Lost and Gone

HUGH JOHNSON WAS A good-looking, athletic kid, the kind that people of all stripes are naturally drawn to. I was his hunting and trapping partner. And unlike anyone else around me during high school in Daven port, Iowa, Hughie made me believe that life was wide-open, full of adventure and risk—even a little danger.

One cold October night during our senior year, around a warming fire on the backwaters of the Mississippi, he’d prove it—not just to me and our whole class, but to the entire town and beyond.

It started as nothing more than an after-school