“Anyway, I’m just as glad things got screwed up with the rental car and that we didn’t have to drive this road last night,” Ned said. “With all these twists and turns, it’s dangerous enough in broad daylight. I don’t think we—”
“Ned!” Nancy yelled. “Stop!”
Just a few yards ahead of the front bumper, the road vanished into thin air.
Bess gasped.
Ned jammed his foot on the pedal, making the brakes squeal. “Oh, no!” George screamed. “We’re going over!”
Chapter
Three
THE RENTAL CAR screeched around in a circle before skidding erratically to a halt. The four friends sat for a moment in stunned silence, once again staring at the sheer emptiness ahead. The road was completely gone, carried down the cliff and into the ravine by a massive rockslide.
“Ned!” Nancy exclaimed, her horror mixed with limp relief. “If you hadn’t stopped when you did . . .”
“We’re just lucky it was daylight,” Ned said soberly.
Shuddering, Nancy peered down into the ravine where the slide had loosened enormous boulders and huge gray slabs of asphalt. “We would have been killed if we’d dropped down there!” She looked around. “Is everybody okay?”
Bess rubbed her head. A bump was beginning to appear where she had hit her head against the car window. “I think so,” she said in a dazed voice. “Good thing we were wearing seat belts.”
“But why isn’t there a barricade across the road?” George asked, jumping out of the car and stepping cautiously to the edge of the drop-off.
“Maybe the slide just happened,” Ned suggested.
Nancy got out and looked around. “I don’t think so,” she said. “There are signs of erosion down there, and even a few weeds in the rubble. I’d say this road has been out of commission for weeks, at least.”
Bess came to stand beside Nancy. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to something orange half-hidden behind a pile of brush a dozen yards below. “Isn’t that a barricade?”
George scrambled partway down the slope. “It is a barricade,” she called. “It looks as if somebody tried to hide it!”
“You mean somebody tried to kill us?” Bess asked.
Nancy frowned. “I don’t think we can draw that conclusion from the evidence,” she said slowly. “All we know is that the road is out and the barricade is missing.”
“That barricade was deliberately hidden,” George corrected her breathlessly, climbing back up to the road. “There’s no way it could have accidentally gotten covered up under all that brush.” She shivered. “You know, Nancy, as Ned was saying a few minutes ago, if we’d driven up here last night after dark—the way we were supposed to—we wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“That’s true,” Nancy said. “But we don’t know that the barricade was removed just for our benefit. A road crew might have come to inspect the slide and forgotten to put it back up.”
“Well, maybe you’re right,” Bess said, looking pale and shaken. “But I don’t know. Between this and your phone call, Nancy, the whole thing looks really suspicious.”
“You’re right,” Nancy agreed. “I’d say that we have to be on our guard.”
“In fact,” Bess said hopefully, “maybe we ought to reconsider.” She turned to George. “Haven’t we already had enough excitement for one trip?”
Ned had managed to turn the car around, and the girls got back in. “Well, what now?” he asked.
Nancy looked at the others. “Do you want to go back to Great Falls and take the next plane home? Or do we keep trying to find Lost River?”
“I want to get to the bottom of this thing,” said George. “And I’m stubborn. I don’t want to give up my prize.” She looked around. “But just because I’m crazy, doesn’t mean you all have to stay. I’ll understand if anybody decides to go back home.”
Bess heaved a sigh of resignation. “If George is staying, I guess I will, too.”
Ned reached over and ruffled Nancy’s hair. “I’m in this as long as you are, Nan,” he said.
“In that case,” Nancy said briskly, “we’d better find an alternative route. This road isn’t going anywhere but down.” She pulled a state highway map out of the glove compartment and began to compare it to the map they had been given. “I think I see how to get there,” she reported after several minutes. “Let’s go back to the last fork in the road and take a left. Then it looks like we take two more left turns—we’ll be there in thirty or forty minutes.”
“You’re the detective,” Ned replied cheerfully, and drove back down the mountain.
