“Hah! We sure scored one on you, didn’t we?” The boy who came running to Nancy and George looked very pleased with himself. He was short and stocky and wore a pair of faded cutoffs and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “I’m Tod. And this is Mike.” He pointed to the boy who had followed him over. The accomplice was tall and thin, his legs looking like pipestems in his frayed cutoffs.

“Listen, you guys, I don’t think it was funny at all,” George protested, coming out from behind the tree. “You scared us to death!”

But Nancy just said mildly, “Yeah, you sure scored one. We were pretty scared.” Were Tod and Mike really immature enough to think it was funny to frighten people like that?

“Well, I’ve got to say this,” Mike observed, looking at Nancy appraisingly. “You sure think fast and act fast-for a girl.” He grinned and shuffled his feet. Maybe, thought Nancy, he was shy.

The dark-haired girl spoke up. “I’m Mercedes.” She pointed to two others who had come up behind her. “This is Linda and this is Ralph. I guess you’ve already met Sammy,” she added, looking toward the raft, where Sammy was standing close to Ned, talking animatedly with him.

Nancy followed her glance. “Yes,” she said wryly, wondering if Sammy was going to be another Sondra-or worse. “We’ve already met Sammy. She seems very… friendly. And helpful.”

“Yeah, that’s Sammy, all right.” Tod nudged Mike. “Very friendly. And very helpful.”

Linda was a delicate, fragile-looking girl with a narrow, pointed face that reminded Nancy of a princess in a fairy-tale book. Ralph, slender with intense black eyes, was probably the scholarly type. He seemed a little out of place next to Tod and Mike, both of whom looked as if they’d grown up in the woods. Nancy listened carefully to them as Mercedes introduced them, trying to detect any trace of the voice that had made the phone call. But the week-old memory of a muffled voice wasn’t much to go on.