Danger on Midnight River (3 page)

Scotty took the bark. “I'm game.” He sipped the hot liquid. “Not bad.”

Brandon picked up one of the pinecones and tossed it into the air. “What are we gonna do with these? Have a war later?”

“Those are part of your breakfast.” Daniel held one of the cones over the fire. When it was warm he easily popped off some of the scales. “See these little winged-looking
seeds?” He put them in his mouth. “They're good.”

“These don't taste all that great.” Daniel pointed to his little cache of berries. “But they'll help fill the empty place in your stomach.”

Scotty stripped off a few of the berries and tossed them in his mouth. “Danny boy, you are amazing.”

A small rock flew through the air and hit Scotty in the chest. Troy sat up and smiled. “You dummies gonna keep all the grub to yourselves or what?”

Scotty threw the rock back. “I think I liked you better when you were unconscious.”

Daniel poured some of the tea for Troy. Troy reached for it, and some of the leaves and pine needles fell out of his shirt. He looked at Daniel. “Would it be okay with you if I unstuffed myself? I feel like a scarecrow. This junk is kinda uncomfortable.”

Daniel nodded. “I don't think you need it any-more. But you still ought to take it easy today.”

“Does that mean you think we should wait another day before we try finding our way out of here?” Bran-don asked.

Daniel nodded again. “Troy wouldn't get too far before we'd have to stop and make another camp, and be-sides”—he looked up at the sky—”it's a little late in the day to start.”

Scotty popped some scales off his pinecone. “Why don't we just stay where we are? Someone's bound to find us sooner or later. Until they do, Troy can rest up.”

“They don't know where we are.” Daniel poured more tea for Troy. “The way I figure it, the driver took a wrong turn about an hour out of town. After that he just kept going. We should have been at Camp Eagle Nest two hours after we left yesterday, but we were still driving after about four hours.”

“You mean we're not even close to the camp?” Scotty's voice rose slightly.

Daniel shook his head. “We could be anywhere. I think the driver knew we were lost and he kept trying different roads hoping to get back on course.”

“What are we going to do?” Troy asked.

“We have three choices. One is to sit here, build a signal fire, and wait. We can hope someone sees it and comes to get us. The second is to walk up this side of the river to the place where the bridge washed out and see if the road leads anywhere.”

“What's the third thing?” Brandon asked.

“The third thing is the most dangerous, but if it works it'll get us home the fastest. We go downstream and find the slowest-moving part of the river and try to get to the other side. Follow the river back upstream to the bridge and then follow the road home.”

“Not me.” Troy shook his head. “Ain't no way this boy is getting back in that water. Forget it.”

Brandon looked at Daniel. “Which way do you want to take?”

“Back across the river.”

Several hours later Daniel dropped his wood by the fire. It was strangely quiet around the camp. Scotty nudged Brandon with his elbow.

Brandon cleared his throat. “We, ah, we took a vote while you were gone.”

Daniel was silent.

“It's just that we think it makes more sense to stay on this side of the river. I mean, it's safer and that road on this side of the bridge has to lead somewhere, doesn't it?”

“We don't want to go against you or anything, Danny boy.” Scotty looked sheepish.
“We appreciate everything you've done and all, but Troy's a little nervous about the water, and to tell you the truth, so am I.”

Daniel knelt by the fire. He didn't look at them. His voice was low. “What if it doesn't lead to anything? It could just be an old forest road the rangers use to check on things up here.”

“We think it's worth a try,” Brandon said.

Daniel stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Maybe it's for the best. If we split up, one of us is bound to find help sooner or later.”

“We don't necessarily have to split up,” Brandon said. “Unless you want to.”

“Like I said, it's probably for the best.”

Troy touched Daniel's shoulder. “No hard feel-ings?”

Daniel shook his head. He looked up at the night sky.
Well, at least I was the hero for a little while. I should have known these guys didn't really want me around. To them I'm still Daniel the nerd
.

Scotty punched him in the arm. “As soon as
we reach civilization we'll come looking for you, Danny boy. Promise.”

Daniel put a log on the fire. He stretched out on the ground and turned over so that they couldn't see his face.

“Right,” he said quietly.

Daniel sat on his heels and watched the water. He had walked downriver for more than two and a half miles, until he'd found a likely-looking spot at which to cross. He had been watching it for a long time. It didn't look too deep, and the current appeared to be slow enough that he could get across without too much trouble.

He thought about the three boys back at the camp and how, for a little while, things had been different among them. For the first time he could remember, Daniel had actually felt
like part of a group. Then they had turned on him.

They had all been asleep when he had silently withdrawn this morn-ing. He had purposely left early so that he wouldn't have to face their empty goodbyes.

