The Sasquatch Mystery

the group gathered around the campfire once again.
    “Want to tell ghost tales?” Hallie drawled. “Oh, Hallie, you wouldn’t!” Di wailed.
    “Let’s sing,” Cap suggested, adding fuel till the flames leaped.
    Trixie loved to sing, and so did the others. Just when the harmony was sweetest and she had the feeling that the pines themselves listened, she became aware of an approaching vehicle. Its lights swung in an arc, striking bark, brush, and boulders, and came to rest pointed straight at the rear of Cap’s truck.
    Three men crawled from the cab. A voice yelled, “Hey, there, Cap!”
    Cap loped around the fire to join the men coming forward. “Hi, guys! Gosh, it’s good to see you. Come meet my friends and relatives.” One voice said, “Look, we’re due at Big Dick creek by midnight. Hurry it up, Will.”
    The driver pleaded, “I’ve got a story for Cap that he’ll never believe.”
    In a jumble of talk and laughter, Cap drew the men to the fire and introduced them: Will, Jinx, and Bo, friends of Cap’s from the Forestry lookout.
    “Ma’am,” Will told Miss Trask, “I don’t want to scare you folks, but it’s only fair to warn you.”
    Trixie heard Di’s quick intake of breath and reached out to hold her hand.
    Will drew out a bandana, mopped his brow, and burst out, “Cap, I just saw the doggonest sight I ever hope to see!”
    “Spit it out,” Cap urged.
    “Like Bo said, we’re heading south for Big Dick creek, coming from Wallace. Just before we got to the pass, I got this whiff of an uncleaned stable—where there are no stables. Then something stood up in the bushes. I swear it was seven or eight feet tall. It put a hand across its face to shield its eyes from the headlights; then it disappeared.”
    “It had to be an elk or a bear,” Bo said.
    “But, hands, Bo; it had hands!” Will insisted.
    Cap asked alertly, “Anybody else see what you saw, Will?”
    “I wasn’t watching the road,” said Jinx, “but you better believe something happened. Will here was shaking like a leaf when he slammed on the brakes.”
    “You’d shake, too,” Will argued, “seeing something unnatural like that.”
    “Just where did this take place?” Knut asked. “It was at the head of that draw where the old log chute goes to the valley floor,” Will said. “You know where I mean?”
    Knut and Cap nodded.
    Jinx turned to Miss Trask. “Don’t worry, ma’am. That’s on the north side of the saddle. It would take a while for Will’s nightmare to walk this far.”
    “I’m sure it would,” Miss Trask said. Trixie wondered how she managed to sound so calm. Her own heart was thumping like a bongo.
    Cap rolled his jacket fringes around a finger. “I suppose you’ve had the word there’s a sasquatch scare in the campgrounds here on Champion. Well, it’s more than a scare.” He told of his sighting.
    Will stirred uneasily. “We sure didn’t expect to run into bigfoot in the Joe forest, and certainly not here on Champion. I’d always considered him to be a dropout of the human race that stuck to the snow peaks of the Cascades. It doesn’t make a bit of sense to find him this far inland.” He squinted at Cap. “You pretty sure of your facts?”
    “Yep,” Cap said.
    Will looked glum.
    “I’ve been thinking,” Cap went on. “I know they’re checking the possibility of eruption of some ancient craters in the Cascades. I wonder if the wildlife is getting nervous and moving out. For example, on the main body of the St. Joe, near the town of St. Maries, there’s an enormous colony of ospreys—eagles that moved in from the coast years ago when their feeding grounds began to disappear. Couldn’t the same thing happen to the sasquatch?”
    “Good thinking, son,” said Will earnestly. “Now, I haven’t been one to take the sasquatch seriously. Always thought it was an Indian myth, but lately things have been happening that are hard to explain. As I see it, the real danger here is human, not hominid. I don’t want guns popping at everything that moves. And I don’t want chiselers taking advantage of the honest fright of other people.” He rose, hitched at his belt, and said, “We’d better be on our way. We’ll look in on you in a couple of days. Now, use your heads, okay?”
    “Yes, sir,” Cap said.
    When the truck had rumbled off down the narrow road, Trixie stood up and said cheerfully, “Gleeps, that was good news!”
    “What’s so good about it?” Mart argued.