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To Jordan Yager and all other great Riverton readers!
And a special thanks to Sneed B. Collard III.
1 Jake Wilder moved through the dense forest, making as little noise as he could. His breath steamed in the shafts of afternoon light slanting down through the trees. The chill in the air was like the hunger in his stomach; gnawing, but bearable. Just about.
A thought flashed through his mind: I used to be able to pick up a burger and fries for a few bucks.
He closed his eyes. Images of golden fries and neon-red ketchup surfaced in his memory, and the knot of hunger tightened. Sometimes it hurt to have left all that behind.
Get a grip, he told himself. Focus on the hunt.
He flicked his eyes open again and took a breath.
The beauty of the forest all around him was unlike anything he had seen back home in Pennsylvania. This high in the Tetons, the aspen leaves had already begun to shift from summer green to autumn gold. But the birdsong that had brought the forest to life over the summer had disappeared; almost all the birds had flown south. The forest had a haunted, silent feel now, like an abandoned house.
There was still life here, though, if you knew where to look for it. Jake paused and dropped down to squat on his haunches, looking at the fresh rabbit droppings that littered the forest floor. There were still plenty of rabbits for the taking. The trick, of course, was knowing how. . . .
Jake made his way to the spot he’d picked out several days before, the entrance to a burrow near the edge of the forest. The two pegs he’d driven into the ground were still there.
Working quickly, he fitted a small cross branch into two sockets cut into the pegs. Dangling from the cross branch was a loop of cord tied with a slipknot that would tighten around an animal’s neck.
Now for the trap, Jake thought. He pulled his dark hair back out of his eyes and bent a nearby sapling down toward the ground. He tied the cross branch to it with a piece of string. The crossbar strained with tension but didn’t slip loose from its sockets. But if anything nudged it—like a rabbit—it would pop free and whip upward with lethal force.
Satisfied, Jake crept back through the foliage and sat down on a log.
“And now,” he whispered to himself, “we wait.”
Jake picked at a scab on his hand and let his thoughts wander back to his old life. He and his younger brother, Taylor, had lived a normal-enough life back in Pittsburgh. That was, until his mom’s brutal boyfriend, Bull, had beaten her and threatened them. Convinced that their mother was dead, they knew they had to get away, to a place where Bull couldn’t reach them. So they’d taken Bull’s money and struck out for Wyoming, in the crazy hope of finding the father they barely remembered.
But Bull had followed them, desperate to get his money back and to silence the boys permanently. He’d chased them across half the country, all the way up into the mountains, where their dad, Abe, was living. Jake shivered as he remembered the day when Abe had fought like a grizzly to protect the boys. If their dad hadn’t shown up when he had, the boys would have been dead meat. Instead, it was Bull who had died, plunging over a mountain waterfall. Jake tried to feel sorry for the man, but it was difficult after everything that had happened.
A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye snapped Jake back to reality. He quickly turned his head and trained his sight on the burrow to see the furry brown head of a mountain cottontail emerge. Even from a distance Jake could see the rabbit’s ears twitch, trying to sense danger. Jake continued to breathe slowly and steadily, not moving an inch.
The rabbit seemed to think it was safe. It came all the way out of the burrow. It again sniffed the air and studied the forest in all directions.
Jake held his breath.
Come on, Mr. Rabbit . . . keep going.
As Jake watched, the rabbit hopped along the path. Jake could feel his muscles tense as the animal’s head got caught in the snare’s loop and pulled the cross branch free of the pegs.
Zing!
The sapling sprang instantly upward, jerking the rabbit into the air by its neck.
Heart thundering, Jake leaped to his feet and raced forward.
“Got you!” he cried.
Adrenaline washed through him. The rabbit was hanging, limp, not struggling—a clean kill.
He undid the noose and excitedly took his catch. He peered into the rabbit’s dead eyes, which only moments ago had gleamed as they’d looked around for danger.
Before uncertainty could creep through him, he reassured himself. I’m only doing it to survive. Out here Jake could see the truth of what “killing to live” really meant, and he never took an animal’s life for granted. He carefully placed the rabbit in his pack and broke down the trap, and then set off back toward his dad’s cabin, pride washing through him.
As he emerged from the forest into a small clearing, Jake found his dad and brother sitting around the fire pit outside the cabin. Warm flames crackled in the pit, and the smell of campfire smoke filled the air.
“Hey, buddy! There you are.”
Abe sat in the shadow of a simple wooden dwelling, tending the campfire. Taylor sat in a growing patch of white shavings, busy whittling on a branch with a hunting knife.
“Hey, Dad!” Jake called back.
He hadn’t known what to expect when they’d first arrived in the wilderness. He’d thought maybe they’d be making their clothes from skins and hunting or foraging for all their food. But although Abe lived off the land as much as possible, he wasn’t a hermit; he was a park ranger. He was allowed to live in his little cabin as part of his job—keeping an eye out for forest fires, monitoring wildlife, and keeping trails clear.
The boys’ Jack Russell terrier, Cody, raced over to greet Jake.
“Hey, boy!” Jake squatted down and affectionately tussled with the dog, letting Cody wriggle and squirm through his arms.
