Pack Trip Read online

“I THINK WE have about two hours before dark,” Eli said to the young riders after dinner that night. “Jeannie and I are going to relax here by the camp fire while you all go on a scavenger hunt. Two teams of four.” He looked at the group assembled in front of him and put Carole, Kate, Christine, and John on one team. Lisa, Stevie, Seth, and Amy were the second team. “Here are your lists.” He handed them to Christine and Seth. “The first team back with everything wins breakfast in bed, delivered by the other team. Everybody is due back here by dark. If neither team gets everything, then the team with the most items wins. Got it?”

  They nodded.

  “Then, go!”

  Carole, Kate, and John circled Christine so they could read the list.

  “Bird’s nest, piece of granite, animal tooth, pine cone …” Carole read.

  “I know just where to start,” John announced. “Come on, this way.”

  The team headed to the east, following John. As they left the campsite, Carole could already hear bickering from the other team. Amy was at the center of it. “Let me have the list,” she whined to Seth. Carole was glad Amy wasn’t on her team.

  “The hardest thing on this list is going to be the bird’s nest,” Kate said.

  “Oh, no, it’s not,” John said. “I saw one when Carole and I were watering the horses. It’s up in a pine tree not far from here.”

  John knew right where to go. He took them to a scraggly pine tree that bordered the field where the horses were pastured. “See, it’s up there,” he said, pointing.

  It was up, all right. It was about twenty feet up, and the lowest branches on the tree were a good eight feet above the ground.

  “There’s a little problem, John,” Christine said politely.

  “Here, stand on my shoulders,” he offered. “One of you should be able to reach from there, don’t you think?”

  Carole didn’t think it would work, but she figured it was worth a try. She was the tallest of the three girls, so she volunteered, but it was clear almost instantly that it just wasn’t enough.

  “Now if you were a basketball player …” she teased.

  “I do play basketball,” John protested.

  “NBA,” Carole specified.

  “It’s not the sport, it’s the height,” Christine said. “We just need somebody taller.”

  “We’ve got somebody taller!” Kate announced triumphantly. Then, before anybody could ask what she meant, she whistled loudly. The horses, who had been grazing lazily on the other side of the field, pricked up their ears and moved toward the familiar sound. Kate whistled again. Her horse, an Appaloosa named Spot, arrived first.

  “I think he’s tall enough,” she said.

  “Great idea!” John agreed. He hiked himself up onto Spot’s back and, using his legs to guide the horse, rode him directly under the lowest branch.

  Kate and Christine held Spot’s halter while John rose to a standing position on the horse’s back.

  “People in the circus always make this look so easy,” he said, using his hands to balance himself.

  “In the circus they use draft horses with very wide backs. An Appaloosa doesn’t have that same broad, flat surface,” Kate said.

  “I noticed,” he told the girls. “But I am as nimble as an aerialist and can rise above all adversity.” With that he grabbed onto the lowest branch and drew himself up into the feathery needles of the tree. Soon he was standing securely, looking for the next branch to climb on.

  “Not only can he rise above adversity, he can even rise above the ground!” Christine joked. In response a bird’s nest hit her on the head before it tumbled to the ground.

  “One down, nine to go,” John declared. He jumped down from the branch and landed safely next to Spot.

  “Thanks, boy,” he said, patting the horse’s neck warmly. Spot looked at him expectantly. The look said carrot.

  “I’ve tried to teach him not to beg,” Kate joked.

  “It’s okay,” John said. “I understand. It’s just that I don’t have any carrots. All I’ve got is a bird’s nest, and he can’t have that.”

  Spot returned to the herd followed by promises of carrots in the morning.

  “Okay, what’s next on the list?” John asked.

  “A pine cone, and it’s right here,” Carole said, picking up one from under the tree. And here’s a rock. Is it granite?”

  Kate, who had taken some geology in sixth grade, examined the rock. She said she thought it looked as if it were probably granite, and by the time they got back to the campsite, it would be too dark to tell anyway.

  “Check it off,” she announced authoritatively.

