The Ghost of Schafer Meadows Read online

  Jim sat down on the couch, ran his hands through his hair, and laughed. “Oh, man. What a relief! I’m really glad everyone is okay—everyone in your family, that is.” He grinned at Mom. “And I’m sorry for your loss, Kate.”

  Mom sniffled and shook her head. “And I’m sorry to have worried you. It always surprises me how emotional I can get over my characters.” She blew her nose one more time, laughed at herself, and took the CDs and batteries from Jim. “Thanks for delivering these. This helps a lot. Hey, what do you say we go to the cookhouse? I don’t know about you two, but I could sure use a snack.”

  Oriole lay in the grass just beyond the porch, snapping at flies buzzing around her head. She jumped up and joined us.

  Inside the cookhouse, Dad and Charlie pored over a map spread out on the kitchen table, discussing the trail crew’s next work project. Jim grabbed a piece of banana bread and sat down to tell Dad about the break-in at the Spotted Bear food cache. I ate the last of Cody’s cookies and gave Oriole a dog biscuit.

  Dad called his boss, Rosie. He talked for a long time before he finally came back.

  “Guess they haven’t found anyone who stole from the food cache at Spotted Bear. Besides the ranger station staff, there aren’t many folks around right now, just a few campers at the campground, a horse party by the airstrip, and a few other people along the river. Guess it’s up to law enforcement now.”

  “Dad, did anyone talk to Hank Cooter? He was at the airstrip when we landed,” I said.

  “Hank Cooter? What was he doing there?”

  “Don’t know,” Jim said. “I thought it was a little weird. He told me yesterday he was headed to Great Falls. Spotted Bear’s in the opposite direction from Great Falls.”

  “Hey, you don’t think he had anything to do with what happened at Spotted Bear do you?” I asked.

  “No, he couldn’t have,” Dad said. “He flew out of Schafer this morning. The break-in at the food cache took place before he left. Rosie said they’ll keep searching Spotted Bear for whoever did this, but she wants us to stay alert here, too. She said to keep our eyes open for anyone who looks out of place or for anything that doesn’t seem right.”

  Mom poured herself some iced tea. “Speaking of out of place, who moved my CDs? I had them on a corner of my desk next to my laptop. I didn’t work on my story yesterday, and when I went to get a CD this morning, I had to hunt for them. I found them in the windowsill across the room.”

  I remembered seeing the light move around in our house at night and it gave me an idea. “It had to be the ghost. Dad and I didn’t do it, and no one else has been in the house. Wow! This is really cool!”

  “I doubt it was the ghost, Jessie. I probably moved them and just don’t remember it. Nothing was lost, though. I hadn’t put any more of my manuscript on CDs since you and Jim flew the last batch out to Spotted Bear. Guess I just need to be a little more careful with things.”

  We talked a while more, and then I went outside with Oriole. She started to wag her tail and bark excitedly. I stuck my head back in the door. “Hey everybody, Jed and Pete are back.”

  We went out to greet them.

  “How’d it go?” Charlie asked.

  Jed swung out of the saddle and patted Rocky on the neck. “Great. We made it to the trail crew camp with no problem. We had a little bit of time to work on the Miner Creek Trail so we stayed to help the crew. Good thing we did, too. There was a big jackpot on the trail.”

  “A jackpot? As in a pot of gold?” Jim asked.

  “You pilots need to get with the backcountry lingo,” Charlie said, smoothing out his white moustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Course I guess it doesn’t matter much, ’cause you never walk anywhere you don’t absolutely have to.”

  “Yeah, well you just remember that the next time you want to fly in my plane, old man. I’ll make you walk.” Jim’s eyes lit up. He seemed to really enjoy teasing Charlie.

  Charlie wasn’t going to lose. “I’d probably get there faster by walking than by flying with you in that old bucket. Anyway, just so you know, a jackpot is a bunch of trees that have fallen on top of each other. Sometimes they’re in a huge pile ten feet high or more.”

  “This one wasn’t that high,” Pete said, “but it sure was long. Must have been 40 feet or more along the trail. Jed got to use his crosscut saw skills. He held one end of the big saw and Cody held the other. They went through a lot of trees.”

