The Sasquatch Mystery

area. “Nothing over there.”
    “We’re just jumpy,” Trixie comforted.
    “You’re probably right.” Honey went back to bed.
    But then the sound came again—the suka , suka , suka they’d come to associate only with the sasquatch.
    Both girls held their noses and gasped, “Whew!” at the odor pervading their tent.
    “Isn’t that smell different?” Trixie whispered.
    “Smells like plain old skunk.” Honey choked, still holding her nose.
    “If we weren’t in the middle of the Joe country, I’d think some meanie was trying to scare us,” Trixie muttered. “But—”
    Honey sighed. “But who would do it, and why? Oh, Trix, it must have been a skunk. Let’s try to get some sleep.”
    Just as she drifted back to sleep; Trixie thought of the vehicle that had labored upriver. If Knut had not met it, it had to be some place between this camp and the pass. There's only one road was her last waking thought.
    Wednesday had been such a long, strenuous, and worrisome day that it was past midmorning when the young people awoke on Thursday. Then, like puppets whose strings are pulled by one person’s hands, they all popped out of sleeping bags and into the campground at the same time. They found Miss Trask sitting alone by the camp table.
    “Good morning,” she called. “I have a pot of hot oatmeal waiting for you.” Briskly Miss Trask began to fill cereal bowls.
    After breakfast, Brian removed Trixie’s bandages, allowing her to wash and dress for the day before replacing them. Hallie arose from the table, scooped up Trixie’s dishes along with her own, and headed for the dishpan.
    “Everybody else dunks his or her own,” she declared. “I’m giving Cap till noon to come marchin’ home. That gives me a couple of hours to snoop around here and uncover that pack rat’s mansion. Maybe we’ll find another clue there.”
    “I’d like to help if I could,” Knut said, “but I’ve got to scrub out the cab of that truck with tomato juice and lots of hot soapy water. It still smells like skunk.”
    “That’s not the only thing that smells like skunk,” Honey told them. “Our tent does, too— or at least it did. I think it’s aired out now.” She swallowed the last of her huckleberries before explaining about the early-morning disturbance they’d had.
    “There’s something rotten in Denmark,” Hallie declared.
    “Or skunky in northern Idaho,” said Mart.
    Knut shook his head and lifted the can of hot water from the coals. “I want to have the truck in decent condition before Ron Duncan comes. We may need to use it.”
    Knut, Mart, and Jim began scouring and scrubbing the truck.
    Quickly and expertly, Hallie plaited her long, smooth black hair.-She coiled the two braids around her head and settled her straw hat with a slap on its crown. “Who’s going with me?”
    Trixie and Honey stood up, but Di held back. “I don’t know what to look for,” she explained.
    “Can’t you recognize a pile Of sticks when you see it?” Hallie drawled.
    “Or where,” Di went on stubbornly.
    “Just look for a pile of driftwood that couldn’t be driftwood because of where it is,” Hallie ordered. As she tramped out of camp, she paused to add, “Especially around a fallen tree.”
    Still reluctant, Di went with the other girls.
    Hallie chose to search the area of woods behind the girls’ tents. When they had moved farther and farther from camp with no success, she led the way back to the creek to search its north bank. “Pack rats don’t like water, but they like to fool the rest of the world by building near water.”
    Dutifully Trixie hunted for a trash pile. She also watched for eighteen-inch footprints and any other unusual bruise on the tender surface of the earth.
    When Honey finally located the pack rat’s nest, Trixie realized that she had passed that heap of broken sticks many times since Monday. It wasn’t far from the spot where Cap had disappeared. A path, no more than three inches wide, led to an entrance barely large enough for the tiny mammal to squeeze through.
    Hallie got a firm grasp on one of the larger sticks near the bottom of the heap. She directed Di and Honey to do the same.
    “Lift when I count three. One... two....” Before Hallie got to three, a long watersnake slithered out.
    “It’s a rattler!” Di screamed.
    “Diana Lynch!” Hallie yelled. “We’re too high in the mountains to worry about rattlers! And even if it is a rattler, it’s not chasing