The Ghost of Schafer Meadows Read online

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go, Oriole.”

  We started out together. She hit the water and immediately had to swim. I panicked as the river started to carry her downstream, but she turned upstream to face the current and easily swam across. I let out a huge sigh of relief. She was safe. I knew the river wouldn’t be a problem this summer.

  A quarter mile after crossing the Middle Fork, Jed stopped.

  “Hey look—a campground.”

  The small campground with a few picnic tables was nestled among some small lodgepole pine trees. Beyond the campground we saw a wooden pole corral, a barn, and a grassy airstrip with a couple of small planes. Past the barn were some old log buildings. We had reached the Schafer Meadows Ranger Station and our new summer home.

  ******

  A short stocky man with arms bulging against his faded white T-shirt worked next to the barn. He turned when he saw us coming and took off his cowboy hat, revealing brown hair.

  “Hey, how’s it going? Good to see all of you.”

  He wiped his hand on his jeans before reaching for Dad’s hand. Dad leaned down from his saddle and took it.

  “Nice to be here at last. Kate, Jessie, you remember Brad Peters, the Schafer packer?” Dad said to us. We nodded and shook hands with Brad.

  “Glad you made it here safely. Your gear arrived in good shape.”

  Brad went back to unpacking wooden boxes wrapped in “manty” tarps made of heavy white canvas. They held the supplies the mules had carried on their backs to Schafer. Brad handed me a package.

  “Your friend, Allie, asked me to give this to you.”

  I grinned. The grape jelly jar Allie had picked up in the food cache at Spotted Bear came with a note wrapped around it held by a rubber band.

  Dear Jessie,

  Did the jar arrive unbroken? Aren’t the mules and Packer Brad amazing? Didn’t you love the ride in? Write to me and tell me all about your trip. Hope to see you soon.

  Your friend,

  Allie

  P.S. Will says hi and watch out for the ghost!

  Wow! She signed it “Your friend, Allie.” It felt good to have a friend already. Two friends. I laughed off the joke about the ghost.

  We rode on to the cookhouse to unload the manties from Kitty. A familiar figure came out from the cookhouse basement.

  “Hey Pete,” I said, recognizing Oriole’s rescuer. “How goes it?”

  I jumped off Red and hugged Pete. My legs almost gave out after riding in the saddle for so long.

  “Everything’s great.” Pete hugged me back and began to untie the ropes holding one side of Kitty’s manties. “How was your trip?”

  “Wonderful,” Mom said. “The country’s beautiful and Jessie and I saw a new bird. No animals except squirrels, though.”

  We looked up at the large two-story log cookhouse. Dark brown with green and white trim along the windows, it looked a lot like some of the old buildings at Spotted Bear. Maybe I was getting used to those old buildings, because they didn’t look so disgusting to me now. I’ve always hated it when Jed was right. Maybe I was still mad at Dad for making us move and just didn’t want to admit it.

  We tied up our horses, and about that time two people came around the corner of the cookhouse to meet us.

  “We’ll give you a hand unloading,” said Celie Long Runner, a Native American from the Blackfeet Nation just outside the wilderness boundary. Her real name is Celeste, but she prefers Celie, pronounced like Seeley Lake, a town nearby. We had met at Spotted Bear. Tall and thin, Celie’s leanness hid sheer strength—strength she needed as the trail crew leader. All the guys at Spotted Bear drooled over her and her high cheekbones, dark smooth skin, and long black hair worn in a single braid. I liked her because she made me feel like a friend. Guess I had more friends than I realized.

  Cody Gray, a member of Celie’s trail crew, also helped us unload. Like the other trail crew members, Cody was about 20. He was built a lot like Jed and had the same ever-present cowboy hat worn with the brim facing down.

  “Whoa. What’s that smell?” Jed asked. The aroma of roast beef floated our way from upstairs in the cookhouse. “I’m starved. Someone’s sure fixing something good.”

  “I was going to take you to the ranger house,” Pete said, “but maybe you’d all like to eat first. Charlie’s got dinner just about ready.”

