by Ron Roy
The kids slipped out of their life vests and passed them to Morris.
“Thanks for the ride,” Ruth Rose said.
Morris handed Dink a magazine and some other mail. “Would you mind leaving this inside the gate?” he asked, pointing toward the other end of the dock.
“Sure,” Dink said.
“I’ll swing by here for you in about a half hour,” Morris said. “Can you be finished with your picnic by then?”
“No problem!” Josh said.
Morris gunned his engine. “Okey-dokey see you later.”
The kids watched Morris pull away. Soon his boat was just a speck on the water.
The dock was quiet and cool under the awning. The only sound was made by the water gently slapping against the small blue boat.
“Now what?” asked Josh.
The kids turned away from the water. The dock was as long as two school buses. At the other end was a small sandy beach.
The whole island was covered with trees and bushes. But part of it was fenced off. Behind the fence, among tall trees and thick shrubbery they could see a chimney and part of a roof.
“That must be where the rich guy lives,” Josh said. He glanced down at the boat. “I wonder if that blond woman lives there, too.”
“We can’t go inside the fence,” Dink said.
“No, but we can peek through the gate when you leave the mail,” Ruth Rose said.
“Let’s go,” Dink said, reaching down for his backpack. “We’ve only got a half hour.”
“What’s that stuff?” Ruth Rose asked, pointing to a blue smudge on the gray dock.
Ruth Rose knelt down for a closer look. She touched the smudge, then smelled the tip of her finger.
“What is it?” asked Dink.
Ruth Rose looked up at Dink and Josh. “It’s blueberries!” she said.
All three kids were on their knees studying the stain.
“You’re right,” Josh said. “And it looks like it came off someone’s shoe.”
He traced a finger around the smudge. “See, this round edge looks like part of a heelprint.”
Josh looked at Dink and Ruth Rose. “Guys, someone stepped in those blueberries we saw yesterday,” he said. “This could have been made by the same person!”
“Right, the people who carried the cage down to the boat!” Ruth Rose said.
Dink glanced up. “And the awning kept last night’s rain from washing it away.”
“Hey! What are you kids doing?” someone shouted.
Startled, the kids looked up. A tall man and woman in shorts and T-shirts were hurrying down the dock toward them. The woman’s blond ponytail flopped over one shoulder.
“We … we wondered if we could have a picnic here,” Ruth Rose said.
Josh held up his pack.
“Do you know you’re on private property?” the woman asked. “How did you get here, anyway? I don’t see another boat.”
“The mailman dropped us off,” Ruth Rose said. “He’ll be back to get us in a half hour.”
Dink held out the mail. “Morris asked me to put this inside your gate,” he said.
“Thanks.” The man took the mail and opened the magazine.
“Okay, the boss is away, so I guess you can have your picnic,” the woman said. She pointed toward the sandy beach. “Up there, please.”
The man and woman turned and strode back up the dock. The kids scrambled after them.
When they reached the sand, the man walked through the gate, still reading his magazine.
“Please don’t leave any litter behind,” the woman said. Then she stepped inside the gate, slammed it shut, and walked through the shrubbery.
“They could be the wolf-nappers!” Ruth Rose said. “That woman had a blond ponytail!”
“When we get back, we can call the game warden!” Dink said.
“Guys, we only have a half hour,” Josh declared. “Let’s eat!” He sat in the sand and opened his pack.
Dink and Ruth Rose knelt as Josh brought out three juice cartons, a bag of cookies, and some grapes. High over their heads, a few gulls soared.
“Look at all those seagulls,” Ruth Rose said. “Watch out, Josh, they might zoom down and grab your cookie.”
“They’d better not,” Josh said, glancing at the sky.
“Why don’t you turn on Abbi’s tape recorder?” Dink said. “If they come closer, we can get some gull noises for her collection.”
“Good idea.” Ruth Rose took the tape recorder out and set it on her flattened pack. She pushed the RECORD button.
