Jen's Legacy.

The girl; the woman, was watching him now, fully conscious, huddled up in his sleeping bag and unhappy, her teeth chattering, her eyes fluttering in synchrony with her bodily tremors, but they were fewer now than earlier, with periods of calm between the spasms.

She’d felt him touching her far too personally as he had undressed her, and then had touched her even more personally when he’d pushed his hand between her legs and held her thigh for a couple of seconds with his hand touching into that hair on her there, and he had done much more than that to get her dry, assessing her temperature as he’d touched and looked at her with concern in his face. He’d touched her in many embarrassing places and at frequent intervals as he continued to check her condition.

Had she been so far gone?

It was a relief when she saw him get dressed.

She would have to trust him, but would do so cautiously, watching everything he did, not sure where he had come from, but thankful that he had been there to pull her out. Although she might change her mind about that if….

She’d felt the disturbance in the river beside her as he’d landed almost upon her, felt his arm go around her and felt herself carried out of the river’s cold embrace to lie on warmer sand as he had pulled her around, undressing her, then wrapping her in his own shirt, patting it and holding it against her in front and behind, and then enclosing her in his sleeping bag.

He’d looked into her face for almost a full minute as though he recognized something about her, then had shaken his head.

She knew she was recovering now. Without his intervention she would not have survived. By the time she got down to where her companions would be waiting for her, wherever that might be, she might only have been a battered corpse.

They were complete strangers to each other, stuck alone, miles from anywhere and everywhere, and no chance of there being a rescue for hours at best; likely, not for days. She would be entirely in his power, and she didn’t like that thought, remembering what she’s seen of his inability to control himself around her when she had been undressed.

She tried to sit up, finding that he helped her do so, to lean back against a rock still in the sun, but it wouldn’t be in the sun for long.

The rugged beauty of the canyon was lost on her at the moment. This spectacular paradise had almost cost her her life in a moment of thinking to help someone else. It had been a commendable action, but foolish.

He was too obviously curious about her, constantly looking at her, making her uncomfortable.

“You pulled me out.” A statement, not a question. She was fully conscious again. She had a nice voice.

He looked at her and nodded, waiting for her next questions; statements, or her complaints about what he had done with her.

“Thank you.” Her voice was hoarse from all of her coughing. “Where did you come from? How…?”

He pointed.

“Up there. I saw you fall from the raft.”

She looked up at the towering canyon walls extending several hundred feet above them, dwarfing everything, seeing the variations in colors of the various beds of sandstones; at the shading, as her eyes were drawn relentlessly upward, and up and up; brilliant reds, whites and grays, as well as deep dark browns, and sparkling grey sandstone, with the quartz crystals in it, glinting like millions of diamonds as the reflection of the sun caught at them.

He had come down from up there in the few minutes she’d been in the river? He must have done.

It was hard for her to accept, but she did accept it. Why would she not believe him? But it was difficult.

Farther up, she could just see faint ribbons of sand blowing off the plateau edge in the gusts of wind, to settle down onto the slopes below, or to be dropped onto them, sitting where they were, or into the river. There was a constant rain-of-sand, blown from the plateau above, and running in sand rivulets down the screes above them, running over the edge just as water did, under the force of gravity and with any disturbance to its uneasy equilibrium which always changed.

They were sheltered from that wind down here, but were subjected to air currents carried down the river as though that air was flowing like the water, which it was, but they were mostly sheltered from that too, where they were in the rocks.

“I saw you try to help the girl who got caught as the raft spun around, and then watched you knocked out of the last raft, from up there”—he pointed upriver— “on the other side of the bend.”

He really must have been up there to have seen that! But how…?

“I came across the plateau, and down. I was aiming to spend the night here, in this exact spot tonight anyway, but not quite so soon as this, so I just hurried my pace up, retracing my footsteps from a few years ago, so I knew what faced me.”

He’d been here before?

What she would see was only a quarter of what he’d done. He didn’t tell her anything about the foolish risks he’d run; leaping from the lower outcrops onto sand screes to ride the sand-river down to the next drop-off, until he’d got to the bottom. He’d have quite a climb out… they would… to get back up there again. That climb would take at least an hour, or even two, or more, where it had taken him barely fifteen minutes to get down.

“I got here a couple of minutes before you, and set my rope up to hold us both, or you would have gone all the way down the rapids, one after another below here. There are not many places where your group could hold up and wait for you, unless they had the kind of anchors that the Titanic took down with her.”

He didn’t need to say it, but if he’d missed her, she would not have survived. She already knew that. She owed him her life, not sure how to thank him for that, afraid of what he might want in return.

She looked up at the clear rock face. And clearly thought that what he said about coming down it as fast as he had, was not possible in a normal way. He had taken risks; life-threatening risks to get to her.

She had to ask, to hear his explanation of everything.

“How did you manage to get down so quickly?”

He shrugged as though not to make a big deal of it.

‘Reckless stupidity.’ But he didn’t say that, to describe what he’d done, or to try and describe what had driven him to do it, but something had prodded him along to take risks he would never have dared take at any other time.

