The Madman of Black Bear Mountain (8 page)

The fall was too high, the rocks below too sharp, the rapids too fast. There was no way he was going to survive, unless . . .

“Yes!” I screamed as Joe grabbed hold of the bottom rope just before it slipped from his grasp. The bridge swung violently, nearly bucking him, but he held on.

The victory didn't last long.

He only managed to pull himself halfway up before the
bridge started to come apart around him. Wood planks flew off and rained down toward the churning rapids as the ropes holding them in place began to snap. Suddenly there wasn't anything left for Joe to pull himself back onto because there was a huge gap between the remaining planks on either side of him—the rope Joe clung to had transformed from a support rail into a high wire!

He tried walking his hands back along the swaying rope, but that just caused more planks to fly free and the rope to bow dangerously, dangling Joe even lower over the rapids. I had no idea how I was going to pull him to safety, I just knew I had to try.

I leaped for the door. “Hang on, Joe! I'm coming!”

I made it only a few feet before another figure appeared in the cabin door in front of me, his hulking silhouette nearly filling the frame. There was no mistaking this person's identity; the huge ax was a dead giveaway.

With buckskin clothing that strained against his bulging muscles, a wild beard, and even wilder eyes, the Mad Hermit of Black Bear Mountain was somehow more horrifying up close than he'd been galloping at us from across the woods.

I pivoted in the opposite direction, hoping Dr. Kroopnik—the one I'd just freed, not the “Mystery Max” who'd pushed my brother off a bridge—had easy access to something we could fight the hermit off with. But the scientist apparently had other plans, because he was
already halfway down a hatch in the floor at the back of the cabin.

“Follow me!” he yelled. “We can save your friend, but we have to move fast!”

I dashed after him without a second glance at the monster in the doorway.

“Stop!” the Mad Hermit bellowed after me. “I am—”

I wasn't about to wait around to hear what he had to say. I had the hatch door shut and was sliding down a rope after Dr. Kroopnik before the hermit got out another word. The rope-and-pulley system rigged for hoisting supplies up to the station made for a quick escape. I expected the hermit to be right on our tail, but when I looked behind me, he was nowhere to be seen.

I sprinted after Dr. Kroopnik toward the edge of the ravine. The bridge swayed back and forth below us, with Joe dangling over the center of the chasm, desperately clinging to the rope with both hands.

“This way!” Dr. Kroopnik shouted, hurrying down a steep flight of steps leading all the way to the riverbank below.

“But the bridge is up here!” I protested.

That's when I saw the raft tethered to the bank a few yards upstream from the bridge.

“We can to try to catch him in the raft,” Dr. Kroopnik said. “It may be our only chance.”

I raced down after him, past more of the exotic flowers I'd seen earlier, not that I was about to stop to examine them
this time. It seemed to take us forever to get to the bottom, but when I looked up, Joe was still there, fighting to keep his grip.

“Get in!” Dr. Kroopnik yelled, pulling the raft toward the bank's edge. “I'll let out enough rope to hold you under the bridge. The river 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.

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.

“I 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.

“Is 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.

J
OE GRABBING THE MAD HERMIT'S
ax was the last thing I saw before the tether anchoring me to the riverbank broke.

My little raft shot down the rapids like an out-of-control speedboat, nearly tossing me over the side. I looked back, expecting to see Dr. Kroopnik standing on the bank, holding the broken rope. He still had a hold on the rope, all right, only he wasn't on the bank—he was being dragged through the water behind me!

The scientist struggled to keep his head above water as the rapids threatened to take him under. I looked frantically for a place to land, but the current was too swift and the bank way too high. Dr. Kroopnik didn't even have a life vest.
I had to find a way to get him on board before he drowned or smashed against the rocks.

I dug in hard with my paddle, cutting the raft sideways across the rapids into a patch of slightly calmer water. The raft slowed, but Dr. Kroopnik didn't, and he bodysurfed right into the boat's stern—just like I'd planned! I held the raft as steady as I could, giving him a chance to pull himself aboard before we were whisked back downstream at a furious clip.

The soaked scientist clung to the raft to keep from getting tossed right back over. The second paddle had gone overboard when the raft first broke free, so the job of trying to steer the two-man raft with only one paddle fell to me.

“Thank you!” he shouted once he had his breath back. “I thought I was a goner until you pulled that slick maneuver back there to save me.”

“You got it,” I said, trying to veer the raft toward the bank in search of a place to land. “Now we have to go back to save my brother, Joe!”

