“Why didn’t you wear rubber boots?” Russ asked.
Mariah was tempted to explain. Instead, she simply shrugged. “Come on. Let’s get going.” She headed in the same direction Cassie had started out in, her feet making a sloshing sound with every step she took. Russ and Cassie gripped their gear more tightly, then followed.
“Wait a minute.” Suddenly Russ stopped. “We’d better not go this way after all.”
“What now?” demanded Mariah.
“Look up there.”
Cassie’s eyes traveled upward in the direction he was pointing.
“I don’t see anything.” She was squinting into the sun.
“See what’s up in that tree?”
“You mean those birds?” asked Mariah.
“Exactly. They’re terns.”
“Now I see them!” Cassie exclaimed. The birds were too far away for her to get a good look, but even from her vantage point she could see their distinctive black-and-white coloring. “They’re beautiful!”
“Very nice,” Mariah said impatiently. “Now let’s hurry up and get this over with.” She hiked her backpack higher up on her shoulders and started off.
“I wouldn’t recommend going this way,” Russ cautioned.
“But it’s the shortest route!”
“We’d be better off heading around that way, along that little pond over there.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Mariah made no attempt to hide her exasperation. “We must have walked two miles so far. Do you really expect me to tack on another extra mile because of some stupid birds!”
“Terns are extremely territorial,” Russ explained. “Look in that tree, over there. See that nest?”
“Don’t tell me,” Mariah muttered. “That’s the launching pad for their missiles.”
Ignoring her icy comment, he continued, “The adult terns will do anything to protect their nestlings.”
“I’m with Russ,” Cassie agreed. “It’s true that this other route is a little bit out of our way. But if he thinks it’s for the best—”
“Tell me I’m not really hearing this!” Mariah rolled her eyes. “Are you two serious? You’re actually afraid of a few little birdies?”
Russ opened his mouth, as if to protest. But he snapped it shut as Mariah gave a defiant toss of her head, then marched off in the exact direction he’d just warned her about.
“Honestly,” she was muttering. “Of all the silly things I’ve ever heard in my life....”
“Should we follow her?” Cassie asked Russ, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“No. Stay back.” Gently he placed his arm on hers. But his eyes remained fixed on Mariah.
“Come on, you two scaredy-cats,” she called over her shoulder, not bothering to look back.
Cassie was standing completely still. She realized her heart was pounding like a jackhammer as she watched Mariah make her way across the field. She could sense Russ’s tension as well. He stood beside her, frozen as he watched.
Already the birds were reacting to the intruder. Cassie could see them flitting from tree to tree, making unsettling screeching noises. A few began swooping across the sky, gradually getting closer and closer to Mariah.
She, meanwhile, didn’t seem to notice.
“Ooooh, I’m so scared,” she yelled back at Cassie and Russ, her tone sarcastic. “Don’t hurt me, birdies. Keep away. I’ll be out of here in a few minutes; I promise.” She was already far into the area that Cassie had figured out was the territory the terns thought of as their own. “I’ll be waiting for you two adventurers on the other side,” she called mockingly.
“We’ve got to stop her,” Cassie cried.
“No, let her go,” declared Russ. “Maybe this will teach her a little respect for nature.”
“But will they hurt her?”
“Ooh, look at the pretty birdies.” Mariah was prancing through the field. She’d finally noticed the half-dozen birds flying overhead, getting closer and closer. “See? They just want to be friends. Here, birdie, birdie!”
And then she let out a scream. One of the terns had descended from the sky, pecking at her head as it sailed past her.
“Oh, no!” Cassie cried. “We’ve got to help her!”
“They won’t hurt her,” Russ assured Cassie. “But if we’re lucky, they’ll scare her a little.”
A second tern had already zoomed in for an attack, grabbing hold of a strand of Marian’s hair in its beak. It only held on for a second before darting off, but the shrill cry Mariah let out cut through the deserted field like an alarm.
