The Ice Chips and the Grizzly Escape

by Roy MacGregor

  Dedication

  To the outdoors—the place where we love to get lost, and where we love to be found.

  —ROY MACGREGOR AND KERRY MACGREGOR

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors and Illustrator

  The Ice Chips Series

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Location Unknown (The Past)

  A blur of evergreen tree trunks passed in front of Lucas Finnigan’s eyes as he twisted, turned, and fell on top of Dylan Chung with a thud.

  “Watch out for the log! Ugh—my foot!” squealed Dylan, known as “Mouth Guard” on the Ice Chips hockey team, as he struggled to squirm out from under Lucas. He’d just tripped over that same log and was bent over, clutching the ankle he’d twisted, when Lucas smashed into him.

  “Sorry—sorry!” Lucas whispered nervously to his teammate. He quickly placed his hands behind him on the pine-needle-covered ground and scurried like a crab into some ferns.

  The Chips were trying to move out of the small wooded area as fast as they could. But none of them could take their eyes off the enormous animal that had just wandered through the trees in front of them.

  We have to get out of here! Lucas thought, his mind racing. Or else . . .

  Those nostrils.

  Those claws.

  Those teeth!

  These were nothing like the woods they had back in Riverton. The trunks of the evergreen trees around the clearing were tall and straight, almost as though they were silent guardians of the forest—or handmade telephone poles with branches way up high. The bushes on the ground were green, leafy . . . and moving. When Lucas and his friends had first arrived here, he’d joked that the bushes were giggling in the light summery wind. Nica Bertrand, who went by “Swift” on the ice, had marvelled at the smell of the forest: fresh, earthy, and almost cold. They’d all agreed that the woods were peaceful and calming—of course, that’s before they needed a place to hide.

  “This way—pssst! Now!” Lucas whispered, trembling, as he motioned for the others to follow him into the ferns.

  The bear, too, saw this movement. It took a slow step forward, leaned back on its haunches, and sniffed the air.

  It can smell us even if we hide, Lucas realized, shaking his head. He looked over at Shayna Atlookan and Swift, who were still in the clearing—both with their eyes as wide as hockey pucks. The bear snorted as it took another slow step toward them.

  When Mouth Guard had wandered away from their picnic area at the river, looking for a place to pee, the young hockey players hadn’t even thought about what trouble he could get into. No one had gone with him. No one had been worried about danger—or wild caribou, bobcats, or bears. But then Mouth Guard had screamed and they’d all come running, not realizing they were about to become a picnic themselves.

  How could we have been so stupid?! Lucas wondered. He’d seen bears at his grandfather’s cottage, but never this close!

  The four young hockey players had already backed as far away as they could from the shaggy brown animal, but it was still moving toward them. It was following their scent. To get back to the river where they’d been fishing, they’d have to either cross its path or get the bear to move. Could they scare it out of the grove of spruce trees? Make it run away? But how?

  And then there was their third option: up!

  “I can’t go over that rock,” Swift whispered loudly, seeing what Lucas was thinking. “I can’t climb it.”

  She was looking to her right, behind the long leaf-fingered ferns where Lucas was trying to hide. The mound of hard volcanic rock was part of the base of a high peak in the distance. And it was steep—just as steep as the cliffs over the water at Lucas’s grandfather’s cottage. Swift hadn’t climbed the cliffs at the cottage when the team was invited last summer, and she didn’t plan on climbing the ones here. It didn’t matter if this was their only escape route.

  “It’s not because of my foot,” said the Chips’ star goalie, nervously rubbing her thigh just above her prosthetic leg. “It’s—I’m still afraid of heights.”

  “Then what do we do? Throw snacks?” Lucas asked desperately from behind the ferns. He reached out and grabbed Mouth Guard’s arm, pulling his friend toward him. “Mouth, you said you know these animals. You’ve been in these woods before. Do we yell? Play dead? Climb as fast as we can?”

