by Mac Barnett
Principal Barkin decided that the glade would be an enchanting spot to rest awhile, so he strolled across the grass and promptly fell into a large hole.
Chapter
13
On the same day, at almost the same time, in a different part of the woods, another Barkin, Josh Barkin, was gloating. He was gloating quietly. This was difficult for him, because he was by nature a loud gloater. But his current situation demanded stealth. The situation was this: crouching behind a shrub, spying on Miles Murphy and Niles Sparks.
He’d found them! After two weeks of patrols in the forest, klick after klick of tromping through plants, slapping mosquitoes, drinking water that had been warmed up in his canteen and so felt really gross in his mouth, Josh Barkin had practically stumbled right over those two nimbuses. No. Not stumbled. Josh Barkin had precisely targeted those two nimbuses. He considered signaling Splinters and Mudflap, who were scouting elsewhere, but he didn’t want to risk attracting attention, plus he’d assigned the cadets parts of the forest that were far away and pretty hard to get to.
The whistling had given Miles and Niles away. Josh had heard whistling near a shady spot under the tree he’d been patrolling, and he went to investigate. Josh had found Miles and Niles merrily hiking a path that ran near Yawnee Valley Yelling and Push-Ups Camp. (The area right by camp was Josh’s territory to patrol.) They were carrying a ladder, like a couple of dorks. The ladder clanged. The boys whistled. These nimbuses were not stealthy at all. And now they would lead him right back to their headquarters. Pshh. The Terrible Two. More like . . . the Terrible at Hiding Two. Josh chuckled at his own joke, then angrily shushed himself. Miles and Niles were getting ahead of him, so he left his cover and crept after them.
Miles whistled.
“Oooh, that was a good one!” said Niles.
Niles whistled back, and the boys both started laughing.
“I can’t get the notes right,” Niles said.
“That’s true,” said Miles, “you can’t.”
Niles carried the front of the ladder, while Miles carried the back.
“How do you do it?” Niles asked. “How do you control the notes?”
Miles shrugged. “I just do it. With my mouth muscles.”
“Yeah, but how? Describe how.”
“I can’t describe it. I just do it. I guess I’m a prodigy.”
“Hmmm,” said Niles. He tried whistling again, and then they both started laughing.
“What the heck kind of secret army signal is this?” Josh thought from behind a new shrub. “They don’t sound like turkey vultures, or any other kind of bird.”
(Miles and Niles weren’t practicing secret army signals. They were trying to whistle like Alessandro Alessandroni.)
Niles dropped his end of the ladder and pointed at a tall tree just off the path.
“Look! That’s one!”
Miles dropped his end of the ladder. They both ran over to the tree and peered up into its branches.
“This is a jack pine?” Miles asked.
“Yeah!” said Niles.
“It looks just like a normal tree.”
“Yeah, it looks like it. On the surface.”
Miles rolled his eyes. “Oh boy.”
“Do you have that pocketknife?” Niles asked.
Miles reached into his pocket and got his knife. Niles used it to pry off some bark from the trunk of the tree.
“I don’t know, man,” Miles said.
“No, it’s true. It has something to do with the minerals in the ground that make them grow.”
“OK,” said Miles.
“You’ll see,” said Niles.
Niles kept stripping bark from the tree. Josh had no idea what the little nimbus was up to, but whatever it was, it was not going well. As Niles grew more and more frustrated, he pulled off the pieces at a furious pace. Miles began whistling again. Niles glared at him.
“Sorry,” said Miles.
Josh wished Miles and Niles would just give up and head back to their secret headquarters, so he could beat them up and steal his flag back.
“Boomtown!” said Niles.
The little blond nimbus had pried off a piece of bark and pulled a fat gold nugget right out of the tree.
Miles’s eyes got wide.
Josh’s eyes got wider.
“Wow,” said Miles.
Niles held the nugget between his thumb and forefinger. “Told you. These trees only grow where there’s gold in the ground. It gets stuck in their bark when they’re shooting up through the dirt. There should be even more nuggets up higher.”
