The Ghost of Schafer Meadows Read online

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Oh, they’re all out and about finishing up projects.”

  “Are Mom and Dad around?”

  “I think they’re both at the campground.”

  I finished my breakfast and ran out the door. Near the barn an unfamiliar bird called. I hurried back to the house for my binoculars and bird book.

  Oriole and I walked slowly toward the barn so we wouldn’t disturb the bird that sounded somewhat like a robin yet not quite. The call came from beyond the barn, closer to the campground.

  Suddenly a yellow flash shot past me and flew up the hill above the campground. Oriole and I followed the bird up the hill, finally finding it perched on a lodgepole pine, preening itself. It completely spread out one black wing with white stripes and bent its bright red head to pick at tiny insects. Then it shook its brilliant yellow body, spraying drops of water into the air. It must have just bathed in a puddle or the nearby creek. Thinking this would be an easy bird to identify, I sat on the ground and leafed through my bird book. A Western Tanager. No doubt. Cool! We had Western Tanagers where we lived in New Mexico, but I had never seen one before.

  The bird finished cleaning itself and sang for a while before moving on to another tree. I was so caught up with watching it that it took a while to realize I could hear Les and Doug talking as they took down their tarp over the picnic table below. The sound carried well up the hill. They didn’t seem to know I could hear them. And what they were saying caused me to listen—closely.

  “I’m glad we can finally git outta here. I’m bored silly,” Doug said, untying one end of the tarp.

  Les untied another end. “Yeah, well, we better hurry. And he better be there on time. I don’t want that stuff found in our possession.”

  “If he hadn’t messed up that message, we’d of been long gone. Sure took long enough to figure out where to go.”

  “I know. But ya gotta admit it was pretty gutsy to stash them right under the ranger’s nose.”

  Both men chuckled. “Yeah, that was pretty funny, but I don’t like taking the heat for his plan. That horse trailer better be there waitin’ for us. I still can’t believe we got away without no one seein’ us.”

  The two men folded the tarp and left for the horse camp. Oriole followed her nose down the hill to the picnic table Les and Doug had sat on for so long. She put her front paws on the bench and leaned out toward something white on the table top. A small piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Oriole raced after it and picked it up in her mouth.

  “Whatcha got, girl?” I said. I looked up to make sure Doug and Les didn’t see Oriole with the paper. They kept on walking.

  Oriole tossed the paper in the air and caught it again.

  “Bring me the paper.”

  Oriole acted like this was a great game. She ran around me with the paper dangling from her mouth.

  “Bring it here,” I said, more strongly. Oriole just stood there, wagging her tail.

  “Oriole, come!”

  This time she came and dropped the paper at my feet. Picking it up, I found tooth marks and dog slobber all over it. One corner was torn off. The paper was a note. It said:

  “Look in _oo___o_e.”

  I tried to smooth out the places where tooth marks had broken through the paper, but Oriole had evidently destroyed some letters. The next line read “in the______house.”

  What a weird note. It would take some time to figure it out. I looked for Mom, Dad, and Don, but didn’t see them anywhere. Putting the note in my pocket, I decided to give “birding” one last try at the horse camp. Maybe Doug and Les had more to say, maybe even about the note. Maybe I could catch those dirty birds in the act.

  When Oriole and I got to the camp, Doug and Les were packing up all of their food and gear. When they saw us coming, they covered up some of their things and quickly stood to meet us.

  “Hey, how’s it goin’?” I put my binoculars up to the sky. “Just trying to find that osprey again. You guys heading out today?”

  “Looks that way, don’t it?” Doug said.

  “Where ya headed?”

  “East side.”

  “Oh? How will you get your horses out if you came from Spotted Bear? You live on the east side of the mountains?”

  “We got a pilot friend who had someone drive our horse trailer to the east side for us.”

  Les gave Doug a look that said he’d told me too much. He was right. I had a pretty good idea who that pilot might be. “Is it one of the pilots here?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  Doug clammed up. “Nope.”

