by Jon Scieszka
“As it happens, I do,” Mr. Lewis said. He reached over and picked up his medicine case. Inside the big wooden box were lots of small glass vials filled with who knows what. It was like something out of an old smelly museum.
“We have all the latest treatments,” Mr. Lewis said. “Hmm…Let’s see…”
Mr. Lewis rooted around in the box and pulled out a small brown vial. “I could give you an emetic,” he said.
“Sure, sounds great,” I replied. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“What’s an emetic?” I whispered to Freddi.
“It makes you throw up,” she whispered back.
Throw up? No thanks. “What else do you have?” I asked Mr. Lewis.
“I could drain some of your blood,” Mr. Lewis said, holding up a small but very sharp-looking knife.
“Tempting,” I said. “But no.”
Next Mr. Lewis pulled out a bottle labeled RUSH’S THUNDERBOLTS. This looked promising. At least it was a name brand.
“What’s that one?” I asked.
“Rush’s Thunderbolts,” Mr. Lewis said. “This’ll go through your system like lightning. It’ll make you, uh…”
Mr. Lewis turned a little red. Then he leaned down to whisper the totally drastic side effects. Let’s just say in a place without real bathrooms or toilet paper, a slow death by poison berries was looking better and better.
“You know,” I said, “I’m feeling much better. I think I’ll just…”
Suddenly we heard Samantha scream. “Jodie! Freddi! Hurry!”
Freddi and I looked at each other. It could only mean one thing. “The bear!” we screamed.
We took off as fast as we could.
Back at our campsite, Samantha was sitting still as a stone, just a few feet away from the giant bear. Luckily, the bear’s attention was on the big black pot he was eating from. Mr. Lewis and Mr. Clark ran up behind Freddi and me, and Sacagawea and York arrived seconds later. Everyone had heard Samantha’s screams.
“Not to bother you,” Samantha squeaked. “But…help.”
“Rifles,” Mr. Clark whispered. “We need rifles.”
Mr. Lewis and York ran off. Sensing the commotion, the bear threw aside the pot and reared up on his hind legs. He was even bigger and meaner when standing up. He turned toward Samantha. She let out a terrified scream.
Freddi and I had to act fast. We had only a few seconds before our friend became grizzly grub.
CHAPTER 11
Freddi jumped into action. She grabbed the pot lid that was lying on the ground and a big rock.
“Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!” she screamed and ran toward the bear, clanging the pot lid loudly with the rock.
“Freddi, no!” I yelled. Something told me this was not the best way to calm down an angry bear.
Even the bear looked confused for a minute. Then he made an angry swipe at Freddi’s head. She ducked just in time and kept right on with her banging and yelling.
Mr. Lewis returned with a rifle and got off a shot. It whizzed past Freddi and missed the bear.
“Dang,” Mr. Lewis said, quickly reloading his gun.
Freddi, meanwhile, was banging and yelling louder than ever. The crazy thing was—it was starting to work.
The bear dropped to all fours and slowly began to lumber away. As he turned, we could see The Book was still stuck to his butt.
“There it is!” I cried. “The Book!”
Mr. Lewis took another shot at the bear and missed again.
“Dang,” he said. “Oh, well. At least we scared him off.”
For a moment we were all relieved. But then I screamed, “The bear is running away…with The Book!”
“Come on!” Freddi cried and took off after the bear.
Samantha and I were right behind her, and Sacagawea was right behind us.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. “Never run after a bear. He will kill you!”
“We have to get that book,” Freddi yelled back. “It’s our only way home.”
The bear stopped at the edge of a creek. We had him trapped—or so we thought. The bear took one look at crazed, charging Freddi, and he shimmied up a tree.
“Now we’ll never get The Book,” I wailed.
“Oh, yes we will,” Freddi said. Without skipping a beat, she whipped the pot lid into the air. It whizzed toward the bear’s bottom like a torpedo.
Clonk. A direct hit. The Book plummeted down from the tree.
“Yaaaaaayyyyyy!” we cheered. Until The Book fell…right in the creek. “Nooooooooooo!” we yelled.
Suddenly Mr. Clark and York rushed up with a canoe. They tossed it into the river. Mr. Clark jumped into the front and Sacagawea jumped in the back.
“Come on!” she said.
Samantha, Freddi, and I hopped in, and we all paddled furiously after The Book.
Rough waters flung our canoe this way and that as we tried to keep sight of the bobbing book as it floated farther and farther away.
“Hold on,” Mr. Clark yelled, skillfully guiding our canoe through the choppy current. Water splashed in our eyes. When I opened mine, all I could see was more fast rapids ahead.
“Woo-hoo!” I had to admit—it was kind of fun.
