“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 saving 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—”