  After putting our saddlebags in a pile, we took our horses and mule back to the barn. I tied Red to a hitch rail, fed him oats, unsaddled him, and put his saddle and bridle in the shed next to the barn. His sweaty blanket lay on top of his saddle to dry. I brushed his back, chest, belly, and legs while he ate. Then I turned him out into the grassy area next to the corral. About 15 horses and mules waited to greet the new arrivals.

  Red took a long drink from a water tank before moving among the other animals. His back, still wet from sweat, showed the outline of his saddle. He buckled his knees to the ground and rolled in the dusty dirt, waving his hooves in the air. It has always amazed me that such huge creatures can roll so easily onto their backs. I watched Rocky, Dillon, Smurf, and Kitty do the same.

  The other horses and mules moved in among our animals, nickering a greeting. One horse nipped at a mule, sending it braying. One mule laid its ears flat on its head and kicked at another, moving it out of the way. Our animals held their own as the pecking order established itself. In the end, little Smurf ended up among the dominant ones. I wasn’t surprised. He always had.

  We walked back to the cookhouse. Everyone but Oriole and I went inside. I fed Oriole just outside the door and sat on a bench watching her wolf her food down before she fell into a deep sleep. It felt good to sit and rub my sore leg muscles.

  Charlie Horton, the station guard, clanged a triangle bell by the door, right near where Oriole slept. I grimaced.

  “Sorry it’s so loud, but that’s how we announce dinner,” Charlie said softly.

  Oriole opened her eyes, groaned, and went back to sleep.

  “Come on in to dinner. Let’s let sleeping dogs lie.”

  F O U R

  The Ghost of Schafer Meadows

  Jed sat with his plate in his hands, staring at the food on the table with a giant grin on his face.

  “I already love this place. Who fixed dinner?”

  Pot roast with potatoes, onions, and carrots, salad with my favorite Ranch dressing, fresh hot homemade bread, cherry Kool-Aid, and hot apple pie filled the long table. We all sat together and ate family style.

  “You can thank Charlie,” Pete said. “He worked most of the day getting things ready. Wanted you to have a good hot meal after your long ride in.”

  As station guard, Charlie pretty much kept the Schafer Meadows Ranger Station running. Right away I thought he was really cool. Tall and white-haired with a white moustache, he wore western clothes and a bandana instead of a Forest Service uniform. He placed a small wooden bird on the table.

  “Did you whittle that?” I asked.

  Charlie’s eyes twinkled and his moustache turned up slightly as he spoke softly. “I’m still working on it. But see the other carved wooden people and animals in the windowsill? Those are finished products.”

  “They look real,” Mom said, picking one up.

  “Well, thanks. They’re something I like to do to keep me out of trouble.” He stabbed a piece of pot roast as it went around the table. “So what are you going to do this summer, Jessie? Ride that horse of yours and rope bears?”

  “Nah, bears are too easy. Thought I’d rope me a moose instead. They’re meaner.”

  “You know, one of the early rangers tried that here once. Nearly got killed doing it.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said, laughing.

  “No, really. Look at the picture hanging on the wall over there.”

  Sure enough. There was a photo of a guy striking at a moose with a coiled horse bridle while the moose reared up on its hind legs and tried to thump the guy with its front hooves. My mouth hung open.
r />   Charlie laughed softly. “I’m pulling your leg, Jessie. But what really happened is almost as unbelievable. A dog spooked the moose, who charged the man. The guy struck back with the bridle in self-defense. He sure was lucky. He ended up with some bad injuries requiring surgery, but he lived.”

  “What? You kidding me again?”

  “Nope. Moose don’t normally act like that, but look out when they do. They can be deadly.”

  Mandy Lake, Celie’s other trail crew member, stared at the photo before turning back to her dinner. Mandy loosely gathered her bushy light brown hair with a band to keep it off her face. She had an easy smile and manner.

  “What do you do for fun when you’re not off working on some trail?” I asked Mandy.

  “I like to spend time at the barn with the animals, grooming the horses and mules or just talking to them.”

  That instantly put her at the top of my list. I knew she’d get along great with Oriole.