  Jed nodded. “Yeah, that was really fun. Made me appreciate how hard the trail crew works, though. It took us the better part of two hours to clear that section of the trail. Cody and I raced Celie and Mandy to see who could cut through the most trees in ten minutes. Those two women sure can saw. They beat us by five trees.”

  “No surprise there,” I said. “You’ve got such a weenie arm.”

  Jed took off his hat and playfully slapped my arm with it. “I’d sure like to see you take them on. You probably wouldn’t get through one tree in an hour.”

  “I’d still get through one before you would.”

  “Okay, you two,” Dad said, stroking Kitty’s nose. Jed had taken her as one of the pack mules. “Let’s get back to the trail work. Did you get any farther than the jackpot, Pete? I’m just wondering if there might be more.”

  “Celie sent Cody ahead to scout. He went about a mile or so and didn’t find anything before he turned around. They’re going to try to make it to the top of the trail tomorrow.”

  “I’ll give them a call on the radio later. If it looks like they’ve got more jackpots, I may go help them out.”

  We folded the manty tarps and took them and the boxes and ropes into the basement. We stacked the boxes and manties in a corner and hung up the ropes. When everything was put away we helped carry Jed’s sleeping bag and saddlebags to the house. Charlie and Jim took the horses and mules to the barn while Pete went to his room in the cookhouse.

  “So did you meet anyone on the trail?” I asked.

  “No. No one could get past the trees,” Jed said. “If they tried, they’d have had to turn back and take the Schafer Creek Trail.”

  “So, Dad,” I said. “Do you think I can go with you tomorrow if you go see Celie’s crew?”

  “Let me see what’s happening first. I’ll let you know after I’ve talked with Celie.”

  ******

  After supper Oriole and I played in the yard by the airstrip. She sat and faced the airstrip while I hid behind a tree. When I called her, she had to find me. I fooled her a few times by slinking to the other side of my hiding tree when she got close, but her nose usually led her right to me. Whenever she found me she jumped in the air and raced around the yard.

  Later, Dad came and joined us. “I’m sending Pete out tomorrow to scout another trail that may need some work.”

  I couldn’t hope that the answer would be “yes” to my next question. “I don’t suppose you’d let me go with him?”

  “No, but you’d better get a good night’s sleep if you want to go with me.”

  “Wow, you mean it, Dad? I can go?”

  “I talked with Celie on the radio and things are looking good but I’d like to check in with them, see how it’s going. You might find what they’re doing interesting—more so than just tagging along with Pete to look at some future trail projects. I want to make sure the jackpot the crew cleared is well back from the trail. Sometimes horses or mules spook when they see part of a cut off tree staring at them. We don’t want anyone having a wreck.”

  ******

  I barely slept. I was up the minute I heard the wranglers call the horses and mules off the airstrip. At the cookhouse Mom fixed Dad and me a good breakfast, and Oriole got a bit more than she usually eats because she was going with us. Dad hoped to ride all the way to the top of the trail to inspect the crew’s work and then go back with them to their camp, where we would spend the night. It would be a long day.

  We left at seven. Red was ready to go, prancing around, wanting to trot. I had
to hold him back. Dad rode Dillon and pulled Kitty behind him. Along with our gear, Kitty carried a saw, a shovel, and a tool called a pulaski that has a hatchet on one side of the head and a small hoe on the other. Oriole raced up and back, up and back, checking out logs and brush along the way for squirrels or grouse.

  We reached the jackpot about an hour later. The crew had cut a ton of lodgepole pine, Douglas-fir, and spruce trees from the trail and pulled them back far enough so they wouldn’t catch on a mule’s pack or scare the mule as it walked by. A couple of the larger trees measured four feet around. Dad saw only one small lodgepole that he thought might be a problem. He cut that one farther back from the trail and we hauled it into the woods.

  Close to noon we hit the top. “Hey, look! There they are,” I said. The trail crew sat eating their lunch in the shade of a tree next to a beautiful small lake. They did not look happy.

  “What’s wrong?” Dad asked.

