“Taylor, where are you?” Jake shouted as a smaller branch whacked his head.
“I’m here!” Taylor cried, and suddenly Jake felt his brother’s fingers lock into his.
“Quick! Get out of here!”
The boys scrambled and clawed their way out of the pile of logs and sticks, and stood up. Cody continued to bark furiously, and finally the boys could see why.
Lit only by dim starlight, the animal looked huge. It puffed and panted like a locomotive—an angry locomotive—and it flung branches and sticks aside as if they were straw. A bear! And with a roar, it surged forward.
“It’s coming after us!” Taylor shouted. “Run!”
Without thinking, the boys scrambled back and scurried farther into the trees.
“Stand back to back and make lots of noise!” Jake shouted.
The boys started yelling at the top of their lungs, Cody barking right next to them, ready to take on the bear. They even waved their clothes in the air, trying to make themselves look as big as possible. Both brothers braced for the bear attack, but the noise of their hollering made the bear retreat, and after a few seconds it drifted back toward their camp.
Taylor peered around a tree trunk toward what remained of their shelter. “Jake, what’s it doing?”
Jake watched as the bear took apart the shelter. “The berries!” he realized. “It’s not after us. It’s after the berries we picked!”
Almost as if it knew the boys were talking about it, the bear stopped clawing through their shelter and peered back in their direction.
“Uh-oh!” Taylor said.
But at that instant, Cody raced out to circle behind the bear and nip its back leg. The bear wheeled and swiped at the pesky terrier. As Cody sprang back, the bear followed it away from where the brothers hid.
“Careful, Cody!” Taylor called, but the little dog knew what it was doing. Barking, it led the bear away from their camp. Whenever the bear paused or turned back toward the shelter, Cody leaped in and nipped at it again. Gradually, the sounds of Cody and the bear faded into the distance.
Cautiously, Jake and Taylor returned to their shelter. The bear had transformed it into a pile of kindling and splinters.
“Geez!” Taylor said, his breathing still rapid. “That was close.”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “That’ll teach us to leave food where we sleep. At least it wasn’t a grizzly bear.”
“How can you tell? That thing looked huge.”
“Grizzlies have big humps on their backs and are twice as big as that. That was definitely a black bear—fortunately.”
“Good thing Cody was here.”
“Yeah—again!”
Taylor picked up one of the logs from the shelter. “I wish I were as brave as him!”
On cue, Cody trotted back into camp, wagging his tail as if nothing had happened. Taylor petted him and gave him what was left of the berry stash as a fiery orange line began tracing the hills to the east.
“It’s getting light,” Taylor said.
Jake swatted at a mosquito. “Yeah, we should keep going.”
“Okay, but I gotta have some food soon,” Taylor whined.
Jake nodded. If we’re going to keep looking for Dad, we’ve got to get some protein. Get our strength back.
“Well,” he said, “what do you say we rebuild the shelter, then go after those trout again?”
“Do you think the bear will come back?” Taylor asked.
“Not with Cody here,” Jake said. Although he sounded much more confident than he felt.
The boys spent the next few hours rebuilding their shelter. It went more quickly now that they’d figured out what worked and what didn’t. By the time the sun separated from the horizon, they’d erased all traces of the bear.
Now, to catch some fish, Jake told himself.
Taylor decided to try to make a spear to stab some of the trout, and while he went to search for a long straight pole, Jake sat down with his father’s journal and flipped through it for other ideas. His dad had used two pages to sketch out the best lures to use and how best to tie on fishhooks.
“That would be great if we had any fishhooks,” Jake muttered.
On the next page, though, his father had sketched a tool that just might be useful—a net or scoop made with a forked branch and a T-shirt spread between the branches. Jake had always skimmed over that page before, but now it caught his attention.
“Ah . . .” For the first time, it occurred to him that he might be able to net some fish instead of trying to catch them with hook and line, and he quickly set about creating the tool his father had drawn. Meanwhile, Taylor returned with a long straight pole and began using his pocketknife to whittle the end into a sharp point.
Soon the boys were ready to resume battle.
“Well, the fish are definitely there,” said Jake, seeing one leap out of the water as they walked toward the lakeshore.
“They look hungry, too,” said Taylor. “Let’s spread out. I’ll go this way, and you go that way. Whoever catches the most fish gets to pick what they want to watch on television tonight.”
Jake laughed. “Very funny,” he said, and began walking counterclockwise along the shore, looking for a likely spot to ambush some trout. He found another rock that stuck out into the lake and decided to lie down and wait for the fish to come to him. The water next to the rock was about two feet deep, and he watched minnows and dace lazily swim by or dart quickly when they got excited. Soon a ten-inch trout approached, attracted by the shade of the rock.
Jake tightened his grip on the net, ready to plunge it under the water after the fish. The fish drifted closer and closer.
Splash!
Jake thrust the scoop under the water and quickly pulled it back up, splashing water all over his face. When he opened his eyes, he saw . . .
Nothing.
No fish. Just the wet T-shirt hanging limply between the forked branches of the net.
Jake glanced over at Taylor in time to see him throw his spear into the water, but his brother also came up empty-handed.