  It took a little longer to find some of the other items. They combed the bases of four oak trees before locating a single acorn that had been overlooked by all the local squirrels, and they had to comb a whole field before coming across one scraggly crow feather.

  “How do we know it’s a crow feather?” Christine asked, looking at the weathered sample they had finally located.

  “How will Eli know it’s not?” John countered.

  The logic was compelling. They checked the feather off their list, too.

  It was easy to find an ant but hard to hold onto it. None of them wanted to kill it. Carole fished in her pocket and found a small plastic bag with a zipper closure. Carole lured the ant into it with some leftover sandwich crumbs and blew the bag up like a balloon before sealing it so the guest would have as much air as possible.

  “It still might suffocate before we get it to Eli,” John said.

  “That’s true,” Kate said. “But at least we’ve tried, right?”

  “Right,” John agreed.

  By the time the sun was dipping toward the mountains, they had nine of the ten items on their list. The only thing they hadn’t been able to get was an animal tooth.

  “I was sure we’d see something,” John said. “I’ve been looking out for a rodent skeleton. They’re usually not hard to find, but there hasn’t been anything.”

  Carole had an idea, but it might not be easy. “What kind of animal do you think Eli had in mind?” she asked.

  “Any kind of animal,” Kate said. “But I think John’s right that it’s got to be a dead one, because you can’t exactly go up to your friendly neighborhood fox and ask him to open wide, can you?” Kate said.

  “Fox, no, but an animal’s an animal, right?” Carole asked.

  “What are you getting at?” John said, sensing that there was an idea lurking behind the questions.

  “It’s about this tooth,” Carole said. She stuck her tongue back to a wobbly bicuspid in her mouth and wiggled. “It’sh prrrry woooofe now,” she announced.

  “Huh?” John asked.

  Kate’s face brightened as she understood. “Outstanding!” she said.

  John still looked confused. He looked to Kate for a translation.

  “She’s got a loose tooth,” Kate explained. “The only question is how loose?”

  Carole tested it some more. “I fink it’f abouw rehhy,” she said. “Oou wook, okay?”

  She opened wide. One by one Kate, Christine, and John checked it out. They agreed that it was about ready. When Carole wiggled it with her tongue, the tooth came completely out on one side.

  “Look, you can already see the new one there. It’s ready. Definitely.”

  John’s eyes lit up. “Eli’s never going to believe this,” he said.

  “Oh, sure he will,” Carole disagreed. “Eli’s not going to be the problem. I mean, what am I going to tell the Tooth Fairy?”

  Kate, Christine, and John all howled with laughter. When Carole had their promise to pay her the money if her father doubted the story, she sat down on a rock and went to work on her tooth.

  First, she wiggled it more with her tongue.

  “These big ones are tough,” she said. “It was easier with the front teeth.”

  “You can do it!” Christine said, cheering her on.

  Carole switched from her tong
ue-wiggling technique to the single-digit finger wiggle.

  “Ish woohking!” she announced, feeling the tooth loosen even more.

  Kate, Christine, and John made a circle around her and continued cheering her on.

  “Think of it—breakfast in bed, served by spoiled brat Amy!” Kate said.

  That did it. The moment that thought crossed Carole’s mind, the tooth was released.

  “Ta da!” Carole announced. “One animal tooth for Eli!”

  They added Carole’s tooth to their collection and hurried back to the campsite.

  Eli and Jeannie were waiting for them. There was no sign of the other team.

  “We won!” they shouted triumphantly as they handed their booty over to Eli and Jeannie.

  Each item had a story, and they loved telling them all to Eli and Jeannie. Eli and Jeannie laughed especially hard when they heard about Carole’s tooth.

  “I can just see you three bloodthirsty scavenger hunters standing around poor Carole, trying to get her to yank the tooth out of her head!” Jeannie said.

  “It wasn’t them that made me do it,” Carole confessed. “It was the idea of Amy serving me breakfast tomorrow morning. I’d undergo all kinds of pain just for that!”

