Chapter Twenty ~ Safe at Last

as told to Jstar8 by Cap

Cap stirred the coals of his overnight fire back to life as soon as the sky was gray enough to see by. He fed it a few small sticks until it was properly burning. Then he began to feed it the pine boughs he’d used as bedding. They’d create smoke, so he’d have to be gone before it got bright enough for that to give away his location. That was okay, though. He wanted to warm his hands and feet and roast some of the acorns he’d gathered while he was setting his camp. It wasn’t much of a breakfast for a day he'd spend hiking, but it was what he had, and nutrition to size, there wasn’t much that could beat an acorn.

Pine burned fast, so it didn’t take Cap long to burn through his bedding. He used the empty gin bottle and about a dozen trips to the stream near his campsite to make sure the fire was completely out and the coals too cold to reignite after he left. Then he filled both bottles and munched on his now cooled feast of roasted tree nut.

Satisfied he’d left as little trace on the environment as possible, Cap oriented himself, whistling a morning greeting to the birds singing the sun into the sky and began his long trek. He had been careful the night before, and doubted inexperienced trackers like the Swishers would be able to find where he’d spent the night, but he took as much care leaving his camp, moving from boulder to boulder. When the stream widened and grew swift, he removed his makeshift shoes and walked half a mile in the middle of the stream. It slowed him down, but left absolutely no trace of his passage.

Once he was convinced that he’d obscured his trail sufficiently, Cap climbed out of the stream where there was grass to dry his feet before putting his footwear back on. Cap picked up his pace, taking a more direct route. He avoided the official hiking trails and roads – no point in making it easy for the Swishers – but no longer avoided game trails. If they were searching hard enough to find his tracks on the game trails, they could determine his direction of travel and pace, but if they were searching in this area, they could conclude without finding his tracks where he was heading. He doubted they’d try that hard. If they needed him permanently out of the way, they’d have killed him or at least kept an eye on him. Whatever their purpose was in abducting him, it had probably already been served by keeping him out of the Champion Creek campground for a day or two.

Cap hoped everyone else was okay. Knut and Hallie were smart and would take care of each other. The New Yorkers seemed equally smart and prone to sticking together and taking care of one another. He wanted to believe they were a match for the Swishers. He’d feel better if he was with them, though.

By the middle of the afternoon, Cap’s headache had turned to dizziness. That could be blood sugar, too, he supposed, hiking like this on two handfuls of acorns and the three cattails he’d plucked while walking in the stream.

Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food, Cap reminded himself of conventional survival wisdom. He knew it was a lie. Those numbers were under ideal circumstances, and were the timeline for death, not dysfunction. Still, he’d be fine without anything else to eat before he stopped for the night. There were acorns, huckleberries, wild onions, and edible mushrooms in the vicinity of the cave he planned to sleep in.

He just had to get there before it got too dark to forage. He’d been making good time through the middle of the day, but his pace was slowing as the concussion wreaked havoc on him. Or the low blood sugar. It was hard to tell the difference under the circumstances.

Suka, suka. Cap’s head snapped toward the sound. It was off to the right. A hundred yards ahead, the trail he was on bore left. There was no reason to expect another close encounter. He had nothing to defend himself with, but then, the real Sasquatch, the one that had come into their camp the first night, hadn’t been aggressive, just curious.

Still, Cap hurried ahead. He was in no shape to deal with a wild predator.

The sound came again, more plaintive. Suka, suka. As if it knew he was moving away and wanted him to come closer instead. It’s the concussion; you’re not thinking clearly, Cap cautioned himself. He still found himself wavering, turning toward the sound, not away.

He stepped off the game trail into the brush. A soft whistle drifted to him on the breeze.

He stepped back onto the trail. Suka, suka.

He was… what, communicating with a wild sasquatch? Or it was communicating with him? No one would believe him. Not with the concussion, not with the Swishers playing sasquatch. They’d say he’d been lured by a human, or that it was coincidence not intent.

Tell that to the whistles urging him forward, the fweeops when he was off course, and suka, suka if he stopped or went the wrong way.

At last, he stepped out of the trees into a clearing. Well, a clearing in the trees. It was hardly clear, not with wild raspberry bushes choking each other out trying to grow. Late raspberries, ripe and eager for picking. He fell on them, eating a handful, two. Only then did he have the presence of mind to look for the creature.

No one would believe he saw it, either, back in the shadows at the far side of the clearing, more shadow than substance itself. “Thank you,” he offered softly. Then, because sasquatch sightings were an ancient thing, from before the English made it to Idaho, he added a Coeur d’Alene blessing of gratitude for nature giving of its bounty that he’d learned from a tribal elder on a solo camping trip in back country last summer.

He might have imagined the whistle and grunt of acknowledgement. But he might not have.

He reached the cave – really more of an overhang with delusions of grandeur, but it would serve – with enough daylight to gather firewood, pine boughs, mushrooms, and acorns. The huckleberries were picked over but he managed to get a handful. The onions weren’t ready to be harvested though, which was a shame. It would have added some kick to his otherwise bland dinner of roasted acorn and mushroom.

