But by the time a car was available, it was late. They had spent the night at the only place they could find-a motel next door to the airport, where jets seemed to plow through the bedrooms every hour on the hour. Dragging themselves out of bed, they were on the road by five o’clock-anxious to get to Lost River Junction before the rafts left at nine.

“Well,” Ned said, rolling down the window and taking a deep breath, “now that we’re here, I’m glad. Smell those pine trees. What a wilderness this is!”

It was a wilderness, Nancy thought. They hadn’t seen a sign of civilization for miles. For the last half hour, the narrow two-lane asphalt road had twisted and turned upward into the mountains like a mountain-goat trail. At the moment it was zigzagging precariously across the face of a vertical rock cliff.

Above the cliff and on the other side of the creek, huge pine and spruce trees reached toward the clear blue Montana sky.

Even though it was the middle of July, the breeze was cool and brisk and invigorating, not at all like the steamy, oven-hot summer weather they had left back home.

Nancy stretched and filled her lungs with the clean air. In spite of everything, she was glad they had come. She glanced at Ned’s calm profile and his sturdy, capable hands on the steering wheel. She was glad to be with him. With Ned along to help her laugh, the trip hadn’t seemed nearly so bad.

Bess looked out the window. “I suppose there are wild animals out there,” she said in a worried tone.

“Right,” agreed Ned. “Plenty of them.” He grinned at Bess in the rearview mirror. “Black bears and cougars and mountain lions and rattlesnakes.”

With a little moan, Bess shut her eyes tight and hunched down in the seat.

“You know, I’m really getting worried about how late we are,” George said, glancing at her watch. “It’s after eight o’clock, and we’re scheduled to leave at nine. You don’t suppose they’d start the trip without us, do you?”

“I don’t think they’d leave without their grand-prize winner,” Nancy consoled her. “They wouldn’t dare. After all, you are the reason for this trip.” She hesitated. If George were the reason for the trip, why had Nancy received the mysterious phone call?

“Anyway, I’m just as glad things got screwed up with the rental car and that we didn’t have to drive this road last night,” Ned said. “With all these twists and turns, it’s dangerous enough in broad daylight. I don’t think we-”

“Ned!” Nancy yelled. “Stop!”

Just a few yards ahead of the front bumper, the road vanished into thin air.

Bess gasped.

Ned jammed his foot on the pedal, making the brakes squeal. “Oh, no!” George screamed. “We’re going over!”

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.