Thunderhead

“Is it safe?” Black asked. “Looks pretty narrow to me.”

“I’ve kept my eyes on the canyon walls,” Sloane said. “There haven’t been any obvious trails that would lead up and over to the next valley. If we’re going on, this is the only way through.”

“It’s getting late,” Nora said. “The real question is, shall we unpack the horses and carry everything in now? Or shall we camp now and go in tomorrow?”

Black answered first. “I’d prefer not to carry any more equipment today, thank you, especially through that.” He gestured past the canebrake toward the narrow slot, which looked more like a fissure in the rock than a canyon.

Smithback sat back, fa

The rest seemed to agree. Then Nora turned toward Sloane. In the woman’s eyes, she immediately saw the same eagerness that was kindling within her.

Sloane gri

Nora looked at the entrance to the slot canyon—barely more than a dark seam in the rock—and nodded. Then she turned once again toward the group.

“Sloane and I are going to reco

There were none. While the camp settled down to its routine, Nora loaded a sleeping bag and water pump into a backpack. Sloane did the same, adding a length of rope and some climbing equipment to hers. Bonarotti wordlessly pressed small, heavy packets of food into each of their hands.

Shouldering their packs, they waved goodbye and hiked down the stream. Past the grove of oaks, the rivulet burbled across a pebbled bed and entered the canebrake outside the mouth of the slot canyon. Much of the cane had been torn and shredded into a dense tangle, and there were several battered tree trunks and boulders lying about.

They pushed ahead into the cane, which rustled and crackled at their passage. Deerflies and no-see-ums danced and droned in the thick air. Nora led, waving them away with an impatient hand.

“Nora,” she heard Sloane say softly behind her, “look carefully to your right. Look, but don’t move.”

Nora followed Sloane’s glance toward a piece of cane perhaps eighteen inches away. A small gray rattlesnake was coiled tightly around it at about shoulder height.

“I hate to tell you, Nora, but you just elbowed this poor snake aside.” It was meant to sound lighthearted, but Sloane’s voice carried a small tremor.

Nora stared in horrified fascination. She could see the cane still swaying slightly from her passage. “Christ,” she whispered, her throat dry and constricted.

“Probably the only reason he didn’t strike was because it would have caused him to fall,” added Sloane. “Sistrurus toxidius, the pigmy gray rattler. Second most poisonous rattlesnake in North America.”

Nora continued to stare at the snake, almost perfectly camouflaged by its surroundings. “I feel a little sick,” she said.

“Let me walk first.”

In no mood to argue, Nora stood by while Sloane went on ahead, gingerly picking her way through the broken cane, pausing every few steps to scrutinize her path.

She stopped suddenly. “There’s another one,” she pointed. The snake, disturbed, was swiftly gliding down a stalk ahead of them. It gave a sudden, chilling buzz before it disappeared into a tangle of brush.

“Too bad Bonarotti isn’t here,” said Sloane, moving ahead carefully. “He’d probably make a cassoulet out of them.” As she spoke, there was another buzz directly beneath her feet. She leapt backward with a shout, then gave the snake a wide berth.

A few more harrowing moments brought them to the far side of the canebrake. Here the mouth of the canyon opened before them, two scooped and polished stone walls about ten feet apart, with a bottom of smooth sand barely covered by slowly moving water.

“Jesus,” Nora said. “I’ve never seen so many rattlers in one place in my life.”

“Probably washed down by a flood,” said Sloane. “Now they’re wet, cold, and pissed.”

They continued down the creek into the slot canyon, splashing in the shallow water. The narrow walls quickly pressed in around them, leaving Nora with the uncomfortable feeling that she was along the bottom of a long, slender container. Eons of floods had sculpted the walls of the canyon into glossy hollows, ribs, pockets, and tubes. There were only occasional glimpses of sky, and they proceeded in a reddish half-light that filtered down from far above. With the high narrow walls of the slot canyon crowding out the sun, the air at its base felt surprisingly chilly. In places where water had scooped out a larger hollow, they encountered pools of loose quicksand. The best way to get past them, Nora found, was to start crawling through on her hands and knees and, when the quicksand at last gave way, to lie on her stomach and breaststroke, keeping her legs rigid and unmoving behind her. The pack, oddly enough, buoyed her, acting as a kind of float on her back.

“It’s going to be a wet night,” Sloane said, emerging from one of the pools.

As the canyon descended, the light grew dimmer. At one point, a huge cottonwood trunk, horribly scarred and mauled, had somehow become jammed in the canyon walls about twenty feet above their heads. Nearby, there was a narrow hollow in the rockface, above a small, stepped ledge.

“Must’ve been some storm that put that tree up there,” Sloane murmured, glancing upward at the trunk. “I’d sure hate to be caught in a flash flood in one of these canyons.”

“I’ve heard the first thing you feel is a rising wind,” Nora replied. “Then you hear a sound, echoing and distorted. Someone once told me it sounded almost like distant voices or applause. At that point, you get your butt out as fast as possible. If you’re still in the canyon by the time you hear the roar of water, it’s too late. You’re dead meat.”

Sloane broke out into her low, sultry laugh. “Thanks a lot,” she said. “Now you’ll have me climbing the walls every time I feel a breeze.”

As they walked on, the canyon narrowed still further and sloped downward in a series of pools, each filled with chocolate-colored water. Sometimes the water was only an inch deep, covering shivery quicksand; other times, it was over their heads. Each pool was co

After half an hour’s struggle, they came to a pourover above an especially long, narrow pool. Beyond, Nora could make out a faint glow. Taking the lead, she eased down into the pool and swam across toward a small boulder, wedged between the walls about six feet above the ground. A thick curtain of weeds and roots trailed from it, through which came a sheen of sunlight.

Nora crawled under the boulder and paused at the shaggy curtain, wringing the water from her wet hair. “It’s like the entrance to something magical,” Sloane said as she approached. “But what?”

Nora glanced at her for a moment. Then, placing her arms together, she pushed through the dense tangle.

Although not strong, the light of the late afternoon sun beyond seemed dazzling after their journey through the cramped, twisting canyon. As her eyes adjusted, Nora could see a small valley open up below them. The stream tumbled down a defile and spread out into a sandy creek along the valley floor. There was a narrow floodplain, covered with pounded boulders, repeatedly raked by flash floods. Cottonwoods lined the banks of the floodplain, their massive trunks scarred and hung with old flood debris. The creek had cut down through a layer of rock in the center of the valley, creating benchlands on either side that were also dotted with cottonwoods, scrub oak, rabbitbrush, and wildflowers.