  “There are also incredible places to hike or backpack. You’ll have to come along sometime, Jessie. Oriole can come, too. There are miles of places to explore.”

  ******

  After dinner we carried our own dishes to the counter, washed them in the sink, and put them in the dish rack. With everyone pitching in they went fast. Then Dad sat at the table, reading an old copy of the Daily InterLake, the Kalispell newspaper. It had come in with the last pack string.

  “Listen to this,” he said, reading from the front page. “Someone robbed a jewelry store in the Kalispell Center Mall, right in the middle of the day. The store had a big sale going on, with a huge inventory and a lot of really expensive pieces. Three thieves took cut diamonds, rubies, and other small gems from the store—no jewelry—but they stole about $100,000 worth.”

  Packer Brad let out a low whistle. “Wonder how they got away.”

  Dad continued reading. “It says there were a lot of people in the store for the sale, and three men surprised the owner at the back of the store, away from the customers. The owner wasn’t hurt, but he never saw the men’s faces—he just heard their voices.

  “Also, an outfit was selling horse trailers in the parking lot and other stores had sales that had drawn a lot of people. The thieves just slipped out and blended in with the crowd. The police have no idea where the crooks went or how they escaped after the robbery.”

  “You know,” Mom said, “when we first got to Spotted Bear, the Sheriff’s Office was trying to radio all those deputies in the wilderness.”

  “Yeah, and Dad’s boss Rosie said she was busy with some law enforcement stuff the day she gave us a tour,” added Jed. “I bet it was related to that.”

  “Well,” Dad said, “by now the thieves have probably been caught.”

  “I don’t think so,” Pete said. “We listen to local radio here in the cookhouse, one of the few places where we can usually get good reception, and so far we haven’t heard anything on the news. We’ll have to keep our ears tuned. Something this big doesn’t happen very often around Kalispell.”

  As he sat at the table playing solitaire, his muscles bulging, Packer Brad grinned mischievously in my direction. “Have you ever seen a ghost?”

  “Only the one of my brother in his pajamas on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night,” I said. “Talk about scary.”

  “Schafer has its own ghost, you know, and it hangs out a lot at the ranger’s house.”

  Pulling her hair away from her face and tucking loose ends into her hair band, Mandy dismissed Packer Brad with a wave of her hand. “Oh, give me a break. There’s no ghost here. Don’t listen to him, Jessie.”

  Packer Brad flipped over three cards and set them in a pile. “There is too a ghost. I’ve been here three years now and every year someone sees it.”

  “Oh, yeah, what does it look like?”

  “I’ve heard it’s a man who appears to people at night and sometimes calls out. I’ve also heard it’s a woman who walks at night carrying a candle. But don’t ask me. Ask someone who’s seen the ghost.” Packer Brad picked up a two of clubs and set it on a three of diamonds. “Like Pete.”

  My jaw dropped. “Did you really see the ghost, Pete?” As Oriole’s rescuer and my friend, I trusted Pete to tell the truth, and it was hard to imagine that he would believe such a fantasy.

  Pete, drinking coffee at the table, shifted uneasily in his chair. He pushed his mug away and sat still for a second. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

  “First, let me say that normally I wouldn’t believe in such a thing. But yep—I’ve seen the ghost. At least that’s what it appeared to be.”

  “This is too cool!” Jed said, leaning over so he could see Pete, who sat two seats away on the same side of the table. “What happened?”

  Pete was silent again. Then he said, “Which time?”

  “WHICH TIME?” Mom, Dad, and Cody shouted in unison. He had everybody’s attention now.

  “Well, the first time I only heard him. The second time I saw him.”

  Pete walked to the coffee pot, poured himself another cup, and sat back down at the table, scraping his chair on the wood floor as he pulled it in with one hand. He took a sip of coffee, wrapping his large hands around the mug.

  “Guess I’d better start at the beginning. The first time—the time I only heard him—was late one fall. Packer Brad was bringing mules into Schafer that day so he and I could close the station at the end of the season. The trail crew had already left. I was here alone. I had already turned off the water in all the buildings except here in the cookhouse, so I slept upstairs in the large storage room next to Charlie’s room. It has a bed in there for people who need a place to stay when the bunkhouse is full.” Pete waved toward the area at the back of the upstairs.

