Free The Madman of Black Bear Mountain by Franklin W. Dixon Page A

swelled from the storm, so you’re going to have to fight the current to get in position.”
    I strained to hear him over the white water hammering the rocks and smashing against the bank as it raced past. These rapids were easily twice as bad as the ones we’d rafted down yesterday. Like the entire river was boiling over as it crashed down the mountain! Serious white-water rafters have a name for these kinds of rapids: Big Water.
    Taking a deep breath, I hopped in, strapped on a life preserver, and grabbed the paddle. The rapids hammered me the instant Dr. Kroopnik pushed me off, spraying me with a face full of cold white water and rocketing the raft toward the bridge. If the raft hadn’t been tethered to the bank, I would have shot right past Joe. I fought the current, digging in hard with my paddle to get in position under him.
    I was nearly there when I looked up and saw that I wasn’t the only one closing in. The hermit was stalking across the bridge toward him. A normal person wouldn’t have been able to reach Joe across the gap in the middle of the bridge where the planks had flown off, but a normal person didn’t have the enormous mountain man’s long arms and long ax to close the distance.
    Joe looked down in panic while I fought to position the raft beneath him. When he looked back up, the hermit stood at the edge of the gap, one long arm gripping the rope rail, the other raising the ax.
    The hermit didn’t get a chance to hurt him, though. My brother lost his grip first. I watched from below as the rope slipped from his fingers and he began falling through the air toward me.

15
TRUST FALL
JOE
    I COULD FEEL THE ROPE slipping and had only a second to decide which was worse: risk falling to my death or be roasted over a fire by a crazy mountain man.
    I’d felt a small surge of hope when I’d looked down and seen Frank—but a rubber raft bobbing up and down in raging white water didn’t exactly make for a great safety net. Could he even catch me? Or would I just capsize the raft, taking us both down to a watery grave?
    I gave one last look to the deadly rapids below and the deadly hermit above. When I looked up, the hermit’s ax was raised above me. I don’t know if it was the sight of the weapon looming overhead that finally did it, but I lost my grip at the exact same time the hermit lowered the ax.
    Two things happened as my fingertips lost contact with the rope: the Mad Hermit’s words finally reached me through the din of the rapids and I noticed the leather sheath covering the ax’s lethal blade.
    â€œI am a friend!” he yelled in a thick accent. “Grab hold!”
    With no time to think, I grabbed, wrapping my fingers around the axhead an instant before the sky and the rapids could claim me.
    I held on with the last bit of strength in my aching hands as the powerful hermit hoisted me back up to the bridge where the planks were still intact. I lay on my back, exhausted, my last bit of energy drained. Splintery wood never felt so good! If the Mad Hermit had tricked me so he could reel me up like a fresh-caught fish to cook over the fire, there wasn’t anything I’d be able to do about it.
    But instead of unsheathing his ax, he set it down and offered me his giant paw of a hand.
    â€œIs nice to meet you,” the not-so-mad hermit said in a gruff accent. “My name is Aleksei.”
    I gawked at my new friend. I may not have been an expert on foreign accents, but between the way he spoke and the name Aleksei, I had a good idea where he was from. It looked like the demantoid garnets and the rubles weren’t the only things from Russia to survive that plane crash thirty years ago. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Orlov, sir,” I managed to sputter as I shook the hand of the very-much-alive mobster.

16
MAN OVERBOARD
FRANK
    J OE GRABBING THE MAD HERMIT’S ax was the last thing I saw before the tether anchoring me