He was almost too scared to turn. He considered calling out, but was afraid he’d be ridiculed if it turned out to be nothing.
Slowly, Travis turned around, ready to jump if necessary. He could see the tent, the lean-to, and the firepit. He could see where they’d stashed their packs under an edge of the tarp. He could see where the moonlight petered out and the black apron of the woods began.
He could see eyes!
Never in his life had Travis felt such a chilling tremor go up and down his spine. It felt as if his hair were standing straight on end.
The eyes were yellow, gleaming in the moonlight like miniature headlights – and Travis felt himself frozen.
Suddenly the eyes moved.
The creature moved smoothly, catlike. It loped silently past the firepit. A wolf! It was still staring at Travis when it suddenly swept in under the spruce trees and vanished into the darkness.
Travis breathed out. Without realizing it, he hadn’t taken a breath since he felt the eyes on the back of his neck. He was shaking, shaking like a leaf, even though it was hot enough for him to be sweating.
His head was spinning. A wolf? Was it dangerous? Would it attack? And yet, Travis thought, all it had done was stare at him and then move off. No growl, no snarl, nothing. Just curiosity, and then it was gone.
His heart was pounding. He could hear it in the silence, could feel the blood pumping through his temples. He felt light-headed, almost as if he were about to topple over.
Travis made his way back to the tent. He could hear Nish snoring, could pick out, faintly, the breathing of the sleeping girls. Should he waken them? Wouldn’t he just scare everyone if he told them about the wolf?
It was gone, he decided. He should try to get some sleep.
Maybe he hadn’t even seen it at all.
But Travis could not get back to sleep.
He lay in his sleeping bag trying to get comfortable, trying a dozen different positions, but nothing worked. His body might have been tired, but his mind was racing.
Was Muck trying to find them? Was the wolf still there? What was happening in the search? Was Jake Tyson dead or alive?
Travis shook his head and tried to think of other things – his grandparents’ cottage, heading back to school, the upcoming hockey season – but more worrying thoughts kept intruding. He gave in to his fate and simply lay there, waiting for morning to come.
It was so quiet now. Nish wasn’t even snoring any more, not since he had shifted abruptly in his sleep, mumbling something about talking boxer shorts.
Travis tried counting sheep. He tried going over every goal he had scored that summer in lacrosse, then every goal he had ever scored in hockey. He tried to remember his top ten favourite tournament games. He tried to remember the names of all the teams the Screech Owls had ever faced …
… and then he heard the sound.
At first he thought it was his imagination. Or maybe it was the wind picking up. But it was neither. It was a sound unlike anything Travis had ever heard before. A sound like something heavy being pushed or dragged.
And then he heard the breathing.
Heavy breathing.
It was large, whatever it was.
A moose?
A bear?
Travis reached for his shorts and, very quietly, afraid even to breathe, dug around in his pocket until he found his jackknife. He pulled it out and opened the blade, ready to fight back.
He felt like a fool. What good would a little Swiss Army knife do against a bear? One swat and the knife would be flying into the bush. But if he had to fight, he would.
He was ready to jump up. The second he heard the bear trying to get into the tent or the lean-to.
He lay there, shaking, near tears, and listened.
The heavy breathing continued for some time.
And once in a while, the other sound, the sound of something heavy moving.
Then, suddenly, all went silent.
Travis lay, finally able to breathe. He thought he could hear branches snapping some way off in the bush, but soon there was nothing.
Silence.
And then he fell asleep.
15
Travis had never been so hot.
The tent seemed to glow with sunshine, and the atmosphere inside was warm and stale. He rolled over, yanked on his shorts and T-shirt, and rolled, gratefully, into the freshest, sweetest air he had ever encountered.
He sat there, taking it all in, blinking while his eyes adjusted, and wasn’t at first aware that he was not alone.
Rachel was already up. She had their only plastic container – a Tupperware bowl that normally held Sam’s soap and toothbrush – and she was smiling.
“I’m going to find us some water,” she said. “We’ll need to drink, otherwise we’ll get dehydrated.”
Travis smiled back. “Why didn’t you just set it out last night? It would be full by now.”
“Good thinking, Trav,” she said. “We’ll do it tonight if we have to stay another night here.”
“We’d better not.”
“You never know. I think I know where to find some fresh water. There’s a little creek just over to the side of the hill.”
“Don’t get lost!” Travis called after her as she set out for the water.
Rachel turned, laughing. “You keep forgetting – I’m a Cree. We’re never lost.”
Travis rose and stretched hard in the sun. He was stiff from sleeping on the ground, but he must have slept enough, for he was no longer tired. The sun was warming, the air so fresh from the storm that it felt energy-charged, and he found he was in an excellent mood despite the fact that they were lost in the wild and had no idea whatsoever where they were.
“You’re up,” a voice said from the far side of the lean-to. It was Sarah. She was walking around bent over, her hands on her knees as she stared down hard at the ground. “Did you hear anything last night?” she asked.
Travis swallowed. “Like what?” he asked.