The kids began to eat. The only sounds were their munching and a few gull cries.
“Guys, what are we going to do?” Ruth Rose asked. “If those are the people Abbi saw, the wolf pups could be here on this island!”
Dink turned and looked through the fence into the thick shrubbery. “But we can’t get in,” he said.
Ruth Rose shook her head. “Why would anyone want baby wolves?” she asked. “I just don’t get it.”
“The rich guy who owns this place must be their boss,” Josh said. “He might have told them to steal the babies.”
“But why?” Ruth Rose asked.
“For pets,” Josh said. “I read about a movie star who had a leopard.”
“But that’s cruel!” Ruth Rose said. “Wild animals should be left in the wild. And those babies should be with their mother. We have to rescue them!”
“How, Ruth Rose?” Dink stood up and walked over to the gate. He tried to open it. “Locked,” he muttered.
Suddenly a bunch of gulls swooped down and landed on the sand.
“Shoo!” Josh yelled, making the gulls take off again.
Just then, they heard a toot.
“There’s Morris,” Josh said.
The mail boat was still a ways off, chugging toward the island. The kids packed their stuff and hurried onto the dock.
They stood waiting next to the blue motorboat. Josh glanced down. Suddenly he lay flat on his belly and leaned over the boat.
“What are you doing?” Dink asked.
“Looking for clues,” Josh said. “If the baby wolves were in this boat, there might be some hairs.”
He peered beneath a seat. “Aha!”
Josh reached under the seat, then yelled. He jumped to his feet, shaking his hands in disgust.
“What did you see?” Ruth Rose asked.
“A mouse!” Josh said.
“Really?” Ruth Rose said. “We should catch it and set it free on land!”
“Too late,” Josh said. “It’s all wet and slimy and dead.”
“I gave the mail to a man,” Dink said as they pulled away from the dock a few minutes later.
“Thanks a lot,” Captain Morris said. “That’d be Greg Dack. He and his sister, Lynda, take care of the place for the owner.”
“Do they have any pets?” Josh asked, sliding a look at Dink and Ruth Rose.
Morris shook his head. “Not that I’ve seen.” Then he grinned. “Course, with that jungle they live in, they could hide an elephant on that island!”
A few minutes later, he pulled the mail boat up to Wallis’s dock.
“Thanks a lot!” the kids all said.
“My pleasure,” Morris said. “Give Wallis and Walker and Abbi a big howdy from me.”
“We will,” Dink said. “Bye, Captain Morris!”
Morris tooted his horn and pulled away. The kids ran up the dock and into the cabin.
Wallis, Walker, and Abbi were waiting for them.
“How was your picnic?” Wallis asked. “Or should I say, how was your snooping expedition?” she added slyly.
“Did you find the wolf pups?” Abbi asked.
“No, but we might have found a clue!” Josh said. He told them about the blueberry stain on the dock. “It looked like it came off someone’s shoe. Like whoever crushed those blueberries on that path!”
“Josh, anyone could have left a blueberry stain on that dock,” Wallis sai
d. “This is blueberry-picking season. We have no proof it was the people who took the wolves.”
Ruth Rose told them about the brother-and-sister caretakers. “Lynda Dack has long blond hair!” she said.
“I knew it!” Abbi said.
“There was a high fence all around the place,” Dink said. “We couldn’t see anything inside.”
Ruth Rose remembered the tape. “Abbi, we forgot to ask Morris about the seals, but we tried to tape some seagulls for you.”
Ruth Rose put the tape recorder on the table and pressed the PLAY button.
At first they heard only hissing, then the sound of gulls.
Then the gull cries were interrupted by Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose talking.
Suddenly they heard Josh’s voice yell, “Shoo!”
“This is when the gulls landed near us,” Ruth Rose said. “I think they wanted our food.”
“It was nice of you to make the tape,” Wallis said.
“But those weren’t all gull sounds!” Abbi said. She rewound the tape and hit PLAY again. “Listen,” she said, leaning toward the machine and turning up the volume. The others leaned in, too.
