Amanda in Alberta: The Writing on the Stone

by Darlene Foster

  “Many ranchers and farmers put money toward that donation,” replied her dad. “Andy was just the spokesperson for the Cattleman’s Association.”

  “Well, that was still very nice of them. Maybe your accounting firm could make a donation.”

  “Perhaps we will.”

  * * *

  The next morning, they all drove out to a campground near a town called Seven Persons, for a pancake breakfast with about two hundred of Amanda’s relatives.

  Leah looked around. “You can’t possibly be related to all of these people.”

  “You bet I am. Some are fourth or fifth cousins, but they are all related to my mom and me.” Amanda waved to a group of younger children playing a game of marbles.

  Uncle Jimmy grinned as he flipped pancakes. “And how many for our special visitor from England?” He plopped three big fluffy pancakes on Leah’s paper plate before she could answer. “Hope you’re hungry,” he said as he put another three on Amanda’s plate. Then he shouted, “We need more batter over here, boys. These hungry gals finished us off.”

  “Uncle Jimmy, you’re embarrassing us. Is Aunt Mary here yet?”

  “She’ll be along shortly. She’s coming with Marjorie and the kids. Enjoy the pancakes. There’ll be an exciting scavenger hunt later.” He winked at Leah and went back to making pancakes.

  After breakfast, everyone joined in the three-legged races, a horseshoe tournament and baseball game. Then groups of young people were given a list and a pail for the scavenger hunt. Amanda and Leah teamed up with Gordon and Sarah.

  Gordon looked at the list and said, “Let’s take my truck. We can get everything way faster that way.”

  “Are you sure that’s not cheating?” asked Amanda.

  “It doesn’t say we can’t take a vehicle.” Gordon opened the truck door. “Hop in and let’s get this done.”

  Leah held the list. “The first thing on the list is a clothes peg. Now where are we going to find one of those?”

  “Easy peasy. Just look for a clothes line.” Amanda searched out the window. “There’s one, behind that farm house.”

  Gordon made a sharp right hand turn and drove through an open gate with a sign over it that said, Paradise Ranch. He drove up to the house and honked the horn. No one seemed to be about. He jumped out of the truck, ran to the clothes line and removed one clothes peg.

  “No one’ll miss this.” He dropped it in the pail and drove off.

  “Next thing on the list is a red rock,” read Leah.

  “There’s lots of red rocks at Red Rock Coulee,” said Sarah. “It’s not very far from here.”

  “Good idea. I’ll drop you off at Red Rock Coulee. You can get the rock and other things on the list, like a wild flower and a feather, while I go into town and get a business card, a pet treat and a postcard.” He studied the list. “If we split up it’ll go faster. I’ve a feeling we’re gonna win this scavenger hunt.”

  A few minutes later, Gordon dropped the girls off at the top of a hill covered with long grass that bent in the wind. The hill overlooked a shallow gorge dotted with huge reddish orange, round boulders.

  “Are you sure he didn’t drop us off somewhere on the moon?” asked Leah.

  The girls surveyed the weird rocks that looked like meteorites.

  “It’s pretty desolate out here,” said Sarah. “I’d hate to be here on my own.”

  A sign read:

  CAUTION:

  YOU ARE IN RATTLESNAKE COUNTRY

  “I don’t think I want to go down there if there are to be rattlesnakes,” Leah said in a strained voice as she backed away.

  “It’ll be OK. You always hear them before you see them. I’ve been here before and I’ve never run into any,” assured Amanda. “Just follow me.”

  The girls scrambled down to the rocks and soon found the perfect red rock for the game.

  “Over here is a flower that would work.” Leah bent down to pick a bright yellow flower growing between two rocks.

  “That’s called a buffalo bean,” Sarah said. “It will be perfect.”

  The girls couldn’t find a feather so they hiked deeper into the valley.

  “Be careful you don’t step on a cactus,” Amanda cautioned Leah. “They are hard to see because they’re the same colour as the grass.”

  “I thought cactus only grew in the desert,” said Leah.

  “What do you think this is? It’s desert country, all right,” said Sarah.

