by Justin D'Ath
I climbed back down to join the others. ‘What time does it get dark, E.J.?’
‘Around eight.’
It was four o’clock now. ‘We’d better get moving,’ I said.
11
SHHHHH! IT’LL HEAR US!
For the first hour and a half we made quite good time. The forest floor was steep in places, but we were travelling downhill and there were no cliffs like further up the valley where the bus had crashed. The trees hid the farm from view, but I used the sun as my compass. As long as we kept it on our left, we were going in roughly the right direction. But as the afternoon wore on, we began to lose sight of the sun. Finally it disappeared behind the mountains, throwing the valley into shadow.
The forest was changing, too. The fir trees of the higher slopes gradually gave way to smaller trees with spreading branches and yellow autumn leaves. In places there were stands of saplings that grew so close together we had to go around them. It became impossible to walk in a straight line. We were continually taking detours around thickets, fallen logs and prickly brambles. E.J. pointed out a patch of tall, hairy-stemmed plants called burn weed.
‘Keep away from those,’ he warned. ‘You’ll be itching for hours.’
Without the sun as a guide, all we could do was keep heading downhill and hope we would reach the river soon. My plan then was to follow the river. It would lead us down the valley to the farm.
But first we had to find the river.
‘You guys take a break,’ I said, stopping beneath a tall, white-barked tree that looked like a poplar. ‘I’m going to climb up and have a look around.’
‘Are we lost?’ asked E.J.
‘No. I just want to see how far it is to the river.’
The poplar had looked easy to climb from the ground, but halfway up I got stuck. There were too many branches. I couldn’t get through.
‘Give me a go, Baloo,’ Sally said from below. ‘I’m smaller than you.’
I slithered back down and let her have a try. Sally was tall for a nine-year-old, but she was really skinny. She wriggled up through the branches like a human snake. All the way to the top.
‘Can you see the farm?’ asked E.J.
‘No,’ Sally said. ‘I can only see trees.’
‘What about the river?’ I asked.
‘I can’t see the river, either.’
‘You’re looking in the wrong direction,’ E.J. said.
He was right. Sally was staring back the way we’d come. Suddenly she let out a little gasp.
‘Yikes! A grizzly!’
My skin prickled. E.J. and I looked in the direction Sally was looking, but of course we saw nothing. Only a thick wall of forest.
‘Where is it?’ I asked.
‘Halfway up the hill,’ Sally said. A tumble of yellow leaves fluttered to the ground as she clambered down through the branches. ‘I only saw it for a second, but it looked like the same one. It was coming this way.’
I turned to E.J. ‘Do you think it’s after us?’
He shrugged. ‘Let’s not wait to find out.’
It was hard to move quickly through the forest. Thorny brambles scratched our legs and caught in our clothing. Leaves slapped in our faces. We scrambled over fallen logs and waded waist-deep through sweetfern.
Shhhhh! I kept thinking, every time one of us trod on a stick or rattled two branches together. It’ll hear us!
But I didn’t say it out loud. Because it was impossible to hurry and be quiet. Which got me thinking …
‘Hey guys,’ I whispered. ‘Stop for a moment. I want to hear if the grizzly’s following us.’
We all stopped and listened. Sweat dribbled down our faces as we looked back the way we’d come. The forest was deathly silent.
‘Can you guys hear anything?’ E.J. whispered.
Sally and I shook our heads.
I turned to Sally. ‘How far away was it?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I only saw it for a second.’
‘Are you sure it was coming this way?’ asked E.J.
Before Sally could answer, a stick snapped in the forest nearby. It was followed, two seconds later, by the rustle of leaves.
That answered E.J.’s question.
‘Run!’ I hissed.
I could have saved my breath. E.J. and Sally were already running, crashing away through the trees and underbrush like two startled deer. I let them go ahead. I was Baloo. Their safety was my responsibility.
Attack is the best means of defence.
Scooping up a hefty stick, I turned and waited for the grizzly.
12
SNAPPER
There was a shout from deep in the woods behind me, followed by a high-pitched scream:
‘BALOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’
Sally and E.J. were in trouble. I didn’t hesitate. I whirled around and went charging off after them.
