The Sasquatch Mystery

footprint; she had heard one story told by Cap’s friend Will; she had seen its ghostly bulk in the first light of day, and had descended like a human tornado on its sleeping place at noon.
    But in all these things, she had sensed no real menace. A displaced animal was trying to adjust to a new environment while not yet able to sort enemies from friends.
    Certainly it was big enough to have caused trouble with the foresters in their pickup. It could have attacked me, Trixie thought, but it didn't. Why, then, had the monster fought with Cap and perhaps with Tank?
    “What would make Cap mad enough to fight?” Trixie wondered aloud.
    “He’d fight for somebody younger or smaller or weaker, at the drop of a hat,” said Hallie.
    “Or older?” Trixie suggested.
    “He’d fight a whole army for Tank,” Hallie declared.
    “Would he fight the man who stole our food?”
    “I doubt it,” Hallie said. “I think he’d just figure that the man must have needed it worse than we did. Cap would give him a juicy piece of his mind to gnaw on, but Cap wouldn’t worry us to death by getting into a brawl and disappearing. Cap and Knut and I take care of each other. Those parents of ours in South America expect us to be stuck together with some kind of glue and at least recognizable when they get home.
    “ ’Course, the sasquatch hadn’t moved in before they left the country. When something new is added, we have to make up some new rules. Oh, Trix, I don’t know what set of rules Cap is playing by now!”
    Trixie waved her taped and bandaged hands. “I don’t know either, but somewhere there has to be some clue we’ve overlooked. There simply has to be!”
    “I wish we had found that tuft of fur before Knut left for town,” Jim said to Trixie. “I’d like to know what a lab test would show.”
    “What tuft of fur?” Hallie demanded.
    “We found some fur tangled in Tank’s door hasp—”
    “And you kept your mouth shut?” Hallie broke in fiercely.
    “Thou hath a temper like unto a Beatrix,” Mart said lightly. “Try to see Jim’s point. If he had told us he found fur in the door, we’d have seen bears and monsters behind every tree on the trail. Right, Jim?”
    “Right,” Jim said. “Look, I see the campfire!” Brian was piling more logs on the fire when the five mountain climbers hurried into the firelight.
    “I’ve made cocoa,” Miss Trask called. “Brian, will you pass the cups? Come, Hallie, and tell us what you found out.”
    Hallie dropped heavily into a camp chair and rested elbows on the table. “A great big fat nothing—we didn’t find Cap, and we didn’t even see Tank.”
    Brian listened intently to the report on Tank’s camp. “It sounds like somebody was hunting for something.”
    “It’s a shame about that marvelous chair, said Miss Trask. “What could it have hidden?”
    “Perhaps it was used as a weapon,” Jim told her. “The moose that wore those flat antlers must have found them pretty handy for attack and defense.”
    Miss Trask shook her head. “That chair was heavy. It would take a great deal of strength to swing it.”
    “Maybe something heavy crashed into it.” Jim pulled from his pocket the tuft of fur and placed it in strong light. “Here’s a scrap of peltlike skin that we found.”
    Trixie was puzzled. “If this is a piece of fur scraped from a living animal, wouldn’t we see some dried blood?”
    Brian fingered the fur and added, “It’s a crazy idea, I suppose, but there seems to be more than one kind of fur here. See? There are some long, stiff hairs tangled in with shorter, softer fur. There’s color variation, too.”
    Almost angrily Hallie burst out, “I wish that birdbrain Cap was here! He could tell us if this covered the foreleg of a gopher or the left hindleg of a raccoon.”
    Trixie watched in anguish as Hallie went off to sit by herself for a while.
    Tired from the long day’s activity and worry, Hallie was still able to perch quietly, her booted feet placed neatly side by side. Only her hands betrayed her inner turmoil. She plucked bits of wool from her sweater, rolled the scraps into tiny balls with long, nervous fingers, then stored the woolen balls in the palm of her left hand. Long lashes shadowed the high, flat bones of her cheeks.
    Trixie moved around the circle to sit with Hallie. She was warmed by the smile of approval she got from Honey. Still, once there,
    Trixie could think of nothing she could say to make Hallie’s face