  “Oh, I know. It must have been Hank Cooter. He said he had friends coming in. You must be those friends.” Just so they didn’t think I knew too much and hoping to make them relax a bit I said, “He didn’t like me or Oriole.”

  “Maybe that’s because you ask too many questions,” Les said. “You better go

  find your bird. We gotta git.”

  “Okay. Have a good trip out.” I left with Oriole on my heels. We walked slowly down toward the river, away from their camp. I lifted my binoculars and searched the sky, pretending to look for an osprey.

  After a while I got behind a tree where they couldn’t see me and watched them through my binoculars.

  Les bent over a manty tarp, wrapping one side securely before reaching for the other side. “Life’s gonna be pretty darn good soon.”

  Doug stuffed a sandwich into a saddlebag. “You ain’t just a-woofin’. Soon as we git rid of the stuff we’ll be sittin’ pretty.”

  When they uncovered the things they hadn’t wanted me to see earlier, I looked closely through my binoculars. Another meat wrapper marked Schafer lay on a tarp. I now knew for certain that Les and Doug stole the food from Spotted Bear. But how would getting rid of the “stuff” make life good? What “stuff?” Food can’t make life that good.

  Les picked up some small drawstring pouches and put them inside a waist pack. He handed some to Doug and told him to do the same. “Keep ’em with you just in case the mules run off or something. Don’t want to lose these babies. They’re our ticket to happiness.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but it was definitely time to go find Mom, Dad, and Don. Oriole and I walked past Les and Doug, saying goodbye as we went. Oriole sniffed around and seemed particularly interested in a boot print—a large wide print from a soft sole with a small circle in the tip. I drew in my breath, realizing it probably came from the same boots I had photographed in the food cache at Spotted Bear and later when we found the trail mess. I tried to act relaxed as we passed by.

  Wouldn’t you know it? An osprey soared overhead as we left the horse camp. I didn’t dare take time to watch it. But if Doug or Les knew I’d seen it and just walked away, they’d know something was wrong. I glanced back, but they were still packing.

  On the mile walk back to the campground, I took out the note, trying to make sense of it.

  “This must be the ‘message’ Doug and Les said ‘he’ messed up,” I told Oriole. “Lucky you spotted it, but couldn’t you have left your tooth marks out of it? They make it really difficult to figure out what it all means.”

  “Look in _oo___o_e” and “in the ______house.”

  Look in where? And what house? It had to be somewhere at Schafer. Was it the bunkhouse? Cookhouse? Our house? One thing was sure: Hank Cooter had left the note. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. He had hidden something at Schafer and left it for them to find.

  Suddenly it began to make sense. “Guess what, Oriole? We didn’t see a ghost last night walking away from our house in the fog. It was either Doug or Les.”

  I laughed out loud. As silly as it seems, I felt better knowing that a real person, not a ghost, had searched our house. I should have been more frightened.

  “What were they looking for and where? I wish you could talk to me, Oriole. Whatever it is could have been in the bunkhouse, cookhouse, or our house. But which one?”

  I had to think hard
er about the first part of the note. Look in what? To figure that out I needed to search all three buildings.

  When we reached the campground, I sat at the picnic table where Les and Doug had spent all their time. Once more I looked at the note. “Look in _oo___o_e” What was in the buildings that made a word with the letters that were still visible on the note?

  Then it came to me.

  Woodstove.

  Could it mean “Look in woodstove?” There was one way to find out.

  I forgot about talking to anyone about Les and Doug and went to the bunkhouse instead. Mandy invited me in.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Have you seen my parents and Jed?”

  “Not for a while, but they’re around.”

  I glanced into the bathroom. “Hey. Can I see the woodstove in the bathroom? It sure looks different from any I’ve seen before.”

  “No problem.”

  The woodstove hadn’t been used for a while. Someone had emptied the ashes, leaving the inside clean.

