Page 75 of If the Summer Lasted Forever
I wake with a start.My pillow’s wet with tears, but I refuse to think about Mom and Uncle Mark right now.
Prospector’s Demise. The spot where Gideon Bonavit went off the cliff—that’s what Caleb was so fascinated with. I told Paige’s dad to check the hiking trails, but that area is away from the trails, near the cliff’s edge, on a narrow wagon road that was abandoned long ago when a tunnel was blasted in the fifties, making a safer passage through the mountain.
I leap from my bed and race through the house. Thankfully, there’s no sign of Mom or Mark. I can’t deal with them while Caleb is missing. I just can’t.
It’s about seven o’clock now, and the sun is up. People mill around everywhere, all volunteers here to aid in the search. There’s Division of Wildlife agents, BLM officials, and all kinds of people from the town and campgrounds.
Mr. and Mrs. Murray have a table in front of the office, and they’re handing out coffee, bottled water, and snacks to the weary search teams.
Several officers I don’t recognize stand with Paige’s dad, and they have police dogs with them. As far as I know, our littletown doesn’t have any, so they must have brought them in from somewhere nearby.
Thankfully, the person I’m looking for is standing to the side of the chaos, talking with a group. I walk to Landon, and as soon as he spots me, he reaches for me.
“They’re calling in a helicopter,” he tells me. “They’ve had search and rescue out all night, but they haven’t seen any sign of him.”
“Prospector’s Demise,” I say in a rush. “That’s one of the places he wanted to see. What if he didn’t want to check out the spot where Gideon went over? What if he really wanted to see the canyonbelow.”
Where the gold was supposedly lost.
Landon’s eyes widen, and he nods, slowly at first and then with more conviction. “How do we get down there?”
Since there’sno real trail to Prospector’s Demise, we have to make our own way through the thick brush after we leave the Jeep by the side of the closest road. It’s a nasty walk, full of scratchy oak brush, prickly thistles, and sappy, low-hanging evergreen boughs.
Even though I’m wearing my hiking boots, something sharp has lodged in the sock by my heel, just low enough I’d have to take off the boot to remove it. I ignore it as we push on.
Finally, we reach the cliff’s edge.
Landon looks over the sheer wall, bracing himself. I think we’re both worried Caleb might have lost his footing and tumbled off the side, but neither of us says the horrifying words out loud.
“See anything?” I ask after several long moments.
Landon shakes his head. “Nothing. How do we get down there?”
I pull out my phone, but there’s no service here, therefore no way to access any of the map apps. Too bad we don’t have a trail map like Caleb.
“If Caleb went this way, he probably got to this point and decided he needed to find a way down,” I say, finally digging the sticker from my boot. “Which way do you think he would have gone?”
Landon looks to the left and then the right, studying the possible route along each side of the ledge. “Probably to the north—there are fewer obstacles in the way.”
We follow a deer trail along the top of the canyon wall, looking for any sign of Caleb passing this way. Our path ends in a thick patch of brush that appears impossible to move through.
“I don’t think he went this way.” Landon puts his hands on his lower back and stretches. He only got an hour of sleep at the most, and he looks defeated.
“Let’s go back to the road,” I suggest. “See if we can find some sort of trail that leads into the canyon. Caleb has the map—he would have probably taken the easiest route.”
I toss my pack in the back seat when we reach the Jeep. I have a few backpacking supplies with me just in case—lots of water, a first aid kit, an emergency blanket, and a handful of energy bars. It’s nothing to sustain us for long, but hopefully, it will be enough to take care of Caleb when we find him.
And I say “when” because I refuse to believe this isn’t the way he went. My gut tells me it is, and I pray I’m right.
He’s too little to be lost. My exhausted brain dwells on all the bad things he could run into out here: bears, mountain lions, flash floods, dangerous terrain, hypothermia…
The list is too long to even contemplate.
We must find him. That’s the only option.
I take off-road trails I’ve never gone down before, hoping one of them will take us into the canyon. Because we’re forced to backtrack so many times, we’re still not so far from the campground that Caleb couldn’t have made it here on his bike in a few hours.
Finally, we find our road. I almost cry when we begin to descend into the canyon.
