Bones On Black Spruce Mountain Read online

  Slowly, over the years, people forgot the details of the story. Slowly the tale took on the sound of something from a book. Everybody more or less forgot—everybody, that is, except Mr. Bateau.

  When Seth and Daniel were younger, they were frightened by the story and believed it. Now that they were older, they realized that grown-ups told the story because it was a good yarn, but they knew nobody really believed it. Seth and Daniel didn't really believe it either.

  Nobody believed the story except the little kids and Mr. Bateau, and Mr. Bateau was old and a little peculiar. At least that's what people said. Nobody alive had ever seen the bones. Old man Bateau's father was the last man said to have seen them and he'd been dead for years. And since nobody went up to the mountain, nobody even knew whether there really was a cave on the western face. Anyway, it would be impossible for anyone to survive up there. It was just a story, a story for little kids and old men who were kind of crazy. But though the boys doubted the story, it still fascinated them. The possibility that it might be true added excitement and mystery to their plan.

  By the time Mr. Bateau had finished talking, the boys were ready. They mounted their packs, kissed their parents good-bye, and headed down the lane toward the meadow behind the barn.

  "You boys be careful!" Daniel's mother shouted.

  "We will!"

  The five adults stood in the dooryard and watched the boys grow smaller as they moved across the meadow toward the woods. Then the long early-morning shadow of Black Spruce Mountain fell on them and took them in.

  In the batting of an eye they were gone, swallowed by the woods, and there was nothing left to look at but the mountain reaching darkly into the sky.

  Chapter 2

  Seth and Daniel struck the old logging road that ran alongside Tamarack Brook and headed upstream. It was a warm, clear day and the cool shade of the woods felt good. Already their pace had slowed from the fast, striding eagerness with which hikes always begin to a slower, steadier gait, the sure sign of those who know that there are many hard miles ahead.

  "Daniel, do you think Mr. Bateau really believes that story?"

  "Nah, how could he?"

  "I don't know, but when he tells it, it sounds so real. And he sounds so sincere."

  "I know."

  "Maybe he's right," Seth went on. "He was right about the beaver pond and the big trout in the middle of the swamp. Nobody believed that story either until we showed them proof. I hope he is right. If we could find the bones, we could prove to everybody he was right about that too."

  "Well, I don't believe the story. Look, Seth, have you ever seen or heard a ghost? All that stuff can be explained. Can you imagine a kid surviving up there for years? It's impossible. He'd freeze to death the first winter. What would he eat? How would he stay warm? It's impossible. All of it's impossible and you know it. Why would a kid do such a thing any-way? There's nothing to that story and there never was."

  "Maybe not, but it'll be fun to look for the bones even if we don't find anything." Seth was determined not to let Daniel spoil the adventure.

  The logging road hooked left and back toward the farm. Seth and Daniel dropped down over the bank of the brook and began hopping from rock to rock, working their way slowly upstream. Their rubber-bottom, leather-top boots were perfect for terrain such as this, not as hot as all-rubber boots, yet water-proof enough to travel through brooks and swamps. Ahead of them the boys could hear the dull roar of a waterfall. The ravine narrowed as they approached until, when they stood at the bottom of the falls, the sheer rock sides rose almost perpendicular far above them. They would either have to climb hand over hand up the ravine walls or retrace their steps and find a way around. Slowly they inched their way up the falls, gaining one plateau after another, with great effort and even greater care, until they stood panting at the top. Their hearts were pounding now, not so much from the exertion of the climb as from the fright they felt on looking back down to where they had been.

  The boys let their packs down slowly an settled themselves on a flat jut of rock about the size of a kitchen table. They rested briefly, listened to the roar of the falls, then headed upstream again.

  They came to a place where another old logging road crossed the brook. The log bridge had long since collapsed and been washed away.

  "Hey," Seth said, "I know this place. I 'was here last fall. This road will take us to the sugarhouse."