Daniel looked at the sky. Dark clouds were forming to the east. It would probably rain before afternoon. He smiled. With any luck, he would be halfway home before it hit.

Still, he didn't move to cross the river. He knew he was stalling. His thoughts kept going back to the trio on the mountain. He doubted they even knew how to start a fire.

Why should I care?
Daniel suddenly stood up and stepped out into the water.

He stopped and thought of what his uncle Smitty would say about his leaving three helpless boys stranded on the mountain.

On the other hand, there's really no rush. Maybe I'll just hang around up here for a while
.

“You and your big ideas.” Brandon paused and looked around them. “Some shortcut,
Scotty. We've been walking for hours, probably in circles. Why do I ever listen to you? We should have crossed the river like Daniel said.”

“Nobody stopped you.” Scotty was breathing hard. “You weren't too anxious to swim across that river last night.”

“That's because last night I was dumb and lis-tened to you two. Daniel knows what he's doing. Didn't you see him? He fed us and kept us dry. Not to mention the fact that he saved Troy's life.”

Troy sat on a log. “Let's take a break. I'm beat. We can argue all we want but it doesn't help our situation. We're lost.” A drop of rain the size of a quarter hit him on the nose. “Great, This is all we need.”

“Come on.” Scotty led the way through the brush. “We need to get under a tree like the one Daniel found, before we get soaked.”

As if on cue, the heavens opened and unleashed a furious downpour. Before they could take ten steps it was raining so hard it was difficult to see where they were going.
The boys crashed through the brush and dove under the first big tree they came to.

The only problem was, the space under the tree happened to be oc-cupied. The little striped animal stamped its feet and hissed in warning. Then it whirled and in a flash sprayed them with foul-smelling liquid.

Scotty got the worst of it right in the face. He screamed and ran back into the rain, holding his hands over his eyes in pain.

Brandon grabbed Scotty's arm and pulled him to another tree Troy had found a few yards away. They huddled together near the base of the tree while the wind blew sheets of rain at them. They were helpless. There was nothing to do but cover their heads and wait the storm out.

Daniel sat back and took a sip of his rainwater tea. The rain was be-ginning to let up. When it was clear enough he would try to pick up the boys' tracks again. Strangely, Brandon, Troy, and Scotty had left the river and cut across the mountain. Their tracks had led him over the tops of two ridges. There was no telling how far they had gone before the rain had hit.

He felt edgy. The newspaper was full of stories about backpackers who had lost their way up here. The Premonition Mountains were famous
for catching inexperienced hikers unaware.

Daniel had never hiked up here. He didn't know these mountains at all. But thanks to the time he had spent with his uncle, he knew there was little chance of his losing his way.

He wished he could say the same for Brandon and the others.
What are they doing?
In the direction they were going they would never cut across the bridge road.

The air was cool, but he was anxious to get started. Taking handfuls of dirt, he doused the little fire. He knew it would be next to impossible to find any tracks after the rain. The best he could hope for was that the boys would continue in the same direction and break off branches here and there, leaving a trail that he could fol-low,

It was slow going. He circled and circled, hoping to find some sign of where they had gone. The noise he was making startled an old doe. She jumped out in front of him and bounded away.

Daniel smiled.
Some backwoodsman, I'm louder than a herd of buffalo
.

The doe drew his attention to some brush off to his right. The bushes had been trampled recently and hadn't had a chance to recover. Daniel pushed some of them aside. Under one was the clear imprint of a tennis shoe, now filled with muddy waterHe looked in the direction the boys appeared to be heading. It didn't make sense. Why would they try to cross the Premoni-tions —unless they were lost? If they were, it would make his job even harder. They could change direction at any time.

Daniel wondered if he had made a mistake. Maybe it would have been better for him to cross the river and get help instead of wandering around up here. He cupped his hands and yelled for the others. There was no answer.

He decided to keep going. If he lost their trail now, he might never be able to find them. When the van didn't show up at Camp Eagle Nest, he fig-ured, they'd send out search parties. A lot would depend on how wide an area they covered. The searchers wouldn't be able to spot the van at all now. On his trip
downriver he had discovered that it had completely sunk below the surface.

Anyway, he doubted if a search party would think to look on this side of the mountain range. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that the driver had taken them close to a hundred miles in the wrong direction.

Daniel worked the area carefully. He cut their trail again near an ancient pine tree. The dirt and pine needles under the tree had been packed down. He studied the place where the three boys had waited out the rain, and scratched his head.

The tree was on the wrong side of a small ravine. They had been sitting facing the wind as it drove the heavy rain in at them. To stay dry, all they would have had to do was move to a tree on the other side of the ravine, or move around to the other side of this tree.