Chapter Eleven ~ A Noise and a Scream

as told to Janice by Jim

Jim’s heart sank as the mess came into full view. What seemed to be all of Tank’s worldly goods – along with his whole food supply – had been scattered across the ground outside the cabin. Something bad had happened here. They all began to search around, but Tank himself was nowhere to be found.

“We’d better get this food put away,” Jim himself suggested, picking up a bag of sugar which miraculously had not broken.

They had soon gathered all of the supplies, returning them to either the ice cave or the cabin. Then Jim saw the tears pool in his sister’s eyes as she gathered the broken pieces of the chair they had all admired on their previous visit. Honey carefully picked up the torn back and seat, the broken-off legs and other parts and placed them inside the cabin door. Hallie set about picking up the other belongings.

Behind him, Trixie made a frustrated noise. Turning, Jim saw her by the door, pointing at something with her bandaged hands. In two strides, he was there beside her. He pulled at the tuft of fur caught in the metal hasp of the door, rolled it between his fingers and then put it safely in his pocket. Trixie opened her mouth to speak, but her cousin beat her to it.

“I don’t like this at all,” Hallie declared. “I think we should hightail it back to camp before anything else weird happens around here.”

Honey immediately voiced a fervent agreement and the moment to share the discovery was lost. Soon, they were all heading back down the trail, flashlights bobbing with every step.

As he walked, Jim took notice of the night animals around him, whose eyes he sometimes saw reflected in their flashlight beams. He listened to the sounds of the forest at night, wishing that he could go slower and take it all in. But ahead of him, Hallie was setting a much brisker pace. Sometimes, as they passed through more open areas, Jim saw bats swooping overhead after insects. He had to exercise quite a lot of self-discipline not to be left behind.

Hallie made a comment about hoping that Di and Knut would be back when they got there and Jim stirred himself to keep up with the conversation.

“Poor Di,” he commented. “She stayed in camp because she felt safe with Miss Trask, and that’s where the sasquatch showed up. Now, she’s crossing the saddle twice tonight, and there’s a sasquatch there, too!”

A silence fell for a few minutes, then Trixie suddenly asked what would make Cap mad enough to fight. Jim listened to the conversation between Hallie and Trixie and pondered a couple of things. Firstly, how had Trixie’s train of thought travelled from Di potentially being frightened by a sasquatch to Cap’s likelihood of fighting? Second, why did Trixie want to know that?

From what Hallie was saying, it seemed that Cap would only fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves, but especially for Tank, whom he cared for. He wouldn’t fight the man who’d stolen their food, figuring he probably needed it more. But what difference did any of this make?

Jim shook his head, giving up trying to understand Trixie’s thought processes, just as she burst out with a lament of having missed some clue somewhere.

“I wish we had found that tuft of fur before Knut left for town,” he told her. “I’d like to know what a lab test would show.”

He was so focussed on Trixie that he almost missed the outraged look Hallie shot him.

“What tuft of fur?” she almost snarled at him.

“We found some fur tangled in Tank’s door hasp–”

“And you kept your mouth shut?” she interrupted, in full snarl, now. Jim was reminded of some kind of wildcat.

Then Mart’s voice broke the tension. “Thou hath a temper like unto a Beatrix. Try to see Jim’s point. If he had told us he found fur in the door, we’d have seen bears and monsters behind every tree on the trail. Right, Jim?”

“Right,” Jim answered, relieved. Then, before she could snarl any more, he changed the subject. “Look, I see the campfire.”

They stepped from among the trees into the firelit clearing, where Brian was piling more logs onto the blaze and Miss Trask offered hot cocoa. And at the same time, Hallie seemed to lose her wildcat persona and shrink into something smaller and more fragile. Jim watched as she sat, elbows leaning on the table, and related just what they had found at the old miner’s cabin.

Brian floated the theory that someone had been searching for something and Miss Trask wondered what the chair could possibly have held.

“Perhaps it was used as a weapon,” Jim found himself asking, as the thought popped into his head. “The moose that wore those flat antlers must have found them pretty handy for attack and defense.”

“That chair was heavy,” Miss Trask argued, shaking her head. “It would take a great deal of strength to swing it.”

Jim was pretty sure he could have done it, but out of respect he instead suggested that something heavy might have crashed into it. That explanation didn’t make as much sense, but it was still better than the chair as a hiding place.

He pulled out the tuft of fur and put it in the brightest patch of light available. In a few words, he explained where it had come from. Trixie, at once, leaned closer to look at it, now that it wasn’t quite so dark.

“If this is a piece of fur scraped from a living animal,” she pointed out, “wouldn’t we see some dried blood?”

Brian’s long fingers smoothed over the sample. “It’s a crazy idea, I suppose,” he mused, “but there seems to be more than one kind of fur here. See? There are some long, stiff hairs tangled in with shorter, softer fur. There’s color variation, too.”