The canoe continued to bounce along, flying through the air and nearly tipping over. Just when I’d had enough, we turned a bend onto a big calm stretch of water.
I glanced over the wide, flat river—no ripples, no rapids, no book.
“Where’s The Book?” I asked.
Suddenly Freddi spotted it fifty feet downstream. “There it is!” she cried.
Mr. Clark and Sacagawea powered the canoe closer and closer until we were alongside The Book. Freddi leaned over and plucked it out of the river.
“All right!” Samantha and I yelled.
“Do you know what this is?” Mr. Clark said excitedly.
Clearly he’d never seen a book quite like ours.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “It’s a book, only it’s not a regular—”
“No,” Mr. Clark interrupted. “The river. It’s headin’ west. I’ll bet you anything it leads to the Columbia. Wa-hooooo!”
Mr. Clark was so excited that he jumped to his feet and promptly fell out of the canoe. It looked like he’d be able to finish his map after all.
Sacagawea swiftly spun the canoe around and paddled it over to the shore. Samantha, Freddi, and I hopped out onto the bank. Then Sacagawea stepped out and pulled the canoe out of the water.
A sopping wet, very happy Mr. Clark waded over to us. “Thank you, ladies,” he said. “If it weren’t for you, I’m not sure we would’ve found this place.”
Flipping his water-logged hat onto his head, he waved good-bye. “And now I’m off to tell the men.”
Sacagawea looked over at Freddi, Samantha, and me. “I am glad that you have found your book,” she said.
“Thanks, Sacagawea,” Samantha said. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“We couldn’t have done anything without you,” Freddi added.
Sacagawea smiled. “But that is not true,” she said. “You did many things. You saved my horse, you walked for miles in terrible shoes, you scared a bear, and you found your book.”
Maybe we weren’t so bad at roughing it after all. But I had to admit, I still missed the good ol’ comforts of the twenty-second century. I opened The Book to prepare for our trip home.
Freddi’s face lit up. “Jodie, give her your backpack.”
“My backpack?” I said. “But there’s nothing…Oh, right.” I suddenly realized what Freddi wanted. “It’s not much,” I said, handing it to Sacagawea, “but we want you to have it…to thank you for all of your help.”
Sacagawea looked confused.
“It’ll be great for gathering berries,” Freddi explained. “And maybe Little Pomp can ride in it.”
A huge smile spread across Sacagawea’s face. “Aishenda’ga…thank you,” she said. “And thank you also for your friendship. I will miss you.
”
The Book was activated and the familiar green mist began to swirl around us.
Freddi waved to Sacagawea and said, “Good-bye. Aishenda’ga…”
Then we were gone.
CHAPTER 12
We rematerialized in the forest. Only this time, it was the year 2105 and the forest was comfortably located in my very own bedroom.
Everything was just as we’d left it—including Samantha’s silly cat that was eating the leftover marshmallows.
“Oh, kitty,” Samantha gushed. “Did you miss me?”
Of the many things I missed from home, Samantha’s cat was not one of them.
“So,” I said, “did Lewis and Clark ever find that river to the Pacific Ocean they were looking for?”
“No,” Freddi said. “The Northwest Passage didn’t really exist, but they did find lots of other things.”
“Yeah,” Samantha said, snuggling her cyberkitty, “like lots of new kinds of animals and plants.”
“And maybe their best find of all was Sacagawea,” Freddi added. “Without her, they might not have made it. She was able to get them horses and find them food. She even saved some important papers when someone tipped over a canoe.”
“I wonder if it was Mr. Clark’s map,” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Freddi, “but without Lewis and Clark, there might still be a big empty space in our map today.”
After hiking for hours, chasing down a bear, and nearly changing the course of American history, I was pooped.
“I don’t know about you two,” I said to Freddi and Samantha, “but I’m going to bed. G’night.” If I never had to spend another sleepless night outdoors, it would be too soon.
I crawled into my comfy, climate-controlled tent, and Freddi and Samantha followed soon after.
“You know,” Samantha said, “before we go to sleep, there’s something I want to say. Freddi, you were totally amazing out there—you really saved our butts.”
It was true. Fraidy-cat-Freddi had been really brave.
Freddi blushed. “Oh, well…it was kinda fun,” she said. “But thanks.”
“I have something to say, too,” I announced.
“Yeah? What?” Samantha asked.
My stomach gurgled. “I really shouldn’t have eaten those berries!”
It looked like we were in for another very long night.
Copyright
TIME WARP TRIO: LEWIS AND CLARK…AND JODIE, FREDDI, AND SAMANTHA. Copyright © 2006 WGBH Educational Foundation and Chucklebait, Inc. Artwork, Designs and Animation © 2005 WGBH Educational Foundation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 2006924547
EPub Edition © January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200573-1
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