Riding the Flume Read Online Free Page A

mouth held its almost smile. But the only answer was silence.

•   Chapter Three   •
    T he only safety is in secrecy. The words hung in the air and Francie sat straight up in bed. She’d been dreaming. In the dream Francie had been standing at the bottom of the tallest part of the lumber flume, watching her sister climb up to the top. The night breeze fluttered Carrie’s white nightgown and made Francie shiver. “Don’t do it!” Francie called. She could feel her heart beating furiously in her chest. Something terrible was going to happen. “Please,” Francie cried. “Please stop!”
    Carrie looked down, hanging onto the wooden crosspiece with one hand. Her laugh was the same rippling musical sound that Francie had always loved. “I’m going to ride the flume,” she called back, and kept climbing, step by step, to the top. Her arms and legs moved together in the easy, fluid movements that characterized everything Carrie did.
    Now she had reached the top of the flume, so far away that she looked like a tiny white bird standing on the edge of the wooden track. She stretched her arms out wide, as if to embrace the star-studded sky. Her long hair streamed out behind her. Francie saw her climb into the flume boat and crouch down, gripping the sides with white fingers. Then the little wooden raft started to move, slowly at first. Francie sucked in her breath as it picked up speed, racing faster and faster down the track. Water splashed out on either side, cascading down the structure like a waterfall of sparkling diamonds.
    â€œNo!” Francie shouted. She tried to follow it, running below the little flume boat as it sped down the track. It was coming to the first sharp curve. If she could only get ahead, climb up, stop it somehow. . . .
    She looked up as the boat hit the turn, bounced off the track, and went flying into the air. The scream stuck in her throat as she saw Carrie hold out her hands. “Remember,” Carrie cried, “the only safety is in secrecy!”
    Now, with the darkness engulfing her and her heart pounding, Francie wasn’t sure if the words were in her dream or if she’d actually heard them spoken aloud. She fumbled with the matches and finally lit the candle she kept on her nightstand. She watched as the flickering light slowly brought the furniture into focus—the spindles flanking the foot of her bed, the wardrobe in the corner, the washstand and the white pitcher. Comforted by the light, she leanedback against her pillows. It was a stupid dream. Not even Carrie would have tried to ride the lumber flume—the thirty-mile track that floated the lumber out of the woods and down into the town of St. Joseph. It was too dangerous. She shook her head. A year ago Sean O’Brien and Buck Murphy, two of the biggest daredevils in the logging camp, had ridden it into St. Joseph—people had talked about it for months afterward. But Carrie would never have tried it.
    But while the substance of the dream quickly faded, the feeling of guilt, of something she needed most urgently to do, lingered on. She couldn’t remember the exact words of the message she’d found in the tree, except that part about the only safety being secrecy, but she thought it had communicated the same urgency. Something terrible about to happen, something someone had to stop.
    But that had been six years ago. Who had the message been for? Who would have been meeting Carrie at Turkey Fork? Francie snuggled down under the covers. The answer to that, at least, was easy. If the note had not been meant for her cousin, Charlie, he would probably know who it was meant for. Carrie and Charlie had been best friends, even though Carrie had been two years older. If Charlie didn’t know what Carrie had been talking about, then nobody would.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    The raucous chorus of birds calling woke Francie just as the sky