Thirty minutes later, they pulled up at Lost River Junction, a small cluster of weathered, tired-looking wooden sheds huddled under tall pine trees beside the road. As Nancy got out of the car, she saw that one of the sheds sported a crude sign that said White Water Rafting in crooked letters. The sign looked new, she noticed, in contrast to the old building. Down the hill, behind the building, she glimpsed a group of people standing on the bank of a river, next to two big rubber rafts.
“Looks like we’ve made it—finally,” Ned announced, turning off the ignition.
“Fantastic!” George exclaimed. She got out of the car, her concern about the trip momentarily forgotten. “Listen to that river!”
“I hate to tell you guys this,” Bess remarked, “but I hear roaring. Loud roaring.”
“Right,” Ned said, opening the trunk and beginning to pull out their gear. “Sounds like a pretty big falls not far away.” Grinning, he handed Bess her duffel bag. “That’s what white water rafting is all about, you know, Bess. Water falling over the rocks. It always makes a noise.”
Bess took the bag, shaking her head.
Nancy slung her backpack over her shoulder and followed George to the river. She was wearing khaki-colored safari shorts and a red knit polo shirt, a sweatshirt tied around her neck. The sun felt warm on her shoulders.
“Hi!” George said, hailing a tall, thin-faced young woman who was standing beside one of the rafts. “I’m George Fayne. Can you tell me where to find Paula Hancock? She runs White Water Rafting.”
The young woman looked up. Nancy couldn’t tell whether she was surprised to see them. “I’m Paula,” the woman said. She was in her early twenties, Nancy judged, wiry-thin and tense, like a nervous animal. “You’re late. We expected you last night.”
George bristled. “Yeah. Well, you might say that we’ve been victims of circumstance. That map you left for us at the airport took us on a wild-goose chase, and then we—”
Nancy stepped in. “Then we got lost,” she interrupted smoothly, leaning her backpack against a tree. She threw George a warning glance. There wasn’t any point in alerting Paula Hancock to their suspicions. If she had anything to do with the warning phone call or the missing barricade, Nancy didn’t want to put her on her guard. “I’m Nancy Drew,” she said, holding out her hand and studying Paula. “George invited me to come along.”
“Glad to have you,” Paula replied brusquely. She ignored Nancy’s hand. She had odd amber eyes, Nancy noticed, cold and remote.
Nancy shivered as though somebody had dropped an ice cube down her neck. “Have we . . . have we met?” she asked hesitantly. Those eyes—where had she seen them?
Paula straightened up. “I don’t think so,” she said more casually. “Not unless you’ve been up here before.”
“No,” Nancy said. “This is my first trip to Montana.” She was sure she had never met Paula, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew those eyes.
Paula turned to a dark, good-looking young man in a faded blue denim work shirt and jeans, who was loading a radio into one of the rafts. “Max, come and meet our grand-prize winner, Georgia Fayne. Max is an expert river-rafter,” she said, turning back to George and Nancy. “He’ll handle one of our rafts. I’m taking the other.”
“It’s not Georgia, it’s George,” George said, shaking Max’s hand. “This is my friend Nancy. And B
ess,” she added as the others came up, “and Ned. We’re really looking forward to the trip. Ned’s been on a raft trip before, but the rest of us are novices.”
“Glad to meet you,” Max said. A long, hairline scar cut across the corner of his square jaw, giving him a lopsided look. He smiled at Bess as he shook her hand, his dark eyes glinting appreciatively. “Real glad.”
Nancy looked at Max closely. The voice on the phone could just as easily have been a man’s voice as a woman’s. In her experience, it was better to consider everybody a candidate for suspicion. And Max looked like a likely one. But then, so did Paula. Since she was the owner of White Water Rafting, she must have been responsible for the contest—and for that killer map. Nancy decided to watch both of them closely.
Paula glanced at the sleeping bags and packs that Ned was carrying. “Go ahead and stow your gear in Max’s raft,” she commanded. “The sooner we get started, the better.” She frowned at Max. “Did you check the batteries before you loaded the emergency radio?”