The cries were louder now. “There! Those aren’t gulls,” Abbi said. “I think they’re the wolf pups!”
“Honey, those sound like seagulls,” Wallis said. “Are you sure you’re not just—”
“I know what gulls sound like,” Abbi said. “I have them on another tape. It’s on the deck, the cassette marked BIRDS.”
Walker hurried out to the deck and came back with the cassette. He ejected the one in the recorder and slid in the BIRDS tape.
They heard the hooting of an owl, some loons, and finally a raucous, high-pitched squawking.
“Those are gull calls,” Abbi said. “Do you hear the difference?”
“Play the other one again,” Ruth Rose said.
Abbi switched cassettes, and they once more heard the sounds that Abbi said were the pups.
“It does sound like puppies whimpering,” Josh said. “My dog makes that noise when he’s hungry!”
“But how did we get the wolf pups on tape?” Dink asked. “We never saw them.”
“They must be hidden somewhere out there,” Abbi said. “You might have heard them, but you thought they were seagull noises. Now we can tell the police!”
“But this tape doesn’t prove the wolves are on that island,” Walker said. “The Dacks might have dogs.”
“But I saw the woman in the boat!” Abbi insisted. “I can tell the police she was the same woman I saw take the pups.”
“You saw her from a long distance both times,” Walker told his niece. “You might have seen two different women with long blond hair.”
“Uncle Walker is right, hon,” Wallis said. “We can call the game warden again, but I have a feeling she’ll want more proof before she accuses those people.”
“Abbi, what do wolves eat around here?” Dink asked suddenly.
Abbi looked at Dink. “Small animals, mostly,” she said. “Why?”
“Well, Josh found a dead mouse in their boat,” Dink explained.
“Right, and I touched it,” Josh said. “It was wet and slimy and gross!”
“You should have heard Josh scream, Abbi,” Ruth Rose said.
Suddenly Abbi backed her wheelchair away from the table. She wheeled herself to the fireplace and came back with a book in her lap.
With the others watching her, she flipped some pages, then started reading:
A large part of a wolf’s diet is rodents, mostly mice. Adult wolves often vomit up partially digested mice as food for their young.
Abbi closed the book. “I think those baby wolves were in that boat,” she declared. “The mother wolf probably caught the mouse for her babies, and one of them was eating it when they got thrown in the cage.”
“So the mouse was a clue!” Josh said.
“It’s almost like connecting dots to make a picture,” Dink said. “First Abbi saw two people steal the puppies. Then we saw human footprints near the wolves’ den. Ruth Rose found a trail down to the beach and blueberry stains on the dock. And Josh found a dead mouse in the boat.”
“And we heard the whimpering noises on the tape,” Abbi added.
“Okay, I have to admit that I see a picture forming,” Wallis said. “But what we believe isn’t necessarily the truth.”
“Right,” Walker said. “There are a couple more dots to connect. Like how do we prove that whimpering on the tape came from the baby wolves?”
“I have an idea,” Josh said quietly.
“Tell us, Josh,” Wallis said.
“I was thinking about the mother wolf,” Josh said. “She would know if those were her babies whimpering on the tape.”
Everyone stared at Josh.
“I don’t get it,” Dink said.
“I do!” Ruth Rose cried. “We let the mother wolf listen to the tape, right, Josh?”
Josh nodded. “Yeah, we can take the tape recorder to her den and play it. If the mother wolf is there, she should do something when she hears her babies crying.”
“If those really are her babies on the tape,” Wallis reminded them.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Walker said. “Come on, kids!”
Dink, Josh, Ruth Rose, and Walker left the cabin and hiked into the woods.
Ruth Rose carried Abbi’s tape recorder and a copy of the tape in her backpack. Walker had slung his camera around his neck.
“I sure hope this works,” Dink said as they trekked through the trees.