  “It, uh, duh . . . pends—oof!” Mouth Guard said, wincing in pain as he limped farther into the ferns. The Ice Chips’ blabbermouth was short on words for the very first time in his life.

  It was true that Mouth Guard had been in woods like this before. If only he could remember what his father had told him on their hikes . . .

  “Depends on what—WHAT?!” Swift asked loudly.

  “Depends on the colour . . . of . . . the bear,” said Mouth Guard, rubbing his ankle. He stumbled closer to the rock wall.

  The bear grunted and snorted again as it waddled toward the edge of the clearing. Shayna and Swift now had their backs to the rock wall, too. Shayna turned and was going up, but Swift wasn’t moving.

  “It’s . . . uh, brownish!” Swift stated firmly, looking at her teammates. “What do we do with brownish?!”

  “Oh, and if it has a big hump on its back, above its shoulders,” Mouth Guard continued, not looking behind him, “that means it’s a grizzly.”

  Lucas’s jaw dropped.

  A hump.

  There was a hump!

  If this bear had skates, Lucas couldn’t help thinking as he put one hand in a groove of the dark rock, it would make a KILLER defenceman. He was pulling himself up, scrambling again, when he turned back and locked eyes with the enormous animal. The bear grunted and snorted once more, and Lucas’s face turned as white as a clean sheet of ice.

  “We . . . uh . . .” said Mouth Guard, searching his memory. By the way Swift was holding herself, he could tell she was ready to run. And by the way Lucas was looking at that bear, it was obvious they were in trouble. “Lucas! Don’t make eye contact! If you look like you’re going to fight it—”

  The caramel-coloured bear—now close enough that they could smell it, too—blinked and stood up on its hind legs. It was either showing them its teeth or yawning . . . or getting ready to eat them. None of the Chips were sure. They just didn’t know enough about bears.

  Then it was down again on all fours, taking a step into the ferns, right toward Swift.

  And then another one.

  “Do you see any siu hung jai?” Mouth Guard asked Lucas, who was now the highest on the rock. “Sorry, that’s the Cantonese word. Any baby bears? Any cubs?”

  “I’ve been looking,” said Shayna nervously. “I haven’t seen any, but they could be hiding.”

  Lucas pulled himself still higher on the rock. He couldn’t see any, either.

  “Okay, wait. I’ve got this,” Swift stage-whispered from the patch of ferns. “I’m going to yell. I’ll scare away the bear. And her cubs—if there are any.”

  “Uh, if y
ou think that will work,” said Lucas, looking down nervously. “Maybe put your hands over your head and make yourself look really scary?” He put the tip of his boot in another foothold and rose a little higher—just in case. The bear was starting to look angry—or worried. And it was almost close enough to lick Swift’s elbow.

  “No, DON’T DO THAT!” said Mouth Guard, struggling to squeeze his foot with the hurt ankle into a crack. “I said it’s a grizzly!”

  “He’s right!” Shayna whisper-yelled. “That’s for black bears! You CAN’T scare a grizzly!”

  But Swift was already raising her arms above her head like a ballerina who’d never had any dance lessons. She was drawing in her breath and . . .

  From behind the bear, there was a burst of sound. A snort. Maybe a whistle.

  A cub?

  No, it was a horse snort, and in the distance, a hoof was tapping lightly on the soft forest ground.

  The kids watched as the horse and its rider moved through the trees. The rider got off in one swift movement and—slowly, carefully—began leading the horse around behind the bear and toward the trapped hockey players, careful to keep his distance.

  All four hockey players were holding their breath when the rider finally spoke.

  “Keep your eyes on the ground,” he said carefully, calmly. “And whatever you do, don’t make a sound.”

  Chapter 2

  Riverton Campground—Present

  “Got ya!”

  “No way!”

  “Yeah, I did!”

  “You missed!”

  “You’re tagged! Go back to your base!”

  “Ugh, but you’re cheating!”