“Let me see that,” said Miles. He took his knife back. The boys set their ladder against the pine. Miles climbed up until he reached its lowest branches, which stuck straight out from the trunk a good twelve feet above the ground. Miles hopped from limb to limb until he reached a sturdy bough. He shimmied to the spot where branch met trunk and, his legs wrapped tightly around the bough, began to work at the bark with his knife.
It wasn’t long before Miles cackled gleefully.
“Look at this!”
Miles tossed a nugget down to Niles.
It was even bigger than the first one.
“How much do you think that’s worth?” Miles asked.
Josh was wondering the exact same thing.
“I don’t know,” Niles said. “A lot.”
“Well, there’s more up here. A lot more. We should have brought a backpack.”
“We could go back to HQ and get mine,” Niles said.
Miles sat high in the tree and thought about it.
“All right,” he said. “But let’s hurry.”
Josh Barkin’s mouth was open wide. His heart was beating fast. His face was purpling splotchily. He watched Miles Murphy shimmy down the tree and slide down the ladder, which his little friend held steady with two hands. The boys hurried off away from the trail, into the woods.
They’d left their ladder leaning against the tree.
This was a dilemma.
“Think!” Josh thought. He had two options.
That was a pretty great plan.
But! There was also Plan Two!
That was also a great plan! How could he decide?
Josh’s mom always said Josh was the kind of kid who “would rather eat his dessert first.” But what was the dessert here? Stealing a bunch of gold, or beating up a couple of nimbuses? They were both dessert! And you know what, Josh’s mom was wrong. He wouldn’t rather eat his dessert first. He’d rather eat his dessert first and last. Otherwise you’re just eating something gross like carrots at the end of the night, when you should be eating dessert. In fact, why eat carrots at all? Why not just eat all dessert? And that was the great thing about the options that lay before him: They were all dessert!
“Stop thinking!” Josh thought. At Yawnee Valley Yelling and Push-Ups Camp, campers were expected to be A-OK—Action-Oriented Kids. Hiding behind a shrub, cooking up food metaphors, was not Action-Oriented. It felt like something his father would do. ( Josh was probably right about that.) And Josh did not want to be like his father! It was time to stop thinking about dessert and time to start eating dessert! And Plan Two had an extra step, which was like more dessert, so he would eat that plan!
He stood up.
He was a little hungry.
But he had firmly decided on Plan Two.
(Good thing: Miles and Niles had left so long ago it’d be hard to follow them at this point.)
Josh clambered up the ladder and lifted himself into the tree. Now. Where had that nimbus been digging around with his knife? Josh spied a spot where the trunk was scratched and stripped. It was five feet above his head. That nimbus could climb, Josh would give him that. But so could Josh. Yawnee Valley Yelling and Push-Ups Camp wasn’t just about push-ups. There were also a lot of pull-ups, and so Josh had no trouble pulling himself up the pine branches.
Wow. He was up pretty high. Hugging a branch high above the ground sure didn’t feel lik
e dessert. But he hadn’t gotten to the gold yet. Josh grinned and shimmied along the bough. He kept his pocketknife sheathed in his boot, under his sock, because it looked cooler when he took it out. At least it looked cool when he was on the ground. Getting his foot up to his hand without falling out of the tree took some awkward twisting. But so what? Nobody was watching him. If a kid almost falls out of a tree in the forest, and nobody is there to see him, is it embarrassing? Well, what do you think?
Anyway, Josh managed to grab the knife.
“Aw yeah,” said Josh. He stabbed the tree.
He jimmied the handle and got some bark off. No gold. He stabbed it again and pried off a pretty big piece. There was no gold underneath, just more bark. Obviously, this work required patience.
Ten mikes later, he still hadn’t found any gold and was just stabbing the tree out of anger. Miles had said there was a bunch of gold up here. “Do those nimbuses know some trick I don’t?” He stared at his knife, wiped the blade on his shorts to get the sap off, then stabbed the tree again.