He wanted to ask her if she recognized him from anywhere, to put to rest this burning curiosity about where he knew her, where they'd met, and who she was.

“I had a rope and I was already preparing to use it. I intended to come down here anyway, and it was easy enough, though that might not be obvious from down here.” He pointed to his path of descent over each scarp and outcrop. She still didn’t see how he could have got down safely, and as fast as he had.

“I came down too fast for safety, but it was easier than it looks from down here." She doubted that. "You can’t see that, where we are now, but from up there, one can pick a course down the screes, and that was what I did. I had my rope to get down the worst bits.”

He played it all down by understatement. He did not seem to be the blustering braggart as some men were, over-exaggerating small exploits to impress an easily impressed listener, but played the role of the silent, self-effacing hero. She was impressed anyway.

Or maybe she had it all wrong and couldn’t read anyone’s character or purpose. Only time would tell her who, and what he was, and how it would work out for her.

She saw scrapes and cuts on his legs and hands, from where he’d slid, even some recent cuts on his boots, which he seemed otherwise to take care of, and saw his rope, untidily coiled for the moment, lying on his pack. He had fiery red marks behind his right shoulder under his arm, when he turned away from her, with others on his left arm and hands; all from rope burns from coming down so quickly as he’d described.

He’d been lucky not to have lost control and broken a leg, or they would both have been in a hell of a pickle; neither of them likely to survive.

She had been lucky he’d seen her go into the river from up there.

“I’ll make a warm drink in a short while and that will help you get warmer. At least you are not injured that I could see when I first examined you. Do you hurt anywhere? You’ll be bruised for a while and might be stiff in the morning, but we can stay here tonight.”

She shook her head in answer to all of his question after she’d analyzed her own body and pulled the sleeping bag closer around her, putting her legs down, to hide herself from him as she made sure her swimsuit covered her properly down there, but out of his sight, pulling at it to make sure it covered her and was not caught up anywhere between her legs after that series of unexpected surprises, as he’d done that for her too.

She watched him as he took the knots out of his rope; coiling it carefully. Once her mind settled down, she’d be able to ask more meaningful questions about what she could do to join up with her companions again.

He was already thinking beyond the next hour and even the next day, and planning to make his food go further with this extra mouth to feed, and how he could supplement what he had.

His schedule was likely to go off track for a while.

She’d need to stay with him for a few days until they could get somewhere to either find a signal to call out, or where some of the parks’ people could pick her up, if he could signal them. They patrolled the rim and the plateau from time to time, or flew the canyon by helicopter.

Water wouldn’t be a problem, and neither would food if he was careful. He could do with losing another pound or two, but from the looks of her she didn’t need to lose any weight.

The other difficulty that he could immediately see, was that she wasn’t dressed for walking. She had soft sneakers on her feet, drying now by the fire, no socks worth speaking of, also drying, and was too lightly dressed. The nights on the plateau and even down here could be cold, but she wouldn’t be aware of any of those future difficulties yet; not until he explained the realities of this predicament to her. She probably wouldn’t like what he would suggest.

Like it or not, they were stuck with each other.

So much for him getting to the copper mine at Witches’ Cauldron in the next three days.

Not that it mattered. He now had another responsibility to take care of first. A slip in his informal schedule of a day or two wouldn’t kill him. He smiled wryly at that thought.

He would see her to safety, and then get himself back on track without her finding out too much about him.

There was nothing to tell her that she probably didn’t already know about the predicament she’d landed in, but he’d get to all of that after she’d recovered more, got herself warm, and was in a better frame of mind after a warm meal, even if it was only a thick soup with everything in it but the kitchen sink; even some dried strips of beef he’d been saving.

She wouldn’t want to hear that they’d be sharing a sleeping bag tonight, or any of the other realities of this situation, with no privacy; or not much of it, so she’d better not be shy, or a prude, or she’d become a nervous wreck around him.

“You got yourself scraped and are still bleeding. I would like to get some antibiotic cream on those, if you don’t mind.” He pointed to her scrapes.

She sat by the fire for him as he applied some of that cream in tender places she couldn’t easily see for herself, and on her arms. He was gentle, concern for her written across his face.

It was too late to complain about him touching her after he’d already touched all of her, and she meant, all of her.

He was gentle about it and she just had to stay still and hope that he was the kind of man he seemed to be, which few of them ever were.

Now that she could look around, distracting herself from what he was doing for her, she noticed a profusion of brightly colored butterflies crowded on damp patches of sand and mud. They were drinking, or were attracted to something. They seemed almost out of place here, but why shouldn’t they be here? There were wildflowers everywhere that she’d not noticed from the river and focusing only on that, to the exclusion of almost everything else, although there were other areas of the canyon that were well-wooded.

She brought her attention back to what he was doing for her, looking at the top of his head as he dabbed that cream on her lower legs.

She saw that he looked up at her in a puzzled way every so often, wanting to ask her something or wondering about her, as though he might know her, or maybe he was just weighing her up.

His glance did not turn away when she looked at him, but held hers. She was the one who blushingly looked away, her heart thumping furiously at what she could see in his look.