White Water Terror

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 his 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 bothering 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.

“Okay, everybody. The rafts are loaded,” Paula announced. “Now, I’m going to give you a few important instructions.” She pointed toward the rafts, big rubber boats eighteen or twenty feet long and five or six feet wide. One was pulled up on the shore, the other was in the river, moored with a line.

“See those wooden platforms toward the stern, where the oars are? Max and I sit on them. Everybody else sits down inside the raft-no standing up, no clowning around. Wear your life vest all the time, no matter how uncomfortable it gets. Pick a buddy-if anything happens, keep your eye on your buddy and be responsible for each other.” She looked around the group. “Any questions?”

When nobody answered, she said, “Okay, then, let’s get going. The first major falls is only about fifty yards downstream. It’s too dangerous to raft over, so we’ll take the sluice to the left to avoid the worst of it. It’s a sort of natural waterslide along the left shore, and it’s much tamer than the falls. We know what we’re doing, but it’ll be rough going for a few minutes, so hang on.” She eyed Nancy. “I’m assigning you to the raft on the right, Nancy. Climb aboard. There are some life vests stowed under the platform.”

The raft was moored to the shore with a line tied to a stake stuck in the mud. Nancy pulled it toward her and clambered aboard, scrambling awkwardly over a small heap of supplies and equipment stowed in the middle of the raft. The raft bobbed violently under her weight, and she grabbed for a handhold. She could feel the current tugging against the mooring line as if it were trying to tear the raft free.

Suddenly the line gave, jolting her to her knees as the raft swept away. The turbulent current of Lost River was pulling Nancy directly toward the falls!