Danger on Midnight River by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-51922-1
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 1995-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

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.

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