  “Anyway, it was early in the morning, still dark. I heard a man call out, ‘Hel-lo, Hel-lo.’ I got up and went downstairs to the door. It had snowed during the night, enough that there would have been tracks if anyone had walked or ridden their horse past the cookhouse. But there were no tracks—none.

  “I couldn’t explain it,” Pete said, confusion showing on his face. “That voice sounded so clear. I was sure someone was there.”

  “That doesn’t prove there’s a ghost,” Packer Brad said. “You could have been dreaming.”

  Pete took another sip of coffee. “True, but my next encounter is harder to explain.”

  “So tell us,” Mom said, clearly intrigued.

  Pete took a deep breath and blew it out. “Last year we didn’t have anyone in Tom’s position as ranger, so I pretty much ran the station. I lived in the ranger’s house. We had a big trail program, so two crew leaders lived in the house with me—in your room, Jed. Sometimes they’d go to the bunkhouse or cookhouse to play cards or games or just sit around and talk until late, so I was used to people wandering in and out of the house at all hours.

  “One night I was asleep in bed. I woke up hearing the screen door squeak open and then bang shut. I heard soft footsteps come up the stairs. I didn’t think much of it, because there’s only the one bathroom, which we all shared.

  “But the footsteps kept coming, past the bathroom and right into my room. Next thing I knew, I felt someone sit down at the foot of the bed. I could actually feel the bed sink down. Then I felt someone pressing down on the mattress on either side of my shoulders. I opened my eyes and saw the face of a man—a stranger—looking me right in the face. I could feel his ice-cold breath on my cheek.”

  Celie grabbed her braid and pulled it tightly over one shoulder with both hands. “Holy smoke! I’d have screamed my lungs out and run all the way back to Spotted Bear.”

  “Funny thing is I wasn’t afraid. All I thought was, ‘Oh. That’s the ghost.’ I rolled over, closed my eyes, and went back to sleep. I never even knew when he left.”

  Pete swallowed the rest of his coffee and set the mug gently on the table. “I’m not saying for sure it was the ghost. I’ve never been a believer. But I sure never experienced anythi
ng like that before—or since. Who knows? You may never see or hear the ghost the entire time you’re here. Most people don’t, right, Charlie?”

  Charlie nodded, his red bandana nodding with him. “Right. I’ve been here for years and have only heard the stories. Never seen a thing.”

  Pete’s story gave me the willies, but Charlie made me feel better. If he hadn’t seen a ghost in all the years he worked at Schafer, maybe we wouldn’t either.

  No one could top Pete’s tale, so we all just started leaving the table. It was time to see our new house.

  Ghost or no ghost.

  F I V E

  The Ranger’s House

  “C’mon, I’ll take you to the ranger’s house, your new home,” said Pete, hoisting a duffle bag under one arm and two of our sleeping bags under the other. “We’ve already got a lot of your gear there. Celie and Cody will bring the rest.”

  We ducked under the hitch rail and followed Pete to a log cabin near the cookhouse. Nestled in the pines by the edge of the airstrip, the two-story house had a porch with a big wooden swing. It looked like a cozy old cabin, not one haunted by a ghost.

  Pete led us into the house through a squeaky screen door. A long couch and a couple of easy chairs took up most of the living room. Large windows faced the porch, airstrip, and cookhouse. The smell of wood smoke filled the air. A fire in the woodstove by the far wall crackled and warmed the room. An old wooden box next to the stove held stacked split wood.

  Mom pointed to a spot just below the ceiling. “Good. There are propane gas lights on the walls. When you don’t have electricity, it’s nice not to have to light lanterns all the time.”

  “I know,” said Pete. “We’re lucky to have gas here at all. We can’t have natural gas, it’s too far to put in gas lines, but propane is just as good. The mules bring in propane tanks when we need them. They’re nearly as tall as you, Jessie.” He walked to a table that had a lantern on it. “There are lanterns if you want extra light, but the wall lights are usually all you’ll need.”