In that moment, Hallie’s wildcat persona re-emerged. Jim watched her smooth, quiet movements as she burst out with an assertion that Cap would have known exactly what this was, if only he was here, then retreated to sit by herself for a while. He noticed Trixie going after her and saw the contrast in them. Trixie looked and moved exactly as she always did. But Hallie still had that feline stealth to her, which awoke some primal instinct in Jim to keep well out of the way. His eyes turned to the fire.

“Listen,” Trixie urged them all, a short time later. “I think I hear the truck.”

But the sound wasn’t quite right, to Jim’s ears. This engine had a different note to it, and it was coming from the wrong direction. Hallie said as much, only a moment later. Some of the others talked about who it could possibly be, but that didn’t interest Jim much. He listened to it pass by their camping spot and fade into the distance.

A short time later, Honey drew their attention to another truck, which Hallie recognised at once. She was right. Knut drove right up to their camping area, helped a sleepy Diana out of the cab and started unloading the supplies he’d brought, while the rest of the group gathered around to help. Among other things, they’d brought more eggs, along with cream that Gloria’s mother had sent to go with their berries, and ice cream, packed in dry ice.

Once the supplies were stowed, Hallie demanded that her brother tell who had been in the truck that passed.

“Didn’t meet him,” he answered, looking surprised. “The only traffic between here and the pass was a sow bear with a couple of cubs.”

“And a porcupine,” Di added.

After that, Knut lost interest in the truck and turned the conversation to what he’d done with regard to Cap. He’d arranged for Gloria’s mother to call his father’s office in the morning and find out where they might be, in case it might take a message longer to get to them than the crisis might last. Jim nodded at this logic. Knut was right; Cap might easily turn up long before the Belden parents could be located, in some remote area.

“Didn’t you tell anybody?” Miss Trask asked and Jim could tell by the tone of her voice that the answer had better not be ‘no’. “I mean, besides Gloria and her mother?”

But to Jim’s relief, Knut had done the thing properly. He’d been to the sheriff’s office and talked to the sheriff himself. True, he hadn’t seemed all that concerned, but he’d promised to keep in touch with Gloria’s family. And Knut explained that Cap could live off the land indefinitely, if needed, which took a weight off Jim’s mind, at least. Ron Duncan, Gloria’s brother, also planned to come out and join the search.

Then Knut asked why they all looked so glum and they shared the news that Tank was missing, too. For a long moment, Jim thought that Knut, tired as he was, would jump back in the truck and head back to town. But instead he pointed out that everything they’d said about Cap also applied to Tank. Both of them could look after themselves and didn’t expect people to keep tabs on them.

“It looked like somebody had ransacked the cabin,” Jim added, in case that changed things for Knut.

Knut rubbed his eyes, which made Jim wonder whether the trip back to town might happen after all, but after a moment the other man smiled slightly and said, “Sorry about the mess we’re making of your Idaho visit.”

“Jeepers! Don’t worry about us,” Trixie urged him. “It’s Cap – and Tank–”

“The best thing everyone can do for them now is head for bed,” Knut asserted, in a voice that brooked no argument. “I think I’ll just sit here and unwind a little while until the fire dies down.”

“I’ll sit with you,” Jim decided. He shared a look with Brian, who nodded slightly and walked away with everyone else.

He moved his chair closer to Knut, who had his feet stretched out in front of him towards the fire.

“I thought, for a minute, I was going to have to offer to drive,” Jim commented, in not much more than a whisper.

Knut let out a sigh. “I thought about heading back to town, but in the end I knew I was too tired. And it’s not fair to ask you or Brian or Miss Trask to drive on an unfamiliar road, so late at night.”

Jim shrugged. “But safer than you driving when you’re so tired.”

The other man nodded. “So, we wait. But I’m not sure, now, that I’ve made the right decision. I mean, I know in my head that both Cap and Tank can look after themselves…”

“But it’s a lot of responsibility, if it turns out that there’s anything… let’s say, sinister happening.”

“I don’t want to worry Hallie any more than she already is,” Knut explained, “but I’m very concerned. I let Sheriff Sprute talk me out of it, while I was there, but I know, deep down, that there’s something really wrong here. Cap didn’t just walk off by himself. Something really has happened to him. And now Tank, too.”

“We should go back to Tank’s in daylight,” Jim suggested. “We might have missed something tonight. Hallie seemed to suddenly get spooked and she hurried us back down here. It made me wonder if she’d noticed, or remembered, or thought of something.”

“I’ll talk to her in the morning and see if I can find out,” Knut promised. “She might not tell me, but at least I can try.”

From somewhere behind the tents came a sound like fleep!

“What was–” Knut began to say, only to be cut off by a more urgent sound.

From inside the tents, one of the girls was screaming and screaming.

“That’s Di,” Jim declared, jumping to his feet.