  “What is that over there?” Leah pointed to a building on a knoll. A lone tree stood in front of it. Both the tree and the house had seen better days.

  “Let’s check it out.” Amanda headed toward the weather worn building.

  The door hung crooked like a broken leg and opened with a screech. A musty smell greeted them. A large wooden table, set for four, stood in the middle of the kitchen. A round loaf of bread rested on a thick plank, a rusty knife beside it. Amanda touched the bread. It was rock hard. Her eyes searched the shelves of preserves, bound together with cobwebs. She stepped closer and squinted to read the labels.

  “Oh my gosh, these beet pickles are from 1938.”

  “Look at this,” said Sarah.

  A treadle sewing machine, like the ones seen in a museum, sat idle; the needle stuck in a lace trimmed hankie.

  “It’s as if the people living here left in the middle of the day,” said Amanda. “I wonder what drove them away?”

  “We should leave,” said Leah. “This is starting to freak me out.”

  “Look at this old note nailed to the wall.” Sarah read from a piece of yellowed paper:

  Seven miles to water

  Fifteen miles to wood

  You can have my desert homestead

  I’m leaving it for good

  “Maybe that’s why they left,” said Leah as she edged toward the door.

  A dusty photograph album on the piano bench caught Amanda’s attention. She leafed through the discoloured pages. Elegant ladies in old fashioned dresses and fur coats smiled. Serious men in dark suits and black moustaches stared straight ahead. Happy babies all bundled up, snuggled in lacy prams, even though it looked sunny out.

  Amanda turned another page. A sepia photograph of a dead person laid out in a coffin appeared. Chills ran up and down her spine. She quickly closed the album.

  Bump!

  “What was that noise?” Leah’s eyes grew wide.

  Bump!

  “There it is again. I think it’s in the attic. I’m out of here.” Leah ran out the door.

  Sarah followed close behind.

  Amanda tripped over the piano stool.

  “Wait for me,” she called.

  She picked herself up and ran for the door, catching the pocket of her shorts on a nail as she squeezed through. Once outside, she looked at the rip and thought, ‘Darn, now Mom will be angry at me for wrecking my new shorts.’

  She looked back, squinting at the glare coming from a small attic window. A face appeared in the window. Her stomach tightened. She looked again and no one was there.

  Chapter 19

  Gordon waited for them at the top of the hill. “Where were you guys? Did you get everything?” He frowned. “We need to get going if we want to win.”

  “We couldn’t find a feather,” said Sarah as they piled into the truck.

  “Watch out the window while we drive down the road. There might be one,” said Gordon.

  They hadn’t driven far when Amanda shouted, “There’s one!”

  The brakes screeched as Gordon stopped and then backed up.

  Amanda jumped out and picked up the long black feather. She thought it might be from a crow. She looked up as another vehicle passed them going in the opposite direction, spraying rocks and dust.

  “I wonder where they’re going in such a hurry,” said Amanda as she climbed back in the pick-up. “There’s nothing up the road but Red Rock Coulee.”

  “Maybe they’re looking for things for the scavenger hunt too,” said Lea
h.

  Gordon put the pick-up in gear. “That truck doesn’t belong to anyone in our family.”

  After collecting the last few items on the list, they returned to the campground and proudly placed the bucket on the table where another cousin checked off each item.

  “Well, it looks like you came in first. But, you used a vehicle and that’s an unfair advantage. So you’ll have to wait ten minutes. If no other team arrives with all the items, you’ll be the winners.”

  Gordon’s face fell. “Who made up that rule?”

  “It’s only fair,” said Amanda. Sarah and Leah nodded in agreement.

  “I guess so,” mumbled Gordon.

  Amanda spotted Aunt Mary chatting with a couple of older family members. “I’ll be right back,” she said leaving the others to await the outcome.

  “Aunt Mary, how are you?” Amanda bent down to give the older woman a hug.

  “I’m much better thank you. I hear you have been busy with your friend from England.”

  “Yes, we have been having loads of fun. We saw a bone at the dinosaur museum that you dug up.”