“We can't! Not until we're out of the ravine and the water calms down. The danger of capsizing is too great!” He had to shout to be heard over the rapids. “Besides, your brother is in good hands.”

“Good hands?!” I yelled, my mind flashing back to the giant ax-wielding wild man I'd seen at the research station. “You must be madder than the Mad Hermit!”

For some reason, Dr. Kroopnik seemed to find that funny. “Trust me, the Mad Hermit is one of the good guys.”

He must have seen the look of complete shock on my face, because he hesitated for a second before shouting a disclaimer. “Okay, sure, he's a notorious Russian mobster who faked his own death to avoid prosecution, but he's just about the nicest Russian mobster you'll ever meet.”

The pieces finally clicked into place—the plane crash, the fugitive whose body was never found, the exotic Russian gem and the old Russian money—but I still couldn't quite believe it. “So the Mad Hermit really didn't eat that Orlov guy after his plane crashed?”

“Not unless he ate and regurgitated himself,” Dr. Kroopnik yelled. “That old legend about the man-eating mountain man has been around forever; Aleksei just borrowed it to scare people off so they wouldn't find out who he really was.”

“So the mythical Mad Hermit of Black Bear Mountain is real and not real, all at the same time,” I said. “Talk about a great disguise!”

“Worked pretty well until a few days ago. Wait a second—” Dr. Kroopnik scrutinized me. “You really didn't know the hermit was Aleksei? I assumed you must have, since you were mixed up with that woman on the bridge.”

“We thought that woman was you!”

“I can't say anyone's ever mistaken me for a beautiful woman before!” he mused at top volume. “What in the world ever gave you that idea?”

“She did!” I said. “My high school conservation club came to see Max Kroopnik and she's the one who showed up to meet us!”

“You're from the Bayport High conservation group! I'd been looking forward to meeting Mr. Morgan and his students!” he exclaimed. “I would have been waiting for you myself, but I was a little tied up.”

“Ha! Usually I'm the one with the bad puns,” I said with a laugh. “I'm Frank, by the way.”

“Frank? Frank Hardy?” he yelled back excitedly.

“How did you know?” The famous Dr. Kroopnik knew who I was?

“Your teacher sent me your commentary on my last article. I found your observations fascinating. I was hoping we'd get a chance to talk about it in greater detail.”

“Me too!” In my excitement, I nearly steered us right into a boulder. I cut hard to the left, waves slapping us in the face with cold white foam and nearly knocking Dr. Kroopnik back into the river. “But maybe we'd better save that conversation for later.”

“I concur,” Dr. Kroopnik agreed, gripping the raft even tighter.

The river ran down the mountain so quickly, I could feel my ears popping from the drop in elevation. I paddled like crazy to keep us upright and headed straight through the big water ahead. By the time we reached a less harrowing stretch of river, my arms felt like they were about to fall off.
We were still moving pretty fast, but the danger level had dropped a category or two, giving me a chance to rest.

“Wait a second,” I said, returning to the mystery at hand. “If the Max we met isn't you, then who is she?”

“I don't have a clue,” Dr. Kroopnik said, squinting at something downstream. “But maybe we should ask her.”

There she was! Imposter Max rode her horse out of the woods farther downriver and took off along the bank, her blond hair flowing in the wind behind her.

I paddled against the current to keep the raft on course close to the left bank, where her horse cantered at a steady pace over the rocky terrain ahead. Miss Max didn't look back once.

“I don't think she's seen us or she'd be pushing her horse a lot harder,” I said. “She's got a good head start, but we should be able to keep up as long as she sticks to the river.”

“Let's follow her and see where she goes, shall we?” Dr. Kroopnik suggested. “Full speed ahead, Captain Frank!”

“You got it, Dr. K,” I said as the river swept us downstream. “Although I think full speed is our only option.”

“Fine by me,” he replied. “I've got a bone to pick with my evil twin.”

“You really don't have any idea who she is?” I asked.

“I'd been hoping you could tell me,” he said. “I'd never seen her before until yesterday, when I caught her snooping around my research station. Said she got lost hiking and asked to use my radio, so I invited her in and told her to make
herself at home while I went back down to bring up some gear. When I got back, I saw she'd accidentally dropped an old flyer on the floor. I bent down to pick it up and saw Aleksei's picture staring back at me. He was lot younger and didn't have that crazy beard yet, but those wild eyes of his were a dead giveaway. So was the hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to his capture.”