  The woods were remarkably still that morning. Only an occasional bluejay squawked away in front of them, announcing their presence to the unseen creatures all around. They followed the slight two-track depression of the ancient woods road up a gentle rise and through a flat, mature stand of hardwood trees. The August sun made jigsaw patterns of light and dark as it danced across the forest floor.

  Although Seth had been here before, things looked different now. The trees were still in leaf; the ground was choked with ferns and bushes. Seth couldn't be quite sure they were going in the right direction. But every now and then he saw a tree or a certain clump of trees or a wet place or a rock that gave off a familiar feeling. Although he didn't know exactly where he was, he wasn't lost either. He moved forward now, not with the kind of knowledge one gets from a map, the kind the mind deliberately retains, but rather with that strange sense, those vague feelings of what is right and wrong, stored in him from last fall's hike, feelings he hadn't known were there until now. It was the instinctive knowledge that he had been here before.

  They came to a fork in the road. Seth picked the direction that felt best and they pushed on. Seth knew his chances of finding the way were good if he could keep himself from doubting his feelings. If he could trust that odd urge to go this way instead of that, he'd get them there, but it was hard to do. Ever since he'd started school, he'd been taught to think, not feel, taught to mistrust his instincts. It was hard now to go forward riding entirely on a kind of knowledge he'd been told to disregard—hard but not impossible, and before long the angular lines of Isaiah Morey's sugarhouse loomed in front of them.

  The boys dropped their packs at the gaping open side of the ruined building and stepped in. Everything was the same as it had been the year before, the same litter of beams and gnarled tin, the same broken table and chair, the same ladder made from poles leaning against the wall. There was one change, however. The porcupine Seth had found stiffened and bloated with death, was now deflated and shrinking to a small clot of rotting hide and bone.

  Seth stepped around the porcupine and gingerly opened the door that led into the sugarhouse shed. During the winter the shed roof had caved in from the weight of snow, and now the shed was filled with a rubble of rafters and metal roofing. Where Seth had found an old and dirty but useful place to stay, he now found a chaotic tangle of decay. The shed would be useless as a camp. The boys would have to make other plans.

  The collapsed roof had allowed light and rain to come in, and weeds were growing in the shed. The old coat Seth had found last fall hanging from a nail on the wall had fallen to the floor, where it lay limp and wet. There were raspberries sprouting from the soggy mattress on the cot. The place wasn't a shed anymore; it had become a confused pile of sticks and tin. Last fall Seth had felt the presence of the men and women who worked here years before; now he felt nothing. All the ghosts were gone. The place was too far gone even for them. There was nothing left, only the last remains, only that final sinking back into the earth. The shed was slowly returning to the ground. The boys stepped out into the sun.

  "Now what?" Seth asked. "We can't stay in there. I wouldn't want to if we could."

  "Well, for starters," Daniel replied, "how about some lunch? I'm starved."

  "Good idea. There's a nice big beech tree right up over the bank. I had lunch there last fall. Let's go up there."

  The boys settled under the beech and ate sandwiches and apples.

  "We better not hang around here too long," Daniel said. "We don't have a camp; we don't have any fish. We've got a lot of work to do
before dark and it must be noon already. Let's slide down into the ravine and work our way upstream until we find a good campsite. If that doesn't take too long, we can probably get set up before dark."

  The boys headed down a long sidehill covered with young spruce and fir not more than three feet high. The whole hill had been logged over a few years before and the young trees were growing profusely in the bright emptiness left by the loggers. Once into Lost Boy Brook ravine, however, huge ancient trees covered up the sky again.

  They stopped here and there on their upward climb to debate the merits of this spot or that as a campsite. They needed easy access to water. The brook would supply that. They also needed a level place on which to build their lean-to. Here in the lower reaches of the ravine the banks were far too steep. They continued up the ravine. Finally, far up into the mountains they found a spot where a small brook joined the main stream. Near the angle made by the junction of the two streams, there was a large, flat place clear of underbrush in a stand of tall hemlock and spruce. This was obviously the place. They unpacked. Seth put the folding saw together and looked around for poles with which to begin building the camp. He turned to see what Daniel was doing. Daniel had his fishing rod under his arm and was tying a hook on his line.

