Canyon Sacrifice (12 page)

The Santa Fe Railroad had constructed Hermit Trail in 1898 as an alternative to Bright Angel Trail, a private and expensive toll route into the canyon prior to the creation of the national park in 1913. Though Hermit was the best-maintained trail in the canyon during its years of operation by the railroad, it fell into disrepair in the decades following the establishment of the national park and the subsequent opening to all comers of the more-central Bright Angel Trail. Nowadays, the eight-mile stretch of Hermit Trail to Hermit Creek campground was rocky and unmaintained, providing an arduous but direct route to the string of campsites along the perennial waters of Hermit Creek deep in the inner canyon.

Louis Boucher built Boucher Trail in the early 1890s, a few years prior to the construction of Hermit Trail by the railroad. Though the route to Hermit Creek campground via Boucher Trail was several miles longer than via Hermit Trail, the meandering Boucher Trail was not nearly as steep, providing a reasonable alternative to Hermit Trail for backpackers descending to the backcountry campground, with the added benefit of water replenishment at Dripping Spring along the way.

“You're not planning to head into the canyon right now, are you?” said a stern voice at Chuck's side.

A swarthy young man in ranger garb had taken up a place next to Chuck in the shade of the information board. The man,
in his early twenties, had close-set eyes, tightly coiled black hair, and thick eyebrows that almost came together above the bridge of his large nose. His uniform lacked a ranger's badge. Its absence marked him as what full-time park staffers derisively called a “student ranger,” one of the recent college graduates from around the country who rotated through the park as part of the Student Conservation Association's National Park Service Academy. The young man held his arms an inch or two out from his sides to show he was ready for whatever Chuck might bring at him.

Chuck opened his mouth to reply. Then, thinking of his altercation with the guy on Maricopa Point, he went back to studying the map in front of him.

“
Sprechen sie Englisch
?” the student ranger insisted.

“
Ja
,” Chuck answered.

The student ranger shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “No—go—walk—canyon—hot!” he proclaimed, louder this time, breaking off each word.

Chuck kept his eyes on the map, his mouth shut. He knew from his many ranger friends that park rangers, student and otherwise, were attracted by their nature to the orderly world of rules and regulations promised by park-service work. All of Chuck's ranger friends disliked the fact that hikers could choose for themselves when to set off into and out of the canyon. Indeed, Grand Canyon rangers regularly argued in favor of a ban on midday hiking in the canyon during summer months, though the ban never had been imposed.

“Look at it this way,” Chuck said each time the subject came up. “People stupid enough to hike in the canyon in hundred-degree heat get what they deserve.”

“Except we're the ones who have to save their sorry asses,” came the response. “People call up, say they're a little overheated, and would we please send a rescue chopper for them? Oh, and
by the way, they've got dinner reservations at El Tovar, so could we get a move on?”

“But you charge them for it,” Chuck would rejoin. “It's called job security.”

At Chuck's side, the student ranger sounded off again, this time nearly yelling in his ear, “You—understand? No—canyon—now!”

Chuck tensed. Rather than whirl and lay into the young man, he rolled his shoulders and rocked back on his heels. “Got it, thanks,” he said. He walked away before the student ranger could say anything more.

Chuck grunted to himself as he headed down the rocky trail away from the information board. The young man was right. Chuck should not be setting off into the canyon this time of day in the middle of the summer. The temperature was easily in the nineties at the canyon rim. That meant inner-canyon temps were well over a hundred, dangerously hot, and it wasn't even noon yet.

When he was out of the student ranger's earshot, Chuck ducked into a patch of broken shade beneath a trailside piñon and punched the return-call button on his phone.

“You're there?” came the same disembodied computer voice as before.

“I'm on the phone with you, aren't I?”

“Start down into the canyon on Hermit/Boucher.” The person at the other end of the line pronounced the French surname of the old hermit correctly,
boo-shay
. “Call again from each trail junction.”