“We’ve got to be quicker,” Jake muttered.
He lay back down on the rock again and waited. Twice more, trout drifted close. Twice more, Jake failed to net one.
“Shoot!” Jake said, standing up. There were fewer mosquitoes now that the sun’s heat was building around the lake. Unfortunately, that meant the fish had moved off to deeper, cooler waters away from the shore. Jake’s stomach rumbled fiercely.
We’ve got to catch something, or we’ll have to risk heading back into town for groceries—or starve!
He watched another trout leap out of the water after an insect, and suddenly he got an idea. He quickly set to work, picking up large rocks and setting them underwater, until just their tops reached the surface.
“What are you doing?” Taylor said, returning with Cody.
“I’m building a fish trap,” Jake told him. “Grab some rocks.”
Taylor quickly grasped the plan. Together they built two fences of rocks, reaching out from the shoreline. At the point where the two arcs would meet, they left an opening about eighteen inches wide.
“Now we’ve got to bait it,” said Jake. “You’re the bait expert.”
Taylor took Cody to catch some more grasshoppers while Jake found a rock he could quickly drop into the trap opening to block it. When Taylor returned, they tossed a couple of the grasshoppers as far out into the water as they could. Within moments, they saw a splash as a fish seized one of them.
“Now throw a few inside the trap,” Jake said.
Taylor tossed two more grasshoppers right inside the trap opening. After a minute the boys spotted a fish swim into the trap and swallow the grasshopper.
Jake reached out and squeezed Taylor’s arm. “It’s working! Throw another one,” he whispered.
Taylor continued tossing grasshoppers, and two more fish swam into the trap. Picking up the rock door, Jake slowly circled around to the trap ent
rance. The trout saw him and swam excitedly to get away, but they didn’t know where the opening was and kept running up against the trap’s rock walls.
Jake dropped the rock “door” in place. “Taylor, get the net!”
Taylor picked it up and waded into the trap. The fish swam frantically now, zipping back and forth past his legs. Jake jumped in too, and together the brothers managed to corner one of the fish. Cody barked with excitement.
“Now!” Jake shouted.
Taylor plunged the net underwater. Twisting and splashing as the trout tried to make an escape, Taylor held on firmly and gathered up the fish in the T-shirt. Heaving upward, he opened the shirt to reveal a twelve-inch brook trout, its colorful spots gleaming in the sun.
“I got it, Jake! I got it!”
16 “What a catch!” Jake whooped.
Together they grasped the wriggling fish and hurried to shore, where they quickly killed it with a rock. Running back and wading into the water, the brothers caught the other two fish trapped against the rock walls.
Taylor whooped, his calls echoing across the lake.
Jake was too happy to warn him to keep his voice down, and together they used their pocketknives to gut and clean the fish, then took them back to camp.
“Man, am I hungry,” Taylor said. “How are we going to cook them?”
Jake had been so elated about catching the fish that he’d momentarily forgotten that they had to cook them too.
“Well, we could eat them raw.”
The brothers exchanged glances, and they both scrunched up their mouths at the memory of the raw bird’s eggs.
“Well,” said Taylor, “maybe not.”
Jake looked down at the trout and saw an ant crawling over one of them. He reached out to flick it away.
“Hey,” said Taylor. “I got an idea.”
Jake looked at his brother. “You know how we can start a fire?”
“Yeah, Jake. Remember that weird kid Joey in our neighborhood?”
“Sure.”
“Well, one time I saw him burning ants with a magnifying glass. What if we do the same thing, just without the ants?”
Jake’s face brightened. “That’s right! I remember you telling me about that. That’s brilliant, Taylor!”
The boys quickly gathered a variety of kindling—everything from small twigs and dried leaves to thicker sticks that they could layer up. They cleared a circle of ground, then Taylor brought out his pocketknife and unfolded one of the tools on the knife: a tiny magnifying glass.
“What should we try to burn first?” Taylor asked.
“This oughta work,” Jake said, pulling out a used napkin he’d stuffed into his pocket back at the truck stop. “Yeah!”
With the sun almost directly overhead, Taylor was able to focus a tiny, intense beam down on the napkin. Within seconds, the paper began to smoke and turn brown. Then it burst into a tiny flame.
“That’s it!” said Jake, laying some twigs across the burning paper. He remembered from camp that the trick to getting a fire going was to give it fuel, but to allow enough space for oxygen to reach the flames. At first he thought he’d smothered the faint flame; then one of the tiny twigs caught fire.
“It’s still going!” Taylor enthused. “Give it some more wood.”
The boys kept putting bigger and bigger sticks on the fire until they had a steady blaze.
“Man, that’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Taylor.
Jake had to agree.
Since they didn’t have any cooking utensils, they skewered the fish on sticks and held them over the fire.
“This is like roasting marshmallows,” Taylor said. “Only better.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, giving Cody a scratch with his free hand. Already, his mouth watered at the prospect of eating his first real meal in two days. The boys had cooked bluegill at camp the previous summer, but they’d had a frying pan and butter for those. They weren’t sure how long a trout was supposed to cook, so they held the fish over the flames until the skins had turned crisp and black. Then they began picking the flesh off with their fingers.
