Lost Cipher by Michael Oechsle

finding a trail across a ridge that was more rock than dirt was a different story.
    â€œMaybe a bear dragged them off,” offered Alex. “I mean with all the snacks George was packing in his.”
    â€œSure,” said George glumly, “blame the fat kid.”
    â€œNaw,” said Lucas. “A bear wouldn’t have hauled off all three of them. Plus he would’ve torn ’em up right where they was at. There’d be somethin’ left to see. It’s all right though. We’ll just start looking. They’re around here somewhere.”
    They split up and searched among the boulders for another half hour, always staying within sight, or at least shouting distance, of each other. But there was no sign of the packs. Worse yet, not even Lucas could find anything that looked like a trail across the rocks. Aaron had told them to follow the cairns, but every time Lucas thought he’d found one, it was just a few rocks lumped together, not the neat little stacks they’d seen before.
    It was more than an hour since they’d sneaked away, and Lucas couldn’t believe that Aaron or Rooster hadn’t come back for them. He began to worry that they were so far off the trail they couldn’t even hear someone calling. Or maybe one of the counselors had come back when they were still across the ravine and now they were looking somewhere else.
    Half an hour later, Lucas gave up looking. He’d even ventured out on his own, far out of earshot, to where the field of rocks ended and the mountaintop turned to forest again. But he returned exhausted and no closer to finding the packs or a trail. It seemed the longer he searched, the more uncertain he was about the way out. If this were his mountain back home, he’d have known exactly where he was and how to get home, but this pile of boulders was nothing like his mountain. He’d relied on someone else to get him out to the middle of nowhere, and now two other kids were relying on him to get them back.
    Before long, he saw Alex in the distance, shaking his head and holding up his hands to tell him his luck had been no better. George had stopped looking long before the other two. They found him sitting alone on a rock, wiping tears away with his sleeve. Lucas and Alex sprawled out on the same rock, and for a few minutes, the only sound was George’s soft blubbering.
    â€œSorry, George,” Lucas said finally. “Sorry I got you into this. Both of you.”
    George sniffed and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not like you had to twist our arms. I just can’t believe we could get lost so quick.”
    â€œWhat about a person?” asked Alex. “I mean, maybe we’re not the only ones up here. Maybe someone’s been following us and stole the packs.”
    Lucas thought about it, but it just didn’t make any sense. “What kind of thief is gonna want to carry our packs all the way out of here? Plus, Aaron said we’d probably have the trail to ourselves, and I believe him.”
    â€œMaybe not,” said George. “Maybe somebody lives close to here. Like that creepy old man Aaron was talking about.”
    â€œAaron said that old man shoots treasure hunters,” said Lucas. “He didn’t say nothin’ about him sneakin’ around stealin’ backpacks full of kids’ dirty clothes and candy bars.”
    â€œWhat about Zack then?” said George. “Maybe he did something with them?”
    The thought had already crossed Lucas’s mind. “Naw, I definitely saw him up near the front of the line when everyone left. And I watched him the whole way. He never even looked back at us.”
    â€œMe too,” said Alex. “No way he could have sneaked back here without Aaron or Rooster or somebody seeing him.”
    â€œSo what are we going to do?” asked George finally. He didn’t seem to care that he sounded helpless.
    â€œAnybody got their