The Sasquatch Mystery

stream. Mountains stretched beyond that, till blue distance swallowed up the distinction between mountain and sky. This had to be close to the spot where Cap’s friends, the foresters, had seen the sasquatch, Trixie thought. Up here, it was almost easy to accept the existence of that strange creature—practically easier than accepting the existence of other human beings.
    Trixie crushed a berry between her fingers, and the faint odor of skunk cabbage disappeared. She thought briefly of the thief, but for the moment, nothing seemed to matter more than this berry, and this berry, and this one.
    Knut shouted to his nearest neighbors, Mart and Hallie, who replied in unison. Then they hallooed to Jim. After Jim called back to them, he shouted to Honey and Trixie.
    “Can you hear me?” Trixie called.
    Jim answered, “Hear you.” You, you, you, said the echo.
    After a while, Trixie realized that her pail was almost full. If the others had worked this steadily, Miss Trask would have enough fruit to serve at several meals, even after Knut took his offering to his girl friend’s mother.
    The back of Trixie’s neck and shoulders felt hot. She noticed that Honey had worked farther up the hill, and she ambled over to join her for a while.
    Just then, she saw a patch of extra-large berries. With her eyes on their juiciness, Trixie stepped forward. In front of her was an obstruction of some kind, but in the litter of weeds, it looked solid enough to climb over.
    Trixie lifted her berry pail high and clambered up—but not over!
    With unbelievable speed, her feet shot out from under her. Landing with her pail lodged miraculously between her knees, she whooshed down what was apparently an abandoned log chute. Trees and bushes whizzed past her astonished eyes. I've got to stop! she thought, but when she reached out, she was punctured by slivers from dried pine needles. She couldn’t hang on long enough even to slow her plunge down the mountain. Those pine needles felt hot enough to burn her, too. As she sped, she became part of a great nest of needles, all tangled with a family of field mice, a chipmunk, and the slapping branches of bushes.
    Just when she feared she was surely going to the very floor of the valley itself, she saw that up ahead a huge pine had toppled over, dangling one limb into the log chute.
    And on that toppled tree... was a huge, furry, gray beast!
    With bleeding hands, Trixie made one last effort to save herself. She failed, but at least the collected needles and her berry pail whammed the limb before she herself did. Trixie stopped with such a sharp jerk that her neck snapped back and she bit the tip of her tongue. Tasting blood, Trixie shook her head, not daring to allow herself one second of blackout as long as that bear—or whatever it was—was around.
    Trixie’s pine needle hurricane startled the great gray beast from its nap. It let out a roar, then rose instantly to its feet, seeming to block out the entire sky.
    From under a shelf like brow, great red eyes stared at the terrified girl. Yellow teeth shone wetly. Huge dangling hands moved when the grayish shoulders shrugged.
    Then the beast leaped. Bushes crunched from its immense weight. With a quick clatter of teeth, it turned away—and disappeared into the underbrush.
    Not daring to move yet, Trixie made a quick survey, decided she had broken no bones, and concluded that she had escaped the beast for the moment.
    But what was she to do now? She dared not shout for help, lest the beast itself hear her fright and return.
    She listened with the intensity of a mouse trapped under a cat’s clawed paw. She heard a clucking, chattering sound and then a by-now-familiar suka, suka, suka.
    “Oh, no!” Trixie moaned. Could there be two of the beasts, conferring about how best to trap this unusually soft, furless animal that was herself?
    So near to hysteria that she knew she would burst into wild laughter or uncontrollable tears if she made a sound, Trixie pulled her bleeding tongue between her bruised lips and counted silently, One, two, three, four, five! One, two , three, four, five! over and over. When the rhythm had calmed the throbbing in her throat, the tight rubber band around her head stretched enough to allow her to think.
    “What was that?” she muttered. She had assumed that it was a bear, for what else of that great size roamed this wilderness, and what else was capable of standing erect and walking on two feet? But why had she