“Good.” She turned to the truck driver. “I do not have the money here today,” she told him. “It is all right with your boss if I pay for the cement next week?”
“Oh, sure, Miss Schmid,” said the man.
“Mrs. Havemeyer,” Anna corrected him.
“Sorry, Mrs. Havemeyer. If you’ll just sign the bill so we have a record that you received the cement, we can — ”
“Sign the bill?” For the first time, Anna seemed a bit uncertain. Her whole body had gone tense.
“It’s a rule,” said the driver. “If we don’t get the money, we get a signature.”
“Oh,” said Anna. “All right. I’ll take it in the house and sign.”
“No need to go to all that trouble.” The driver took a ball-point pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to Anna. “Here Just sign anywhere on the bill. Want to lean on the fender?”
“Oh.” Anna looked at her husband, then back at the driver. She handed the dish towel to her husband and put the bill on the fender of the truck. With the driver’s pen she wrote something on the bill. It seemed to the boys in the kitchen that she was a long time about it. When she finished, she handed the bill and the pen to the driver. “That is all right?” she asked.
The man barely glanced at the bill. “That’s fine, Mrs. Havemeyer.”
“Usually I write more neatly,” said Anna. “Today I am baking bread, working with the dough. My hand shakes.”
“We all have our shaky days,” said the driver cheerfully. He folded the bill and tucked it into his pocket, climbed into the truck, and backed out into the road.
“Idiot!” snapped Havemeyer when the truck was gone.
“I told you I did not want to do that,” said Anna. “You could have signed.”
“It’s Anna Schmid who’s the old customer with the building supply people, not Joe Havemeyer,” he said. “You didn’t have to run off at the mouth to that driver. He’s not a penmanship teacher.” Havemeyer was silent for a second, then repeated, “Idiot!”
Anna whirled around and started back toward the house. She had gone only a few steps when she stopped. “You are the idiot,” she said to Havemeyer. Her voice was low and very intense. “You and that stupid hole in the ground. I think you see things that are not real.”
“It’s real, all right,” declared Havemeyer. “I saw it up on the meadow and it’s been down here.”
“I do not believe it,” said Anna.
“You don’t believe anything you can’t taste or touch or count and put in a bank,” declared Havemeyer. “You’re a plodder. You wouldn’t know an original idea if it came up and bit you on the lip. Without me — ”
“I know. I know. I know all about that. You have the vision, hah? You have the imagination? Without you, where would I be? I think without you I would be better off. I am the one who takes the risk, and you are safe, you and your vision.”
“You’ll see,” said Havemeyer.
“I had better,” Anna snapped. She started again for the kitchen door.
“Cheese it!” whispered Pete.
The Three Investigators retreated from the kitchen to the living room and arranged themselves hastily in chairs. A moment later Anna stomped into the room, then stopped abruptly when she saw the boys.
“Oh,” she said “I did not know you were back.”
Jupiter put down the magazine he was pretending to read and stood up. “We were down at the campground this afternoon,” he told Cousin Anna. “We had an interesting talk with Mr. Smathers.”
Anna nodded. “He is a strange little man” she said.
“He claims he can talk with animals and they understand him.”
Anna shrugged. “Men!” she said. “Their heads are filled with cotton — all of them.” She went past the boys and up the stairs, and the boys heard the sound of a door slamming.
“I think,” said Bob, “that the honeymoon is over.”
Pete scratched his ear and frowned. “I don’t get it,” he said. “She didn’t want to sign for that cement and she lied to the driver. She’s not baking bread. And what risk is she talking about?”
Jupiter Jones leaned against the fireplace. “Cousin Anna thinks her new husband is seeing things. She doesn’t believe it’s real — something Havemeyer saw-up in the meadow, something that’s been down here.”
Pete got up and began to pace back and forth, his shoulders hunched and his head down. “Could it be,” he asked, “that there is some truth in Gabby Richardson’s stories?”
“A tranquilizer gun,” said Jupiter. “A tranquilizer gun and something Havemeyer saw up on the meadow. Fellows, I think we know why Havemeyer has that gun!”
There was dead silence for perhaps half a minute, then Bob said softly, “He’s hunting a monster.”
“That’s… that’s wild” said Pete.
“Utterly insane,” agreed Jupiter, “but I think that must be what he’s doing. Now listen, we’re on vacation. Why don’t we go for a hike up on the meadow tomorrow?”
“A hike or a monster hunt?” asked Pete.
“A tracking expedition,” said Jupe. “If there is something strange wandering around up there, we should be able to find traces. There should be tracks.”
Pete looked rather pale. “Maybe it isn’t the kind of thing that leaves tracks,” he said.
