Pack Trip

by Bonnie Bryant

  “How’s the twig supply?” Seth asked, changing the subject.

  Lisa looked into the bag. “We’re about done, but I suppose we could pick up a few more, just in case.”

  They stood up and walked deeper into the woods.

  “We’d better get extra. This stuff will burn up in no time,” Seth said, handing Lisa another handful of twigs.

  “What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

  “It’s dry,” he said. He took a couple of twigs and crushed them in his hand. “It’ll go fast.”

  It took only a few more minutes to fill the rest of the bag. Then the two of them headed back for the campsite.

  The woods were dense on the mountainside, darkly shaded by tall evergreen trees that provided a smooth forest floor and cushioned their footsteps. Lisa listened for familiar forest sounds. Here and there birds called to one another. The fresh breeze whistled through the pine boughs. Then she heard something else. It was a loud, shrill call.

  “Listen!” Lisa said excitedly.

  “What is it?”

  “I think it could be a bobcat,” Lisa said.

  “A lion!” Seth exclaimed.

  “No, a bobcat. It’s a kind of lynx. They live in woods like this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No,” Lisa said. “They do have a sort of screechy cry, but sounds can get distorted from echoes off the mountains. Let’s be quiet. Maybe we’ll hear it again.”

  “Let’s not wait,” Seth said. Lisa was surprised. He was clearly afraid.

  “If it is a bobcat, he’s no threat to us,” Lisa said. “They would never attack humans. Of course, I wouldn’t want to get between a bobcat and its supper.…” She said it to tease Seth, but it had a stronger effect than she had expected.

  “I’m out of here,” he said. He dropped the bag of sticks and fled, leaving an astonished Lisa behind.

  She picked up the bag and ran after him. “Hey, slow down!” she called. “There’s nothing to worry about—except that you’re going the wrong way. Seth! This way!”

  Eventually Seth stopped and turned around. Lisa showed him the path and led him straight back to the campsite. They didn’t hear the animal cry again, and Lisa was a little disappointed. She was hoping to find out what it was. However, considering Seth’s reaction, she figured it was just as well.

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE seen her!” Seth said at the camp fire that night. “She wasn’t scared at all. There we were, in the middle of nowhere, and there’s this incredible screech of a—get this—lion! And he sounds hungry! Does Lisa flinch? She does not! Cool as can be, she takes my arm—she couldn’t have held onto my legs, they were shaking so hard—and she keeps me from running right toward the beast. Lisa Atwood is really something!”

  As if to emphasize his point, he clapped her on the back. Lisa blushed. It didn’t seem to her that she’d really done much for Seth. In spite of what he said, the biggest danger they’d faced in the woods was him running in the wrong direction.

  “Of course she’s really something,” Carole said. “We’ve always known that.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Stevie.

  “My hero!” Amy declared, but Lisa sensed more than a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

  “Come on, guys, you’re embarrassing me,” Lisa said. “It was just a bobcat if it was anything—”

  “Speaking of scary things,” Amy began. “Isn’t it time to talk about something else? Like were you guys listening to the radio in the car yesterday about the escaped monster?”

  “You mean the half-human thing that’s been in the asylum since it ate all those raw chickens?” Stevie chirped in.

  Amy nodded solemnly. Stevie grinned to herself and winked at Amy. This was Stevie’s kind of story. In her opinion the very best camp-fire stories always began with some kind of creepy monster loose nearby and known to be attracted to fire. She and Amy obviously agreed on that. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t even had the radio on in the car yesterday, and it didn’t matter that everybody sitting around the camp fire that night knew they were making it all up. Stevie would have bet almost anything that the hairs on the backs of a few necks around the camp fire were standing straight on end. Number one on her list was Amy’s brother, Seth.

  “And every time they catch it, they put more bars on its cage,” Amy continued. “But nothing is strong enough to hold it captive for long. It has this compulsion to stalk its prey by firelight.”