“Like a large animal moving around out here,” Sarah said. “I was sure something brushed against the lean-to – almost knocked it down – and then I could hear this strange noise.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I could hear breathing, and it didn’t sound good, or else whatever it was was dragging something heavy along. I actually imagined it might be one of you guys.”
“I heard it, too,” said Travis. “I thought it was a bear.”
“Muck said you’d smell a bear. ‘Like a skunk, only worse’ – remember?”
“Yeah.”
“No smell. And no paw prints. No moose tracks, either – I thought it might be that. But come and look at this.” Sarah was pointing, outlining a shape in the soggy ground.
Travis stared hard. He couldn’t tell what it might be.
“It’s a footprint,” Sarah said.
She got down on her knees and very carefully traced its outline. The ground was soft and wet, but there could be no mistaking it: a human footprint, a boot.
“Put your foot down on it, Travis.”
Travis did as Sarah asked. He very carefully placed his sandalled foot down onto the footprint. “Not my size,” he said. “Much too big.”
Sarah looked up. “What about the other boys?”
“Nish and I are about the same. Both of us are bigger than Fahd.”
“And it’s not one of us, either,” said Sarah, placing her sandal into the large print. “Sam’s slightly bigger than I am, but not nearly as big as this.”
Travis couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong. “Why only the one?”
Sarah pointed ahead. “There’s more. There’s one. And over there.”
She carefully checked out several of the prints before turning back to Travis, a look of bafflement on her face.
“They’re all lefts,” she said. “Like there was only one foot involved.”
Travis looked. Sure enough, all the prints were from a left
boot; there was no mistaking it. But there was another mark as well, only quite different.
“What do you make of this?” Sarah asked.
Travis shook his head. “All these left prints and these marks like little trenches.”
“Like whatever it was – or whoever it was,” said Sarah, “was dragging something.”
“Exactly,” said Travis.
Both of them looked up at each other at the same time, both with their mouths open in astonishment.
“It couldn’t be!” said Travis.
“B-b-but,” stammered Sarah, “what else could it be?”
Travis could hardly believe he was mouthing the word.
“Slewfoot?”
16
Travis and Sarah were still trying to find their tongues when they noticed they were no longer alone in the campsite. Rachel had come back so quietly they hadn’t even noticed.
Only something was different about Rachel. She didn’t have any water with her, though she was still carrying the empty plastic container. And she looked as if she’d just had the scare of her life.
“Get the others up,” she said in a voice so quiet they barely heard her.
“Why?” Travis said. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s something you have to see in the swamp.”
Travis and Sarah scrambled to wake the others up while Rachel stood off to the side of the camp, staring back in the direction of the swamp. She looked terrified.
“I got nothin’ to wear!” Nish moaned when they finally spun him out of his sleeping bag.
He’d grown hot in the night and taken off everything but his infamous boxers. He’d stuffed his shorts and shirt into what he thought was a safe corner of the tent, but the rain had soaked right through where his clothes touched the sides and now they were as drenched as if they’d just come out of a washing machine.
“Offer still stands, Big Boy,” Sam said, pulling a fresh sweatshirt out of her pack.
“I’m not wearing that crud!” Nish whined. “Anybody sees me, they’ll think I’m in a Gay Pride Parade!”
“Suit yourself, Big Boy. We’re off. The pack’s right here if you need anything.”
They set off with Rachel in the lead. She led them down the small creek path that ran from the side of the hill. It was still bubbling with last night’s rainfall, and the going was tough at times. The rocks were slippery. The overgrowth was a tangle on both sides, the tag alders and aspen and cedar all but impenetrable, meaning they really had no choice but to continue down through the creek.
The terrain flattened out near the bottom, swamp on both sides and the creek winding through the bog towards a slightly larger creek, running clean and fast. This must have been where Rachel had come in search of drinking water.
There were bulrushes here, and tall blueberry bushes everywhere. The ground was spongy, and every so often their feet sank right down into the bog. Dead tamarack trees stood, or had fallen, almost everywhere the kids looked.
Rachel was pointing at something through a narrow opening of cedar.
Travis could see nothing at first, but then he noticed the damaged trees, pine and cedar snapped off as if something had exploded through the swamp, the fresh wood bright and shining where the trunks and branches had broken.
The huge swath through the trees made an easy trail for the eye to follow.
And then he saw it, out in the middle of the swamp with large pools of water on all sides.
He saw the splash of red first. But then white, a structure looming large like a curved doorway. It had letters on it: YT …
It was the tail of an airplane!
17
It seemed like the longest time before anyone spoke.
“Jake Tyson’s plane!” Travis gasped, finally.
“Has to be,” said Rachel.
“Is-is-is there any sign of … life?” Fahd sputtered.
“I tried to get over,” Rachel said. “I couldn’t. So I came back for you guys.”
“We have to get to it!” Sarah all but shrieked. She was shaking, almost crying.
“You’ll sink if you try to walk to it,” said Rachel. “I tried. We’ll have to come at it from the far side, and with branches.”
