The Ghost of Schafer Meadows Read online

  “What’s in that room?” I asked, looking at a door just past the end of the couch.

  “That’s my bedroom,” Jed said. “If it’s okay with you, that is. I kinda moved in when Dad and I got here last week.”

  “Where am I gonna sleep?”

  “Upstairs. You’ll see.”

  We backed out of Jed’s room and looked into the kitchen at the back of the house.

  A small wooden table with four chairs hugged the wall next to the back door. A large sink, cupboards, and drawers under the counter filled another wall. Dad opened the cupboards and drawers to show us a few dishes, silverware, and glasses.

  I looked around, more than a little worried. “Where’s our refrigerator? Where’s our food?”

  “We won’t eat meals here,” Dad said. “We’ll eat with everyone at the cookhouse.”

  “Good. At least that way we’ll have lots of people to talk to so it won’t be so lonely.” I didn’t care that my words stung Dad. I was still sore at him for making us move.

  Pete pointed to a beautiful white antique wood-burning cook stove with silvery fixtures that faced into the kitchen with its back to Jed’s room.

  “That stove’s been here a long time. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

  Dad turned his sad-looking eyes from me to the antique cook stove. “So Pete, why’s the cook stove here if not for cooking?”

  “It’s mostly kept here for backup heat if it really gets cold. Which isn’t often. It’s also a nice conversation piece, don’t you think?”

  “Can we see the upstairs?” I asked.

  “Sure, let’s go.” Pete led the way.

  The stairs to the second floor were against the living room wall on the side by the cookhouse. At the top right was a small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and an old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub. A shower curtain circled the tub on a suspended pole.

  Pete pointed to a small white tank hanging on a wall above the sink. “This little guy heats up water on demand so you can have showers. The minute you turn on the water it’s hot.”

  “That’s great,” Mom said. “I wasn’t sure how we would get hot water to bathe. I had visions of us heating buckets of water.”

  We continued down the short hallway. It ended at a bedroom with a queen-sized bed. “This is our bedroom,” Dad said to Mom, “complete with a dresser and closet. Pretty cushy compared to what we had in the wilderness in New Mexico, isn’t it? And the window faces the airstrip, so we can hear the horses and mules at night as they graze on the strip.”

  “Oh, wonderful, Tom,” Mom said sarcastically. “I hope I get some sleep.”

  Dad put his arm around her. “Don’t worry, Kate. The horses and mules usually hang out at one end of the airstrip or the other. I haven’t heard them at night except occasionally when they gallop by or one of them snorts or bellows. Mostly I hear the bell one of them wears. To me it’s comforting knowing they’re still around and haven’t run off.”

  “So this is where Pete met the ghost face-to-face,” I said looking around the room. “Scare ya much, Dad?”

  “No, Jessie. If the ghost didn’t hurt Pete, I don’t think it will bother us. Besides, your mother’s pretty tough. She’ll keep me safe.”

  Mom shook a finger at Dad. “If those horses and mules aren’t quiet at night I might just call on that ghost to help me run them off for good.”

  Jed looked out the window. “Holy smoke! Look there.”

  “The ghost?” I asked.

  Everyone crowded to the window. A mother moose and her new baby ambled across the airstrip. I’d never seen a moose except on TV. The newborn had long wobbly legs and kept close to its mother’s side. The mother nudged her tiny baby with her long nose.

  “I thought moose had antlers,” I said. “How come this one doesn’t?”

  “Only males have them,” Pete said.

  Mom stood on her tiptoes looking over Jed’s shoulder, watching the two animals. “Aren’t they beautiful! Maybe living next to the airstrip won’t be so bad after all.”

  We watched until they went into the woods before we left the room.

  “Okay,” I said, fighting back a sudden panic. “Where’s my bedroom? There’s no other room up here.” I glared at Jed. “Pretty funny, Jed. Do I have to sleep on the floor in Mom and Dad’s room or were you thinking I’d sleep in your bedroom with you?”

  “Neither,” Dad said, sharing a secret wink with Jed. “Look here.”

