The Sasquatch Mystery

Trixie awake. It was so quiet that she could hear the
    whispering, if not the individual words, between Jim and Knut.
    Like an exclamation point at the end of one of Knut’s sentences, Trixie heard a soft fleep! that jerked her head up from her pillow. The sound seemed to rise from behind her tent.
    It was then that Di started to scream.

Pack-Rat Condominium • 12

    HYSTERICALLY DI SHRIEKED, “Help, help; it’s got me! It's got me!"
    Trixie’s bandaged hands prevented her from getting out of her sleeping bag immediately. She could see Jim and Knut spring toward Di’s tent, and in another minute, the whole group had followed, barefoot, in pajamas, and carrying heavy flashlights. Miss Trask patted Di’s shaking shoulders until she stopped screaming.
    “For heaven’s sake, Di, it was just a pack rat!” Hallie drawled. “I turned on my light the minute you started hollering. The poor little varmint was scared spitless. Between your screechin’ and my light, he must have thought he was a goner.”
    “Are you going to be all right, Di?” Knut asked.
    “I—I guess so,” Di quavered. “You’d yell, too, Hallie, if something furry ran across your face!”
    Knut lifted an object from her pillow. “See? At least your visitor left you a present.”
    That night the pack rat’s gift was a safety pin.
    “Here, Trix, you can use it on your bandages,” Knut said.
    Trixie caught it in a white mitt. “Ugh,” she said. “It looks like a bug.”
    Honey picked up the pin and held it close to her flashlight. “Why would a safety pin be stuck through a little piece of fur?” she wondered.
    “Let me see that!” Jim almost snatched the pin away and strode back to the folding camp table with it.
    Everyone else followed, shoulders hunched in the night wind, while Jim lighted the swinging lantern. He took from his pocket the piece of fur he had removed from Tank’s door hasp.
    “Well, I’m no expert on furs, but these scraps sure look alike to me,” he said finally.
    Everyone had to agree.
    “That pack rat didn’t carry a safety pin all the way here from Tank’s cabin,” Hallie declared firmly.
    “Anything is possible, I suppose,” Knut said, adjusting his glasses to peer at the fur again.
    “But not likely!” Hallie snapped. “For heaven’s sake, Knut, that little guy has short legs. He would have had to churn dust to make it from Tank’s place to here since sundown.”
    “Maybe he started earlier,” Honey suggested. “He just comes out at night,” Hallie pointed out. She snapped a long finger against her thumb. “You know what? I’ll bet he has a mansion near here.”
    “A mansion?” Di repeated with a nervous giggle.
    “Sure! He builds a great big place, two feet high, with a couple of rooms, so he has space for all his junk.”
    “Why do you think he lives near?” Mart asked, curious.
    “Because he was drumming up a storm, even while trying to get out of my light. That’s his alarm signal. Why would he signal for nothing?”
    “Maybe he was afraid of the sasquatch,” Trixie said, explaining about the one sharp fleep! she had heard. For the moment, she let that thought go and concentrated on the fur. “Animals don’t use hasps, and they don’t use safety pins. The connecting link between those two pieces of fur has to be a person. Therefore, isn’t it very possible that—”
    Honey finished her thought. “That there’s also a connection between Tank and Cap—a man? One fur scrap was found at Tank’s place, the other in Cap’s camp.”
    Miss Trask threw the proverbial cold water on Trixie’s theory. “But the beast was here,” she said. “It struggled with Cap—Diana and I saw it. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do tonight. We’d all better get some sleep.”
    Mumbling their good nights, the campers returned to their sleeping bags. This time, Knut and Jim covered the coals with ashes and dirt before they went to their tents.
    Some time before morning, Trixie roused, aware of discomfort in her hands. She wiggled her fingers and fretted with her bandages.
    “Are you okay, Trixie?” murmured Honey. “Gleeps, I got my bandage stuck in my bag zipper....”
    “Let me help you.” Honey crossed the narrow aisle, turned on her light, and freed Trixie from the metal zipper. As she started to return to her own bed, Honey tilted her blond head to listen. “Wh-What was that?”
    “Check the food lockers!” Trixie urged.
    Honey played her flashlight over the whole cooking