The Adventurer

that could be elements of an equation." Excitement flowed through Sarah as she moved over to the kitchen table to look down at the map in the plastic envelope. "Look at these numbers. Sixty and Ninety and twenty-five. A ninety-degree triangle is a right triangle. Right?"
    "Right."
    Sarah frowned. "So maybe what we've got here is a right triangle. Maybe the sixty refers to the size of one of the other angles. Right triangles with sixty-degree angles in them are common in geometry."
    "What about the number twenty-five? My geometry is rusty but I seem to recall that the angles of a triangle have to add up to 180 degrees. Sixty, ninety and twenty-five don't add up to that."
    "Maybe twenty-five is the length of one of the sides of the triangle. The distance between the two small squares on the map, perhaps." Sarah was getting more excited by the minute as she examined the markings on the copy of the Fleetwood map. "Given a couple of angles and the length of one side, you could solve for the remaining two sides, right?"
    "Sounds like we're talking your basic Pythagorean theorem here."
    "Yes, of course. The square of the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides."
    "Congratulations to your memory."
    "Don't congratulate me, congratulate Mrs. Simpson. Math was not my strong point in high school," Sarah said as she continued to study the map. "But Mrs. Simpson drilled some of the basics into me. Little did she know I was going to become a writer and never need the stuff. Until now, that is. I guess you never know. Now, if we assume twenty-five is the length of one side…Gideon, we're going to need a calculator. I'm not
that
good at the basics. Got one?"
    "Not on me, but we can pick up a cheap one in town this afternoon. We're almost out of milk, anyway."
    "Let's go now."
    "Sarah, it's only seven o'clock. The stores won't be open until nine or ten."
    She sat back, disgusted with the delay. "This is it, Gideon. I know it. I have a feeling."
    "Uh-huh. I have a feeling there's something getting very close to being done in the oven."
    Sarah's eyes widened. She leaped to her feet. "My biscuits."
    "First things first," Gideon said. "The Flowers can wait. I'll get the honey."
     
    L ATER THAT MORNING , with the help of a five-dollar calculator, they ran the numbers. Sarah was beside herself with excitement. She practically danced around the table as they drew triangles and labeled the sides.
    "We've got the length of all three sides and we know there's supposed to be a white rock at the point where B and C intersect," she said, delighted with the results.
    "None of this does any good unless we can figure out what points Emelina used to measure her triangle," Gideon noted.
    "Well, she gave us the length of one side of the triangle, twenty-five feet. She must have been using familiar points of reference. You said yourself, people tended to do that. Gideon, this is so thrilling. I've never done anything like this before." She looked up when there was no response from his side of the table. "But you have, haven't you?"
    "Once or twice." He sat watching her with an unreadable expression in his eyes.
    "Like once or twice a year when you go off on one or your mysterious vacations?" Sarah asked shrewdly.
    He exhaled heavily. "Magazines are expensive to run.
Cache
needs an infusion of cash periodically."
    "So you go out and dig some up. Wonderful."
    "It's not quite that easy, Sarah. More often than not, you don't get lucky."
    "Still, you know more about second-guessing someone like Emelina Fleetwood than I do. What do you think she used as points of her triangle?"
    He hesitated for a long time. Then, as if he had reached a decision, he pulled the map closer. "We're assuming that all these figures apply to a right triangle. We could be totally off base with all this. The numbers might mean something else entirely."
    Sarah shook her head. "No, I don't think so."
    His mouth curved faintly at her air of certainty. "Yeah, I know. You've got a feeling. All right, we'll assume your intuition is valid and go from there." Gideon leaned over the map. "My first hunch is that she was using the distance between the outhouse door and the back door of her cabin. Twenty-five feet sounds about right for that. But she might also have used a clothesline or a tree as a marker."
    "No, no, I think you're right. Brilliant idea. Lucky you've had experience with outhouses, isn't it?"
    He gave