from falling asleep. She circled the camp-
ground, then walked halfway down the road
that led to the highway. Stopping just before
the last bend, she saw a truck move by, its
empty rear end rattling.
She tensed. It seemed odd to be traveling
through the park at that hour. Without stop-
ping to think, she raced down the road, reach-
ing the highway just in time to see the truck
turn into the woods about a quarter of a mile
east. It looked to Nancy to be near the spot
where Piker and Richard had been working on
the new trail.
She jogged to the place where the truck had
disappeared, realizing that there was a dirt
access road there. The maintenance men had
probably used it to move supplies into their
work area.
Nancy turned in and kept running. She’d
covered about a half a mile when she saw the
truck parked up ahead. She slowed and made
her way up to it cautiously.
She heard a low voice on the far side of the
cab. It was Richard! A flashlight clicked on,
illuminating the figures of the two mainte-
nance men.
“Hurry up,” Piker said. “We’ve got a lot of
work to do.”
“Yeah,” Richard replied. “I’m not looking
forward to carrying all those cages.”
Nancy’s spine stiffened. That meant the
marmots had to be stashed someplace near-
by.
The two men began moving forward. Nancy
followed at a safe distance. The access road
ended about twenty feet beyond the truck,
dwindling into a path that wound up a hill-
side.
Her calf muscles were feeling the strain of
the climb, and she began to notice that the
trees were thinning out. Nancy spied a cabin to
the right of the trail. Piker unlocked the door
and the two of them went inside.
Nancy circled the cabin and saw a small
window in the back. She crept up to it, pulled
herself up, and peered in through the dusty
pane.
Her breath caught in her throat. Lining the
walls were dozens of cages of marmots. Nancy
could hear Piker. “That tranquilizer is strong.
They’ll be under for a few hours, plenty of
time to get them all into the truck and out of
here.” .
“How much longer do we have to hang
around here?” Richard asked.
Piker shrugged. “Until the boss gets back.
He said he wanted to nose around the camp to
make sure the kiddies were all in bed.”
Nancy let herself down from the window.
Any minute the boss could come back. She had
to get out of sight. She was turning to go when
two strong hands grabbed her and forced her
arms up behind her back!
Chapter Fourteen
Nancy’s captor hustled her around to the
front of the cabin, kicked the door open, and
shoved her through. She stumbled into the
light and fell to the floor. Piker and Richard
spun around, startled.
“We’ve got a visitor,” a familiar voice an-
nounced.
Nancy looked up. Jack Billings was standing
next to the open door, a revolver in his hand
pointed toward her.
She sat up cautiously as he approached. The
gun was about two feet from her face when she
noticed the bum scar on his hand.
Just then everything fell into place.
“Hello, Jeff,” she said as calmly as she
could. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that keep-
ing the same initials when you take an alias is
one of the oldest mistakes in the book?”
“You have been doing some investigating,
haven’t you?” he said.
Nancy swallowed. She desperately needed to
play for time. If she could stall the three of
them, Ned might come searching for her or
one of the patrol cars Martin Robbins had
assigned to the area might check up the access
road.
“Your poaching plan was pretty clever,” she
told Jack. “How did you come up with it?”
Jack leaned back against the doorjamb but
kept the gun pointed at Nancy. “I saw an
article a while back about Randy Dean and his
marmots. It said that people were paying a lot
of money for them.”
Nancy nodded, and he continued, apparent-
ly glad to have an appreciative audience. “A