The End of the Trail
Read The End of the Trail Online
Authors: Franklin W. Dixon
THE
HARDY BOYS
®
A TOWN OF DEADLY SECRETSâAND NO WAY OUT OF THE WOODS!
Hiking the Appalachian trail with their friends Chet, Phil, and Biff,
the Hardys hit a snag when daredevil Biff gets hurt. The old mining town of Morgan's
Quarry is the nearest place for help. But even the run-down, isolated town turns
menacing when two tough locals drop a bag full of money in front of the
brothers!
Joe and Frank are stonewalled when they ask about the money. The roads
are washed out, the phones are down, and a crumbling mansion hides a gold mine of
secrets. Every fork in the road leads to more danger... and everyone in Morgan's
Quarry seems bent on making sure the boys don't make it out alive!
THE END OF THE TRAIL
ALADDIN
Simon & Schuster
Cover art copyright © 2000
by Jeff Walker
Ages 8â12
Look Out Below!
Frank polished off a cracker and washed it down with a swig from his
canteen. “Well, looks like it's time to hit the road again.”
“Hey!” said a voice from above. “You really can see
water of some sort.”
Frank, Chet, Joe, and Phil turned to see Biff hanging from a tree
limb.
“I'll be down in a minute,” Biff said. “Great
view up here. If I move a little farther out on the limb, I might be able to see all the
way back to Bayport.”
“That's highly unlikely,” Phil replied.
“Bayport's too far over the horizon. Maybe you could see all the way
toâ”
A loud snapping sound interrupted Phil. Biff had shinnied out to the
far end of the tree branch, his legs and arms wrapped around it.
Stunned, they all watched as the branch split in two and Biff plummeted
twenty feet to the ground!
The Hardy Boys
Mystery Stories
#109 The Prime-Time Crime
#110 The Secret of Sigma Seven
#139 The Search for the Snow Leopard
#140 Slam Dunk Sabotage
#141 The Desert Thieves
#143 The Giant Rat of Sumatra
#152 Danger in the Extreme
#153 Eye on Crime
#154 The Caribbean Cruise Caper
#156 A Will to Survive
#159 Daredevils
#160 A Game Called Chaos
#161 Training for Trouble
#162 The End of the Trail
#163 The Spy That Never Lies
#164 Skin & Bones
#165 Crime in the Cards
#166 Past and Present Danger
#167 Trouble Times Two
#168 The Castle Conundrum
#169 Ghost of a Chance
#170 Kickoff to Danger
#171 The Test Case
The Hardy Boys Ghost Stories
Available from MINSTREL Books
and ALADDIN Paperbacks
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Aladdin Paperbacks edition August 2002
First Minstrel edition July 2000
Copyright © 2000 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children's Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
THE HARDY BOYS and THE HARDY BOYS MYSTERY STORIES are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
ISBN-13: 978-0-671-04759-7
ISBN-10: 0-671-04759-0
ISBN 978-1-44247-227-3 (eBook)
Chapter 1:
On the Appalachian Trail
Chapter 5:
Shelter from the Storm
Chapter 15:
Stream of Unconsciousness
“I can see the ocean from here!” Joe Hardy shouted
excitedly.
He was hanging from the lowest branch of a towering pine tree, on top of
an even more towering mountain in the Appalachian range. A beautiful summer sky arched
above him as the sun rose above the horizon.
“That's impossible!” Phil Cohen shouted up at him from
twenty feet below. “The ocean's more than a hundred miles away! You must be
seeing a lake!”
“If you break your neck, I'm going to ask Dad if I can have
your room,” Joe's brother, Frank, yelled, staring up at him along with Phil,
Chet Morton, and Biff Hooper.
“Oh, relax,” Joe said. “Hanging from this limb is no
worse than doing the parallel bars in gym class. I could hang here
all day.”
Frank smiled and ran his fingers through his dark brown hair. Frank, at
eighteen, was a year older than Joe, and sometimes his younger brother drove him a
little crazy. When they and their three friends had set out on this 250-mile hike along
the Appalachian Trail, he had promised his father, Fenton Hardy, that he would get
everybody through in one piece. Joe was doing his best to thwart Frank's plan.
“Maybe,” Frank said slyly, “the rest of us will eat
breakfast while you're up there. Won't be much food left when you get back
down.”
“All right!” Chet exclaimed, raising his eyes from the
hand-held game machine where he was playing a game called Bear Hunter. “I thought
we'd
never
eat!”
“Why do you keep playing a game about hunting bears in the
woods?” Biff asked. “You really
are
in the woods.
And you really could bump into a bear or two.”
“Somehow the game is more fun,” Chet said, not looking up.
“If I get eaten by a bear in this game, at least I can hit Start and play again.
But if I get eaten by a bear along the trail...”
“Some lucky bear will have the best meal of its life,” Frank
said, gazing at Chet's ample girth.
Joe began working his way along the limb, back
toward
the tree trunk. “You guys are not going to eat breakfast without me.”
Frank smiled. Joe knew that he was being tricked into climbing back down,
but Chet alone could finish off their daily breakfast ration in five minutes. Chet was
known for his voracious appetite, and it was dangerous to leave food unattended when
Chet was hungryâwhich he almost always was.
Biff, who looked like a weight lifter and wasn't bothered by the
task of lugging seventy-five pounds of gear up mountains, grabbed the backpack full of
food that was lying next to his sleeping bag. “Okay, I've got the food.
Someone divvy it up.”
“I will,” Chet said.
“Huh-uh,” Frank said. “I'll divide up the food.
Last time I let you do it, you ate all the beef jerky.”
“That was an accident,” Chet protested.
Joe came rushing up, his T-shirt and blue jeans covered with bark and pine
needles from the tree he had just climbed down. “Here I am. Nothing like a
refreshing climb after spending the night in the woods. So, did you save anything for
me?”
“A drumstick, stuffing, and pumpkin pie,” Frank said.
“Knock yourself out.”
The quintet of teenagers looked down at their meal. Frank had laid out two
tins of sardines, five whole grain crackers, and five canteens of water.
“Sardines again?” Chet moaned. “We've had the
same thing since we started hiking a week ago. Couldn't you at
least open
another tin
of sardines? I'm starving to
death.”
“We agreed when we set out that we'd have sardines for
breakfast,” Frank said.
“And trail mix for lunch,” Joe said.
“And jerky for dinner,” Biff added. “I'm sick of
jerky.”
“Hey,” Frank said to Biff. “If you want to carry a pack
filled with two weeks' worth of gourmet meals, we'll stop off at the next
grocery store.”
“Er, no thanks,” Biff said. “Even the sardine cans are
too heavy.”
Joe sat down and pulled a small tin plate out of his pack. He piled three
sardines on it and began to eat.
“Remind me again why we're here,” he said.
“I'm having trouble remembering.”
Phil Cohen popped a sardine in his mouth and stared off wistfully into the
trees. “Because we wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail,” he said.
“The largest supervised wilderness trail on the East Coast of the United States.
Begun in 1921 and completed in 1937.”
