The Sasquatch Mystery

Stiffly he plodded and dropped into the first chair he reached. He stretched out both legs, leaned back, and closed his eyes. Brown hairs fuzzed his jaws and upper lip. He had lost the thong that usually tied his long brown hair. Scratched, bruised, and dirty, Cap Belden was the most beautiful sight Trixie had ever seen.
    Trixie saw that Cap’s feet were bound with pieces of leather, tied with knotted thongs that had to be the long fringes from his handsome jacket. “Why did you whack up your jacket?” she asked. “Where are your shoes?”
    Cap looked regretful. “After I got away from one Swisher, another one clobbered me with the butt of his shotgun. They loaded me in that old wagon they racket around in and took me to that deserted logging camp on Cedar Mountain. They stole my moccasins and dumped me. I worked my way out of their ropes. I’ve been walking ever since, but it was good-bye jacket, hello foot bindings—or I wouldn’t have made it. I could use some food, though.”
    Hallie bustled about, eyes glowing with black fire. Her mouth could not stop smiling. She declared proudly, “I told everyone that Cap could live off the land!”
    “Just barely,” Cap mumbled.
    After Cap had eaten, the exhausted campers sank into bedrolls for the first truly untroubled sleep since their adventures had begun.
    Trixie slept peacefully, comforted to know that Cap was safe, and so was old Tank. Once, midway between dream and waking, she marveled at the oneness with environment possessed by those two—a sixteen-year-old mountain man and an eighty-year-old hard-rock miner. If their environment included a real sasquatch from this time forward, she knew they would live with it and not against it.
    “And I hope there is,” Trixie mumbled.
    “Is what, Trix?”
    Trixie’s round blue eyes flew open, but she saw no monster’s face. Honey was bending over her bed, telling her that it was nearly time for the Bob-Whites to join Knut and Gloria on their date.
    “A sasquatch,” Trixie answered. “I hope it’s really real.”
    Hope? Why had she used that word? She had seen the strange beast of the forest at first light of dawn and at noon. She had heard its cries and had known its scent. Soon her name would be added to the long, long list of people whose lives had been changed by a sight, a sound, or an odor. Until the mystery was solved in a laboratory, Trixie could cling to the memory of something incredibly ancient, dimly seen, and beyond understanding.