White Water Terror

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 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-”

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 Bess,” 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!