“Me too,” Walker said. “Abbi will be heartbroken if we don’t get those wolf pups back with their mother.”
They stopped talking when they saw the tall dead tree. Dink, Josh, and Walker found a place to stay out of sight.
Ruth Rose set the tape recorder on the ground about fifty feet from the lair. She pressed PLAY, then ran to where the others waited.
Seconds later, they heard the taped whimpering noises. All four watchers had their fingers crossed.
Suddenly a white blur shot out of the rock cave. The mother wolf hurled herself at the tape recorder. Lying on her stomach, she made her own whimpering sounds. She put her nose next to the tape recorder, as if trying to smell her babies.
Walker was recording it all on his digital camera.
After a moment, the whimpering noises stopped, and the kids’ conversation came from the tape.
The mother wolf leaped to her feet, and her ears went straight up. She barked at the tape recorder as if it were alive.
Walker motioned that they should leave, and the four backed away. When they were on the trail toward home, they stopped and high-fived each other.
“Did you see her?” Josh asked. “If that isn’t proof, I don’t know what is!”
“And Walker got it all on camera!” Ruth Rose said.
“I sure hope Abbi was watching,” Dink said. “Will she be mad that we left her tape recorder up there?”
Walker laughed. “She’ll forgive us,” he said. “Between your tape and these pictures, I’m pretty sure the game warden will agree to take a boat ride out to talk to the Dacks.”
Abbi and Wallis were waiting on the deck when the kids and Walker emerged from the woods.
“We saw it all!” Abbi cried. “I told you those were wolf whimpers!”
Walker grinned. “You were right on, honey,” he told Abbi. “We had to leave your tape recorder up there, though.”
“It was so cool,” Josh said. “That mother wolf practically crawled inside the tape recorder.”
“Now can we call the police and have them arrested?” Abbi asked.
“Now we can ask Nadine to pay those people a visit,” Wallis said.
Nadine showed up twenty minutes later with another game warden named Jason. They borrowed Walker’s camera and motored toward the island with the blue awning.
The four kids waited on the dock. To kill time, they counted all the boats they could see. The boys g
ot a point for each motorboat, and the girls for each sailboat.
The girls were ahead eighteen sailboats to eleven motorboats when Ruth Rose screamed, “HERE THEY COME!”
Sure enough, Nadine was sitting in the bow of the boat as Jason guided it toward the dock. In the middle of the boat was a lump covered with an old blanket.
“Did you get them?” asked Abbi as Nadine stepped onto the dock.
“Piece of cake,” Nadine said.
“The puppies are pretty scared,” Nadine said. She and Jason carried the bulky, covered cage up to the deck.
They set the cage in the shade. The baby wolves whimpered through the blanket.
Wallis and Walker joined them on the deck. They were both grinning.
“Can we peek in?” asked Abbi.
“Okay, but just for a second,” Nadine said. “Jason and I have to get them back to their mother as soon as possible.”
Nadine lifted a corner of the blanket, and everyone peeked into the cage. The three baby wolves were huddled together. Small black eyes peered back at the kids.
“They are so amazing!” Josh said.
“They look thirsty,” Abbi said. “Should we give them some water?”
“Sure, and I could use a glass, too,” Jason said.
“Let’s all go inside,” Wallis said.
When the wolves had been given a bowl of water, the two game wardens told what happened on the island.
“At first the Dacks denied everything,” Nadine said. “But then I showed them your digital pictures, and that did it. They took us to a small shed, and there were the baby wolves, crying and scared.”
“Did they say why they took the wolves?” Ruth Rose asked.
Jason nodded. “It seems that Greg Dack read an ad in a magazine from some guy who wanted to buy wolves to use as watchdogs,” he said. “The Dacks stood to make several thousand dollars on this little scheme.”
“And right in the middle of their confession, their boss walked in,” Nadine said. “He fired the Dacks on the spot. Jason called the authorities, and they’ll be arrested within an hour. Those two won’t be kidnapping anymore wolves.”