“Should I call from Waldron junction or the Hermit/Boucher split?”

Little-traveled Waldron Trail descended from farther west along the canyon rim to meet up with the combined Hermit/Boucher trail just above where the two trails diverged. The trail
junctions were less than a quarter mile apart.

“Don't be smart,” came the quick reply, followed by the rustling of a map. Chuck awarded himself a point.

“Hermit/Boucher,” the computerized voice said.

“I don't know how long my phone battery will last.”

“Our conversations will be short. Long as you don't call anyone else, you shouldn't have a problem. And one more thing: there's nothing to be gained by lying about your location. We'll be tracking you.”

Chuck looked out from beneath the tree. A handful of tourists stood at the overlook railing. A few more made their way to and from the bathroom. A half-dozen or so, finished sightseeing, sat on the sheltered benches at the edge of the shuttle-bus turnaround waiting for the next bus back to the village. No one appeared the least bit suspicious.

“Anything else?” Chuck asked.

“Enjoy your hike.”

The line went dead.

Chuck put away his phone and stepped back into the sunlight. The student ranger glowered at him from the information board, his arms crossed. Chuck gave him an informal salute and headed down the trail.

The heat set to work on him within minutes. The pocket of air trapped between his scalp and baseball cap grew oven-hot beneath the blazing sun. Sweat barely gathered on his brow before it evaporated, leaving a grainy film of salt on his skin. Before pulling on his hiking socks and boots in the camper, Chuck had slathered the soles of his feet with petroleum jelly—the lubrication would keep his soles from blistering and peeling off in the intense heat. The jelly turned to squishy liquid as he walked. He sloshed down the trail, his boots twin buckets of hot grease, the air around him thick with the oily smell of an auto repair shop.

He sipped a mouthful of water every few minutes from a
tube leading to a three-liter bladder stowed in his pack. Already, time was working against him. No matter how much he drank, he could not maintain his body's minimum level of hydration in the extreme heat of the inner canyon.

Though crowded with day-hikers and backpackers at the beginning and end of each day, the trail was deserted now, the silence broken only by the accusatory
rach-chat-chat-chat
of cicadas buzzing from trailside tree branches. A steady breeze, hellishly hot, blew upward from the superheated depths of the canyon, scorching Chuck's lungs.

He considered explaining to the computerized voice the insanity of venturing into the canyon in the middle of a day as hot as this, but he knew any request to wait until evening to make the descent would be summarily rejected. He'd known what he was in for when he'd loaded up at camp. In addition to the three-liter bladder he was steadily draining, another was stowed in the bottom of his daypack. The question was whether the combined gallon and a half of water was enough to get him to Hermit Creek, where he could cool off, drink his fill, and replenish the two bladders.

But he wasn't headed to Hermit Creek, and he knew it.

In all the time Chuck had spent at the Grand Canyon, he'd never hiked the inner canyon in the middle of a hot summer day. He had, however, floated a raft down the Colorado River through the canyon during a searing July a decade ago. The torturous heat would have been incapacitating had it not been for the cold water beneath his raft. The river ran a refrigerator-like fifty degrees after it was freed from the base of seven-hundred-foot-tall Glen Canyon Dam upstream. The river water through the canyon was so cold, in fact, that an additional hazard to canyon backpackers, along with heatstroke and cliff fall, was death by drowning. Upon reaching the bottom of the canyon, unsuspecting hikers regularly took what they believed would
be refreshing dips in the river, only to be shocked by the frigid water and swept to their deaths—though for Chuck, hiking nearly a vertical mile above the river, such a fate was the stuff only of dreams.

He rounded the last of the trail's initial switchbacks off the canyon rim and came to a quarter-mile section of trail known as the Chalk Stairs, a series of steps chipped more than a century ago by the Santa Fe Railroad's trail-building crew into a half-mile-wide slab of sloping limestone along the route previously laid out by Louis Boucher. At the time of their construction, the steps provided a secure means of descent for mule-borne tourists down the pitched slab of white rock to the broad, flat bench of tan Coconino sandstone beyond. But a hundred years of erosion had worn away the steps, resulting in a sloped ditch filled with marble-sized pebbles that made for treacherous footing.