“Oh, that’s good,” Taylor moaned, slurping down a bite.
“Yeah,” said Jake. “Right now I’m pretty sure it’s the best food on earth!”
Taylor laughed and fed a couple bites of fish to Cody, who sat begging for more.
“Best of all,” he said, “that lake is full of fish. When we’re done, let’s go back and get some more.”
“No arguments here,” said Jake. If we’d gone much longer without decent food, we’d be finished, he thought.
Just then, though, a loud voice called, “Hey, you! What are you doing over there?”
“Crap!” Jake said, leaping to his feet, followed immediately by Taylor and Cody.
A man in a dark green pants and a gray button-down shirt stepped out of the trees only thirty feet away.
“What are you boys doing here?” the ranger repeated, approaching them.
Cody growled softly.
“Uh, nothing,” Taylor said.
“We were just building a campfire to keep the mosquitoes away,” said Jake.
“Do you have a backcountry camping permit?”
“Uh—” Taylor began, but Jake cut him off.
“We didn’t realize we needed it,” said Jake. “Can you give us one?”
The ranger studied them. “How old are you boys, and where are your parents?”
“They’re, um, camping back down the road. We’re supposed to join up with them later.”
The ranger frowned. He said, “Well, you’re breaking about five park regulations right now, including camping without a permit, building an open fire in an undesignated location, having a dog in bear country, and from what I can see, fishing without a license. I don’t suppose you have one of those either, do you?”
“We lost it,” Taylor blurted out.
Great, Jake thought. Why not just tell him that Cody ate it?
The ranger made a small murmuring sound and then said, “I see. Well, in that case, I think we need to put this fire out. Then you boys will have to come with me.”
Jake’s heart thundered.
If we go with him, he’ll figure out who we are and send us back to Bull. We’ll never find Dad.
“We didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” Jake said.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” said the ranger. “But rules are rules.”
“Can we just get our stuff? It’s right over there.” Jake pointed toward their shelter.
The ranger nodded. “But make it snappy. We’ve got to put out this fire.”
“O-okay. Thanks.”
Jake, Taylor, and Cody walked toward their shelter. Jake could feel the ranger’s eyes following them, and then heard the ranger speaking on his radio.
“Jake, what are we going to do?” Taylor whispered.
“How fast can you run?” Jake whispered back.
They reached their shelter and quickly stuffed their packs with their belongings.
“What about the berries?” Taylor whispered.
“Leave ’em. We can find more.”
“You kids ready yet?” the ranger called.
Jake glanced over to see the man walking toward them.
“Now!” Jake shouted. “Fast!”
17 The boys set off running, Cody close behind. They scrambled through some trees and made their way back down to the lakeshore. The ranger hollered at them again, and Jake thought he heard footsteps, but when he looked back, he saw that the man had given up the chase. Instead he was talking into his radio.
“We’ve got to find someplace to hide—and fast!” Jake told his brother.
“Yeah, but where?”
Jake quickly studied the lakeshore in front of them. It ran east–west, but a steep mountain slope came down to meet it from the north, leaving only a thin strip to walk along.
An easy place to get trapped by another ranger.
Their only othe
r choice was to follow one of the creek drainages that dropped down to the lake. Jake didn’t know where it led, but he made a quick decision.
“C’mon,” he told Taylor. “Up here.”
“Where’s this go?”
“I don’t know, but if we stay next to the lake, they’ll catch us for sure.”
They hurried up the rocky ravine. Though a few trees clung to the ridges above, the stream bed and its banks were rocky and exposed.
“Do you think they’ll send a helicopter to find us?” Taylor asked, reading Jake’s mind.
“I don’t know,” said Jake, already gasping from the climb.
Must be the altitude, he thought. The Tetons weren’t Mount Everest, but they had to be a lot higher above sea level than Pittsburgh.
Taylor’s chest also heaved with the effort. Only Cody seemed to take the climb in stride.
They kept following the little stream as it grew even steeper. Soon they found themselves at the base of a large scree field. To their left, the route kept climbing up to a moonscape of rock and snow. Without a tree in sight, there was nowhere to hide.
Not a place we want to get stuck, Jake thought.
To the right, however, the brothers could see a small ridge that might just lead to somewhere better.
“What about up there?” Taylor pointed, panting.
Jake took another thin gulp of air. “Uh . . . yeah.”
The trio left the stream and began scrambling up the steep slope on their right. It was tough going. The scree slid out from under their shoes, and they were soon using both their hands and feet to make their way.
“I feel like a mountain goat,” Taylor said, gasping.
Jake was sucking in too much air to answer. After fifteen minutes, though, they reached the upper section of the ridge. The boys paused, exhausted, and collapsed onto the rocky ground.
“Wow,” Jake said.
From where they sat, they looked down on a small valley. Even though it was July, a snowfield filled more than half of it. Below that, a small stream of meltwater flowed down the valley, eventually entering a lake much larger than any they’d seen so far.
Wilder Boys Page 10