Max nodded. “Sure thing,” he said carelessly. “Can’t be out on the river with a radio we don’t trust, can we?”
“Hi! Let me show you where to put those.” A pretty girl walked over to Ned and took one of the sleeping bags from him. She was petite and willowy, and her ash-blond hair swept softly over her shoulders. “I’m Samantha,” she told him in a soft southern drawl. “But my friends call me Sammy.”
“Well . . . sure,” Ned said, with a shrug and a quick glance at Nancy. He followed Sammy to the raft. Paula went along, too, calling out instructions for stowing the gear.
Nancy looked at George. “Maybe we should meet some of the others,” she suggested, pointing to a group of kids standing beside one of the rafts.
“Okay,” George said. “I’m looking forward to—”
George didn’t get to finish her sentence. Suddenly the air around them exploded in a series of sharp, staccato sounds, like gunshots fired in rapid succession. Somebody was shooting at them!
Chapter
Four
GET DOWN!” NANCY yelled, pulling George with her in a wild dash for the shelter of a nearby tree. The gunshots continued, echoing through the trees. Crouching low, Nancy waved frantically at several other kids who were still standing beside the rafts, out in the open. “Get down!” she yelled. “Somebody’s shooting!”
“Oh, come on,” one of the girls called back. “That’s not a gun. It’s just Tod and Mike shooting their dumb firecrackers.” The explosions stopped suddenly and there was absolute quiet, except for the sound of the falls.
“What?” Nancy stood up and looked around. “Tod and Mike? Firecrackers?”
“Those two clowns love practical jokes,” the girl explained, coming over to them with a smile. “Firecrackers under a trash can. They’ve been at it all morning.” The girl was short, thin, and dark-haired, and she had a nervous intensity that reminded Nancy of Paula.
Nancy let out the breath she’d been holding. She felt her pulse slow down to its normal rate.
“Hah! We sure scored one on you, didn’t we?” The boy who came running to Nancy and George looked very pleased with himself. He was short and stocky and wore a pair of faded cutoffs and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “I’m Tod. And this is Mike.” He pointed to the boy who had followed him over. The accomplice was tall and thin, his legs looking like pipestems in his frayed cutoffs.
“Listen, you guys, I don’t think it was funny at all,” George protested, coming out from behind the tree. “You scared us to death!”
But Nancy just said mildly, “Yeah, you sure scored one. We were pretty scared.” Were Tod and Mike really immature enough to think it was funny to frighten people like that?
“Well, I’ve got to say this,” Mike observed, looking at Nancy appraisingly. “You sure think fast and act fast—for a girl.” He grinned and shuffled his feet. Maybe, thought Nancy, he was shy.
The dark-haired girl spoke up. “I’m Mercedes.” She pointed to two others who had come up behind her. “This is Linda and this is Ralph. I guess you’ve already met Sammy,” she added, looking toward the raft, where Sammy was standing close to Ned, talking animatedly with him.
Nancy followed her glance. “Yes,” she said wryly, wondering if Sammy was going to be another Sondra—or worse. “We’ve already met Sammy. She seems very . . . friendly. And helpful.”
“Yeah, that’s Sammy, all right.” Tod nudged Mike. “Very friendly. And very helpful.”
Linda was a delicate, fragile-looking girl with a narrow, pointed face that reminded Nancy of a princess in a fairy-tale book. Ralph, slender with intense black eyes, was probably the scholarly type. He seemed a little out of place next to Tod and Mike, both of whom looked as if they’d grown up in the woods. Nancy listened carefully to them as Mercedes introduced them, trying to detect any trace of the voice that had made the phone call. But the week-old memory of a muffled voice wasn’t much to go on.
However, after a few minutes of conversation, Nancy had found out some essential details about their companions. Except for Nancy, Ned, Bess, and George, everyone seemed to be from the area, which struck Nancy as a little odd. Hadn’t George said that the contest was national? If that was true, why weren’t there any winners from other parts of the country? Mercedes turned out to be Paula’s cousin, a fact which didn’t surprise Nancy, given the nervous energy they seemed to share. Linda and Ralph were both from Great Falls and appeared to be close friends—also not surprising, Nancy thought, since they, too, seemed alike, both quiet and shy. Tod and Mike came from a nearby small town and, according to them, were experienced rafters.