  “Oh, that was a long time ago. You were going to show me that piece of rock you found. The one with an interesting mark on it.”

  Amanda put her hand in her pocket and felt around. Her heart stopped. She slowly shook her head and whispered, “No.” The stone wasn’t there.

  “Is something the matter, Amanda?” asked Aunt Mary.

  “I-I’ll be back. I have to go.” Amanda turned around. With her eyes glued to the ground, she weaved her way to the others.

  Leah’s face lit up when she saw Amanda. “No one else has shown up. It looks like we won!”

  “Um, oh, that’s nice.” Amanda kept looking at the ground, hoping she would see the missing stone.

  “You don’t seem very excited about us winning. What’s the matter? What are you looking for?”

  “The stone, it’s not in my pocket anymore. I remember putting it there just before we left this morning to show Aunt Mary, and now it’s gone.” Amanda bit her bottom lip to stop from crying. “Maybe it fell out at the old house in Red Rock Coulee.”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s gone. Now you can enjoy yourself and not think about it anymore. Let’s collect our prizes.” Leah skipped away with Sarah.

  Amanda collapsed on a nearby bench. ‘Where could it have gone?’ She pondered and reached in her pocket again just to be sure. She felt the rip. ‘It must have fallen out when I ripped my pocket at the old house. I need to go back and find it. But how can I get there?’

  Leah brought Amanda an ice cream Dixie cup. “Cheer up. Gordon said there’s going to be a Little Britches Rodeo for the little kids. That ought to be fun to watch.”

  Amanda removed the wrapping from the small wooden spoon that came with the Dixie cup and dipped it in. The cool ice cream felt good as it slid down her dry throat.

  “Thanks, Leah. Let’s go watch the mutton busting.”

  “The…what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Amanda and Leah followed a crowd of family members to a small corral set up in a field. They watched as adults held onto a nervous sheep to keep it still, while a little child, around five or six years old, was placed on top of it. The adult let go of the sheep. The child held onto the sides of the woolly animal for dear life and rode down the field until he tumbled off. All the little kids got a chance to ride a sheep. The young buckaroo who stayed on the longest, won a prize.

  “They are sooooo cute,” said Leah. “I have never seen anything quite so adorable.”

  Someone dressed as a rodeo clown helped the kids up and delivered them to their parents. No one got hurt. The kids wore helmets and were so little the sheep barely felt them on their backs.

  “This is more my kind of rodeo,” said Amanda. “I wonder who the rodeo clown is.”

  “They hired some guy,” said Gordon who had just come up behind them. “I offered to do it but they wanted someone with rodeo experience to make sure everyone was kept safe. Hey, barbeque is on. Hope you guys are hungry.”

  Amanda kept thinking about how she could get back to Red Rock Coulee. She was sure the rock had to be there. She really wanted to show it to Aunt Mary and find out why everyone was so interested in it. Just as she opened her mouth to bite into her hamburger, she saw the rodeo clown get into Gordon’s truck.

  She looked over to where Leah and Sarah chatted with some other cousins. Amanda put down her paper plate and ran over to the truck just as the clown started to back up and turn around. Realizing she couldn’t stop him, she grabbed the tailgate and swung onto the back as he drove out of the campground. She hid behind a bale of hay.

  It wasn’t long until the truck stopped. Amanda peeked around the bale. They were on the hill overlooking Red Rock Coulee.

  ‘Well, at least I made it here,’ she thought.

  The driver got out of the cab. He took off his clown wig and hat revealing a head of red hair. He loped down the valley through the huge red boulders.

  ‘Hank was the rodeo clown? Why did he steal Gordon’s truck? And what is he doing here?’ Amanda’s mind raced.

  She waited a few minutes. When Hank was no longer in sight, she climbed out of the back of the truck, brushing the hay off her clothes. In the dusk, the red rocks cast eerie shadows as she made her way down into the coulee. Amanda wondered if she would be able to find the house again. A rattling sound in the grass stopped her in her tracks.

  “I’m sorry I disturbed you, rattlesnake, wherever you are. Please let me pass without striking me.” Amanda’s voice trembled.

