Fear Stalks Grizzly Hill (4 page)

I
N SPITE OF THEIR
interrupted sleep, the early sunlight woke Brian, and he woke Sean. Alan was already down in the kitchen, getting out cereal and milk for breakfast.

“I tested the flashlights,” Alan said, and pointed to where they lay on the kitchen counter. “Hurry up and eat, and we can get going.”

Brian quickly gobbled down his breakfast. “Wait till I mix up some plaster of paris.”

But Sean ate more slowly. Mr. Everitt, Mr. Shaw, and Mr. Webber had warned them against going into the forest. Was it because they knew something and weren’t telling?

“Hurry up, Sean!” Brian said. “We’re ready to go.”

Sean pushed back his bowl, still half-full of cereal. He wiped his mouth on his shirt, and picked up his flashlight.

Alan was familiar with the trail that led deeper into the woods, so their only stops were to pour plaster into the tracks made by animals Brian recognized. “Deer!” he said. “And over there—fox. I know those.”

“I don’t see any more of those wide footpads with claws,” Alan told him.

“I don’t either,” Brian said. “I’ve been wondering about that. The animal’s wild, not somebody’s pet, so why is it hanging around the houses?”

“And our bedroom window?” Sean said.

“If you’re through with that cast,” Alan said to Brian, “let’s get going. The grizzly’s den is still about fifteen minutes away.”

The forest was silent when they reached a small clearing. Alan pointed to the rock-face in the hill ahead of them, with an opening in it just wide enough for a large, fat bear to squeeze through.

Alan climbed inside the den first, and Brian soon followed.

For a moment Sean waited outside the opening, unwilling to crawl through it. He looked around at the lonely forest that surrounded him—the totally quiet forest. He couldn’t hear a single rustle of leaves. Not even the small sounds of insects moving through the grasses. He listened carefully, but there wasn’t even the trill of a bird to break the silence.

What if something came crashing through the underbrush? What if something rose up ahead of him, roaring loudly? What if it swooped down from the sky, claws gleaming, and he was outside, all by himself?

Sean bent down and scrambled through the opening into the cave,

“Phew!” he said and held his nose. “This place stinks!”

“Do any other animals use this den?” Brian asked.

“I don’t think so,” Alan said, but he quickly glanced into the darkness at the back of the cave. The beam from his flashlight would go only so far.

Sean gave a start. “What was that noise?” he asked.

“What noise?” Brian said.

“It was a kind of snuffle.”

They all began edging toward the opening of the cave, but a louder, thumping noise stopped them.

“Wait! “Brian whispered. “Whatever made that snuffling noise isn’t inside the cave. It’s right outside the opening.”

“Is it coming in after us?” Sean grabbed Brian’s arm.

“What should we do?” Alan asked.

Brian didn’t have time to answer. With a dull thump, something closed off the entrance to the cave.

Three flashlights snapped on. “Bri!” Sean gasped. “Someone shut us in here!”

I
BET IT WAS LUCY
,” Alan said. “She’s getting even with us.”

Brian shook his head. “I don’t think it’s Lucy. Remember? Yesterday your mom said something about going shopping today with Lucy.”

Alan’s voice shook. “Then what closed off the cave? What if it’s a rock? We can’t move a big rock! How are we ever going to get out?”

“Help!” Sean yelled. His heart began beating hard.

“Calm down,” Brian said. “It won’t do any good to panic.” He crawled to where the opening of the cave was and stretched out his arm. Then he winced as his fingers touched the object. “Yuck!” he said. “Whatever’s there is warm and furry.”

“I knew it! Bears!” Sean yelped.

“Try
Rusty
,” Brian said. He shone his light on the opening, and they could see the white-and-brown splotches.

Brian pushed hard against Rusty, but the dog didn’t move.

Alan and Sean squeezed in next to Brian at the cave’s entrance. “Go away, Rusty!” Sean yelled and helped push at the dog’s furry back.

“I bet somebody told Rusty to sit and stay,” Alan said. “He’s just obeying commands.”

“Why would anyone tell him to sit at the cave’s opening?” Sean asked.

“We’ve been warned not to go into the woods,” Brian told him. “We didn’t pay attention to the warning, so now someone is trying to scare us away.”

“Why? It doesn’t make sense,” Alan said.

“We’ll figure that out later,” Brian said. “Right now, let’s see if we can get Rusty to move.”

He and Alan poked and prodded Rusty. They shouted his name, but nothing they tried did any good.

Then Alan said, “I wish we had some dog yummies to give him.”

Rusty gave a wiggle, and they could hear his tail thump.

“Dog yummies!” Sean yelled.

At the magic words, Rusty jumped away from the opening to the cave, wiggling and barking. Sean, Alan, and Brian squirmed through the opening.

Sean looked through his pockets and found a crumbled oatmeal cookie for Rusty while Brian examined the forest around them. There was no sign that anyone had been there with Rusty, yet Brian knew that Rusty hadn’t followed them. What if Rusty had come with someone and had obeyed that person’s commands?

“Bri,” Sean said, “who tried to scare us? We’ve got to solve this case.”

“We will,” Brian said. “But this time we’re going to work the way Dad does. We’re going to solve our mystery with the help of a computer.”

He snapped his fingers at Rusty. “Let’s go back,” he said. “We haven’t got much time left, so we need to get to work.”

As he turned on Alan’s computer, Brian said, “The animal we’re tracking isn’t from around here. None of us have ever seen tracks like that before.”

“If it isn’t from around here, then how did it get here?” Sean asked.

“Remember what Mr. Shaw told us about people who illegally smuggle wild animals into the United States and sell them? He talked about a coatimundi. Let’s look one up and see if that’s the animal Sean saw last night.”