  “Look over there, Tom,” Celie said. She pointed to a wide spot next to the lake, not far from where they ate. We got off our horses, left them with Mandy, and walked over there.

  Empty food cans, paper, broken rope, orange peels, plastic sandwich bags, candy wrappers, and beer cans littered the grassy area next to the lake. Trampled red, blue, yellow, and white wildflowers lay flat and dying. A tree oozed sap where someone had thrown a hatchet or something at it. Beneath two trees the ground was bare and dusty where horses or mules, tied to the trees, had pawed in boredom. A huge fire ring sat right in the middle of the trail junction. It overflowed with partially burned logs, paper, tin foil, and more cans.

  “I’d love to find whoever did this,” Cody said. “I know law enforcement would, too. People have no idea how much trouble they cause when they do this type of thing.”

  Dad bent down and stirred the cans in the fire ring with a stick, sifting through the charred debris, hoping to find some kind of clue to whoever did this. “Well, not only that, but they also cause a lot of damage to the environment. Those trees now have open wounds that allow insects and diseases to get in easier, and it will take a while for vegetation to grow under them again.”

  Oriole sniffed under a tree about ten feet away in the woods. She came back with a white paper wrapper in her mouth. Blood from meat had soaked through it.

  “Give me that, girl,” I said.

  I looked at the wrapper. Someone had written in a felt tip marker on the outside.

  “Hey, Dad, look. This says Schafer on it. This must be from some of the food stolen from Spotted Bear. Good dog, Oriole. Good find.”

  “What are you talking about? What stolen food?” Celie asked.

  Dad took the wrapper from Oriole. He told the crew about the break-in at the food cache and that meat intended for Schafer was among the stolen items.

  “It sure looks like this is from the missing meat.” Turning to Celie he said, “Unless you and your crew happened to bring some for lunch today.”

  Celie shook her head, her black braid swaying across her back. “No, we had no reason to. We only brought sandwiches and nuts and stuff for lunch. Besides, we wouldn’t have thrown a wrapper into the woods.”

  “No, I didn’t mean to imply that. I know you wouldn’t do that. I’m just trying to figure out why a Schafer wrapper would be here. It looks like whoever stole the food must have come this way. Have you seen anyone at all on the trail?”

  “Nope. No one.”

  “Well, if they didn’t go back to Spotted Bear, they may be heading for Schafer Meadows. We’ll have to keep an eye out for them. Meanwhile, Jessie and I will help you clean up this mess. We’ll stay at your camp tonight and go back to Schafer tomorrow. When we leave, I want you to be extra careful. If you see anyone or anything suspicious, call me on the radio. If you can’t reach me, call Spotted Bear. And above all, don’t approach anyone or do anything to put yourselves in danger. If there’s any trouble at all—any—I want you to go back to Schafer immediately.”

  “No problem,” Celie said. “We thought the people who did this were just pigs, but now that we know they’ve stolen stuff, we’ll stay away if we see them.”

  I walked all over the place, taking pictures of garbage, the meat wrapper, the fire ring, and even pictures of tracks, from both people and stock. One print from someone with large wide feet showed a circle near the top of a smooth boot, like someone had worn the boots a long time.

  “Hey, Dad, look here. This matches the boot print from the photo I took in the food cache at Spotted Bear. I think we’re onto something here.”

  “Could be, Jessie. Keep the photos in your camera until we can get them downloaded to look at closer.”

  “Okay. Hey, Oriole, come here.”

  I let her sniff the boot print this time, just in case she might pick up a scent.

  We spent the next hour helping the trail crew clean up the area. We broke up the fire ring, throwing the rocks used to make it and the cold burned logs into the woods as far from the trail as possible. Celie and Cody took shovel loads of charcoal away and replaced it with fresh soil, trying to hide the fact that a fire ring had ever been there. At least whoever did this built the fire ring where nothing would catch on fire, even if it was in the middle of the trail where everyone had to walk around it. Mandy, Dad, and I scattered heavy rocks under the trees where the horses and mules had pawed the ground, hoping to keep other people from tying their animals to the trees, perpetuating the damage. Celie and Mandy worked just as hard as Dad and Cody. I tried to keep up with them. It was hard. We were all soaked with sweat.

