His right foot vanished.
He cursed.
The rope snapped tight.
Now he was being pulled forward.
The woman saw immediately what would happen.
“No!”
He tried to step back.
Wrong.
The unstable edge crumbled beneath him.
He dropped to one knee.
The rope shifted.
The fallen log rolled several inches.
“Let go!” he shouted.
“No!”
“If I go in, we both die!”
“Stop pulling me!”
“What?”
“Stop pulling me!”
The mountain man stared at her.
“Use my weight as the counterbalance!”
He understood.
She wrapped both arms around the rope.
“Shift left!”
He moved.
“Not toward me! Around the log!”
He limped sideways.
The rope slid over bark.
The force redirected.
Her body became the lower anchor.
His weight moved across a stable patch.
The log settled.
For several terrible seconds, nobody moved.
Then the mountain man found solid ground.
He leaned backward.
The woman used the tension to pull one knee upward.
Mud released.
Then the other.
Her body rose horizontally onto the surface.
She crawled.
The mountain man pulled.
She crawled again.
Leaves.
Roots.
Solid ground.
Her fingers grabbed a fern stem.
Useless.
Then his wrist.
Strong.
Warm.
He pulled once.
She slid onto solid earth.
Neither moved.
The woman lay facedown.
The mountain man lay beside her.
Both breathing like hunted animals.
For almost a minute, the forest returned to silence.
Then the mountain man said:
“You nearly killed me.”
Her face remained against the leaves.
“You nearly killed yourself.”
“I came to rescue you.”
“You came to yank me out like a fence post.”
“It usually works.”
“For fence posts.”
He turned his head.
She turned hers.
Their faces were perhaps a foot apart.
Mud covered her cheek.
Mud covered his beard.
Then he laughed.
A low, exhausted laugh.
She tried not to.
Failed.
Within seconds both were laughing so hard it hurt.
The mountain man rolled onto his back.
“You’re impossible.”
She stared up at the redwood canopy.
“So I’ve been told.”
His laughter stopped.
Something in her tone had changed.
He looked toward her.
She pushed herself upright.
The effort revealed that she was shaking.
Hard.
The mountain man sat too.
“Cold?”
“Everything.”
He removed his heavy overshirt.
She immediately said:
“No.”
“Wasn’t asking.”
He placed it around her shoulders.
She almost protested again.
Then the warmth reached her skin.
She stopped.
The mountain man looked at her scattered basket.
Most of the contents were gone.
She followed his gaze.
“Three weeks.”
“What?”
“Some of those roots took three weeks to collect.”
He rose carefully.
His limp was worse now.
The woman noticed.