why we had come. I let my hand drop and touch the pouch, turning my mind inward. After several moments, I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Good. Rick? You up to walking a bit? Near as I can tell from the map, that little side road Clay talked about is about a mile in.”
“I’ve got calluses in my armpits by now,” he grinned. “I’m good.”
“Okay, but you set the pace. And when you start getting tired, we turn back. Check?”
“Check.”
We lathered up with more sunscreen and took time to eat another snack. Then each of us grabbed a bottle of water, at Dad’s insistence. The thermometer in the boat showed that the air temperature was now 102 degrees, and it was still early afternoon.
As far as scenery goes, there wasn’t much here. Much of the land around Lake Powell consists of towering red-rock cliffs, deep canyons, sculpted sand dunes, and high mesas. No such luck here. There were some medium-sized cliffs off in the distance, but mostly it was low bluffs and small bumps for hills. The colors were dull, with mostly whites and grays and an occasional splash of light brown.
“Let’s go,” Cody said, throwing the anchor onto the beach and jumping down after it. I followed, then took Rick’s crutches and helped him down. Grandpère got into one of the boat’s compartments and retrieved the binoculars and two of our handheld radios that we always carried with us. A couple of minutes later, we were off.
The road alternated between hard gravel and patches of sand, but it didn’t have a lot of steep places, so it provided easy walking for the most part. The heat was brutal, but having grown up in Hanksville, it was something we were all used to. We moved along, letting Rick set the pace. I watched him, relieved to see that he was putting more and more weight on his leg, which allowed him to move right along.
It’s hard to judge exactly how far you’ve come when you’re on foot, but at about a mile, we found the turnoff that Clay had talked about. It turned to the right and headed for a pretty high mesa with steep cliffs, which was another half mile away. “This has got to be it,” Dad said, and we turned off onto it.
Almost immediately after leaving the main road, the turnoff climbed up one of those little bumps of a hill. I glanced at Rick. He would never have said anything, not in a lifetime, but I could tell even this mild climb was more of a challenge for him. “Let’s go up to the top,” I suggested. “Then we can decide whether to go any farther or not.”
Bad idea. It was actually a pretty gentle hill, but by the time we reached the top we were all sweating profusely and puffing pretty noticeably. We stopped by unspoken agreement and opened our water bottles. While we drank, Grandpère lifted the binoculars and scanned the area out ahead of us. After a moment he said, “This has got to be it. The road definitely goes through the wash over there, which is probably where they hid their truck.”
>
“Can I look, Grandpère?” I asked. He nodded and handed me the glasses. As he did so, he asked, “Feeling anything?”
I shook my head. “Hot, sweaty, and a little foolish that I thought this was a good idea.”
He smiled and opened his bottle and took a deep swig. I lifted the glasses and started at the bottom of the hill, following the road slowly. There was nothing to see other than flat, dull, whitish sand and rock. Then I found the line of willows and brush that marked the path of the dry wash. They weren’t terribly thick, but I could see that if you pulled off the road far enough, you could get a vehicle out of sight.
“Let me see,” Dad said.
I handed him the binoculars and took another long drink. We had liter-sized bottles, and I had already drained about half of mine. I decided I’d better save the rest for our walk back.
After a moment, Dad spoke. “It looks like the road comes out of the wash again right at the base of the cliffs.” He lowered the glasses. “Not a bad place to leave your transportation for several days and not have anyone bother it.”
“I think we ought to go take a look,” Grandpère said.
“Really?” I said, not trying to hide my total lack of enthusiasm. “It’s probably another half a mile.”
Grandpère gave me one of his looks. “Are you wimping out on us? This was your idea, remember?”
“I don’t remember that, but it does sound like sooo much fun. Let’s do it.”
Dad handed Rick one of the handheld radios. “Why don’t you stay up here with the glasses so you can tell us which direction to go? You’ll have a better perspective than we will.”
It said a lot that Rick only nodded and took the glasses. But to my surprise, Cody volunteered to stay with him and immediately started looking for a rock to sit on.
The road was obviously not one that saw a lot of traffic, but there had been a vehicle or two up and down it recently. About ten minutes later, we found the place that we were pretty sure Clay’s agents had said they had found tire and boot tracks. It was pretty hard to miss. The brush wasn’t that thick, and there were several places where there was room enough to back in a vehicle. I turned and looked back. The brush couldn’t hide a truck if you passed right by it, but from the hill it wouldn’t have been seen. Dad lifted the radio. “This is it,” he said. “Can you still see us?”
“If you stand in the road,” Rick answered. “Smile, Danni,” he said. “You’re supposed to be having fun.”
I started to take the radio from Dad to make some smart comment, but then Grandpère nudged me. “Try the pouch.”
I sighed. I wasn’t feeling anything except hot, sweaty, and tired right now. But I took it off my shoulder and held it in both hands, half closing my eyes.
Nothing. I opened my eyes, looked at Grandpère, and shook my head. “Sorry. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
“Can you even feel any presence?” he asked.
“No,” I said, somewhat surprised. “I feel nothing.”
Dad was looking around. “Why don’t you two start back? I’m going to walk up the road a little farther. Take a look around.”
Thanks to the heat, my curiosity was sufficiently satisfied. “Okay,” I said.
Then the radio crackled. “Mack?” It was Rick’s voice.
Dad raised his radio and pressed the transmit button. “Here.”
“Um ... I’m seeing a cloud of dust off to the north of you, moving along where the road follows the base of the cliff. But it’s behind a hill and I can’t see what it ... uh... no, wait. It’s a pickup truck. A white one.”