Eagerly, Brian and Alan stared at the photo that came up on the computer screen, but Sean shook his head. “I told you it wasn’t a coatimundi,” he said.

“Okay. Let’s try this another way,” Brian told him. “Let’s list all the things we know about the animal. It comes out at night. It eats fruit and has wide feet with long claws for climbing trees. It has a tail that can anchor it to a branch, and it has a face and ears like a bear.”

He typed all the facts into the computer, then waited. Slowly, a photograph began to form. As it finally turned into a complete picture, Sean sighed with relief. “A kinkajou!” he cried out. “Wow! That’s it!”

Brian read the text aloud. “It’s sometimes called a honey bear,” he said. “Sean, you weren’t so wrong when you said it was a bear.”

Alan read over Brian’s shoulder. “The kinkajou has a prehensile tail and soft woolly brown fur. It’s nocturnal and feeds on fruit, insects, and small mammals.”

“Then why didn’t it eat our hot dogs, too?” Sean asked.

“Hot dogs are
not
small mammals,” Alan said.

Sean thought a moment, then made a face. “Yuck!” he said.

“Listen to this,” Brian said and read aloud, “‘Kinkajous live in tropical forests from Mexico to Brazil.’“ He leaned back and looked at Sean and Alan. “That means someone must have brought it into the country or have bought it for a pet—someone in this neighborhood. We need to find out which of the neighbors traveled to Central or South America recently.”

Alan frowned as he thought. “I’ll give you information about the neighbors,” he said.

“Wait!” Brian told him. He pulled out his notebook and pencil then nodded. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“Mr. Everitt travels a lot,” Alan said. “Last week he left Rusty with Mr. Shaw, who said something about taking care of Rusty again in another week or so.”

Brian checked through his notes, then nodded. “Go ahead. What about Mr. Shaw.”

“I fed Mr. Shaw’s pets the week before last when he said he had to go to Sacramento for a program about funding animal shelters.”

“Don’t forget Mr. Webber,” Sean said.

“I was just getting to him,” Alan said. “Mr. Webber was gone again last week on some kind of business, but his wife stayed home and fed their animals. She always does.”

“We can leave out Miss Crane,” Sean said. “She doesn’t have pets.”

“That’s what she told us,” Brian said. “But remember, every week or so trucks from the furniture company come and go from her house. She could be in the middle of an animal smuggling deal.”

“How do we get one of them to admit they traveled to Central or South America for animals?” Alan asked.

“Nobody’s going to admit it. Nobody’s going to confess,” Brian said.

“Then how do we find the one who’s guilty?”

Brian and Sean looked at each other and smiled. Sean knew they were thinking the same thing. “We capture the kinkajou,” Sean said.

“Then we might find out who’s guilty when the smuggler tries to get him back,” Brian said.

“Course, he might be hard to capture,” Sean admitted.

Brian asked, “Sean, did you bring your camera—the one that takes night pictures without a flash?”

“Yes,” Sean said and grinned. “Hey! Maybe we can at least get the kinkajou’s picture!”

Brian grinned back. They were going to solve this case. He knew they would. “Okay,” he said. “Now it’s time to make some plans.”

I
MPATIENT BECAUSE THEY HAD
to wait at least until dusk to carry out their plans, Brian, Sean, and Alan kept busy with other things. By early evening Brian had laid out his cleaned and labeled plaster casts on Alan’s bed and called Mr. Nash to take a look at them.

“Very nice,” Mr. Nash said. He picked up one of the kinkajou’s prints. “So this is our mystery animal.”

“Not a mystery anymore, Dad,” Alan said. “We found out it’s the paw print of a kinkajou.”

“A kinkajou? In northern California?”

Alan’s bedroom door flew open, and Lucy stormed in.

“Dad!” she wailed. “Make them stop!”

“Stop what?” Mr. Nash asked.

“Throwing pinecones at me!” Lucy said. “I was out in the backyard, minding my own business, when they started throwing pinecones.”

“No, we didn’t,” Sean said. “We were up here, working on Brian’s casts.”

“Oh, sure,” Lucy said.

“The boys are right,” Mr. Nash said. “I’ve been here with them.”

“Were you with them ten minutes ago?”

“Well, no, but …”

“Ha!” Lucy shouted. She went to the window and pointed. “I was right there under that tree, when they started throwing pinecones. Three of them even hit me! I bet they threw them from right up here!”

“We wouldn’t have thrown pinecones,” Alan said. “We would have thrown mushy, rotting banana skins, or dead frogs, or …”

“That’s enough,” Mr. Nash said. “Lucy … Alan … I expect you to get along with each other.”

“Little brothers are a pain!” Lucy said and stomped out of the room. Mr. Nash followed her.

“Who threw the pinecones at Lucy?” Sean asked. “The kinkajou?”

“Sure,” Brian said.

“I knew I liked that animal,” Alan said.

“Look, it’s just about dark,” Brian told Sean and Alan. “Thanks to Lucy we know what tree the kinkajou must be hiding in. Let’s carry out our plan.”

Alan cut up some chunks of oranges, bananas, and apples. He put them into a plastic dish and carried it out to the backyard.

“Put it close to that tree,” Brian whispered and pointed.

He and Sean, who had his camera ready to go, hid in the nearby bushes. Alan joined them.

In the moonlight they could see a long, thin animal crawl out of a hollow in the tree. It climbed head first down the trunk, its claws gripping the bark. Its tail, which was longer than its body, curled around a branch for support. Occasionally it stopped and raised its head cautiously. It had the face of a small bear cub, with the same rounded ears.

With its back feet still clinging to the tree trunk, it reached out with its front paws and grabbed a piece of fruit.