  Nearby something startled one of the horses, and it whinnied loudly.

  “What was that?” Seth blurted out.

  Stevie stifled a giggle.

  “Oh, probably nothing,” Amy said.

  “Don’t worry, Seth, it’s just a story,” Lisa told him. He seemed to calm down, but she noticed that later, when Eli suggested that a couple of them check on the horses before they got into their sleeping bags, Seth didn’t offer to go.

  Lisa understood. Seth had had a very rough time with his parents’ divorce. He felt a lot of responsibility for his sister. What he really seemed to need the most was somebody to take care of him. It was a good thing she was there.

  STEVIE SHIFTED IN her saddle. It was still early morning, and the pack trippers were already on their way, in spite of the fog and the chill morning air. Stevie hadn’t slept very well. Neither had anyone else in the girls’ tent. The problem was that the tent had lots of openings that let in the chilly breezes. All night long the girls had grumbled about the way the tent had been set up. Amy insisted that it wasn’t their fault. It was just that the tent hadn’t been properly made. It was supposed to have all those air holes in it, to let in breezes on hot nights. Nobody, including Stevie, believed that story any more than they had the one about the monster. Stevie had kept her mouth shut. Nobody would have heard what she said anyway, since she was curled inside her sleeping bag.

  Now they were back on the trail. Stevie was still chilled, and she couldn’t wait for the morning sun to dry up the fog and bake them warm again.

  The trail followed the long rolling valley, rising and dipping with the foothills of the mountains that surrounded the area. There were surprises with every rise. They were crossing an open prairie, which was covered with short grass and crossed here and there with rivulets that fed larger streams. Soon, Stevie could see, they would be entering another forest area and on the other side of that—well, she’d just have to wait and see.

  The most astonishing aspect of Victoria Pass, however, was the constant presence of the mountains that surrounded it. To either side the prairie gave way to steep hills, then to thick evergreen forests above, and then, reaching to the sky, craggy mountainsides finally became snowcapped. The mountains were omnipresent, yet so distant that they seemed almost mystical.

  “I’m afraid that if I blink, they’ll disappear,” Stevie said to Christine, who was riding next to her.

  Christine smiled. “Sometimes I think that mountains are nature’s way of reminding us that the earth has been around a lot longer than we have.”

  “They do have that effect, definitely,” Stevie agreed.

  “And the wind, too—the cold wind,” Christine added. Stevie didn’t say anything. “Like the wind that came into our poorly assembled tent last night.”

  “Really? I didn’t notice anything,” Stevie said finally. She had the funny feeling that Christine didn’t believe her.

  CAROLE COULDN’T DECIDE which she liked best: the meadow part of the trail or the wooded part. She loved the vast view from the high mountain meadow, but she also loved the pine smell of the forest. She discussed the issue with John.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Yes, what?” she asked. “Which do you like best?”

  “Yes means I like them both.”

  Carole laughed. “Yes” was a good answer to the question.

  It was getting warmer. Carole removed her windbreaker and her sweater and tied them around her waist. She was glad for the cowboy hat that kept the bright sunshine off her face and neck and out of
her eyes. Soon she was rolling up her sleeves and wishing for a cool breeze.

  From the front of the line, Eli began singing. He had a nice voice, which carried back to the other riders. Soon Carole and the others joined in on the familiar cowboy song, “The Streets of Laredo.” Carole had never been much of a singer and always found herself embarrassed to sing in public, even in groups, but there was something suggestive about the even beat of the horses’ footsteps at the walk that made singing seem like a logical activity. When Eli moved them up to a trot, they changed songs, shifting to the brisker “Camptown Races.”

  Pretty soon the whole group was singing cheerfully together, and all unpleasant thoughts had flown from their minds. Nobody was thinking about the cold night or about Amy’s high jinks on the trail the previous day. They were simply doing what they’d come to do. They were having fun.

  “Hey, let’s do the one Gene Autrey used to sing,” Lisa called out to the other riders.