Here’s what I thought as I ran ducking and weaving through the dense forest towards the sound of Sally’s screams: the grizzly must have sneaked past me. Rather than face me and fight, it had made a detour through the woods and gone after my two smaller, weaker companions.
Coward! I thought. All the fear I’d been feeling moments earlier was replaced by anger. I gripped the stick in both hands and charged towards an opening in the trees ahead. It looked like a clearing. That’s where the screams were coming from.
It wasn’t what I expected. There was no sign of the grizzly. Just Sally standing knee-deep near the edge of a small, weed-choked creek. She was leaning backwards, trying to pull something out of the muddy water.
‘Baloo, help!’ she screamed when she saw me.
‘Coming!’ I yelled, rattling through the rushes towards her. ‘Where’s E.J.?’
‘He’s here!’ she cried.
Only when I reached the creek did I see E.J. Or part of him, anyway. Just his head and one arm were visible. The rest of him was underwater. His eyes were wide, his face was contorted, he was shivering. Sally had both hands wrapped around his wrist. She was trying to drag him towards the bank. But E.J. was sliding the other way.
Dropping my stick, I leapt into the creek and grabbed E.J.’s other hand.
‘What’s going on?’ I puffed, still out of breath from my flat-out run through the forest.
‘I was crossing the creek and a snapper got my foot,’ he gasped.
I didn’t know what a snapper was. Some kind of fish? It was really strong. Sally and I pulled E.J. one way, the snapper pulled the other. It was a tug of war. The snapper was winning. Our sneakers slipped down the muddy slope of the creek bed. The water got deeper and deeper. In another minute, E.J. would be completely underwater.
‘Hold him while I get my shoes off,’ I said to Sally.
She held on while I splashed back to the creek bank and ripped off my sneakers. It only took fifteen seconds, but that was long enough for the snapper to gain another half-metre. E.J.’s face was barely above water when I ploughed back in and grabbed his arm again. There were tears in his eyes but he wasn’t panicking. He had a lot of guts.
‘Hang in there, E.J.,’ I encouraged him.
In bare feet I had more grip. The tables were turned. Centimetre by centimetre, Sally and I hauled E.J. into the shallows. As we neared the creek bank, I had my first view of the snapper. It was possibly the ugliest creature I’d ever seen (and I’ve seen a few!). It looked like a snake, with slimy green skin, a long pointy nose and gaping, pig-like nostrils. Its fearsome, beaked mouth was clamped firmly around E.J.’s right shoe.
Some kind of python? I wondered.
My question was soon answered as the rest of the snapper became visible. A large domed shell covered in pond slime rose out of the water. It wasn’t a python, it was a huge old turtle.
The snapper was as big as a backpack and must have weighed fifty kilograms. Its horny feet were dug deep into the mud, resisting us every millimetre of the way. No matter how hard we tried, Sally and I couldn’t get it up the steep, slippery bank onto dry lan
d. I grabbed my stick and gave the turtle a whack. Instead of releasing E.J.’s foot as I’d hoped, the stubborn creature retracted its head into its shell, pulling the shoe in after it. I started bashing the shell.
‘It won’t let go,’ E.J. grunted. ‘Sometimes they hold on for twenty-four hours.’
‘Where’s your knife?’ I gasped.
‘In the water somewhere. I got it halfway out of my pocket but it slipped.’
‘What if we try to get your foot out of the shoe?’ Sally suggested.
It was E.J.’s only hope. I sat behind him with both arms around his chest and my heels buried in the mud, while Sally knelt in the shallow water to undo the laces. The shoe was pulled almost all the way into the turtle’s shell, making it difficult to get at. But Sally had small hands and nimble fingers. She got the laces undone. E.J. twisted his ankle back and forth, and all three of us tugged, but the snapper held on.
‘My foot feels swollen,’ E.J. said. He gave a funny little laugh. ‘I’m turning into Bigfoot!’
I was amazed he could joke about it. But this wasn’t a time for jokes.