It took a while for the Owls to understand what Rachel meant. Before she led them back to this spot, she had picked up the tool she had used to build the shelter, and after the six kids had worked their way around to the far side of the swamp, she immediately went to work cutting and sawing saplings, leaving their branches and leaves intact.
“We can work a bridge over with these,” she said.
It took them the better part of two hours, but slowly, ever so slowly, they worked their way closer to the sunken, smashed aircraft.
Rachel’s idea was ingenious. She would lay down a sapling, sometimes two, on the surface of the bog, making a bridge between one fairly solid clump of grass and moss and the next. They kept a steady stream of fresh saplings and branches coming, and gradually formed a path over the bog.
“Is it Jake?”
The voice came from well behind. Nish had caught up with them.
They stood up from their work and stared back through the underbrush.
Nish had arrived in full sequinned glory! He had selected Sam’s most discreet sweatshirt and shorts, but he still sparkled like a jewellery counter as he stood before them, his face like a glistening ruby.
“No cracks!” he ordered. “Is it Jake?”
“We don’t know,” said Sam, acting as if nothing at all were unusual about Nish’s appearance.
“We haven’t made it to the plane yet,” said Rachel. “Can you do some cutting?”
Nish was anxious to help. He took the tool and began sawing off branches and handing them along as the others worked their way closer.
As they inched deeper into the bog, the heavier Owls dropped back. Nish was already well back. But Sam dropped off, then Sarah. The three smaller ones – Rachel, Fahd, and Travis – continued to build the bridge out until they were just a few feet from the craft.
Carefully, Rachel laid down the last of the branches. It stretched to within an arm’s length of the fuselage of the plane.
Travis could clearly see the damage now. The wings had been sheared off as the plane cut down through the trees. The engine had been torn away from its housing and lay, smashed, half buried in the muck. The pontoons, from what little he could see of them, seemed squashed by the fuselage, which had pounded down onto them on impact.
“One of us has to check,” Rachel said.
“I can’t,” Fahd said, near tears. “I just can’t do it, okay?”
“I’ll do it,” said Travis.
He had no idea where the bravery had come from. He was Travis Lindsay, the kid who still liked to sleep with a night light on, the kid who was so terrified last night he couldn’t even look out to see what was making that terrible noise. The idea of staring down into the cockpit at two dead men terrified him. What, he wondered, if they were still alive? No, they couldn’t be. Impossible. But if they weren’t alive, then they had to be dead. He couldn’t do it. But he had to …
He had to because Rachel was here. Rachel, who had found the plane, who had made it possible for them to be dry and warm through the night, who was the best chance the Owls had of ever getting out of here.
And he was team captain.
“I’ll go,” he repeated.
He felt Rachel touch his arm. “Be careful,” she whispered.
Travis took one tentative step onto the makeshift bridge. It held fine. He tightrope-walked his way along the branches and made the final lunge onto the crunched pontoon.
“Don’t cut yourself!!” Fahd cried out.
Travis looked back. He could see his friends staring at him as if he were about to do something incredible, like explode, or vanish into the muck.
No one seemed to be breathing. Nish appeared even to have forgotten he was wearing a pink sweatshirt with purple and silver sequins and bl
uejean cutoffs with copper studs sewn on to make a big heart right over his butt.
Travis surveyed the wreck. For a fleeting moment, he thought it might have been here for some time, that in fact it wasn’t the plane in which Jake Tyson had been flying. But that made no sense; the plane might be a wreck, but the paint was new.
There were small foot- and hand-holds along the pilot’s side of the plane, and one of the wing struts was still half on, a convenient step to get to the small door.
Travis reached out to pull himself up, then stepped onto the strut.
He took a deep breath. He had no choice. He had to look. There could be no turning back now.
“Travis! Be careful!” Rachel called out.
Travis nodded. He would not turn back. Something in Rachel’s voice made him realize he would crawl through broken glass and land mines and writhing cobras, if necessary.
He pulled himself higher.
The window at the side had blown out on impact.
He eased himself up, his heart pounding so loud and fast he thought it must be shaking the entire plane.
He looked in.
The pilot was slumped over the controls. His head was bloody around the temples and ears, and his neck was twisted unnaturally.
He was staring straight at Travis.
Travis almost jumped back, but he knew he couldn’t. If he dropped down onto the soft moss and bog, he would sink in to his armpits.
He forced himself to keep looking.
There was no question about it – the pilot was dead. He had probably been dead from the moment the plane struck, just like that other pilot who’d been flying Bill Barilko so many years ago. Both of them had died instantly, still sitting in their seats when the plane was finally found.
Travis made himself look beyond the pilot.
Seeing the dead face of a total stranger was bad enough, Travis thought. But he knew he would recognize Jake Tyson.
His stomach lurched. He was going to throw up. He forced it back down, the vomit burning in his throat, and he swallowed deliberately, stepped high again, and looked over the jumble of packs and fishing supplies that had been thrown forward when the plane crashed into the bog.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 5 Page 6