  “‘I’m back in the saddle again!”’ Eli began, but it turned out that nobody, not even Eli, knew enough words to sing that one, so they tried making up nonsense words to it. Everybody took turns. Not surprisingly, Amy was excellent at nonsense words.

  “I sat in the saddle all day.

  “Too bad my horse ran away!

  “Since my horse was not there,

  “I used my saddle for a chair,

  “And I guess in this town, I’ll just stay!”

  There was applause when she finished, and demands for another verse. “Okay, I’ve got another,” she said. Then she began.

  “I’m out here, where my dog is my friend.

  “I guess we’ll be friends to the end.

  “We just ride here by the hour

  “Where it’s hot and we can’t shower.

  “No wonder there’s nobody to befriend!”

  Carole and the other riders applauded again. Amy was very clever, and at that moment Carole was glad she was along on the trip.

  When the sun was high in the sky, Eli led the riders off the trail, through a small patch of woods, and into a shady open area for a rest and some lunch. First, it was rest time for the horses. Everyone pitched in to untack them and let them drink from a nearby lake surrounded by rocks before they hobbled them in a grassy field near the water.

  “Perfect!” Stevie announced when she spotted it. “It was obviously put here to give us a place to swim on this hot, dusty day!”

  “No question about it,” Kate agreed.

  “Definitely,” Christine chimed in.

  “Can we?” Lisa asked Eli.

  “Don’t know why not, as long as you’re careful,” Eli said. “Tell you what. You’ve been such good singers and riders this morning that Jeannie and I will make the sandwiches while you all take a dip. Then you all can clean up after lunch while we take our swim. Deal?”

  “Deal!”

  “Do I have to remind you that you should never dive in unfamiliar water, especially since it’s been a long, dry summer and the water may be much shallower than you think?”

  “We promise, no diving and we’ll be super careful,” John assured Eli.

  “Everybody promise?” Eli asked, looking directly at Amy.

  She crossed her heart as she promised.

  It took only a few minutes for the riders to don their bathing suits and head for the pond.

  “Last one in is a—hey, Amy!” Stevie shouted. Everybody turned to look. Amy had climbed to a rocky ledge five feet above the water and was flexing her knees and swinging her arms.

  “No diving!” John called out.

  Amy grinned mischievously. She crossed her heart, just as she had when promising Eli she wouldn’t dive, and without further ado she jumped high off the rock, tipped forward, touched her toes, straightened out, and dived straight into the water.

  “Amy!” Seth shrieked.

  Nobody else spoke or moved. They waited. Although the water was clear, the sun sparkled on it, making it difficult to see below the surface. There was no sign of Amy.

  Seth ran for the water, ready to jump in after his sister.

  John grabbed him. “You can’t dive in after her,” John reasoned. “Then we’ll just have two people to rescue.”

  Lisa could barely believe the scene that was unfolding before her eyes. She’d been counting silently since Amy’s dive. It had been almost a minute, and there was still no sign of her. Now even the bubbles from her dive had dissipated.

  Without thinking Lisa dropped her towel and hurried to the edge of the pond. She didn’t dive in, but she lowered herself into the cool water quickly and swam over to the place where Amy had disappeared.

  Lisa looked around in the water below. She didn’t see anything. She also couldn’t see how deep it was. She would have to go down there herself.

  She took a deep breath and went under. When she opened her eyes under the water, everything was fuzzy. She could make out a few objects, like the large boulders that cluttered the bottom of the pond. There were stalks of pond grass growing at the floor. There was some movement that might even be fish. There was nothing that looked at all like Amy.

  Lisa pulled herself as far down into the water as she could. The water was deep where Amy had dived. Lisa couldn’t even reach the bottom on one breath. It didn’t make sense that anything would have happened to Amy.

  Lisa searched frantically, aware that her lungs were aching for fresh air. She tried to fight the urge to return to the surface, certain that if she could just go a little deeper, swim a little farther, maybe she could find Amy. Maybe she could save her.…

  Lisa couldn’t hold it anymore. She fled to the surface and gasped for breath when she reached it.