The temperature dropped overnight, more than it had the night before. Cap slept restlessly, waking frequently to feed the fire and warm himself. When the birds started to chirp, Cap gave up on sleep. He could start hiking again soon, with the first light. He was only a few hours from the campground now (two and a half at his usual pace, closer to four at the pace he’d been reduced to the previous afternoon). Or, he could burn the extra firewood he’d gathered and get warmer before he headed out.

In the end, breakfast swayed him. A chipmunk had made off with his acorns in the night, so he’d have to leave the fire to eat, and if he was leaving the fire anyway, he might as well start hiking, especially since a full meal awaited him at the end of today’s hike.

Finally, Cap heard a familiar voice through the trees. “Where can that birdbrain be?” His sister demanded, sounding on the verge of despair.

Timing couldn’t get any better than that, Cap thought with amusement tinged with relief, stepping off the road into the campground. Miss Trask saw him first. Her face broke into a smile and she pointed in his direction. Her hand shook; Cap hadn’t realized she saw him as anything more than another minor under her supervision.

“Capelton?” Knut faltered, sounding like he doubted his own eyes.

“Cap!” Hallie screamed.

Then they were on him, arms around his waist, foreheads touching, as they shared relief and confirmed for each other that they were all alive and together again. Their parents were always busy with the company, so the three of them had bonded more than some siblings, as they fended for themselves and each other.

After only a minute, the Bob-Whites surrounded them, interrupting their reunion. “We thought the sasquatch got you!” Di cried.

“That fraud?” Cap scoffed, certain they meant the aggressive sasquatch – the Swisher sasquatch – not the one he and Trixie had seen, the one that had led him to raspberries.

“Where have you been?” Hallie demanded. “We’ve worn grooves on that mountain, hunting for you.”

“I’ve been walking from Cedar Mountain,” Cap said.

“Cedar?” Hallie fluttered a hand that pointed west.

“That’s a heck of a hike from here!” Knut whistled.

“You’re telling me,” Cap said wearily. “Can’t I sit down before I fall down?” Stiffly he plodded and dropped into the first chair he reached. He stretched out both legs, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

He should have known they wouldn’t let it go at that. He’d been gone too long, and come back in too poor a shape, though he knew it could have been much worse.

“Why did you whack up your jacket?” Trixie asked. “Where are your shoes?”

Cap looked regretful. “After I got away from one Swisher, another one clobbered me with the butt of his shotgun. They loaded me in that old wagon they racket around in and took me to that deserted logging camp on Cedar Mountain. They stole my moccasins and dumped me. I worked my way out of their ropes. I’ve been walking ever since, but it was good-bye jacket, hello foot bindings—or I wouldn’t have made it. I could use some food, though.”

Hallie bustled about, eyes glowing with black fire. Her mouth could not stop smiling. She declared proudly, “I told everyone that Cap could live off the land!”

“Just barely,” Cap mumbled. If it hadn’t been for the Sasquatch….

After Cap had eaten, he retreated to Knut’s tent, where he knew the big first aid kit was stashed. He was doing a better job of tending to the damage from the splinters and gravel he’d been forced to walk over when Knut ducked in a zipped the tent closed.

“Now that it’s just us, how are you, actually?”

“Rough around the edges,” Cap confessed. “Concussed. This,” he said with a wave to his feet. “Sore.”

“You get into the painkillers yet?”

Cap nodded, only wincing a little. The painkillers hadn’t kicked in enough to make his head stop throbbing.

Knut nudged the empty gin bottle that Cap had dumped out of his jacket pocket when he settled on the bedroll. “You drink it? I won’t tell anyone if you did. You obviously were short a first-aid kit, and anyone might despair under the circumstances.”

“No,” Cap assured him. “Used it to sanitize the old canteen I found, then brought the empty along in case I needed to boil water.”

“Good. But if that’s true, what else didn’t you want anyone out there to know?”

Cap frowned even as he eased a fresh pair of socks on. He didn’t wear socks with his moccasins but he wasn’t sure what his footwear situation would be moving forward, and he thought the minimal protection would help them heal better than nothing.

He loved his brother, but he wasn’t sure he’d believe the story about the sasquatch leading him to the raspberries. Then again, he was sure Knut wasn’t going to let it go, and his brother could always tell when he was hiding something (as evidenced by this conversation in the first place). So, Cap told him.

“I’m sure you don’t believe me,” Cap concluded.

Knut looked thoughtful rather than dubious. “I don’t know. We’ve been pretty sure there were two sasquatches this whole trip – the one that threw rocks at us, the Swisher sasquatch, and the wild one that came close but never tried to hurt us. Hallie calls you birdbrain because you’re half-wild in an ‘of the wilderness’ way yourself. The real sasquatch could see you as a kindred spirit and wild animals have rescued humans in need before, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility. For anyone who believes the sasquatch exists in the first place, anyway. I’m just glad you’re safe at last.”