  He pointed to a door at the top of the stairs opposite the bathroom. The roof sloped down to the outer wall. “This space was used for storage in the past, but Jed and I worked all last week to turn it into a loft-like bedroom. It’s small, but if you like it, it’s yours.”

  I walked in. The room held a bed and a dresser for my clothes and still had plenty of space for Oriole’s pad. I liked it—a lot.

  Able to breathe again, I said, “I always dreamed of living in a loft in the mountains. This is the next best thing. Thanks for fixing this for me, you guys. Sorry I got mad, Jed. You’re the greatest!” I mentally started to move in, but then another moment of panic hit me. “Where’s Oriole?”

  We all looked around. She wasn’t there.

  We went downstairs. The screen door was ajar. I thought she might have let herself out and gone exploring, but Pete relieved my fears once more. “Look over there,” he said, pointing to a rug in front of the couch.

  Curled up, nose to tail, lay Oriole. She was sound asleep. “Our 20-mile trip in here was about 40 miles for Oriole with all the running back and forth that she did,” whispered Dad as he scooped her up in his arms. “No wonder she’s pooped.”

  Dad carried her upstairs and put her on my bed. I ran my hand along Oriole’s black eye and ear. “I hope she wakes up if the ghost comes.”

  “Don’t worry too much about the ghost, Jessie. We’ve all had a long day. Why don’t you go to bed and try to sleep.”

  Exhausted, I said good night, put on my pajamas, and crawled in next to Oriole. I don’t even remember my head hitting the pillow.

  ******

  That night I saw a man standing at the foot of my bed staring at me. He wore an old felt cowboy hat and torn clothing. A stubbly beard made soft scratching noises when his head moved across his shirt. I tried to ask him what he wanted, but words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. He watched me through sad-looking eyes for a while before turning away and walking down the stairs. Was it a dream? I didn’t know. I only knew I wasn’t afraid. He didn’t seem to want to harm me.

  S I X

  The Pilot

  The next morning I thought about the ghost as Oriole and I watched Packer Brad and his mule string leave from the barn for the long trail back to Spotted Bear. I still wasn’t scared and soon forgot about it.

  Oriole and I tagged along with Cody and Mandy to the bunkhouse, a long one-story log building close to the cookhouse. It had one room with about half a dozen single metal beds and another room with a bathroom and shower. I thought people would feel cramped in there, but Mandy reminded me that the crew didn’t sleep there very often. Mostly they stayed in tents or backcountry cabins near the trail they were working on and only came back to Schafer on their days off. Even then they’d often go backpacking or hike out to somewhere else. So the bunkhouse was usually empty.

  Mom was busy setting up her “office” when Oriole and I got back to the house. Years ago Mom taught college history, but when Dad’s work took us from one place to another, it was too hard for her to keep a job. She always wanted to be a writer, so one day she began writing romance novels set in some historical time period, like the Civil War or when settlers moved west.

  It’s funny. I always thought someone who wrote love stories would wear pearls and high heels. Instead, Mom usually sits at the computer dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her shoulder-length blonde hair in a ponytail sticking out from under a baseball cap, her tall thin body sitting ramrod straight. As she thinks up stories, her blue eyes get a distant look and
her fingers fly across the keyboard. She’s good at what she writes—good enough that we can live anywhere that Dad’s job takes us. If Mom keeps cranking out novels, maybe someday we won’t have to move again.

  She put her laptop on a small wooden table in the living room next to the front window. Because Schafer has no electricity, Mom needed a constant supply of computer batteries. And she couldn’t use a printer. How primitive can you get? All her work had to be put on a CD or an external drive to mail out. She stored stacks of CDs and about ten backup batteries in a cardboard box below the table.

  “What are you and Oriole up to today?” Mom asked.

  “I thought I might work on some more obedience lessons with her and then take Red for a ride.”

  “Well, don’t go too far with Red until you know the area better.”

  “I won’t. I might take him out on the airstrip and run him a bit to give him some exercise.”

  “Okay. Enjoy yourself, but be careful. See you at lunch.” Mom sat down to work on her book.

