“I don’t know the first thing about the contest,” Mercedes insisted with a nervous glance over her shoulder at Paula. Nancy sensed that Mercedes was afraid of her cousin. “When I heard about the trip, I asked Paula if I could go. That’s all.” She bit her thumbnail. “I thought it would be fun to get out on the river. I’ve never been rafting.”

“Did you see any advertisements for the contest?” Nancy asked in a low voice. “The others can’t remember entering it.” Mercedes shrugged and turned away.

Mercedes was afraid of her cousin. But why?

The afternoon was uneventful. For the first couple of hours, there was as much drifting as paddling, then Nancy began to notice that the water was moving more rapidly. Her raft was following the other one down a deep, shadowy gorge where the water ran even faster, foaming and curling against the rocks as the channel of the river narrowed and twisted. In the distance Nancy could hear a deeper sound, like faraway drums echoing between the walls of the cliffs.

“What’s that?” she asked nervously.

“Dead Man’s Falls,” Paula replied.

“Do you think we can skip that landmark?” Nancy kidded.

Tod laughed. “The name makes it sound worse than it is,” he said. “A couple of guys drowned there last year, but the rafter was at fault. Sloppy handling.”

“You don’t know that, Tod,” Paula said sharply. “Even the best raft-handlers have trouble there in high water, because of the way the rocks line up.”

“Is the water high right now?” Ned asked curiously.

Paula shook her head. “Nope. It’s only a four-foot drop, anyway. These eighteen-foot rafts are big enough to take it easily when the water’s down, the way it is now.”

They came around another bend, and at the far end, the riverbed began to step down in a series of small, rough rapids that tossed the raft against rock after rock. Nancy found herself clinging to the side.

“There’s the falls!” Tod shouted, pointing. Nancy looked. She could see Max’s raft just ahead.

“Okay,” Paula shouted. “This’ll be just like going down a steep sliding board. Once we’re over, the water will suck us down and then force us up again. It’ll be like riding a bucking horse, so hang on. Check your life vests to see that they’re fastened.”

Nancy looked at the other raft. “That idiot!” Nancy gasped, pointing to Bess. “She’s not wearing her life vest!”

“She probably didn’t think it looked pretty enough,” Ned said with a laugh. He sobered quickly. “She’s not a very strong swimmer, is she?”

Nancy shook her head, cinching her own life jacket a little tighter. “Sometimes Bess doesn’t have much sense,” she muttered.

The raft gathered speed as the current dragged it toward the falls. A few yards upstream, Max’s raft seemed to hang up against a rock. Frantically, Max fought the current with his oars, and Ralph tried to push off.

“Uh-oh!” Paula muttered. “That’s real trouble!”

Nancy and the others watched helplessly as the raft broke loose from the rock and was captured by the swirling water. It somersaulted broadside over the lip of the falls, heaving its shrieking passengers to almost certain death in the raging torrent.

“Bess!” Nancy screamed into the cold spray, hardly feeling it sting her face. “Answer me! Bess! Where are you?”

Paula leaned on the oars. “Hang on!” she shouted. “We’re going over!” And with that the raft poised for a nosedive over the edge of the falls.

The bow hit the water at the foot of the falls with an enormous splash that drenched everyone, dived down, and came up again, riding the crest of a wave. Paula dug in deep with the oars, and in a moment they were out of the worst of the swirling current. They were carried fifty yards below the falls before they could beach the raft on a jutting sandbar.

Everybody abandoned the raft and dashed back upstream. In the gorge, the evening shadows were already falling, but Nancy could see heads bobbing in the frothing Water. Linda was clinging desperately to a large rock, Ralph keeping a firm hand around her waist. Max supported Sammy as he swam toward them, towing her. And she could see George’s dark head in the water, about twenty feet out, one arm waving frantically. But where was Bess?

“There she is!” Ned shouted as Bess’s head emerged from the water. “George has her.” He dived into the water.

“Hurry, Ned!” Nancy cried. “She’s going down again!”

With powerful strokes, Ned swam toward George and Bess, catching Bess just as she slipped out of George’s grasp and disappeared again under the white water. He towed her back to the bank, George just ahead of him.

Nancy and George bent over their friend’s limp form as Ned pulled her up on the sand. “Bess! Are you all right?”

Nancy rolled her over on her stomach and lifted her up by the middle. The water emptied out of her. After a minute, Bess spluttered and sat up. “I-I’m okay,” she said, shaking the water out of her hair. “What happened?”

“Capsize,” Tod said grimly. He had thrown a line to Ralph and Linda, and the two of them were now safely on the bank, holding on to each other. Mike was salvaging some of their gear from the water. Paula and Max had clambered back under the falls to detach the raft from a jagged rock.

Tod turned back to Nancy, scowling darkly. He began to coil the line in his hands. “You saw what happened,” he said. “Max let the raft get broadside to the current and dumped everybody. Just like the last time.”

“Last time?” Nancy said sharply.

“Yeah, when the two guys drowned.”

Bess looked up, her eyes wide. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying it was Max’s fault just like last year’s capsize,” Tod replied. “Max was the rafter I was talking about earlier. His raft got hung up last year and flipped. Everybody fell out-that’s how Max got his scar. Only last year there wasn’t another raft standing by, and two people drowned.” Tod shook his head angrily and slung the coil of rope over his shoulder. “That’s why Mike traded places with George. He wouldn’t ride with Max on this part of the trip. Once you lose your nerve at a dangerous spot like this, it’s tough to get it back.”

“Does Paula know about what happened last year?” Nancy asked, her mind shifting quickly into detective gear.

“Yeah, she knows,” Tod said bitterly. “Everybody on the river knows. None of the other rafting companies will hire Max now-she shouldn’t have either.”

“How many other people on this trip know?” Nancy asked.

Tod shrugged. “Mike. And Paula. I guess that’s it. Why?”

“No reason.” Nancy stood up. Could the anonymous caller have known about Max’s past-and wanted to warn her? But why had she been the one to get the call?

“We’ve got a problem, gang,” Paula announced soberly when she and Max returned. Mike and Tod had built a roaring fire beside the remaining raft, and everybody was gathered around it, trying to dry off. They shivered in the cool evening breeze that funneled up through the gorge.

“A problem?” Ned asked.

“Yeah,” Paula replied, shrugging into her roomy red-and-black plaid jacket. “The raft got pretty badly beaten up by the water. It’s ripped in a half-dozen places-totally beyond repair.”

George stared. “Beyond repair? But that means…”

“That means we’ll have to load everybody into one raft,” Paula said matter-of-factly. “Either that, or we’ll have to leave some of you here while the others go downriver and send help back.” She paused and looked around. “That’s going to be a problem, too, because most of the gear that was in that raft-sleeping bags, tents, food-has all been washed away.”

“Ooh!” Linda wailed. “Ralph, I told you we shouldn’t have come!”

“What I want to know,” Sammy demanded sharply, “is how this happened. What about it, Max? How come we capsized?”