Carolyn Keene - White Water Terror

Nancy waved her hand to interrupt. “Probably. But there’s something that bothers me.”

“Bothers you?” Ned asked. “I’d be bothered, too, if somebody knocked me out and tied me up in the middle of the woods.”

“Yeah, I know.” Nancy sighed. “But Max said something odd, just before I got away. He said that he hadn’t meant to hit me so hard, that he just wanted to talk.”

“But why would he want to talk to you?” Ned asked. “Was he trying to keep you from going to the police?”

Nancy shook her head. “I don’t know, but I wish I hadn’t hit him so quickly.”

Ned considered. “You couldn’t take that chance. But we could go back and talk to him now,” he suggested. “There’re four of us and only one of him.”

Nancy looked around. “To tell you the truth, Ned,” she confessed, “I don’t know which direction I ran after I got away from Max.”

Ned followed her scuffed track in the leaves. “It looks like you came from over there,” he said, pointing’. “Let’s go that way.”

But even though they searched the woods, they couldn’t find the clearing where Max had held Nancy captive. Ned glanced down at his watch.

“It’s nearly two o’clock,” he said reluctantly. “The others are waiting. We’ll have to push hard if we’re going to reach the ranger station this afternoon.”

“ If the ranger station is in this direction,” Nancy reminded him.

“Right.” Ned sighed and took her hand as the four of them headed back to the trail. “If.”

“Did you manage to talk to Mercedes?” Nancy asked after a few minutes.

“I tried,” Ned answered.

“Oh. No luck?”

“Nope. She wouldn’t say a word to me.” Ned grinned and squeezed Nancy’s hand. “Not even when I turned on some charm.”

“Now I really do wish I’d had the sense to play possum just a few minutes longer,” Nancy said unhappily. “If I’d just listened to Max, he might have given us a clue to this whole thing. I wish-”

“I wish you’d shut up, Detective Drew,” Ned said. He slipped his arm affectionately around her shoulders. “It’s good to have you safe. Even if you didn’t get the clue you wanted.”

“He kidnapped you!” Linda exclaimed hysterically when Nancy and her friends finally caught up with the rest of the group and told them what had happened. “He’s going to kill us all! He’ll track us down and isolate us, one at a time, and kill us.”

Ralph rubbed her back. “Don’t, Linda,” he said helplessly.

Mercedes jumped up. “Maybe Max doesn’t want to hurt the rest of us,” she blurted. “Maybe he’s just after Nancy.”

“No!” Sammy exclaimed. “He’s out to kill all of us. I’ll bet he’s somewhere nearby right now, spying on us, deciding which one of us will be next.”

“What do you mean, maybe he was just out after me?” Nancy asked Mercedes. “Why would you think that?”

Mercedes pressed her lips into a tight line. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was just trying to make Linda feel better, that’s all.”

Linda began to cry harder, and Sammy looked as if she were going to burst into tears, too. Mercedes’s face was closed and dark.

“Listen, everybody,” Tod interrupted. “I know we’re all tired and sore, but if we don’t keep going, we’re not going to get to the ranger station before dark.”

The climb to the top of the ridge was one of the longest and most wearying hikes that Nancy had ever been on. Her heel was painful, and in spite of the beauty of the mountain, she kept her eyes on the ground, trying to pick out the easiest path. Ahead of her, Linda seemed to moan with every step, and she could hear Sammy complaining bitterly to Mike that they were going the wrong way.

At last they reached the top of the ridge.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” Bess exclaimed. “What a view!”

“And there’s the fire tower!” Tod said triumphantly, pointing along the ridge to the left. “It’s only a half-mile or so away!”

“All right!” Ralph let loose a giant whoop.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Nancy said, her wide grin fading. “If the tower’s deserted, will it still have a radio? We can still get a message out, can’t we?”

“Yup,” Tod assured her, “and the Forest Service will send a helicopter for us-probably before sunset! Of course, they’ll have to send a team in to look for Paula’s body.”

With the ranger station so close, the group seemed a great deal more relaxed. Even Linda managed a smile when a small brown fawn hopped across the trail in front of them.

“I don’t see any signs of life,” Ned observed when they reached the station. Beside the trail stood a small cabin with a sign on it reading United States Forest Service, but grass was growing up in front of the door-the cabin seemed to be deserted.

“How do they get people and supplies up here?” Sammy wanted to know. “I don’t see any roads.”

“There aren’t roads to some of these back-country towers,” Mike replied. “That’s why they use helicopters.”

“So that’s the tower,” Bess said, looking across the yard that separated it from the station. It was a squat, square box built on stilts forty feet in the air, with a stair zigzagging between the stilts. Halfway up was an open platform. “I’ll bet there’s a good view from up there.”

“You’re right,” Mike told her. “Since these lookout towers are built so that rangers can watch for fires, they have an unobstructed view of the whole country.” He grinned. “Want to take a look? I’m going to go up and get that message out.”

“We’ll all go,” Sammy decided.

“I’m not sure I can climb that high,” Linda objected.

“You’ll never have another chance like this one,” Ralph told her.

“Oh, okay.”

“Well, then, let’s go,” Mike said, and they started toward the tower.

Suddenly George clutched Nancy’s sleeve. “Nancy! I saw somebody run behind that building over there!”

Nancy turned to see a blur of movement behind one of the rickety wooden sheds only a few yards away.

Linda gasped. “It’s Max!” she cried when the figure stepped out and started toward them. “He’s coming to kill us!”

“Let’s get him!” Tod shouted.

“Watch out,” Mike cautioned. “He’s got a club.”

“That’s okay,” Tod said, his eyes narrowed to slits. “We can handle that.”

“Wait,” Ned said. “I think he just wants to talk.”

But Tod and Mike ignored Ned and advanced threateningly toward Max.

“Hold on,” Max rasped. He kept walking toward them. His shoulders slumped wearily, and he seemed to be dragging one foot. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. All I want is to talk to Nancy.”

“Then put that club down,” Ned said reasonably, stepping forward and holding out both hands to show that they were empty. “Nobody’s got any weapons here. Nancy will talk to you if you throw your weapon away.”

“Not on your life,” Max said with a gesture toward Tod and Mike.

He lifted the stick, and Nancy could see that he had driven a giant, lethal-looking spike into the end of it. “Stay back!” he rasped when Tod moved closer. “Where’s Nancy Drew? It’s a matter of life and death!” A shadow of pain crossed his face, and he began to cough.

“Here I am,” Nancy said, stepping forward beside Ned. She could hear Max’s harsh, labored breathing. “What do you want?”

For an instant, distracted by Nancy’s voice and by his own coughing, Max lowered the stick. Mike and Tod rushed him. Mike tackled him around the knees, bringing him down, and Tod tried to pin his arms behind his back. Max fought back with the strength of a madman, and the three rolled on the dusty ground in a silent, violent tangle. But after a moment, the two were too much for Max, and Tod managed to get astride him. He put his hands around Max’s neck, trying to throttle him.