“There’s not much about Lost River that we don’t know,” Tod bragged. “We’ve made half a dozen trips down it in the past couple of years. We could handle these rafts ourselves, without any trouble—and all the gear, too. Like the radio, for instance. Isn’t it a beauty?” He jerked his thumb toward Mike. “Mike here is the expert on this baby. Right, Mike?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “Radios are my hobby.”
“Is rafting dangerous?” George asked excitedly. She sounded as if she wished it were, but she wasn’t sure she should. She cocked an ear. “It sounds dangerous,” she said, listening to the thundering of the falls.
Mike shrugged. “Not if you know what you’re doing.” He cast a meaningful glance at Max, who had just joined the group and was busily talking to Bess. “Of course, if you’re careless or just plain dumb, somebody’s going to get hurt—or worse.” Nancy thought that Mike sounded as if he were challenging Max’s raft-handling ability. She wondered if he knew something about Max that the others didn’t.
Max turned to Mike. “Lost River is always dangerous,” he said flatly. “It doesn’t matter how much skill you have. The worst thing you can do is take it for granted.”
Linda and Bess looked frightened. “You mean the rafts aren’t safe?” Linda said haltingly.
“A raft is always safe as long as it is right-side-up and everybody stays on it,” Mike replied, with another challenging look at Max.
“Do they capsize often?” Bess asked, glancing at George and putting special emphasis on the word capsize. Nancy hid a smile. Bess was learning the vocabulary.
“Hardly ever.” Max tipped his cap toward the back of bis head.
“As long as you don’t get careless,” Tod put in. “If you do . . .”
“Right,” Max said, avoiding Mike’s eyes. He put his hand casually on Bess’s arm. “Listen, Bess, if you’re scared, ride along with me, and I’ll show you what to watch out for. That way, you’ll understand what’s going on.”
A happy smile lit Bess’s face. “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to.”
Nancy and George exchanged worried looks. Why did Bess have to give away her heart on a moment’s notice? They’d have to talk with her first chance they got and warn her.
For the time being, Nancy just wanted some answers to the questions that had been b
othering her all along. How much did the others know about the contest? George couldn’t remember entering it—could they? She turned to Linda. “So,” she said, “another lucky winner. Tell me how you won the contest.”
Linda shook her head. “You know, it’s funny,” she replied timidly. “When the letter from Paula Hancock came, I was completely surprised. I couldn’t even remember entering a contest.”
“Me, neither,” Ralph volunteered. “Linda and I have talked about it, and neither one of us can figure out exactly how we got here.”
Nancy looked at Mike and Tod. “What about you?” she asked.
Tod shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t remember entering, but I might have. You know how it goes. When you see a contest at a store or something, you always put your name in the box. I figure that’s what happened here. I probably entered it at the sporting goods store.”
“Yeah,” Mike put in. “When we got the letters we couldn’t remember exactly.” He glanced around with a slightly puzzled look on his face. “In fact, neither of us could remember ever hearing about White Water Rafting, which is kind of funny, since we live so close by. It must be a new company.”
“What does it matter how any of us got here?” Mercedes interrupted quickly, stepping forward. “We’re all going to have the time of our lives—and White Water Rafting is paying for the whole thing! What’s the point of asking all these questions?”
Before Nancy could answer, Paula hurried over to them, followed by Ned and Sammy. Nancy noticed that Sammy was casting very interested glances at Ned—and that Ned didn’t seem at all reluctant. In fact, he was laughing at something Sammy had said.
Nancy gave an inward sigh. This was supposed to be a time when she and Ned could get reacquainted with each other. But with all the distracting questions and frightening events, it was beginning to look more like a case than a vacation. And Sammy was giving her something else to worry about.