The sun's rays reflected off the expanse of limestone, bumping up the temperature a few degrees. Chuck's body temperature rose along with the air temperature as he edged his way down the hazardous section of trail. He doffed his cap and wiped the long sleeve of his hiking shirt across his broiling brow. If Miguel were trying to kill him, this descent might well do it.

Waves of heat rose from the surface of the limestone and bounced off the legs of his lightweight hiking pants. His sunscreen-coated face and hands, the only portions of his skin exposed to the sun, were puffy and stiff.

At last, he left the expanse of sloping limestone and followed the trail, now smooth and flat, across the top of the Coconino sandstone layer, past the Waldron Trail junction, toward the place where, a few hundred feet ahead, the leading edge of the Coconino layer fell away into the canyon. There, the Hermit/Boucher trails divided. Boucher Trail headed west along the top of the sandstone layer while Hermit Trail angled north, dropping through a rare break in the Coconino and into the inner canyon.

Low yucca, a few prickly pear cacti, and a smattering of chest-high creosote bushes sprouted amid scattered rocks. Otherwise, the area around the trail junction was a desolate Mars-scape of scattered boulders and shimmering sand.

Chuck hit redial on his phone as he approached the trail split. One ring. Two. Finally, the computerized voice: “We've got you at Hermit/Boucher.”

“How's Carmelita?”

“She'll be fine—as long as you keep moving.”

Before Chuck could respond, the muffled report of a gun blast sounded directly behind him.

T
HIRTEEN

Noon

Chuck dropped his phone and dove for cover behind the nearest creosote bush. He knelt, trembling, behind the scant protection of the bush's spindly branches. He swung around, quickly ascertaining that the closest real cover was several hundred yards away, where a small stand of piñons clung to a north-facing slope below the canyon rim.

Nothing moved in the direction of the piñons—but the sound of the gunshot had been far closer than the stand of trees. He drew a stream of air past his dry tongue, fighting for control. He held his position, unmoving, his knees hot in the burning sand.

No follow-up shot came. No sign of an assailant. In fact, as with Chuck's own predicament, there was nowhere in the immediate vicinity for an assailant to hide.

Chuck mentally replayed the sound of the shot. It had come from behind him and, though explosively loud, had seemed somehow stifled.

He sat back on his haunches and slapped a hand to his forehead, unzipped his daypack, and looked inside. Sure enough, slimy white goo was sprayed across the interior—melted yogurt expelled in the explosion of a previously unopened bag of yogurt-covered pretzels he'd brought from camp. The steadily rising heat had built the pressure inside the vacuum-sealed bag until, like stepping on a balloon, the bag had exploded with the concussive force of a gunshot, spraying melted yogurt and bits of pulverized pretzel throughout the pack's interior, and sending Chuck scrambling for cover.

He climbed wearily to his feet. The heat was playing games with his head. How long until it affected his physical abilities as well?

He zipped his pack closed and retrieved his phone. “Still there?” he asked.

“Continue down the trail,” came the computerized voice. “Hermit, not Boucher. Call when you reach the ridgeline.”

“I know where you're sending me.”

“Of course you do.” The caller hung up.

Chuck shoved the phone back in his pocket. Miguel was proving himself every bit as smart as Janelle and Clarence claimed him to be. Somehow, the girls' father knew the canyon trail system and the correct pronunciation of Boucher. And he knew where to send Chuck, and why.

Chuck had told a number of people about his discovery over the course of his career. A dozen, maybe more, almost all of them early on. He'd been young and full of himself when he'd first dropped hints to others about his find. The Southwest archaeological community had been different back then, freer, more open. Chuck and his peers had shared secrets with one another they never would today, not after what had transpired in the years since.