  Lucas swore he hadn’t been tagged. Of course, that wouldn’t stop Beatrice Blitz, the biggest bully on the Riverton Stars, from saying whatever she wanted. Her hockey team was the only other U9 novice one in town, and the Ice Chips’ biggest rival. The Blitz twins—Beatrice and her brother, Jared, whose rich father owned and coached the team—were the Stars’ dirtiest players.

  Only this wasn’t hockey.

  The kids were outside in a grassy field, in the middle of a water-fight version of capture the flag. And these were the rules: If you got tagged, you could no longer rush to grab the other team’s flag and had to start again from your home base. If you got a little wet, you’d better run away—because getting soaked meant you were out of the game. Most of the kids were at least partially wet. But none of them would admit, despite a lot of shouting back and forth, that they were wet enough to be out.

  As they had in other years, Lucas’s parents had signed him up for the summer hockey camp held at the Riverton Arena. Mornings were for indoor skating and drills. Afternoons were for games and summer activities outside. The camp kids had played baseball in fields around town and been taken to the pool earlier in the week—but today was quite different.

  Lucas’s cousin Speedy, the one who’d given him all his hand-me-down hockey equipment, had been hired by Coach Small as an assistant coach this summer. And Speedy, who was always a bit of a prankster, had come up with this new game that Lucas thought was the most ridiculous challenge yet. Right after lunch, the campers had been taken by bus to the old soccer field at the Riverton campsite. Once there, they’d watched Speedy plant a flagpole and a cone at each end of the wide-open space. When he was done, Lucas’s cousin had stood before the group with his hands behind his back.

  “I found these in the lost and found at the rink,” Speedy said with a laugh, amused by the joke he was about to make. From behind his back, he brought out two wrinkled and worn pairs of long johns—one white and one blue.

  “That’s mine!” yelled Maurice Boudreau—known as “Slapper” to the Ice Chips—when he recognized the white ones. “That’s my lucky caleçon! My longies, right, Lucas? I need those!”

  “Oh, goodness. You’ll get them back,” said Tianna Foster—the Ice Chips’ “Bond”—giving her fellow defender a gentle elbow.

  “Just be glad yours don’t smell as bad as the blue flag,” said Alex Stepanov, the little winger known as “Dynamo,” in his slight Russian accent before clapping his hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle.

  All the Ice Chips knew what the blue “flag” was: Mouth Guard’s second pair of long johns—the ones he used to wipe his armpits after a game. This was Mouth Guard’s only superstition, but it was a big one. He kept one pair of long johns perfectly clean and absolutely refused to wash the other pair. By the smile on Speedy’s face, the Chips were sure that Lucas’s curly-haired cousin already knew that.

  “Those stinking long johns will NOT be my flag,” declared Beatrice, scrunching up her nose. She knew about Mouth Guard’s armpit rag from back when the Stars shared the Riverton Community Arena with the Chips, before the Stars’ new high-tech rink was built.

  “At least I don’t have as many superstitions as Top Shelf!” Mouth Guard protested, pointing at Lucas. “I’ve only got one. And you all know that I can’t make my fart sounds if my pits are too sweaty!” He moved to put his hand under his armpit to demonstrate, but the other kids, doubled over in laughter, said they couldn’t handle it.

  Beatrice rolled her eyes, and Mouth Guard, smiling, offered her an honest shrug. This wasn’t his fault.

  George Small, the Ice Chips’ regular-season coach and their teacher at school, had already started dividing the hockey players into two teams: white and blue.

  “Don’t worry,” Lucas said to Beatrice, noticing that she’d been picked for the white team. “The blue flag’s not yours. It’s mine. Although, that does mean you’ll have to try your hardest to grab it.”

  To Lucas’s delight, Beatrice crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue.

  “You just have to rip the flag off the pole and the game’s over,” said Bond, smiling. “No one’s asking you to wear them!”

  Again, the campers all laughed together.