“Help me! Help!” she cried. The backpack had slid off her back onto the wet muskeg. Both her arms were folded over her head as she desperately attempted to defend herself against the beating wings of the birds. They had all zeroed in on her, taking turns at swooping past her, sometimes taking a peck at her scalp, other times simply making terrifying squawking sounds.
“Help! Help!” Mariah shrieked again and again. She sank to her knees, her arms still covering her head. Not only did the birds continue their assault, she also began sinking into the marshy ground.
“We’ve got to help her,” Cassie cried. Rushing toward Mariah, she was frustrated by how slowly she was forced to travel. The muskeg greedily grabbed at her feet, sucking her in with every step she took. But as she glanced over her shoulder, she saw that Russ was standing with his arms folded. And while he was trying his hardest not to laugh, he wasn’t having much luck.
“Maybe this will teach Princess Mariah a little humility!” he called.
Ignoring him, Cassie trudged onward. Up ahead she could see Mariah crouched down and attempting to keep her balance on unsteady ground that gave way to whatever limb she put down on it. The birds circled her head, swooping and pecking and shrieking, refusing to give up their attack.
When she reached Mariah, Cassie yelled and waved her arms. The presence of two intruders was apparently more intimidating than just one. The birds finally moved away, hovering low in the sky. Their screeching continued, but at least they’d retreated.
“Let’s get out of here!” Cassie exclaimed. She reached for Marian’s arm and dragged her to her feet. Marian’s face was streaked with tears and her designer sweater was spotted with tern droppings. She was sobbing.
“Are you all right, Mariah?”
“It was horrible! Absolutely horrible!” Standing straight, brushing off her clothes, Mariah shrieked, “And it was all your fault!”
“My fault? Why?”
“You and Russ!” Mariah accused. “You’re the ones who picked this route. This whole stupid thing was your idea!”
“But Russ tried to warn you!” Cassie was incredulous.
“He never explained to me what those birds were capable of.” Her hazel eyes had narrowed into slits. “He wanted this to happen! He planned it! Don’t think I didn’t see him standing over there, laughing. Laughing’“
“Mariah, he didn’t—”
“Those disgusting birds could have pecked my eyes out. I could be blind!”
Russ suddenly appeared, having made his way over to the two girls as they struggled to get away from the birds. He was laughing as he attempted to take hold of Mariah’s arm.
“Get away from me, you ... you beast” Mariah screeched. ‘This was all your fault!”
Russ simply looked amused. “I should have known better than to think you might actually recognize that you played a part in this.”
“You—you should have told me!” Mariah sputtered. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me!”
With a shrug, he said, “I tried.”
“He did, Mariah,” Cassie was quick to agree. “But you wouldn’t listen. You—”
“Get away from me, both of you!” Mariah barked. She grabbed her backpack and pulled it on roughly. As she did, huge dollops of mud from the muskeg splattered all over her jeans and the back of her shirt.
Cassie gasped, horrified.
“I’ll get you for this!” Ma
riah declared, pointing her finger at him.
Russ opened his mouth to protest his innocence. But before he had a chance, they all started at the distant sound of Laurel and Trip yelling.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” Russ was already running toward the sound of their voices, doing his best to travel quickly despite the soft sucking action of the muskeg and the ungainliness of his rubber boots.
“Over here!” Trip yelled. Suddenly he emerged from behind the thick growth of trees that edged the field a few hundred yards away.
“Is someone hurt?” Cassie cried.
“Everyone’s fine,” Trip returned. “Just come over here, will you?”
By the time Cassie, Russ, and Mariah reached him, all three of them were splattered with mud. Cassie was gasping for breath, nearly overwhelmed by the exertion of trying to run through muskeg. But it wasn’t her own discomfort she was thinking about. It was the distraught look on Trip’s face.
Her heart immediately began to race. She’d never seen him look so upset. In fact, she could barely remember having seen such a stricken look on anyone’s face before. He looked as if he might be sick.
“Wh-what is it?” she demanded, surprised when her voice came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Brace yourselves,” he instructed. “Russ, maybe you’d better look first.”