“Hullo, Josh!” said Niles, down on the ground.
“Hello, Josh!” said Miles, who was also on the ground, and who thought it was funny how Niles had said “hullo” but wasn’t sure that he’d be able to pull it off. “You look like a plum up there!”
Josh squeezed his thighs tight against the branch but otherwise managed to play it cool. “What do you nimbuses want?”
“Good-bye, Josh!” said Niles.
“Yeah, bye, Josh!” said Miles.
They took the ladder from the tree and began to walk away with it.
This is bad, thought Josh.
This is really bad, he thought.
This is really really bad.
(It’s not easy to think at the same time you’re realizing you’re stuck high in a jack pine.)
“You nimbuses may have the ladder,” Josh shouted, “but I’m up here with all your gold!”
The boys stopped. Niles turned toward Josh and gave him a disappointed look.
“Josh.”
“Oh,” said Josh. “Right.”
(It was just dawning on Josh that the entire thing had been a prank, but seriously: It’s hard to think when you’re up a tree, especially when a light breeze has picked up, and the bough you’re on trembles.)
Miles and Niles turned to leave once again.
“But how do you get gold in a tree?” Josh shouted after them.
“We stuck a nugget in there yesterday!” said Niles.
“Oh,” said Josh. “I know!”
Josh felt the need to establish his dominance in these woods, which had perhaps been diminished by his current predicament. “Whatever!” he said. “Now when I find you, I’ll beat you up even harder! I’ll steal my flag and your gold nuggets!”
Niles reached into his pocket and tossed the two nuggets on the forest floor. “It’s just fool’s gold, Josh. Come and get it.”
And with that, the Terrible Two marched off, Miles whistling a carefree tune.
Josh looked down.
There were no branches lower than twelve feet off the ground.
That was too far to fall.
Josh screeched like an angry turkey vulture, which was Papa Company’s secret distress signal. But soon he decided there was no need to be discreet. “Help!” he cried. “Help!”
Chapter
14
Miles and Niles had planned on a leisurely stroll back to their hideout. They wanted to revisit all the best moments from their recent successful caper, then spend some time on one of their summer projects: learning to identify every tree in the forest. Yawnee Valley Regional Park and Outdoor Recreational Area was home to more than two hundred different kinds of hardwood trees, each one beautiful in its own distinct way. It would take many pages of this book to catalog the trees the boys passed—even longer with adjectives. Unfortunately, there’s no time for our sylvan interlude. The Terrible Two had only just started reviewing their prank—Niles was doing a devastatingly accurate impression of Josh Barkin—when the sound of a bell rang through the trees, which included cottonwood, box elder, and quaking aspen.
Miles and Niles dropped their ladder and ran toward the bell.
Chapter
15
Principal Barkin found himself at the bottom of a hole. By some stroke of luck, his fall had been broken by a thick cushion of hay. He buried his nose in the straw, inhaled its grassy smell, and sighed. It reminded him of his brother’s dairy farm. His brother was named Bob, and he was a smug, unscrupulous man, but his farm smelled nice. Principal Barkin especially enjoyed visiting the dairy farm during haymaking season, when fragrant alfalfa lay drying in great piles beside Bob’s barn.
It then occurred to Principal Barkin that hay was not a natural thing to find in forests. Moreover, holes were not a natural thing to find in forests! A hole full of hay, well, that was exceedingly uncommon. It was unnatural.
And why hadn’t he noticed the hole? He’d simply been walking across a patch of grass when the ground had just given way. That was certainly unnatural as well! Unnatural and irregular! He got on his hands and knees and felt around on the ground.
“What the sod?” he said, staring at a handful of sod. The hole had been camouflaged. Barkin realized that he was in a trap.
