The Cessna came down hard in a patch of black spruce. For a long minute Mara heard nothing but her own heartbeat. Then her cousin Dell coughed in the seat beside her, alive, his glasses cracked but still on. The radio was dead except for one thing: a clean tone, repeating, over and over, on an old frequency. A tower beacon. Somewhere out there, someone had left a light on.

"That beacon means people," Mara said. She grabbed the map from the broken dash and found a tiny mark: an old ranger tower, maybe ninety miles north. "We walk toward it. We follow the signal." Dell wiped his cracked glasses and nodded, already pulling on his boots.

By dusk the radio battery was fading. The tone stuttered, dropped, then came back weaker. "If it dies, we lose our only guide," Mara said. Ahead, through the trees, she spotted a thin line of smoke rising into the gray sky.

They pushed toward the smoke and found a small camp in a clearing: a tarp, a cold fire pit, and a man feeding fresh sticks to a new blaze. He turned, shocked. "You two from that plane? I'm a trapper. My radio's better than yours. Sit down, let me call this in."

The trapper worked his radio, said a few quick words, and got an answer right away. "Rangers have been hunting your wreck since morning," he told them. "They'll send a chopper to my camp. You're safe now." He handed them hot tea, and Dell's hands finally stopped shaking.