  Oriole and I dashed to the airstrip. I taught her to come, sit, stay, and lie down following only hand signals. She already knew voice commands, but I figured sometime she might be too far away to hear me or I might not want to speak. Knowing hand signals might save her life.

  The morning was sunny and getting warmer by the minute. I rewarded Oriole for being a good student with a swim in the river. We found a deep hole where the water didn’t flow too fast, and she swam for a long time. The water seemed to invigorate her and when we left the river she raced up to the cookhouse, leaving wet footprints and a trail of water in the dirt.

  We stopped in for a bowl of water for Oriole and a glass of lemonade for me. Charlie was in his little office in the back room of the kitchen. I could hear him talking on the radio to Spotted Bear. Through the static, Cindy, the woman from the front desk at Spotted Bear, relayed to him that his friend from Kalispell was flying into Schafer this afternoon to visit. Oriole lay down by the table while I drank my lemonade.

  “Does your friend have his own plane?” I asked Charlie when he came out.

  “He does. He likes to come to Schafer, mostly to give me a hard time and make my life miserable,” Charlie joked. “He’s coming for a couple of days to fish and camp.”

  “Great. Maybe at least he likes kids and dogs.”

  “Nope. He eats ’em for lunch, so you better be scarce while he’s around.”

  I finished my lemonade. Charlie started sweeping the floor. Seemed like a good time for Oriole and me to split.

  Dad and Jed were at the house when we got back. Mom sat at her laptop, so intent on her book that she didn’t seem to know we were there. Jed was stuffing work gloves into his saddlebags.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Jed’s going with Pete to pack Celie, Cody, and Mandy into a trail camp tomorrow,” Dad said. “They’ll drop them off and then bring the horses and mules back.”

  “Wow, can I go, too?”

  “Not this time. Opening a trail for the first time in the season can be tough, especially if a lot of trees fall across it during the winter.”

  “I know, but I can help get the trees off the trail.”

  “No, Jessie. It’s hard work and sometimes takes hours to clear a trail. It may be a long time before the crew gets into camp. You can go along with me later when there won’t be those kinds of problems to worry about.”

  “You make me feel like a little kid. I can carry logs and help just as much as anyone else.”

  “Soon, honey, I promise,” Dad said, walking to the stairs. “But this time you can stay here and keep Mom company and help Charlie if you want.”

  I opened the squeaky screen door and slammed it behind me. “Some summer this is going to be,” I grumbled, loud enough so I hoped Dad would hear. “I want to go home to New Mexico.”

  I sat on the swing with my arms folded over my chest, hoping Dad would come out and say he’d changed his mind. I sat for a long time. Finally I opened the door and called Oriole. She bounded out and wagged her tail, grabbing a stick and tossing it into the air. I ignored her, muttering to myself all the way to the barn.

  Red stood just outside the corral, close enough to catch easily. I brushed him, my hurt feelings coming out with every stroke. Meanwhile Oriole barked a challenge to a squirrel, who chattered its response from the safety of a tree limb. Oriole was having a great time. She didn’t seem to care that I was mad.

  After saddling Red, I got on and walked him around a bit, doing some circle eights before we began to trot the length of the airstrip. Until then I didn’t realize how long the airstrip was. It must have been a half mile of short-cropped grass. The horses and mules had lots to eat when they grazed on the airstrip at night.

  Oriole stayed either next to Red or just behind him. When her red tongue hung out of her mouth and her breath came hard and fast, I made her lie down under a tree to rest.

  By then I had calmed down somewhat, thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have someone do all the hard work before I helped with the trail projects. I thought of myself as a princess with all of my servants going before me, clearing the way, carrying all of my worldly goods so I didn’t have to do anything but ride Red. I would thank my servants when we arrived at our destination, giving them extra rations at the end of the day for their hard work.

  ******

  The morning slipped away. By the time I walked Red back, Oriole was lying by the gate to the airstrip. She got up and greeted us, yawning and stretching. Hearing the drone of a plane overhead, I quickly took Red to the corral, unsaddled and brushed him, and turned him loose. Red drank water from the trough as Oriole and I ran back to the airstrip.