  Speedy was grinning as he attached a “flag” to the top of each of the poles. He said there was just one more rule to explain, and then he dumped a bin of metal pots, pans, and ladles onto the ground. He’d borrowed them from the nearby forest school—where little kids, including Lucas’s brother, Connor, spent their days making mud cakes and mud soup in a tree-stump kitchen while they learned about nature.

  “There’s an old wading pool full of rainwater over there, behind the trees,” Speedy said with a mischievous smile. He quickly explained that the kids could scare the other team away from their flag by threatening a water fight. Shayna and Nolan Atlookan knew the pool well because they had waded in it as babies when they’d come to this campsite with their family for their annual powwow gathering. They also knew how to find it using a secret shortcut through the woods.

  “It’s up to each team to figure out how to capture the other team’s flag,” said Speedy. “Get tagged and you have to go back to your base, then try again. Get soaked and you ride the bench for the rest of the game—you’re out. Understand?”

  “No! I said I’m not touching THAT BLUE UNDERWEAR!” shouted Beatrice Blitz, causing most of the other kids to giggle again.

  “I dunno,” said Bond with a smirk. “You’re pretty competitive, Beatrice. If you don’t grab that underwear and hug it, how else are you going to win?”

  * * *

  “Soup, anyone?!” Slapper yelled as he jogged across the grass in front of his team’s white flag, spilling water onto the front of his shirt from the metal ladle he was carrying.

  “Slapper, you clumsy, bumbling bear! If you soak yourself, you’ll be out of the game!” Beatrice yelled at her teammate, rolling her eyes. She was acting like she’d been placed in charge of the worst team ever assembled, even though there were no captains here.

  Laughing and not caring, Slapper shook the last few drops of water in his soup spoon onto the grass at Dynamo’s feet. Dynamo, who was on the opposite team, had proven to be one of the best at this game; he was both small and fast. He and Lucas were trying to rush the white flag from the left side. They just h
adn’t made their move yet.

  “There’s more where that came from,” Slapper said, laughing at the silliness of his “defence.” He turned back, running toward the kiddie pool to refill his ladle as Lars Larsson, an Ice Chip but also Beatrice and Jared’s cousin, ran in to take his spot.

  “At least get a pot this time—that spoon does nothing,” Lars yelled. He scowled at Lucas and Dynamo, but only in a joking way, to show that he wasn’t going to let them through. Lars’s blond hair was dripping wet, but his shirt was still dry. Everyone but Beatrice had rosy cheeks from running around the field.

  The blue team was made up of Lucas, Bond, Dynamo, Nolan, Jessie Bonino (who played house league), Sadie (Swift’s sister, called “Blades”), Matías Rodriguez (the Chips’ second goalie, known as “the Face”), and Jack, a new kid who’d just moved to Riverton this summer. The white team was the Blitz twins and their cousin Lars, Shayna, Mouth Guard, Slapper, Zia Taylor (the Stars’ goalie with the dramatic glove hand), and Shayna and Nolan’s cousin August, who’d come from up north to join them at the camp this summer.

  “Jared!” Beatrice yelled as loud as she could from beside the white flag. “Get over here! And, Shayna, you and Mouth go guard the trees behind the flag—now! RIGHT NOW!”

  “I thought we were the water crew,” Mouth Guard argued, disappointed. He put the frying pan of water he’d just carried over down onto the grass. Jared, who was running toward Beatrice, tripped over it and scowled at Mouth Guard.

  Shayna, who was breathing heavily like the rest of them, was the only one on the white team who didn’t seem annoyed by Beatrice’s bossiness. As a Star, she was probably used to it. “I’ve got something to show you anyway,” she told Mouth Guard, pulling him along by his elbow.

  “We have to guard every direction! ALL THE TIME!” Beatrice hollered at her teammates.

  Jared, who looked ready for battle, offered Lucas and his blue team a smug little smile. The Atlookans’ cousin August was also ready to defend.

  That’s when Beatrice turned and whispered something in her brother’s ear.

  * * *