  With her eyes glued to the ground in front of her, she placed one foot in front of the other as if she were walking on broken glass. She rounded a corner and saw the lone bent and gnarled old tree. The dull grey, weather-beaten house behind it almost blended into the landscape. It appeared much more daunting than in the bright daylight. A shiver ran through Amanda. She wished she hadn’t come by herself. ‘What was I thinking? Perhaps Leah was right; it was after all, only a stone. And where had Hank gone?’

  Amanda shrugged. ‘Since I’m here, I’d better look for the stone.’

  Searching the ground leading up to the door, she found nothing. The crooked door screeched as she pushed it open and entered the house. Things looked the same as earlier in the day, but a faint smell of stale cigarette smoke mixed with the musty scent. Kneeling down in the dim light, she felt around the floor.

  “It’s got to be here,” she whispered under her breath.

  A noise came from upstairs. The hair on her arms lifted. She heard it again. This time it sounded like footsteps coming down a ladder.

  Amanda slowly stood up. She turned to the half open door. Her legs refused to move. An arm reached around her and held her tight. She felt hot breath on her neck.

  “Are you looking fer something?”

  Chapter 20

  “Let go of me, Hank!” Amanda squirmed and kicked. More angry than scared, she said, “You are the worst…person…ever. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I heard you tell your friend you dropped the rock here when you were snooping around earlier today. I’ve come to find it, and you’re not going to stop me.” Hank dragged Amanda to a ladder.

  “I’m not going up there.”

  “Oh yes, you are. You can scream all you want, no one will hear you. There ain’t a soul for miles.”

  Hank pushed Amanda up the ladder into the dark attic and bound her wrists and feet with a rope.

  “I know I don’t need to do this, but just in case.” He tied a handkerchief around her mouth. Picking up a flashlight, he went back downstairs.

  Amanda looked around the gloomy attic. Through the dust and cobwebs, she made out a crumpled up sleeping bag in one corner. A package of cigarettes and a clown suit lay beside it. Squinting, she detected what looked like crosses in another corner. She could hear Hank moving things around downstairs.

  ‘I hope he doesn’t find that stone.’ A
manda’s mind raced. ‘How can I get out of here before everyone wonders where I’ve got to? How stupid of me to jump onto the back of the truck like that.’

  The front door screeched open and an angry voice said, “Hank McGavity, what in blazes are you doing here?”

  “This is my family’s property. I have every right to be here. What’re you doing here?”

  “We’re looking for someone.”

  The voice sounded familiar to Amanda, but it wasn’t any of her family. She wondered who else would be looking for her.

  She dragged herself over to the crosses. With her legs bound together, it was slow going. As she got closer, Amanda could see the crosses had names engraved on them. They looked like old grave markers. She shuddered.

  “Dan and Ed Crow Feather, get out of my house. Right now!” Amanda heard Hank yell.

  “This isn’t your house, Hank. The government took it over years ago when your grandfather couldn’t pay the mortgage. It’s now part of the Provincial Park Natural Area. You know that.”

  Amanda recognized Dan’s voice. ‘How did he know where to find me?’

  ‘I need to get his attention.’ She tried nudging the crosses with her feet but they wouldn’t move.

  “What in tarnation is that cowboy doing here?” Hank hollered.

  A dog barked as the door squeaked open.

  “Andy Rowlands?” exclaimed Dan.

  Amanda kicked at the crosses with her feet. They fell over and crashed onto the floor of the attic.

  “What’s that noise? Is someone up there?” asked Dan.

  “It’s nothing, probably just rats,” said Hank.

  “I think I better have a look.”

  “You do that, Dan, while I ask this young man a few questions. Don’t worry, Ed, I won’t let Hank hit you again.” There was no mistaking Andy’s voice.

  Amanda’s face lit up when Dan appeared at the top of the ladder. He rushed over to her.

  “Are you OK?” Dan asked as he removed the handkerchief and quickly untied her hands and feet.

  “Better now that you showed up. How did you know I was here anyway?”

  “I didn’t. Let’s get you downstairs.”