  “Uh, speaking of Amy,” Eli said. “We haven’t heard a peep out of that group, and it’s getting dark. Did you see them on your hunt?”

  Carole shook her head. “The last I saw of them, they were arguing over who was going to hold the list.”

  “And then they went off to the west,” Jeannie said. A worried look crossed her face as she glanced off in the direction the team had taken.

  “Take it easy,” Carole cautioned. “Seth may be a flake and Amy may be hopeless, but Stevie and Lisa are with them. Those two are levelheaded.”

  “And creative,” Kate said. “If something’s gone wrong, they’ll know what to do.”

  “I‘M NOT READY to stand up yet!” Amy whined. “Just wait a minute, will you?”

  Stevie put her hands on her hips. It seemed to her that they had been waiting a lot of minutes for Amy.

  “Just what is wrong with your ankle?” Stevie demanded.

  “It’s hurt, that’s what’s wrong with it,” Amy retorted.

  “Of course it’s hurt,” Stevie said. “You fell off that branch, where you had no business going in the first place. I told you there wasn’t any bird’s nest there. But what I want to know is, how hurt is it?”

  “It’s hurt,” was all Amy would say.

  Stevie growled, and Amy ignored her.

  For the moment Stevie was alone with Amy. As soon as Amy had announced that she was injured, Lisa and Seth had been dispatched to get her some cool water for her ankle. She had given them her sweatshirt to soak in a stream, assuring them that she’d be warm enough without it. Now, however, she was shivering as the cool night settled in.

  “Can you lend me your sweater?” Amy asked.

  For an instant Stevie considered it. After all, it was becoming almost reflexive to do whatever Amy demanded. Then Stevie realized that it was Amy who had insisted that Lisa take her sweatshirt rather than something sensible like her socks. Stevie wasn’t going to freeze just to make up for Amy’s mistake.

  “No,” Stevie said finally.

  Amy seemed surprised. Stevie didn’t care.

  “Here’s the water,” Seth announced, returning with Lisa. They carried a dripping wet sweatshirt.

  Seth tried to follow his sister’s orders about her ankle.

  “Not that way,” she said. “Use the arms to tie it around—no, not at my foot—my ankle!”

  “It must hurt her an awful lot,” Lisa said.

  Stevie thought that might be true. But she was quite sure that if she ever hurt that much, she’d be nicer to the people who were trying to help her than Amy was being to Seth.

  When she stopped to think about it, she was pretty sure that she was always nicer to everybody than Amy was. Amy seemed to have a way of going through life, expecting everybody else to do exactly what she wanted them to do, even when what she did was dangerous. Some people thought that Stevie was a little wild and crazy. It was a characteristic that Stevie usually liked about herself. She wasn’t afraid to take risks. At first she’d thought that was true of Amy as well, and Stevie had liked that about her. Stevie could forgive a lot in a person who was as kookie as she was. But with Amy there was something more, and Stevie was beginning to realize how much she didn’t like it.

  There they were, four of them, out in the wilderness on a mountainside with darkness coming fast. They didn’t have any flashlights, and they didn’t have any compasses. One of them had a sore ankle, and that one small sore ankle could end up being the cause of some very big problems for all of them.

  “Stevie? Lisa!”

  It was Eli!

  “We’re over here!” Stevie called out.

  “Oh, thank heavens!” Amy said. “He’ll be able to carry me back to the campsite!”

  Stevie almost laughed. It was the best feeling she’d had for several hours.

  STEVIE LEANED FORWARD in her saddle and patted Stewball’s neck. He deserved extra thanks for the snootful of dust he was taking from the horse in front of him.

  They had started on the trail early that morning, right after Stevie’s team had finished serving breakfast to Carole’s. It had been made a little more difficult by the fact that Amy’s ankle bothered her too much for her to help, so three had to do the work of four, but, Stevie told herself, perhaps that was just as well. If Amy had been involved, she certainly would have found a way to mess it up so that somebody else would have had to work even harder!

  Amy’s ankle miraculously improved at about the moment she had to climb into her saddle (but not before her horse needed to be saddled up). Seth seemed genuinely relieved by her recovery.

