“That settles it, then,” Nancy said with a grin, laying her spoon beside her empty dish. She felt good remembering that the three of them had always stuck together, even in tough times. Whatever happened, they weren’t going to let George face the trip alone. Besides, it was already shaping up to be a very interesting vacation. “Lost River, here we come!” she exclaimed.

“Where in the world do you suppose we are?” Bess asked from the backseat of the rental car that Ned was driving. She leaned over and took the map out of George’s hands. “Here, let me have a look at that map. Maybe I can find us.”

Nancy leaned precariously over the front seat. “The road just made another left turn back there,” she said, pointing to the small hand-printed map that Bess was holding.

“Well, what do you think, Bess?” Ned asked, braking suddenly and twisting the wheel to avoid a granite boulder that had tumbled off a cliff and lay in fragments in the road. “Are we taking the right route?”

“It looks like we are,” Bess said, grabbing frantically for the armrest as the car lurched sideways and threatened to go into a skid. “But who cares? The map doesn’t have any route numbers or anything. If this is all we have to go on, Lost River is likely to stay lost.” She thrust the map back at George. “You know, it’s almost as if whoever drew this map wants us to spend the whole morning wandering around in the mountains.”

“I hate to admit it, but Bess may have something there,” George said, staring at the map with a puzzled frown. “And another thing. I can’t figure out why nobody met us at the airport yesterday, the way the letter promised. You’d think that a company big enough to run a national contest would arrange to meet the grand-prize winner when she got off the plane.”

Nancy nodded. “I wondered about that myself. What a start for a vacation!”