  Thanking Mandy, Oriole and I left for the cookhouse. No one was there. I looked inside the woodstove even though it gets used all the time. It wouldn’t make sense for Hank Cooter to hide something there.

  Could the note refer to a cook stove, not a woodstove? I remembered that Doug checked out the cook stove the day he and Les lost their horses and stopped in the cookhouse. Because the stove was always in use, I didn’t bother looking there.

  Oriole and I ran to our house. It was the only place left to look. I stuck my arm inside the woodstove and heard the same rustling sound I’d heard last night when Doug or Les had been in the house. The stove held only wadded newspaper.

  Next I checked the cook stove in the kitchen. I remembered hearing someone slide a lid off the top of the stove. I moved back one heavy round iron lid, peering inside over the hole it formed. It was too dark to see anything, so I ran my hand inside.

  Nothing.

  The lid clanged when set back in place. I lifted another lid. It also revealed nothing. Sliding my hand along the inside bottom, my fingers touched a small object in one corner. It felt like a piece of charcoal, but I picked it up and brought it out. A beautiful tiny blue stone sparkled in the room’s light. I stood up, excited.

  All of a sudden it all came together. I had to find my parents and Don.

  S E V E N T E E N

  The Horse Camp

  They were all there in the campground—Mom, Dad, Jed, Don, Pete, Jim, and Charlie. Dad was discussing where he was sending the crew on the next trail project.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Dad, but this is important.”

  Dad looked up from the notes he had scribbled for the crew. “What’s up, Jessie?”

  “Last night I thought I heard the ghost in our house and then watched it leave. I should have told you then but didn’t. What I really saw was either Doug or Les.”

  “What are you saying? They were in our house?”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize it at the time. And then this morning they talked in the campground, saying things that sounded weird, suspicious. They went to the horse camp right after that and Oriole found this note by their picnic table.” I pulled it out of my pocket and gave it to Don. “We followed them to the horse camp to see if we might hear them say anything else.”

  Dad shook his head. “That was very dangerous, Jessie. You shouldn’t have gone there alone.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone there at all,” Mom said.

  “You’re right, but it didn’t seem that risky at the time. They thought I was looking for an osprey. Anyway, there was a boot print that matched the ones in my photos. It belonged to either Les or Doug. And when Oriole and I pretended to look for the osprey, I zoomed in with my binoculars and saw another meat wrapper and a couple of interesting little pouches. I also found out Hank Cooter knows Les and Doug and had their horse trailer delivered for them to the east side of the mountains.”

  I saved the best for last, pulling out the tiny stone that turned a dazzling blue, especially when the light hit it right.

  “This came from the cook stove in the kitchen of our house. It’s a good thing we can’t use the stove. I’d have never found it.”

  Don took the blue stone from the palm of my hand, tilting it in the sun. “Whoa, look at this little beauty! I’m not much on gems but my wife loved sapphires, and I’m willing to bet this is a yogo sapphire. They’re a brilliant blue like this and found only in Montana. Yogos are rarer than diamonds and extremely valuable, so this may be worth quite a bit.”

  “You mean they’re worth more than diamonds?” Mom asked.

  “Near perfect diamonds cost far more, but some large yogos can hold their own against them. In fact, it was rumored that the giant sapphire engagement ring that Prince Charles of England gave to Princess Diana was a yogo, but it turned out it wasn’t.”

  I thought we were getting off track. “Hey! This gem may tie these two guys and Hank Cooter to the jewelry store robbery in Kalispell. Les and Doug talked about making sure they didn’t lose the pouches, that they were their ticket to happiness. This little sapphire must have fallen out of one of the pouches.”

  “You may be right, Jessie,” Don said. “If the jewels ended up here in Schafer Meadows, that would explain why it’s been so hard to find any clues to the robbery.”

  “Yeah, but why bring the jewels here?” Jed asked.