A chill shot through me. The false report of the sighting at Big Water had said there were three men in a white pickup. “Let’s go,” I cried, pointing back toward where Rick and Cody were.
Dad was staring up the road. Now we could see the dust, but we were too low to see what was making it. “No,” he said. “That will put us out into the open. Quick, into the brush. Get down.”
Heart pounding, I ran off the road, and Dad spoke again into the radio. “Rick. You and Cody find a place and get out of sight. It’s probably just a couple of campers, but let’s not take any chances.” He jammed the radio into his pocket and raced in after us.
We chose the thickest patch of brush we could find and crouched down behind it. “They’ll see our footprints in the dust,” I said. My alarm bells were clanging like crazy now.
“Not if they’re moving very fast,” Dad said grimly. He had his pistol on, and I saw that his hand rested on the butt. That didn’t help how I was feeling.
We heard the truck less than a minute later and could tell it was coming at a pretty good clip, but the wash twisted and turned enough that we wouldn’t see it until it came right past us. As the sound grew louder and louder, we grew smaller and smaller. The brush now felt like no more than a few blades of grass.
And then it was on us. It appeared to our left, swaying back and forth and bouncing hard on the rough hardpan of the wash. I saw immediately that it was especially equipped for off-road travel—big, knobby tires, a lift kit to give it higher ground clearance, three lights across the top of the cab. It flashed by us, leaving a swirling, choking cloud of dust. As the sound died away, we got slowly to our feet, covering our faces with our elbows.
“Two people,” Grandpère said. “Both men I think, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“But not three?” Dad asked.
“No. I’m sure of that. Only two.”
I said nothing. My heart was hammering like a freight train. My mouth was dry (and not from the dust), and I could feel my hands trembling. Only then did I realize how frightened I had been. I had convinced myself it was our three enemies.
We stepped out into the road and started moving forward rapidly. As we cleared the brush, we had a good view of the hill again. The truck was just coming up on the bottom of it. Dad spoke into the radio. “They’re coming fast, Rick. Stay down. We’re on our way.”
We started walking as swiftly as we could, watching the truck ascend the low hill and disappear. Dad lifted the radio again, thought better of it, and increased the pace.
But two minutes later, a huge wave of relief washed over me as the radio popped again. “Mack?” It was Rick. “It’s okay. They went on by. They didn’t see us.”
I thought I could hear his voice trembling a little even through the radio. Good. Maybe Iron Man had been just a little bit scared too.
“We’re coming, Rick,” Dad said. “Hold tight. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
As we hurried along, sweating profusely, we didn’t say much. The sudden appearance of the truck—a white truck—had really rattled us. I was sorry I had ever suggested this. I wanted to get back on the boat and head back to Rainbow Bridge as fast as we could.
Up ahead of me about four strides, Dad raised the radio to his mouth. “Rick? You there?”
After several moments, the radio crackled. “Here.”
“Can you still see the truck?”
Long pause. “Uh ... not really. When they ... um ... reached the main road, they turned north.”
Something in the way Rick said that didn’t sound right. I was suddenly feeling uneasy.
“We’re down low enough that we can’t see you anymore,” Dad said. “You two still okay?”
“Um ... yeah. My leg’s hurting a bit, is all.”
I pulled up short. Rick complaining about the pain? “Dad,” I hissed, “something’s wrong.”
He and Grandpère jerked around.
I pulled Le Gardien close to my body, hugging it tightly. I was expecting to feel this sudden sense of danger, or the presence of evil, but there was none of that. Just this deep uneasiness. Like all was not what it seemed or should be. Then I realized that instead of a sense of danger, what was coming was a flood of thoughts. It was as if random thou
ghts and events were suddenly connecting together, with the same rapidity and clarity that I had experienced during our battles with El Cobra.
Dad started to say something, but Grandpère held up his hand and shook his head.
I closed my eyes, listening inside myself, standing perfect motionless. Finally, I opened my eyes. “We know that El Cobra and his people never left anything to chance. They planned out everything to the smallest detail. So what if Crosby Canyon wasn’t an escape route? What if it was a place for them to hole up? What if they left their truck full of camping gear and supplies and—and what if it was them who blew up the mine?”
It was almost taking my breath away how quickly things were coming together, and how right it felt. “That would explain the phony tips the FBI kept getting.” I stopped, my eyes widening in wonder. “They wanted us to think they had escaped and were no longer a threat.”
“But why?” Dad asked.
I gasped. “Because the kidnapping was only half the plan.” Suddenly, I wasn’t asking “what if?” Suddenly, I knew. “They planned from the beginning to come back and strip the mine, then blow it up. That’s why they wrote ‘Phase Two.’ Their plan wasn’t just to steal twenty million from us. It was to steal everything—the cash and the ore.” I stopped, taking in short breaths, my sweat suddenly cold as ice.
Dad was nodding slowly, watching me intently. “It’s a stretch,” he mused, “but ...” He reached down and took the satellite phone off his belt. “I’m going to call Clay.”
“And I’ll call Angelique,” Grandpère said. “Tell Don to be particularly alert.”
The pouch was suddenly so hot, I had to pull it away from my body. “Mom’s okay, Dad! But we’re not. We are in danger. Hurry. Tell Clay where we are.”
CRACK! The blast of a rifle broke the stillness, echoing off the cliffs behind us. A bullet kicked up a spurt of dust about five yards to the left of us, then whined away in a sharp ricochet.