Actually, Nancy thought as she settled back into the car seat, it hadn’t even begun to feel like a vacation yet. The four of them had rushed to the airport but waited several hours for a flight from Denver that was so bumpy it would have made an eagle airsick. In Great Falls, there was nobody to meet them-only an envelope containing a hand-drawn map. Scrawled on the bottom were unsigned instructions to pick up a rental car and drive to Lost River Junction that night.

But by the time a car was available, it was late. They had spent the night at the only place they could find-a motel next door to the airport, where jets seemed to plow through the bedrooms every hour on the hour. Dragging themselves out of bed, they were on the road by five o’clock-anxious to get to Lost River Junction before the rafts left at nine.

“Well,” Ned said, rolling down the window and taking a deep breath, “now that we’re here, I’m glad. Smell those pine trees. What a wilderness this is!”

It was a wilderness, Nancy thought. They hadn’t seen a sign of civilization for miles. For the last half hour, the narrow two-lane asphalt road had twisted and turned upward into the mountains like a mountain-goat trail. At the moment it was zigzagging precariously across the face of a vertical rock cliff.

Above the cliff and on the other side of the creek, huge pine and spruce trees reached toward the clear blue Montana sky.

Even though it was the middle of July, the breeze was cool and brisk and invigorating, not at all like the steamy, oven-hot summer weather they had left back home.

Nancy stretched and filled her lungs with the clean air. In spite of everything, she was glad they had come. She glanced at Ned’s calm profile and his sturdy, capable hands on the steering wheel. She was glad to be with him. With Ned along to help her laugh, the trip hadn’t seemed nearly so bad.

Bess looked out the window. “I suppose there are wild animals out there,” she said in a worried tone.