  “I didn’t see anything,” she said, panting. “I’ll go again!”

  She filled her lungs with air and went down again, this time searching to the left and the right, her eyes straining with the discomfort of the water. But there was still no sign of Amy. Once again she returned to the surface.

  “Nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing there at all.”

  “Oh, no, Amy!” Seth cried out.

  “Moi?” a voice answered from the cattails. It was followed by a familiar giggle.

  “Amy? Is that you? Are you okay?” Seth ran around the edge of the pond in time to see his sister stand up in the middle of the reeds.

  “I’m just fine,” she announced cheerfully. “I’ve always liked cattails. Haven’t you? I’d like to pick a few, but the stems are so tough. Did you bring your knife?”

  Lisa felt a tremendous rush of relief. When she hadn’t been able to see anything in the water, she was sure of the worst. Now she could hear the brother and sister chatting in the cattails, and she was so filled with relief that there wasn’t room for anything else in her heart.

  Stevie, Carole, John, Kate, and Christine stood stunned on the edge of the pond.

  “Come on in, the water’s fine,” Lisa invited them. They stared at her in surprise, expecting her to be at least a little bit angry. Lisa shrugged in answer to the questions in their eyes. “Amy’s fine, so am I. No harm done.”

  “Maybe she’s right,” Carole said to the others on the shore. “Besides, it’s still hot out here and cool in there.” One by one they dropped their towels and joined Lisa in the water.

  Later Lisa pulled herself out of the water and lay on her towel in the sun to dry off. Kate and Christine joined her.

  “Wasn’t that wonderful?” Lisa said.

  “Part of it,” Kate said. “I mean the part where we were all swimming carefully and sensibly. Not the part where someone took a reckless risk, endangering somebody else who tried to rescue her.”

  “I wasn’t in danger,” Lisa protested. “It’s perfectly safe there. The water is more than ten feet deep.”

  “True,” Christine countered. “But you didn’t know that at the time. You could have been swimming down into four feet of water covering dangerous sharp rocks.”

  “But at least Amy’s okay,
” Lisa said.

  “Sure Amy’s okay,” Kate said. “Amy will always be okay, or else she won’t be, and it will be her own fault. It’s Lisa I’m worried about.”

  “She’s trouble, Lisa,” Christine said. “Amy is the kind of person who will always be getting herself, and anybody else she can bring along, into lots and lots of trouble.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Lisa. “She’s had a hard life. Her parents are divorced—”

  “Lots of parents are divorced,” Kate said. “That doesn’t give their children the right to risk their lives.”

  “Or anybody else’s,” Christine finished.

  Lisa propped herself up on her elbows and looked at her friends. “Amy isn’t the only person in that family,” she said. “There’s Seth, too. He’s got his hands full with Amy, and I really feel sorry for him. I just want to help.”

  “Helping isn’t going to help,” Kate said.

  Stevie pulled herself out of the water and spread her towel out next to the cluster of her friends. “What’s up?” she asked. “Am I missing a Saddle Club meeting?”

  “Sort of,” Kate told her. “The kind where we help other members, even when they don’t know they need help.”

  “Only in this case they’re trying to tell me not to help someone else, namely Amy.”

  “She can be pretty funny,” Stevie said, recalling some of her song lyrics.

  “Sure. Sometimes,” Kate said pointedly.

  “If you like sick jokes,” Christine added.

  “All she needs is a little help,” Lisa insisted.

  “What she needs is a lot of help,” Kate replied.

  Lisa knew that Kate meant well and that she was probably right about Amy, at least to some degree. But what Kate didn’t understand was that Lisa wasn’t helping Amy so much as she was helping Seth. Maybe Amy couldn’t be helped, but she was convinced that Seth could be. Moreover, she was convinced that she was the one who could do it.