Cassie opened her mouth to ask about Laurel one more time when her friend appeared behind Trip.
“Maybe you shouldn’t look at all,” she said to Cassie. Her face had the same sick look as Trip’s.
“Why don’t you tell us what this is all about?”
Mariah said crisply. “If this turns out to be some kind of joke—”
“This is no joke,” Trip cut in, his tone deadly serious. “Someone’s killed a bear. Shot him dead. From the looks of it, it wasn’t a hunter ... and it was no accident.” He swallowed hard. “If you ask me, the poachers have struck again.”
Chapter Nine
“Where’s the bear?” Russ asked, heading over in their direction.
“It’s a pretty grizzly sight—if you’ll excuse the pun,” said Trip. “Somebody did quite a job on that poor animal.”
Cassie swallowed hard. The Torvolds’ words were echoing through her head. The image of bear poaching was repulsive: someone going out of his way to hire planes expressly to herd bears, selling off parts of the poor animals’ bodies simply to line his own pockets. ...
“Maybe none of you should look,” Laurel was saying. “Frankly, I wish I hadn’t seen it.”
“What happened exactly?” asked Russ. “How did you come across it in the first place?”
“Trip and I were looking for botanical specimens,” Laurel explained, “when all of a sudden we smelled something odd. It was really bad, the odor of rotting flesh. We followed our noses until we found the ... the....”
“Let me take a look,” Russ offered. “Mariah, Cassie, wait here.”
“No. We’re coming, too,” Mariah insisted.
Cassie would have been perfectly happy to stay behind. Yet as the other four tramped off somberly, she couldn’t bring herself to beg to be left out. Instead, she followed, doing her best to brace herself against whatever it was she was about to see.
As she stepped between two large trees, peering over the shoulders of the others standing in front of her, she wished she really had stayed back. Her stomach lurched and a wave of dizziness came over her with such force she had to grab hold of one of the tree trunks to keep from sinking to the ground. Swallowing hard, she looked away.
Even so, the horrible image of what she’d just seen stayed with her. The bear carcass, covered with willow branches, was already beginning to rot. A cloud of flies surrounded the body. The head had been cut off, along with all four paws. On its side was a huge wound, caked with dried blood. Its belly had been slit open. And Laurel’s description of the smell as “odd” was a real understatement. The stench made Cassie nauseous.
“See?” said Russ, pointing to the spot on the bear’s side. “That’s where he was shot.”
“Look how they cut him up.” Mariah’s voice was strained.
“No doubt the poachers helping themselves to the parts they could sell,” Trip said dryly. “It’s just like Torvold said. They killed the whole bear to get a few dollars for two or three of its parts.”
“What do we do now?” Marian asked.
“We have to report this,” Russ insisted. “First we’ll tell Dr. Wells, of course.”
‘“I’m sure he’ll want to report it to his friend at the Department of Fish and Game, Ben Seeger,” said Laurel. “I imagine the more we can tell them about what we saw, the better their chances of catching whoever’s responsible.” Averting her eyes from the horrible sight, Laurel added, “As hard as it is to accept, chances are the person who did this will never be caught.”
* * * *
“Oooh ... I hate this stupid thing!”
Marian let out a cry of impatience, throwing down the fish trap she’d been struggling with for a good five minutes, trying without the slightest bit of success to untie the knots in the long string dangling from one end. Her fingers ached from the effort. She stood at the edge of the lake, shaking out her hands and feeling anger rise up inside her.
It wasn’t only the tight little knots that were responsible for her frustration. The entire day had left her feeling unsettled. First, the broken bootlace as she was rushing to get out on time. Then, lugging heavy equipment through that awful muskeg, her canvas sneakers becoming saturated with her very first step. Next came the humiliating and terrifying experience of being attacked by terns. And after topping off the morning by confronting one of the most horrible sights of her entire life, she then had to witness Laurel’s taking advantage of having stumbled across that poor dead bear to look good in front of Dr. Wells.