  Now they were riding along a trail that followed the rise up the mountain. It was open and grassy, but the grass was very dry so that with every step it seemed the horses kicked up more clouds of dust. Stevie found herself following Eli’s lead and tying the kerchief she wore around her neck over her mouth and nose.

  “How do you like that dust?” Stevie remarked.

  Eli turned in his saddle with a grin on his face as if he’d just been waiting for somebody to ask that particular question. “Ah lak it raw!” he drawled, making three syllables out of the last word.

  The riders giggled and adjusted their kerchiefs.

  “Akshully, ahm so hungry now, ah cud eat a whole sahd a’ beef, too,” he added.

  “I think that means Eli thinks it’s time to stop for lunch,” Jeannie translated. “Let’s look for a stream to water the horses. Then we can eat.”

  They rode on for another half hour before they found a trickle of water that would pass for a stream. The riders dismounted and let their horses drink.

  It was important not to let them drink too much at first, so Carole, Lisa, and Kate were put in charge of minding the horses at the stream while Stevie and John doled out the oats. Seth and Christine helped Jeannie put out the lunch. Amy’s ankle was hurting her, so she couldn’t help at all.

  “We’re just stopping for a few minutes,” Eli explained. “We still have a long way to go on this mountain, and we need to be off it by nightfall. It’s much too cold up here to spend the night.”

  “I’ll light a fire right away,” Christine said, looking for nearby kindling.

  “I don’t think so,” Eli told her. “It’s mighty dry around here, and lighting a fire is just asking for trouble. We’ll just eat the cold food we’ve got.”

  “You think we could start a forest fire or something?” Stevie asked, overhearing his answer. Stevie still had very vivid memories of a barn fire she and her friends had witnessed at riding camp. Although in the end nobody had been hurt, the memory of the danger they’d been in was not pleasant.

  “Let me put it this way, Stevie. If we don’t start a camp fire, we can’t possibly start a forest fire.”

/>   The lunch stop was a brief one, really more for the horses than for the riders. They were under way again quickly.

  Stevie was totally unprepared for the afternoon ride. As soon as they left their picnic spot, the trail headed almost straight up the mountain. At first their ride continued through open meadows with occasional forest. Then they entered a deep pine forest.

  “Am I crazy, or is it getting a lot cooler?” Stevie asked Christine, who rode next to her along the wide path.

  “You’re not crazy, I’ll tell you that,” Christine said, retrieving a windbreaker from her saddlebag. “We’re headed up, remember?”

  “Like up, up?” Stevie asked.

  “Yeah, like up, up,” Christine confirmed.

  Soon the soft breeze whistling through the pines turned into a brisk wind buffeting the horses and riders on a bare, rocky trail. Stevie looked to her left, down the hill. She could see the pine forest they’d emerged from and realized that they were, in fact, above it. Up, up, as she and Christine had designated it. To her right there were no more trees.

  “Hey, we’re above the tree line,” Stevie observed. “There’s nothing but rocks up here!”

  “That’s why they call them the Rockies,” Christine told her. “But you’re wrong about there being nothing but rocks.”

  Stevie thought Christine was mistaken. The terrain was completely barren. How could anything grow when it was so cold, even in the summer?

  Stewball trod gingerly on the rocky path. He seemed a little invigorated by the sudden rush of cool air. He teased the clouds of his own breath when he snorted. Just the sight of that made Stevie put on another sweatshirt.

  Then Stevie heard an odd sound beneath Stewball’s feet. It was a crunch. She looked down and blinked her eyes in disbelief. Stewball had just walked through a patch of snow—and still the path went up!

  Soon, all around them, the ground was covered with a few inches of snow.

  “This is what you were talking about, isn’t it?” Stevie asked Christine.

  Christine nodded. “Beautiful, isn’t it? It makes me want to stop and draw a picture of it.”

  “It makes me want to stop all right, but not to draw a picture. Say, Eli!” she called. He turned to her. “Can we take a ten-minute rest?”