Long Lost Read Online Free PDF Page B

Forest.
    “It gets tricky from here on, guys. Keep comparing the map to what’s around us,” I said.
    Jason crawled into the front, and Petey buckled his seat belt over both of them.
    “What are we searching for?” Jason asked.
    “This squiggly line.” Petey showed him the fax. “It’ll be a narrow dirt road on the right. With all these pine trees, we’ll have to watch closely. It’ll be hard to spot.”
    I steered around a curve. The trees got thicker. Even so, I thought I saw a break in them on the right. But I didn’t say anything, wanting Jason to make the discovery. Petey must have read my mind. I saw him look up from the map and focus his eyes as if he’d noticed the break, but he didn’t say anything, either.
    I drove closer.
    The break became a little more distinct.
    “There!” Jason pointed. “I see it!”
    “Good job,” Petey said.
    “For sure,” I added. “I almost went past it.”
    I steered to the right and entered a bumpy dirt lane. Scrub grass grew between its wheel ruts. Bushes squeezed its sides. Pine branches formed a canopy.
    “Gosh, do you think we’ll get stuck?” Jason leaned forward with concern.
    “Not with this four—wheel drive,” Petey said. “It’d take a lot worse terrain than this to put us in trouble. Even if it snowed, we wouldn’t have to worry.”
    “Snowed?” Jason frowned. “In June?”
    “Sure,” Petey said. “This time of year, you can still get a storm in the mountains.” The trees became sparse. “See those peaks ahead and how much snow they still have? Up here, the sun hasn’t gotten hot enough to melt it yet.”
    Taking sharp angles, the lane zigzagged higher. The slope below us became dizzyingly steep. The bumps were so severe that only those cowboys who’d ridden bucking wild horses here years earlier could have enjoyed the ride.
    “Who do you suppose built this road?” Jason asked. “It looks awfully old.”
    “The forest service maybe,” I said. “Or maybe loggers or ranchers before this area became part of the national forest system. I remember our dad saying that in the old days cattlemen kept small herds here to feed prospectors in mining towns.”
    “Prospectors?
Gold?
” Jason asked.
    “And silver. A long time ago. Most of the towns are abandoned now.”
    “
Ghost
towns,” Petey said.
    “Gosh,” Jason said.
    “Or else the towns became ski resorts,” I said, hoping to subdue Jason’s imagination so Petey and I wouldn’t be wakened by his nightmares about ghosts.
    The road crested the slope and took us into a bright meadow, the new grass waving in a gentle breeze.
    “It’s the way I remember it when Dad drove us here,” I told Petey.
    “After all these years,” Petey said in awe.
    “Are we there yet?” Jason asked.
    The age—old question from kids. I imagined that Petey or I had asked our dad the same thing. We looked at each other and couldn’t keep from laughing.
    “What’s so funny?” Jason asked.
    “Nothing,” Petey said. “No, we’re not there yet.”

13
    It took another half hour. The meadow gave way to more pine trees and a slope steeper than the first one, the zigzag angles sharper. We crested a bumpy rise, and I stopped suddenly, staring down toward where the barely detectable road descended into a gentle grassy bowl. Sunlight glinted off a picture—book lake, aspens beyond it, then pine trees, then mountains towering above.
    “Yes,” I said, my chest tight. “Just as I remember.”
    “It hasn’t changed,” Petey said.
    On the right, old corrals were the only variation in the meadow. Their gray weathered posts and railings had long ago collapsed into rotting piles. We drove past them, near—ing the lake. There weren’t any other cars. In fact, I couldn’t find an indication that anyone had been around in a very long time.
    We stopped fifty feet from the lake, where I recalled Dad stopping. When we got out of the car, I savored the fresh, pleasantly cool air.
    “Look at this old