“I’ll take you to the spot, if you want,” Laurel had offered, her voice ringing out much louder than the others. “I remember exactly where it was....”
Angrily Mariah tugged at the string. Being stuck up here in Alaska for four and a half more weeks was bad enough but the presence of Laurel Adams made it even worse. Looking down, she saw that all she’d accomplished was making the tiny knots even tighter.
“I hate this whole stupid trip!” she cried, fighting back the tears welling up in her eyes.
“There’s an easier way to do that.”
Mariah whirled around, caught off guard by the sound of a voice. She’d assumed she was alone out here, a good hundred yards away from the cabin. In fact, she’d made a point of choosing an isolated spot as she attacked this particularly tedious task.
The last thing she wanted to do was look like a fool—in front of Dr. Wells, in front of Trip, and especially in front of Laurel. Yet here Laurel was, standing with her hands folded politely in front of her, wearing that annoying patient look that she wore so much of the time.
“What are you doing out here?” Marian demanded. Automatically she tried to hide the fish trap with the disastrous string—the result of her own failure to follow Dr. Wells’s detailed instructions. Yet as she stood in front of Laurel with a metal fish trap half-hidden behind her back, she realized she was fighting a losing battle.
“Actually, I was looking for Dr. Wells,” said Laurel. “I was wondering if I could go with him when he told John Torvold about the bear we found.”
“He’s not here,” Marian snapped.
“So I see.” Laurel’s eyes had traveled downward, to the trap. “If I were you, I’d take a knife and cut those fraying strings off. You’d be better off tying on new ones. Here, let me take a look at that one.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” As she barked her words, Marian pulled the fish trap away from Laurel. She was pleased to see that her icy tone had precisely the effect she’d been hoping for. Laurel took a step backward, the expression on her face one of surprise. “Maybe you have everybody else around here fooled,” Marian went on, “but you can’t fool me.”
&
nbsp; Laurel simply stared for a few seconds, her green eyes wide. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said.
“Oh, sure, you’re trying to come across as an expert at everything under the sun. Laurel Adams, scientist extraordinaire. Well, if you ask me, you don’t know any more than the rest of us. You’re just a goody two-shoes, taking advantage of every opportunity that comes along to make me look incompetent! Never in my entire life have I seen anybody work so hard to rack up brownie points!”
By now, Laurel’s expression was one of total disbelief. “Mariah,” she began, “I wasn’t—”
“And another thing,” Mariah continued, unable to resist spewing forth the tidal wave of angry words surging up inside her. “If you’re trying to impress Trip, I’ll tell you right now you’re wasting your time.”
‘Trip?” Laurel’s mouth dropped open. “Mariah, I never in a million years—”
“I’ve seen you showing off in front of him. Believe me, I know boys like Trip. The last thing in the world that turns them on is a Miss Know-It-All.”
“Are you finished?” Laurel asked woodenly.
“I am,” Mariah shot back. “I only wish you were.”
Her expression stricken, Laurel turned. Glancing over her shoulder, she called back, “By the way, whenever you untie fish traps out in the field, make sure you undo the knots on the spot instead of just pulling them off the clumps of grass. That way, you won’t get stuck with a dirty job like that.” She turned away, vanishing into the woods.
Mariah stood with her arms folded across her chest, watching Laurel disappear into the woods. She was certain she’d gotten her point across, putting Laurel in her place once and for all. Yet there was one thing that left her completely confused. And that was why having done so didn’t make her feel one bit better.
* * * *
Laurel hurried into the cabin, wanting nothing more than to be alone. Inside she was raging. She was furious at herself for letting Mariah get the best of her.
How dare she accuse me of showing off ... especially in front of Dr. Wells! she thought, closing her eyes tightly to keep from crying. It was true that she was anxious to impress him. But she was sincerely interested in this project—not only in learning as much as she could, but also in being a valuable contributor to his research.
Alaska Adventure Page 8