“Certainly it leaves tracks,” declared Jupiter. “Joe Havemeyer swept the yard this morning so that no one could see its tracks. It isn’t a bear — there’s nothing special about a bear — so it’s something else.”
Jupe grinned. “Mr. Smathers knows what it is, but he’ll never tell. But for the first time that swimming pool makes sense. I know what that hole in the ground reminds me of — one of the animal pits at the San Diego Zoo!”
9
The Beast in the Woods
The Three Investigators were up at daybreak the next morning. They rolled up their sleeping bags and stowed them in the closet under the stairs, then left a note on the kitchen table to inform Hans and Konrad that they were going on a hike. After a quick breakfast of toast and milk, they were out of the inn and working their way up toward the higher country beyond the ski slope. Jupe carried a knapsack, and Pete had a canteen of water slung from his belt.
At first the boys climbed in the cleared area of the ski slope, but the loose stones kept rolling under their feet. After Bob had stumbled twice, they took to the firmer ground under the trees that grew alongside the slope. There they made better time.
After twenty minutes, even Pete was panting for breath in the thin air. He stopped climbing and leaned against a tree trunk.
“From the inn, this mountain didn’t look awfully high,” he gasped.
Bob laughed. “Is the great athlete out of condition?”
“My lungs are spoiled,” said Pete. “They’re used to operating at sea level.”
Jupiter stood still and breathed in and out for a second or two. “It shouldn’t be very far now,” he decided.
“Keep telling yourself that,” said Pete.
Jupe nodded and the boys climbed on, sometimes pulling themselves up by grasping tree limbs. It was another ten minutes before the ground under their feet was level. The trees grew more sparsely. Then they were out from under the pines and standing at the edge of a mountain meadow.
“Beautiful!” gasped Jupiter, when he got his breath.
The wind made ripples on the long, green grass, and here and there a boulder thrust up, sun-bleached and white. Huge trees rimmed the meadow on three sides. On the fourth side, the side which ended at the top of the ski slope, the boys could see for miles. The towers of the ski lift marched down the slope from the meadow to the road and Anna’s inn, far below. Beyond the inn were stands of pine, and way beyond that, the dry, sandy stretches of the Owens Valley. Behind the boys, to the west, rose the rocky summit of Mount Lofty, flanked by other, higher peaks of the Sierras. On some of the mountain tops were glaciers which never melted, even in midsummer.
The boys walked slowly along until Bob spotted a track in the bare earth near the rim of the ski slope. He pulled out a paperback wildlife manual that he’d found at the inn, and turned to the chapter on animal tracks. Kneeling down, he compared the print in the earth with the drawing of a bear track in the book, then shrugged. “It’s a bear, all right,” he told Jupe and Pete. “That’s exactly what you would expect to find up here.”
“It isn’t what we’re looking for,” said Jupiter.
“What are we looking for?” asked Pete. “Also, do we really want to find it?”
“Something different,” declared Jupe. “Some kind of track that isn’t in that manual.”
“I hope we only find the track,” said Pete. “Not the thing that made it.”
The wind gusted across the meadow, rustling the grass and making the trees whisper. Suddenly, from behind the boys, there came a soft, inquisitive whimper.
Pete jumped.
Jupiter Jones turned. “Oh, no!” he said.
Pete heard something scamper and he felt a sniffing at his ankle. He looked down. A bear cub, only a few months old, stared up at him with bright, friendly eyes.
“Where… where’s the mother?” Pete quavered.
“Right behind the baby!” cried Bob. “Run for it!”
There was an angry bawling. The bear cub scooted in one direction and the boys dashed in another, toward the ski slope.
Pete reached the slope first. He jumped, then let himself roll and tumble until he was twenty yards down the incline. Bob and Jupe came slipping and sliding after him. The three crouched on the dry, stony hillside and listened to the mother bear scolding the cub. The cub yelped sharply.
“She’s probably giving it a cuff on the ear,” guessed Bob.
“We’ll be okay,” said Jupe. “So long as we don’t threaten the cub, she won’t bother us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of threatening her cub.” said Pete warmly. “Rule number one: Never get too near a bear cub when the mother’s around. I only wish someone had told the cub about it.”
“It knows now,” Bob assured him.
The three waited for a while. When no more growls or yelps were heard from the meadow above them, they climbed back up. They were in time to see the mother bear and her baby disappear into the woods on the west side of the meadow.
Jupiter Jones took off his knapsack. “They probably won’t come back,” he said. “However, this is one place where Mr. Smathers would say we were the intruders, and he would be right. The bears were here first and they’re still here, so we’d better watch our steps.”
“I plan to,” said Pete. “In fact, I may just watch my steps taking me back down to the inn!”
“You don’t want to find out what Havemeyer’s hunting with his tranquilizer gun?” asked Bob.