  Oriole had a great time, bringing sticks to everyone to throw for her, including some of the burned ones we had already tossed into the woods. She didn’t leave anybody out. When it got too hot for her, she took a swim in the little lake.

  Cody had made a “highline” for Dillon, Red, and Kitty while we ate lunch and cleaned up the site. He tied a rope between two trees about 12 feet apart and ten feet off the ground. He made three small nooses in the highline and tied our animals’ ropes to them. He left enough slack in the rope so they could move their heads but not enough so they could eat the grass on the ground.

  “I’m really pleased,” Dad said. “This is exactly how I want you to tie horses and mules in the wilderness. The only damage here is from their hooves, and that’s not much. The ground will recover quickly, and you didn’t harm any trees. Let’s put some small logs where Dillon, Red, and Kitty stood, and kick their ‘horse apples’ to break them apart or move them into the woods. Then let’s try to get some of the trampled vegetation to stand upright again. The next party that passes by shouldn’t even know we were here.”

  ******

  When we rode into camp about 5 p.m., Dad called Rosie at Spotted Bear on the satellite phone and told her about the mess the crew found, the meat wrapper intended for Schafer, and our efforts to clean up the area.

  “Rosie’s calling law enforcement on this one,” Dad said. “The wrapper that Oriole found pretty much confirms that whoever stole the food from Spotted Bear is probably somewhere in the wilderness near here. She stressed that we should all be very careful.” Dad turned to Celie. “I want you to call me on the radio every evening until it’s time for you and the crew to return to Schafer. I need to know that you’re all safe. If you even suspect anything is wrong, you’re to pack up and head back to Schafer. I don’t want any heroes.”

  “No problem.”

  Dad cooked a stir-fry dinner, letting everyone rest as a reward for their hard work. Oriole ate while I pitched our dome tent, staking it to the ground. I didn’t want it to blow away like we had happen once when we got caught in a sudden windstorm in New Mexico. Chasing a tent that’s rolling away is not only hard work but embarrassing.

  Later we all sat around in our camp chairs and watched the horizon turn from light blue to dark blue to black. Stars twinkled above the outline of the mountains. I grew sleepy and called Oriole to bed. I had just started unzipping the tent door when we heard a long, low, mournfu
l howl like a lost dog crying for its person.

  “Wolves!” Cody said.

  I’d never heard a wolf howl before. It was eerie, making me shiver as the hair crawled up the back of my neck. But in some ways it was also natural and welcome. We stopped what we were doing and stood up straight, as if we could hear better that way. Shortly, another more distant howl filled the night. What a thrill! As we listened for more, Oriole stood next to our tent, all four legs spread out. She lifted her head and returned her best imitation of a howl.

  We howled, too—with laughter.

  E L E V E N

  Law Dogs

  The next morning while Dad fed and saddled our horses and mule, Cody got our gear ready to wrap in manties for the trip back to Schafer. I helped Celie with breakfast and lunch food. It seemed to take forever to eat, do dishes, and pack up, but finally Dad, Oriole, and I started back to Schafer Meadows, leaving the crew to finish their project.

  We made good time. The shade of the lodgepole pines and a light breeze kept the sun from baking us. One large spruce tree had fallen across the trail near where the crew had cut the other trees. Dad sawed it out and we still got back to Schafer by lunchtime.

  Mom was working intently on the computer, hoping to finish her manuscript for the next pack string out, so I said a quick “hi” and ran upstairs to shower. Oriole licked Mom’s hand before curling up for a nap.

  We’d only been gone overnight, but it felt great to get rid of the dust, sweat, and strong horse smell on my hands, face, and clothes.

  I put on a Silver High Colts T-shirt, clean shorts, and running shoes before going back out the door with Oriole. I intended to take her for a brief swim in the river so she could get rid of her trail dust, but on the way there, we stopped to visit with Dad and Charlie, who were talking outside the cookhouse.

  “Do you know Don Lightner, the new law enforcement officer for Spotted Bear?” Dad asked Charlie.