“A bear trap!” said Principal Barkin. He chuckled. It was fitting. On staff training days, he loved making teachers introduce themselves and then say an animal that began with the same letter as their last name. It was a great icebreaker! Principal Barkin always led by example: “Principal Barkin Bear.” And then Ms. Shandy Stingray, Coach O. Ocelot, etc., etc., and so on, and so on. A smile flickered across Principal Barkin’s face. Down in his hole, he wondered what the rest of his faculty was up to this summer, and if any of them were having great adventures, like getting stuck in a bear trap.
Anyway! There were plenty of other animals that started with the letter B. Buffalo, for one. Bunny, for two. Burro, which was Spanish! But in the icebreaker, Principal Barkin always chose Bear because he felt he was very much like a bear, specifically a Kodiak bear, which was the best bear, and the most powerful.
Well, now he just had to wait until the hunter who set this trap returned and found Barry Barkin down here instead of a bear. A principal in a pit! Wouldn’t that be a surprise! Not knowing how long he’d be there, Principal Barkin pulled a bag of trail mix from his pack. He’d prepared it using a family recipe: all nuts, no chocolate. Principal Barkin’s grandfather had invented the snack and named it “Barkin Gorp.” His father, mistakenly believing that “gorp” was an acronym for “Good Old Raisins and Peanuts,” had renamed it “Barkin Scroggin,” since it didn’t have raisins either. (Gorp is actually an old word that means “eat greedily.” That’s the kind of surprising fact you might learn in the middle of a story about adventures in the woods, but of course Principal Barkin’s father didn’t read those.)
Principal Barkin was gorping his scroggin when he noticed the bell.
There was a bell in the hay, partially obscured by some sod! That was odd, and this was even odder: The bell had a note attached.
Since bears cannot read, Barkin immediately revised his assessment: This was a mantrap! Or perhaps it would be better to say “human trap”! Although in this particular case, he was a man, and “human trap” lacked a certain ring, so, yes, a mantrap! The bell, the note, the hay, the sod, the fact that the top of the hole was just beyond his reach, the reach of a man—it all made sense!
But who would set a mantrap in the woods? A jolly fellow seeking a school principal to round out his merry band? A fairy queen seeking a school principal to round out her woodland court? An insane hermit seeking a school principal to round out a balanced breakfast?
Principal Barkin hoped it wasn’t the last one and gave the bell a ring.
Chapter
16
Miles and Niles peered down into one of their traps and were surprised to find their school principal peering back.
“The Terrible Two,” said Miles.
“The Terrible Two,” said Principal Barkin.
Niles was quiet. He was lost in his own mind. At this moment, one Barkin was stuck in a tree while another one was stuck underground, and the symmetry of the situation tickled Niles’s brain. For Niles, pranking was an art, and he had an artist’s appreciation of a beautiful accident.
“What are you doing down there?” Miles asked.
Back when he had suspected Miles Murphy to be a prankster but believed Niles Sparks to be a model student, Principal Barkin had liked Niles much better than Miles. Now that he knew that Miles and Niles were both pranksters, he still preferred Niles.
“That is a question I should be asking you, Miles Murphy, even though I already know the answer, which is that I am obviously once again the intended victim of one of your ridiculous pranks. I seem to be stuck in a principal trap.”
“We’re not trying to catch principals,” Miles said.
“You’re not?” Principal Barkin brightened. “Well, I must say that I am pleased to hear it, since I’d hoped we’d gotten over our unfortunate dynamic after our last adventure,” said Principal Barkin, referring to a bunch of stuff from book two, “although I’m realizing now that we never made it clear what our relationship would be going forward, whether we remain antagonists, or whether we had joined together in a new and permanent secret supersociety called the Terrible Threes—”
“Three,” said Miles.
“Yes, joined together in a new and permanent secret supersociety, the Terrible Three—”
“We definitely didn’t do that,” said Miles.
Principal Barkin frowned. “Of course not. Well, I suppose we’ll sort all that out once school starts again.”
“You mean we’re not in trouble, Principal Barkin?” Niles asked.
“No! This is not a principal trap, and, since it is summer, I am technically not even your principal, so you should probably call me Barry.”