“Yes, I guess I do,” admitted Pete. “Only I don’t think I want to meet it face to face!”
From his knapsack, Jupe took three small devices. “We can cover the ground faster if we separate,” he said. “But we had better not get out of touch with each other. We don’t really know what we’re looking for or what we might meet, so I brought along the directional signal and emergency alarm units. I packed them at home because I thought they’d come in handy on a hike, and indeed they will.”
Pete sighed. “They’re better than nothing,” he said. He took one of the devices from Jupiter and turned it over in his hands. “You sure it’s working okay?” he asked. “I’d hate to get marooned up here and not be able to call for help.”
“I tested all three signals before we left Rocky Beach,” said Jupiter. “They’re in perfect order. You remember how they work?”
“Like most of your inventions, they work just fine,” said Bob.
It was true. Jupiter Jones had a way of putting together salvaged bits of machinery or electronic equipment and turning out devices which served The Three Investigators well while they worked on many of their cases. The directional signal and emergency alarm was smaller than the walkie-talkies which the boys sometimes used, but it was still effective. Each unit broadcast a signal — a beep — which could be picked up by every other unit, and which got louder and faster the nearer one approached it. Each of the units also had a dial to indicate the direction a beep was coming from.
In addition to being a sending and receiving set for electronic beeps, each unit had a special alarm — a red light which could be activated by voice alone. When one of The Three Investigators was in trouble or wanted the others to come to him, he had only to say the word “help” near his set, and the red lights flashed on the other units.
“Now, here’s what I suggest we do.” Jupiter paused and scanned the woods which rimmed the meadow. “I think it unlikely that we’ll find many footprints here in the open,” he said. “The grass is too thick. Besides, if there is some strange animal here, it must be sheltered back away from the meadow or we’d have seen it by now. Yet we know it has come out into the open, because Joe Havemeyer told Anna he saw it on the meadow. That means it had to come through the trees to get here. The ground is clear under those trees; there isn’t any grass. If we’re going to pick up any strange tracks, that’s where we’ll find them.”
“Makes sense,” said Bob.
“So why don’t I search the woods on the north side of the meadow?” said Jupiter. “I can work my way west from the ski slope. Pete, you could take the woods to the west. You might start at the big white stone and go south. Bob, do you want to go over the ground on the south side? You could start from here and keep going until you meet Pete. Every few minutes we can signal one another on our directional finders, and if something looks threatening or especially interesting, we’ll activate the alarms.”
“I’ll sure do that,” promised Pete.
Jupiter put his knapsack on his shoulders, saluted his friends with one hand, and went off to the right. Pete grinned, as if to show he was really not scared, and headed west through the long grass. Bob hesitated a moment, listening to the lonely sound the wind made on the quiet mountain. Then, holding his directional signal in one hand, he trudged to the south.
He looked back once. Jupiter had vanished among the trees on the north side of the meadow. He could see Pete, who had almost reached his section of the woods. Bob activated his directional signal. An answering beep came from Jupiter. Another beep came from Pete, who turned and waved across the meadow.
When he reached the woods on the south side of the field, Bob paused. In the open, under the blue sky, the early morning sun had been bright and warm. But the woods looked very dim and very dense. There was a pungent carpet of pine needles under the trees.
Bob began to walk west, not quite venturing in under the trees. He watched the ground as he went, stopping every few seconds to listen. He heard a jay cry out from some hidden place. A squirrel scampered along a branch.
Then he saw it. It was a faint depression, a place where some large creature had tramped down the earth under the trees and dislodged a few pine needles.
Bob touched the signal on his directional device. After a second, there was an answering beep from the north, and a second from the northwest. He considered shouting for help, to bring Jupe and Pete running to see his find, but there was nothing distinct about the track. He knew it was very likely another bear, or perhaps even a smaller animal. He decided to search farther in, under the trees, to see if he could find a better print.
He went into the dimness under the trees. Here and there he found patches of clear earth, and he hopefully examined these, but there were no more tracks. Twice he found places where fallen pine needles had been pressed down when some animal stepped on them, but the needles were strewn so thickly on the ground that they would not take a clear imprint. There was nothing that could be called a definite track.
Bob went on. The trees grew more closely together. The light grew dimmer, and at last the blue sky was hidden by the interlacing branches. Then, ahead, Bob saw brightness. He went more quickly, and stepped out from under the trees into a small clearing. Almost at his feet was what looked like a huge crack in the earth.
Bob edged forward and looked down into the crevice. It was a split in the ground almost fifty yards long and, in the widest places, about ten feet across. The sides were so sheer that they were almost straight up and down. At the bottom of this peculiar opening in the earth was snow, still unmelted by the summer warmth.