‘Sally,’ I said, ‘take my place for a couple of minutes while I go and get something.’
Leaving her and E.J. at the edge of the creek, I grabbed one of my socks and dashed back towards the forest. And skidded to a halt.
Shishkebab!
The boy was crouched behind a tree. He looked about six years old. Straggly brown hair hung down to his waist and he was dressed from head to foot in animal furs.
‘Where did you come from?’ I asked.
‘Mwaa mwaa!’ said the boy. It sounded more like animal noise than talking. He waved one hand at me, then turned and went scampering into the forest on all fours like a monkey. Weird.
But there wasn’t time to worry about him, or anything else that might be lurking in the woods – the grizzly, for example. I had to save E.J. Ever since he’d pointed out the burn weeds, I’d seen them growing everywhere. I found a plant now. Using my sock as a protective glove, I broke off a big handful of its hairy green leaves. But the sock wasn’t very good protection. Halfway back to the creek, my hand started to sting. It felt like I was clutching a handful of red-hot pins. Yeowww! Now I knew where the plant got its name.
I dropped the burn weed and folded the sock back on itself to make a double layer. Then I stooped to pick up the leaves again.
Holy guacamole!
There were prints all over the ground. My footprints, the boy’s footprints, and about a hundred big dog-like paw prints that could only have been made by wolves.
The grizzly wasn’t the only animal following us.
My heart was still racing when I got back to Sally and E.J., but I tried to put what I’d just seen out of my mind. ‘Do you think this’ll work on the snapper, E.J.?’ I asked, showing him the burn weed.
E.J. shook his head. ‘Its skin’s probably too thick.’
‘What about the skin inside its mouth?’
I crushed the burn weed into a spongy green wad, then used the pointy end of my stick to push it into the tiny gap between the turtle’s jaws and E.J.’s shoe.
Nothing happened. I washed my burning hand in the water and tried to think of another way to make the snapper let go. My fingers bumped something buried in the mud. E.J.’s pocket knife. I prised the longest blade open.
Sorry turtle, I thought.
But before I could use the knife, Sally let out a gasp.
‘Yuck!’ she said.
The snapper had started blowing green bubbles through its nose.
Then it opened its mouth and sneezed.
E.J. was free!
13
BEAR FOOD
‘Man, oh man!’ muttered E.J., gingerly removing his shoe as the snapper swam away. There was a big red line across the arch of his foot, surrounded by angry purple bruising. ‘I think it’s broken.’
‘Are you serious?’ I said.
‘I’ll see if I can stand up.’
Sally and I helped him to his feet. E.J. balanced on his good foot, then slowly transferred his weight to the other.
‘Shoot!’ he gasped. If Sally and I hadn’t been supporting him, he would have collapsed in a heap.
We sat him back down.
‘What are we going to do, Baloo?’ Sally asked.
I began putting my shoes back on. ‘I’ll piggyback him.’
E.J. was nine years old and small for his age. He wasn’t very heavy. We followed the bank of the muddy creek downstream. We kept looking over our shoulders. Nothing was following us. At least, nothing that we could see. In places, the forest came right down to the edge of the creek. Anything could be prowling through the trees.
I told E.J. and Sally about the paw prints and Cave Boy – that’s what I called him, because of the animal skins.
‘Maybe he’s Bigfoot’s kid,’ E.J. suggested.
‘He was human,’ I said. ‘Bigfoot’s an animal.’
‘Nobody knows for sure what Bigfoot is,’ E.J. said.
I’d grown to like E.J. over the past couple of hours, but he could still get under my skin.
‘He was just a normal-looking human boy, E.J.’
‘Wearing animal skins.’
‘Like Mowgli in Jungle Book,’ said Sally.
I stopped walking and lowered E.J. onto a log. I had just remembered something he’d said earlier. ‘You know that little boy who disappeared from a camp site somewhere around here? It could be him.’
E.J. let out a low whistle. ‘Fifty thousand dollars!’
‘What are you talking about, E.J.?’ asked Sally.
‘There’s a TV show called Mystery Solvers. If you help them solve a mystery – like finding that little orphan boy – they pay you fifty thousand dollars.’