  A small white plane buzzed the airstrip and circled back, its engine slowing as the pilot touched down. The plane turned around at the end of the runway. The engine’s deafening roar reverberated against the mountains as the pilot taxied to the other end of the airstrip. A short stocky man about Charlie’s age got out.

  Oriole and I ran to meet him. I was about to say something when Oriole began to growl, backing away.

  The man’s lip curled. “Hey, kid! Get that dog away from me!”

  Oriole began to bark loudly, the hackles standing up on her back. “Oriole, what’s wrong with you?” I grabbed her by the collar. “I’m sorry, mister. She’s never done this before to anyone. Charlie’ll be mad at me when he finds out Oriole treated his friend so badly.”

  “Who’s Charlie?” The man stared at Oriole, keeping his distance from her.

  “Aren’t you Charlie’s friend?”

  “Never heard of him, kid. Just take me to whoever’s in charge.” He walked past me like I didn’t exist. So much for being a princess. I was now this guy’s slave.

  Oriole had stopped barking, so I let go of her collar. She walked along next to me, occasionally giving a low growl in the man’s direction. She really didn’t seem to like him and let him know it.

  We walked to the cookhouse in silence. I took the man inside and left him with Charlie while I went to find Dad. I heard Charlie offering him something to drink.

  Oriole’s reaction to the man made me wonder about her life before she came to live with us.

  I found Dad at the house. “Hey, Dad, do you know if Oriole was abused before you got her at the animal shelter? There’s a guy who just flew in and Oriole didn’t like him one bit. She really growled and barked at him. I thought she might go after him for a minute.”

  “I never heard anything about that. She was just a puppy, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t abused. Did the guy do anything to Oriole—you know—strike at her, raise his hand like he would, try to scare her away?”

  “No, he was just really unpleasant. And guess what? It’s your lucky day. He wants to see you.”

  Dad sighed. “I hate this part of my job. Why do some people come all this way carrying a chip on their shoulder? Most visitors want to be here. Oh, well. Better go see what he wants.”
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br />   Oriole and I followed Dad to the cookhouse. The man sat at the table, drinking coffee and chowing down on Cody’s homemade chocolate chip cookies like they were going out of style. Cody had won awards for those cookies, and I despised seeing that man eat even one of them. At the rate he was going, there wouldn’t be any left for the rest of us. Oriole lay on the floor near Charlie, staring at the man.

  Charlie leaned against the stairs, eyes on the man as he said to Dad, “Tom, this is Hank Cooter. He’s from Kalispell and just came to check the place out. Says he’s got some friends who might come in on horseback some day soon.”

  “You in charge?” Cooter said, looking at Dad through cold watery eyes.

  Dad stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “I’m Tom Scott, the ranger here.”

  Cooter ignored Dad’s hand, choosing instead to stuff another of my beloved cookies in his mouth. Dad stood with his arms crossed, his lips a thin line. I thought he was going to blow up at the guy, but instead, he took a deep breath and said, “What can we do for you, Hank?”

  “Nothing, really. Just wanted to see how you government bureaucrats work back here.” He sniggered. “Got it pretty soft here, don’t you?”

  Dad’s face got red but he stayed cool. “Look, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Our crew is leaving tomorrow to open trails, and we’re trying to get the station ready for summer visitors. Now if you want or need something, let me know. Otherwise go to the campground or wherever you intend to go and we’ll go back to doing our jobs.”

  Dad took the plate of cookies away and put it on the counter. Way to go, Dad!

  Cooter stood up. “Man can’t even get a cup of coffee and a cookie without someone giving him grief. No need to be unfriendly. I was just leaving.”

  By this time Oriole was standing and growling again. “Better watch that mangy fur ball. That’s one vicious dog.” He set his cup down on the table, hitched up his pants, and swaggered to the door. “You government types are all the same,” he said loudly as the door slammed behind him. “Ought to write my congressman.”