stopping?â Red asked.
âYou see that trestle up there?â Jack asked.
Red turned around and peered through the willow branches.
âWe have to wait here for a minute and make sure there isnât a guard coming along there. Thatâs the very farthest corner of the camp. From that point on weâre in Camp X.â
Both Red and Moose looked up at the trestle. I turned around so I could see back up the creek, the way weâd come. If something was following and it wanted to be close enough to keep up with us, it would have to appear pretty soon.
âIf we do see a guard when weâre going under the trestle we have to pretend weâre fishing,â Jack said. âWeâll paddle. You two should get your fishing rods out and put a line in the water.â
âYeah, yeah, good plan,â Red said.
They began fiddling with the rods. Jack and I didnât do much fishing, but it was obvious that these guys had never been fishing before. They fumbled with the reels and hardly seemed to know which end of the rod to hold.
Red peered through the overhanging branches and up at the bridge. âI donât see nobody.â
âMe neither,â Moose said, although he wasnât even looking in the right direction.
âGood, then weâre safe to go.â Jack let loose his grip on the branches and the raft began drifting. It bumped into the shore and Jack used his paddle to push off and out. The raft started to spin sideways and I paddled frantically to correct it. It would be bad enough going over the falls as it wasâI didnât even want to think about going over backwards.
We cleared the overhanging branches and were aimed right at the middle of the creek. That was good because, ideally, we wanted to pass through the middle span of the trestle. Jack and I paddled while Red and Moose pretended to fish. Their lines were in the water but they didnât have baitâor even hooks, for that matter. That was probably good. I didnât think either of them would know what to do with a live fish. Maybe Red would threaten to shoot it and Moose would eat it raw and whole!
The side of the raft brushed against one of the cement foundations of the bridge but it slipped through. I looked up at the wooden crossbeams and then at the tracks directly above my head. I couldnât help thinking about standing up there, earlier in the day, looking down, and then the train coming right toward me. If I had still been on that bridge it would have been all over right there. This could have ended before it had barely even started.
I also thought about the very first time Iâd ever seen the bridge. Jack and I had been drifting in our old inner tubes, cooling off, hidden beneath the branches of that willow. Weâd looked up in surprise, confusion and then shock as we saw what we thought were enemy agents planting explosives, trying to blow it up. Weâd later found out that the âexplosivesâ were just lumps of clay and the âenemy agentsâ were guys being trained at Camp X to be spies.
If we hadnât seen them that day we never would have gone into the camp to investigate. And if we hadnât done that, then everything that followedâincluding thisâwouldnât have happened either. Instead of being here, drifting along the river with two armed criminals trying to break into a spy camp to steal gold, weâd be sitting in school, dreaming about doing something more interesting than studying. Sometimes itâs best that you donât get what you wish for.
I was startled out of my thoughts when I was hit by a splattering of water. I looked up and over at Jack. Heâd splashed me with his paddle, and now he was gesturing with his head for me to look back. There was a long stretch of creek but I didnât see anythingâ that was what he was showing me. Sure, that had to be it. We were alone, and nobody was following us.
âStay
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Scott Nicholson, Garry Kilworth, Eric Brown, John Grant, Anna Tambour, Kaitlin Queen, Iain Rowan, Linda Nagata, Keith Brooke