“You okay?” Abe asked. “You were gone awhile.”
“Wanted to work on my trapping skills.”
Abe nodded, his weather-beaten face wrinkling with good humor. “Good idea.”
Taylor paused in his whittling, his green eyes flashing anxiously up at Jake. “How’d it go?”
Jake straightened up and stepped over to the fire, warming his hands above the flames. Then, unable to suppress a smile, he opened his pack and pulled out the dead rabbit.
Cody raised his nose in the air, circling Jake, trying to catch the rabbit’s scent.
Taylor looked stunned for a second, and then a smile spread across his face. “Way to go!” he cried.
“Thanks, Bro!” Jake laughed, pulling the rabbit away from the eager dog.
Abe grinned at Jake. “Looks like all that hard work paid off.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Jake said, and grinned. He looked into the flames. Being back with their dad after so many years was great—he’d taught them so much since they’d been here. Not just the normal school subjects but all about the wilderness, which he knew like the back of his hand.
Taylor caught the look on Jake’s face and laughed. “You do know we’ll need more than one rabbit to get through the winter, right?”
“Of course I know that!” Jake snapped back. Way to ruin the moment, Taylor.
“Leave him alone, Taylor,” Abe said. “Winter’s nothing to joke about. M
y first winter in this place nearly killed me.”
That explains a lot, Jake thought. Their dad was preparing for winter as if he were readying a castle for a coming siege. In fact, the thought of winter was beginning to scare Jake.
Abe seemed to sense Jake’s discomfort. He reached for his guitar and plucked a few long, melancholy notes that reminded Jake of wolves howling in the distance. “Did I ever tell you boys about that first winter?”
Jake and Taylor shook their heads.
“Well then, listen up.”
Taylor hunkered down beside his dad to listen, wrapping Cody under one arm. Jake sat on a stump and warmed his hands by the fire. On the horizon the sun was setting and the dark was already drawing in.
“I’d been out hunting all day long. Just me, all alone in the cold, with a sack of dead rabbits,” he began. “It got dark real quick, and I should have headed for home right away, but I got greedy. I had one more rabbit in my sights, a big, fat one. He was pure white, like the spirit of winter.”
“Did you catch him?” Taylor asked.
“ ’Fraid not, buddy. He got away, but not before he’d led me deep into the woods. I was totally lost.” Abe plucked a whap-whap-waaa sad set of chords that made the boys laugh.
“It seems funny now,” he continued, “but back then I was scared to death. Especially when I figured out I wasn’t alone. There were eyes watching between the trees. Hungry eyes.”
“Wolves?” Taylor gasped.
“A whole pack of them,” Abe said, his eyes flashing. “The leader was a gray, one-eyed brute. They wanted the rabbits I was bringing home. And I knew that once they were done eating them, they’d start on me.”
Jake leaned forward, listening hard.
“But then I found it: Polaris, the North Star,” their dad continued, pointing up at the darkening sky. “Right there at the tip of the Little Dipper’s handle.”
“Then what?” Jake asked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Taylor stand up and rummage around in his pocket. Jake was about to ask what Taylor was up to, when his dad fixed him tight with his stare.
“That star guided me right out of those woods. I was bruised and shook up, but thankfully I’d managed to lose the wolves. Once I figured out which way was north, I headed up to the hills to build a snow house and . . .”
As Abe went on talking, Taylor crept up behind him and pulled out the wooden carving he’d been working on earlier.
“Raargh!” he yelled, waving the carving in his dad’s face. It was a miniature wolf with gaping jaws.
“Argh!” Abe cried, caught off guard. He let a broad grin arc across his bearded face. “You nearly had me!” He dropped his guitar and wrestled Taylor and his wolf to the ground.
Jake just laughed. “You didn’t escape those wolves after all. . . .”
“This one’s much fiercer than a wolf,” Abe said, and chuckled, letting go of Taylor.
“It’s coming for you next, Jake,” Taylor growled, brandishing the carving in his brother’s face.
Jake added another log to the campfire and sat back, in mock fright.
“You know, Jake,” Abe said, turning back to winter. “That rabbit of yours couldn’t have come at a better time.”
“What do you mean?” Taylor asked.
Abe poured him a mug of hot broth from his flask. “Thanksgiving’s just a few weeks away, and the snows could come any day now. We need to eat well tonight, because tomorrow we’re heading into town for the last of our supplies.”
Jake laughed. “Supplies? I thought we had everything we needed right here.”
Abe patted him on the shoulder. “There’re some needs nature can’t provide. Unfortunately, we can’t tap a tree for kerosene, or dig up knife blades. Wyoming winters can be harsh. You know how long we might get snowed in for up here?”
Jake thought it over. “Six weeks?” he said, fearing the worst. It would be tough, but he figured they could survive being cut off from the world for that long.
“Sorry, Jake,” Abe sighed, his brows knitting together. “It’s more like six months.”
2 Winter announced itself the next day with a wind that howled around the cabin, stealing down the smoke hole, feathering the water in the sink with ice, and creeping under blankets to gnaw on the boys’ toes.
