Read Online Never Say Die by Will Hobbs - Free Book Online Page A

thirty or so caribou bulls were making their way down to the river to drink. Only the width of the Firth separated Ryan from those magnificent animals with their huge racks. It must be killing him not to be able to take their pictures.
    I didn’t feel sorry for him. If he hadn’t been so busy taking pictures, he would have seen the ice sooner. There would have been time to row to shore.
    From our separate sides of the river, we watched the bulls go. Ryan walked upriver until he was straight across from me, and hollered that he had seen smoke from my fire. “YOU OKAY?”
    â€œI’M OKAY!”
    â€œTHANK GOD!” He yelled that he thought it was going to rain. “STAY DRY, NICK. STAY PUT.”
    Duh , I thought. I fought the urge to go sarcastic on him. That wouldn’t help a thing. “GOT IT,” I yelled back. “WHAT NOW?”
    â€œI’M GOING TO TRY TO FIND THE RAFT. YOU STAY WHERE YOU ARE. MAYBE IT DIDN’T GO FAR.”
    â€œWHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK?”
    â€œTOMORROW AT THE LATEST! IF I DON’T FIND IT, I’LL SWIM ACROSS TOMORROW. WE WILL GO FARTHER, LOOK FOR IT TOGETHER.”
    â€œGOT IT!”
    Suddenly there came a huge cracking sound, then a second crack. I’d heard that sound my whole life—ice breaking up.
    We both looked upriver, seeing nothing at first. Half a minute later, around a bend, here came the ice, hundreds and thousands of chunks of it, some small, some as big as refrigerators and pickup trucks. The shore-to-shore ice jam that had flipped our raft was soon passing us by in bits and pieces, grinding and scraping and hissing and jostling as it headed for the sea.
    Ten minutes later the river was running clear. Every last trace of the ice had gone out. No doubt we were both thinking the same thing. Too bad we didn’t camp where Red let us off, and launch the next day.
    â€œI BETTER GET GOING!” Ryan hollered. “GOTTA CHASE THE RAFT!” He waved and started hiking downriver at a brisk pace.
    It crossed my mind I might never see him again. The Arctic has a way of swallowing people up. You make a big mistake, most likely you pay for it.
    â€œGOOD LUCK!” I shouted after him. Angry and annoyed and irritated as I was, I was depending on him to come through.

10
MY SIDE OF THE RIVER
    W atchful for that grizzly we had seen swimming the river, I climbed over the top of the riverbank. My fear was rising. I shouldn’t have let Ryan split us up.
    The wind was buffeting my little spruce grove on the knoll. Dark clouds were spitting rain as I came to the clearing among the trees. The fire was out, and I had used up all the dead wood within reach. I crawled into the trees and found a spot to wait out the weather under the dense, sheltering branches.
    Sitting there with zero bear protection, my back against a spruce trunk, I was spooked nearly to puking. Barren-ground grizzlies—tundra grizzlies, Arctic grizzlies, whatever you want to call them—are more aggressive than grizzlies below the Arctic Circle. They have a shorter food-gathering season, which means they have to eat mostly meat. And to get enough meat—mainly caribou, dead or alive—they have to fight each other for it. Only the fierce survive.
    The rain broke loose just before midnight. The layers of live spruce branches above me did a good enough job as a roof. My life jacket shed the drips that found their way through, and the grove knocked the wind down. Lacking rain gear, I was thankful for my thermal underwear, my tight-weave trousers, and my long-sleeved, long-tailed shirt of synthetic fleece.
    I kept thinking about Ryan, wondering how he was doing. Was he taking shelter or still searching for the raft? He’d better watch his step. Break a leg, and we would be even worse off. What about his pepper spray and bear bangers? I couldn’t remember seeing them on his hip. Had he lost them under the ice?
    I slept in fits. Morning came dark and