  Don put the gem securely in his pocket. “Hard to say. Why don’t we just go to the horse camp and ask Les and Doug? I don’t want everyone going, though. There may be trouble. Jed, you get the trail crew together and have them watch the trails. Tell Celie to have them keep track of everyone who comes and goes. They’re not to stop anyone or talk to them more than they normally would. Tell them to just take good mental notes on who passes by, where they’re going, and what they look like. If anything looks wrong, I want the crew to back off.

  “Kate, you and Charlie stay at the station. Call Spotted Bear on the satellite phone and tell them what’s happening here. Have them call the sheriff’s office in Kalispell and send some deputies right now. Fly them in if possible. Meanwhile, monitor the radio carefully. If you have something important to tell me, call and say there’s a visitor waiting for me at the station. That’ll be my cue. I’ll get out of earshot of Doug and Les before I talk with you so they won’t hear anything we don’t want them to hear.

  “Jim, I know you’re not a Forest Service employee, but would you mind staying at the campground in case the pilots wonder where we are? Just tell them some business popped up and we’ll be back soon.”

  Jim nodded in agreement. “Happy to help.”

  “Great. Thanks. Pete and Tom, I’d like you to come with me to the horse camp in case I need help. Jessie, you come, too. You may have to identify some of their things. But I want you and Oriole to stay completely clear of the situation until I call you in. You mustn’t go anywhere near those two. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  Don called Casey and we left for the horse camp. It seemed a long walk there, but it only took about 20 minutes. Doug and Les had finished putting the last pack on the last mule and had just mounted their horses. Don told me and Oriole to stay on the trail just inside the trees, close enough so we could watch the action and hear what was being said, but far enough away to be safe.

  “Let me start this off,” Dad said to Don as they walked away from us. “They know me and Pete. It might make them less suspicious and nervous.”

  Oriole must have sensed something was about to happen because she whined and trembled excitedly. She kept her eyes on her buddy Casey as he trotted down the trail with Don.

  Dad walked up to the two men. “Heading out already? I’d like you to get down and tie up your horses. I want to talk to you for a minute.”

  “We gotta get going,” Les said, nudging his horse to a walk. “We’re late meetin’ a friend.”

  Pete stood in front of Les, forcing his horse to stop. “What’s the rus
h? You’ve been here a long time doing nothing. Why the hurry now?”

  “We forgot how long it’ll take us to get out.”

  Dad stood next to Pete, making a barrier between Les and the trail. “Well, we need to inspect your camp before you leave. It’ll just take a minute. Tie up and we’ll get you out as soon as we can.”

  Doug and Les hesitated for a moment, looking like they might bolt, but they finally dismounted and tied up their horses and mules.

  Don reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a wallet. He held it open to Les and Doug, revealing his law enforcement badge.

  “What’s this all about?” Doug asked. “You a cop? Why the badge if you’re just checking our camp?”

  “I need you two to sit on the ground and don’t move. I want to see what you have in your waist packs.”

  Les and Doug looked at each other, but neither man sat.

  “You got a search warrant?” Doug said, moving closer to Don.

  Don pocketed his law enforcement badge and wallet. “Look, we can either wait until the sheriff’s deputies arrive or we can get this over with now. Which will it be?”

  “Neither,” Doug said, and he took a swing at Don as Les sprinted past them. Don managed to block his fist and grab his arm, but Doug struggled to get loose. Dad and Pete caught him from behind and wrestled him to the ground before he could get away. They handcuffed Doug’s arms behind him.

  Don looked up to see Les getting farther and farther away. “Casey! Get him!”

  Casey raced after Les, catching up to him as he neared our trail. Casey seized his pant leg with his teeth and started to yank him down.

  Before I knew it, Oriole shot off to join Casey. She grabbed Les by his waist pack. The pack split open. A small pouch hit the ground and beautiful red, blue, green and diamond-like stones spilled out. Frantically, Les reached for them, but Oriole and Casey stood in front of him, their teeth bared. Les cringed and drew his arms and legs under him. “Get them off me!” he said, putting his arms over his ears to protect his head.

  “Casey, off!” Don said. Casey backed away, and Oriole followed his lead.