Outside, Abe looked at the horizon with troubled eyes, but Jake and Taylor laughed as they set off across the rugged terrain. Five months ago neither of the boys could have imagined making the journey to town in a single day, but their time with Abe and the cross-country trek to find him had toughened them up. Even heavy backpacks wouldn’t slow them down.
Cody trotted along ahead of them, sniffing trees and cocking his leg here and there as if he owned the wilderness. Abe pointed out the natural features of the landscape around them, carefully explaining the signs of animal and plant life. Taylor drank it all in, but Jake tuned it out. He was thinking about the town they were heading for, where he could eat hot food he hadn’t had to cook, and stock up on books. Six months without even a magazine to read would drive him crazy.
“Now, this one’s really useful,” Abe suddenly announced, pointing to a plant with some shriveled brown leaves and taller flower stalks rising from the center.
Taylor looked closely at the plant, his brow knitted in concentration. Then his face brightened. “I know this one! It’s the weapons plant.”
Abe looked at him quizzically.
“You know, arrowleaf balsamroot?”
“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Abe said. “You can use it to treat burns and other wounds, and it makes a pretty good cough medicine too.”
“Like when Jake healed my leg . . . ,” Taylor said.
Abe cocked his head.
“Remember, right before we found you, Taylor got attacked by a bobcat,” Jake explained.
Abe nodded. “Of course I remember, and you were real smart about what to do.”
Jake remembered how often Bull had called him stupid, or worse. He relished the sound of his father’s encouragement.
Abe handed out a midmorning snack of pemmican—a mixture of crushed elk meat, fat, and berries—as they continued onward.
“Hey, Jake,” Taylor said with his mouth full, “can you imagine what the kids at school would say if they knew we were out here? Or Mr. Polanachek?”
Jake laughed, thinking about their grouchy school bus driver back in Pittsburgh. “He’d have a cow.”
“I know, right.” Taylor turned to look up at Jake. “In a weird way I kind of miss going to school. I mean, homeschooling is fun and all, but I miss being around our friends.”
Before Jake could answer, Abe cut in. “You might miss school, but you don’t miss the city, do you? It’s so much healthier out here. No pollution, no crime, no junk food.”
“I guess you really hated the city when you lived there, huh?” Taylor asked. He fell into step with his father.
Jake hung back, listening.
Abe thought about that. “The way I see it, I never lived in the city. Nobody can live in a city! All you can do is waste away, slowly, a day at a time.”
“Sounds like a line from one of your songs,” Jake cut in.
Abe coughed. “Guilty as charged.”
Jake laughed, but his father’s attitude still rankled. Not for the first time, it annoyed him how Abe saw everything in stark black-and-white. Sure, the mountains were beautiful and pure. But there were lots of good things about cities, too, like libraries, parks, and restaurants. Not to mention friends. He knew there was no point arguing about it, though. Abe always thought his way of thinking was right.
If life is so perfect out here, Dad, why didn’t you ever come to get us yourself? Why didn’t you bring me, Taylor, and Mom out here with you?
Jake tried to push his frustration out of his mind and just enjoy the time they had with their father now.
A few yards later Taylor stepped off the trail and darted into the undergrowth. “Back in a sec,” he called.
“
What’s he up to?” Jake laughed as he watched Taylor dash to the edge of the forest and rummage around on the ground. When he straightened up, Taylor held a medium-size white-capped mushroom in his hand.
“Who’s hungry?” Taylor said with a laugh.
Abe leaped forward and knocked the mushroom from Taylor’s hands.
“Never eat that one!” he said, alarm cracking his voice. “Didn’t I tell you never to eat something you aren’t sure of?”
Taylor looked shaken. “But, Dad, I wasn’t going to . . .”
Abe held him tight for a moment, then released his grip. “Taylor, that’s a Deadly Parasol! One bite, just one, and you’d have been dead.”
Jake stepped in. “Dad, it’s okay. Taylor wasn’t going to eat it. He was just showing it to us.”
Abe looked from one boy to the other. Then he took a deep breath, bent down, and hiked up the leg of his jeans. Both the boys saw the ugly white mass of scar tissue on his left calf.
“See that?”
They nodded.
“That’s what happened last time I got careless out in the wild.”
“Is it a snake bite?” Jake guessed.
Abe didn’t answer. He just rolled his pants leg back down. “You can never let your guard down out here.” He sighed deeply. “Let’s get a move on.”
Jake thought back to his dad ranting about how bad the city was. But snake bites and deadly mushrooms? It wasn’t as perfect here as his dad made it out to be.
When they reached town two hours later, Jake felt a huge wave of relief to be back in civilization. There were only a few dozen houses, a post office, a gas station, and a general store that doubled as an information center for visitors, but after being away from other people for so long, even a tiny roadside stop felt like a bustling metropolis to Jake.
Abe left Cody sitting outside and shepherded the boys into the general store that fronted the two-lane highway. The boys looked around like starving wolves.
“Look at all this stuff, Jake!” Taylor exclaimed.
The store offered everything a person could want: groceries, guns and ammo, camping supplies, propane and kerosene, tools and hardware. Jake imagined how much easier life would be if their cabin had one of the shiny propane grills the store had for sale.
The Journey Home Page 1
