The Sasquatch Mystery

saddle. There’s only one road.”
    “Oh!” Di’s eyes were troubled.
    “What’s your problem?” Hallie drawled.
    “It’s just that—what if the sas—the you-know-what sits on that saddle?”

Tank ● 5

    UNEASINESS SILENCED the group as it considered the possibility that the sasquatch might be lurking on the only road leading directly from the national forest to the closest towns of the mining region.
    Then Hallie jumped up from the breakfast table. “The sasquatch may be many things, but it can’t be in two places at the same time. I’m going to take my chances that old ’squatch is sitting on that saddle. I’m going to Tank’s cabin if I have to go alone!”
    Cheeks blazing red, Hallie gathered up her place setting and went over to the huge metal dishpan. There she sloshed her own dishes and silver in hot suds, dipped them into a second pan of boiling water, and tilted them in a rack. “There, I’m ready. Who’s going with me?”
    “You know we’re all going,” Mart said gruffly. “Right, Miss Trask?”
    “I suppose so,” Miss Trask agreed after a moment’s hesitation.
    “Not till this mess is cleaned up,” Cap ordered. “Not one crumb of food is to be left out to draw bears.”
    While everyone cleared away all traces of food, closed tents, and locked hasps on storage chests, Trixie tried to keep track of sounds, shadows, and odors. Until Di dropped an owl’s feather on the coals that Cap was dousing with water, the clean smell of sun-warmed pine needles was all that filled the campground.
    “Brian, suppose you take over the foot-check while I fill canteens,” called Cap.
    Brian made sure that everyone’s soft, clean socks were smooth, with boots firmly but not too tightly laced. “Extra socks in your pocket?” Cap asked as he handed each person a canteen of cold fresh water.
    Within minutes, camp was out of sight. Birds had fed early and were silent, but other small animals were going about their business.
    Honey, who was Trixie’s trail buddy, commented, “None of the animals seems to be nervous. I don’t think I’m going to manufacture a lot of adrenaline I’m not going to use.”
    “You sound like Mart,” Trixie giggled, “but I think I know what you mean.” From that moment, Trixie enjoyed the climb up the canyon, reserving only a small, alert part of her mind to stand guard. With Honey, she sang a marching song Honey had learned at camp when much younger.
    Then, in a rich contralto voice, Hallie followed it with a spirited miner’s song.
    Next, Knut sang, in a strong, pleasant tenor: “Sweetly sings the donkey, at the break of day. If you do not feed him, this is what he’ll say....”
    With much gusto, Cap, Mart, Brian, and Jim roared, “Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw!” Their feet thumped the steep trail, beating the rhythm.
    “Distances sure are deceiving in Idaho,” Di complained good-naturedly a little later when she dropped back to join Honey and Trixie for a while.
    “I think it’s just that we’re used to riding our horses back at home,” Honey told her. “But I’m beginning to wonder if the head of this canyon was just an illusion when we saw it back at our camp. We’ve been hiking almost two hours now.”
    Just when Trixie was sure she couldn’t climb another yard, quite unexpectedly the trail leveled. Trees were not so tall or so closely spaced. The August sun beat down on a flat area.
    “Tank, hey, Tank!” roared Knut, Cap, and Hallie.
    “Yah, sure!” The happy response came from the left.
    Trixie had not expected a hermit miner to be over six feet tall, thin as a sapling, and dressed in white. Even his bald head glowed whitely above a freshly shaven pink face.
    Tank was chopping weeds that grew in the queerest garden Trixie had ever seen. In cleared spaces among huckleberry bushes and Indian-paint brush, Tank had disturbed the earth just enough to insert a few seeds. In a helter-skelter way, he grew potatoes, onions, carrots, beans, and cabbages. The watering system was primitive but adequate—two pails and a dipper. Damp areas showed where he had dribbled water on the plants that needed it.
    Tank placed both hands on the end of his upright hoe handle. When he leaned his chin on his hands, his long body bent like a bow. He examined space from earth to sky. Then he said slowly and carefully, “Ay tank de tistles be tick dis year. Yah?”
    “Yah!” whooped Knut, Cap, and Hallie. They rushed forward to hug him.
    Knut