‘Was he an orphan?’ I said.
‘Yeah. It was really sad. His parents died in a car crash when he was two. He was being looked after by his uncle at the time he went missing,’ explained E.J. He looked at Sally, then at me. ‘We’ll split the reward three ways.’
‘But if Bigfoot kidnapped him,’ Sally said, ‘won’t Bigfoot get really mad at anyone who tries to take the boy away?’
Whap!
Something hit me in the middle of my back.
‘Ouch!’ I cried, and spun around.
A big brown acorn lay in the dirt at my feet.
Clunk!
‘Owwww!’ yelped E.J., rubbing his knee.
A third flying acorn bounced off the log behind Sally.
‘What’s going on?’ she cried.
‘Someone’s throwing acorns,’ I said, ducking as another one sailed over our heads. They were coming from the trees over to our right. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
I loaded E.J. onto my back and set off along the creek bank at a fast jog. Sally could have run ahead, but she matched her pace with mine. Another acorn crashed into the rushes to our right and bounced harmlessly into the creek. We were nearly out of range.
‘Wait till I get my hands on that kid!’ muttered E.J.
‘Did you see him?’ I puffed.
‘No.’
‘Then how do you know it was him?’ asked Sally.
‘Who else would it be?’
‘Bigfoot,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s trying to chase us away like a mother animal protecting its baby.’
E.J. twisted around to look behind us.
‘Shoot!’ he muttered.
Sally and I turned too, half-expecting to see Bigfoot. But it wasn’t Bigfoot, it was the grizzly. I watched it amble out of the rushes about two hundred metres away. It was following the exact path we’d taken, sniffing the rushes where we’d brushed past them. It was tracking us, all right.
The huge shaggy bear stopped near the log where we’d rested. It sniffed the log, then the ground, then it stood up on its hind legs and peered in our direction. We squatted down in the rushes so it couldn’t see us.
‘How fast can you run?’ E.J. whispered in my ear.
I’m qui
te a good runner, but try running when you’re bent over in a semi-crouch with someone on your back. After a couple of hundred metres, I was pooped. My leg muscles burned and I was right out of breath.
Luckily the grizzly hadn’t seen us. The rushes provided cover. But there was no hiding from that super-sensitive nose. We could hear it crunching through the rushes towards us, following our scent.
‘We have to throw it off our trail,’ I whispered, veering towards the creek.
‘Watch out for snappers,’ warned E.J.
The water was clouded with mud. We wouldn’t see a snapper until we trod on it. But given the choice between putting my foot into the mouth of a snapper turtle or facing a grizzly bear, I’d choose the snapper every time.
With E.J. riding on my back and Sally following close behind, I waded into the creek. The water got quite deep towards the middle. It lapped around my waist and must have come up even higher on Sally. Luckily there was hardly any current. We made it across okay. But we didn’t go ashore. A couple of metres from the bank, I veered right and began wading upstream towards a thick stand of reeds growing in the creek like a small island. It looked like a good place to hide. There would be no scent trail for the grizzly to follow. Pushing our way into the middle of the reeds, we sank down to our chins in the cool brown water and waited.
Ten seconds later, I heard a snuffling sound. Moving really quietly for something so large, the grizzly came stalking down to the creek exactly where we’d entered the water. It paused and sniffed the air. We were downwind – it couldn’t smell us. After a moment’s hesitation, the huge bear stepped into the creek and ploughed across. Climbing the far bank, it shook itself like a giant dog, then disappeared into the rushes.
‘Phew!’ Sally breathed.
‘That was close,’ muttered E.J.
‘Shhhhh,’ I whispered.
With just our heads above the water, we stayed absolutely still in our swampy hiding place. It was lucky we did. Because after about a minute, the grizzly returned. It came right down to the creek’s edge, sniffing the rushes, sniffing the air, sniffing the ground. Crossing back to the other side, the grizzly sniffed the bank where we’d entered the water. Then it sat down in the creek and looked back over its shoulder. There was a puzzled expression in its eyes, as if it was wondering where we’d got to.