HUNT, Texas — From the north bank of the Guadalupe River, Rough Vine watched as a team of searchers in neon yellow shirts circled a mound of crushed trees near the water’s edge. Suddenly his face turned grim. It was his 10th day volunteering with the massive effort to find bodies — and to provide solace to the families most devastated by Texas Hill Country’s historic flooding on the Fourth of July. Often working solo, Vine had maneuvered his skid steer and flatbed trailer to clear tons of debris carried downstream by the raging waters. So far, the contractor had helped recover the remains of eight people.

Now, even from a distance, he could tell that something new had just been discovered. “A cadaver dog just hit,” he said. “That’s another one.”

Overhead, turkey vultures circled. A field of pulverized rocks and twisted cypress trunks lay between him and the river. His friend owned the property, a wedding venue called Paradise, now transformed by what Vine called “biblical carnage.” At least 11 bodies had been found there alone, he said. The enormity of the tragedy had shaken him.

“This is going to go on for a very long time,” said Vine, 43, a native Texan with muddy alligator boots and neck and knuckle tattoos. “There’s bodies that are encapsulated in that stuff, that are in their tombs.”

Two weeks into a rescue-turned-recovery, the death toll across Central Texas stands at 135, including at least 37 children. About 100 people are still missing, and Gov. Greg Abbott has repeatedly pledged to continue the search until every person is found. But with no end in sight, the task has become a grueling, painstaking slog along 60 miles of the Guadalupe, through communities in Kerr County and farther south.

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“We’re praying that the flooding will shake up some treasures,” Hunt Volunteer Fire Chief Lee Poole said Thursday amid a flurry of volunteers and mutual aid at his tiny station. “We’re being very through because we want the families to have closure. Our goal is to find every soul.”

More than 1,000 local, state and federal responders have been involved, joined by several thousand volunteers such as Vine, who left two young daughters behind when he drove over from near Waco. Others have come from well beyond Texas.

On Thursday, a group located the remains of Lyle Zunker, 7, and his sister, Holland, 3. Their parents, Paula and Reece Zunker, were found a week earlier.

“We are joyful that their bodies have all been found and can be laid to rest, yet we feel absolute sorrow that they are gone from this earth,” Wes Zunker, Reece’s older brother, wrote on Facebook. “For those of you who have been searching alongside us — exhausted, bug bitten, distraught and completely overwhelmed by the amount of destruction … thank you.”

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The search in Hunt resumed Friday morning. Divers and firefighters again plumbed murky brown depths, working from airboats and inflated zodiacs. County officials have questioned what lies beneath the riverbed, though it’s not clear how soon they could dredge it. Sonar crews already have deployed. One report was of a trailer, covered in gravel, 27 feet below the surface.

“We’ve heard accounts of trailer after trailer after trailer being swept into the river with families in them,” County Judge Rob Kelly told a commission meeting. “Can’t find the trailers. … We don’t know how many of them there are.”

The pace of the work has slowed, though remains continue to be found almost daily. At location after location, the same scene repeats — chain saws buzzing and heavy equipment beeping, peeling back the layers. Vine described the challenge bluntly: “The river was a meat grinder.”

Two weeks after the deadly Texas floods, volunteers are determined to try to recover the approximately 100 people still missing. (Video: Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Alisa Shodiyev Kaff/The Washington Post, Photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

About 30 miles down river in Center Point, volunteer firefighter Razor Dobbs drove his side-by-side to the Guadalupe to point out where divers were scouring underwater detritus. On the opposite bank, others were rechecking debris piles. One pile was marked with an orange X and the word “Clean” spray-painted on a piece of plywood propped at its base.

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Dobbs saw a fellow firefighter he knew. He called on his cellphone.

“Y’all hit anything?” he asked.

They’d found a body was the answer. Dobbs had come prepared.

“I can leave some body bags with you,” he said, and a few people rode across to retrieve one.

Dobbs has come full circle. In the early days of the searches, when survivors were still a possibility, he dreaded finding bodies. The first one he spotted, on his family’s riverfront ranch, was so high in a tree that he had to chop the tree down.

The stump is now a grim reminder, and Dobbs stands outside at night and thinks, “There’s people still out there.”

“I can’t escape it,” he said. “We’ve got to get these people home.”

Back in Hunt, at the bend in the road where Crider’s Rodeo & Dancehall draws crowds, Tracy Moore pointed to where her son was using an excavator to clear tangles of cypress along the river. “It’s a little overwhelming,” she said over the sound of Black Hawk helicopters. “We have dog teams out here every day.”

Her 8-year-old great-niece was at Camp Mystic on that horrible night, and Renee Smajstrla died with two other girls and camp director Dick Eastland when he tried to get them all to safety. Her funeral was last weekend; Eastland’s still lies ahead.

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Most of Crider’s already has been mucked out. Yet Moore and her family, which owns the century-old institution, don’t plan to reopen it until next year — “to let the community grieve,” she said.

The trauma runs deep.

In Hunt’s Bumble Bee Hill neighborhood, Corey Jones, 43, is having trouble imagining what life will feel like once her family restores their flood-ravaged house and can move back from the hotel where they’re staying in Kerrville.

“We’re just trying to get back to some normalcy,” she said, sitting under a canopy shade in the front yard. Searchers from the Department of Homeland Security had just combed a creek behind the house for remains.

Jones grew up on the river. Her sons, ages 8 and 18, are avid swimmers and anglers. Along with her husband, they survived the flood by climbing onto the roof and clinging there until they could be rescued hours later.

The older boy hasn’t returned since. The younger boy asks whether they’re really going to stay.