  "What are you doing?" Seth demanded. "I'm going fishing." "Fishing? We've got a camp to build. It's the middle of the afternoon. You're the one who rushed us over here to get to work."

  "Well, you build. I'll fish."

  "Come on! We can eat beans and bacon if we have to. Put away the fishing tackle and let's get to work."

  "It's not that big a job. We don't have to do everything together all the time. I'll help you when I get back. Up here I ought to be able to get a dozen in half an hour. I won't be gone long."

  "No sir, mister man, you're not going. I'm not your slave you know. You're going to help me here."

  Seth dropped the saw and grabbed at Daniel's fishing rod. Daniel pushed Seth away hard, knocking him down. As Seth got up, he saw Daniel's right hand ball into a fist, his knuckles whiten.

  Seth took a step backward. "What's the matter with you!" Daniel's hand loosened.

  "I don't know."

  There was a silence in which both boys stood shaking, looking at each other.

  "I'm sorry, Seth. I don't know what got into me. I'll stay here. We'll work on the lean-to together, then if we get done in time we can both go fishing."

  The two boys began gathering poles for the lean-to, but the incident had taken away the pleasure they usually felt in working together. Usually they got along well. Now something was different, something was wrong.

  Seth and Daniel had been good friends since the day Daniel was adopted by his parents five years before. There had been arguments, of course, and even an occasional fight, but never anything serious—except once. A couple of years ago, they had gotten into a fight, a real fistfight. Seth had given Daniel a bloody nose and Daniel had cut Seth's lip badly. But as soon as there was blood, the fight had stopped. Both boys were ashamed. Their feelings had been hurt more than their faces. They wanted to be friends; they were friends. They had vowed to each other never to do it again. A fight was not exciting the way it seemed on television, but ugly and brutal, something that made them feel bad about themselves. And yet all that after-noon it seemed Daniel was ready to break their vow, ready to fight again.

  Seth knew there were times when Daniel became so angry that he nearly lost control of himself; he'd seen it happen at school. But usually Daniel tried to hold back his anger; in fact, most of the time it seemed to Seth that Daniel was too controlled, too withdrawn and cool. But now Daniel's anger had risen into his throat. Seth could hear it in his voice. Seth felt that at any moment Daniel might explode, and it frightened him.

  Maybe Daniel was upset because their plans had gone awry. Maybe it was being so far from home, so totally alone in the wilderness. Or maybe it was something else, something Seth couldn't understand. Whatever it was, it bothered him. They had so looked forward to this trip, and now that they were actually doing it, it wasn't any fun. The bad feelings made everything difficult, and building the lean-to, something both boys always enjoyed, now loomed ahead of them like a chore. But like all chores, it had to be done.

  The boys were lucky enough to find two spruce trees close enough together that they could nail the crossbar to each tree about four feet above the ground. Then they placed the foundation logs, about four inches in diameter, on the ground to make a six-by-eight-foot rectangle. With baler twine they lashed the pole rafters to the crossbar so that they slanted downward to the back where the boys nailed them to the head log. They set small poles close together along the sides of the lean-to and trimmed them at the roof line. Later they would weave balsam fir and hemlock boughs between the upright poles to make sidewalls.

  All the wood used for framing was dead wood. The boys didn't want to cut any more live trees than they absolutely had to. Now, however, they did need to cut one live hemlock, about a foot in diameter. They sawed the butt log into four-foot sections to serve as reflector logs for the back of the fire. The hemlock boughs would make the weaving material for the side-walls and bedding for the floor of the lean-to. No part of the tree would go to waste; they would use it all.

  As the boys broke the soft, fragrant hemlock boughs away from their branches and laid them carefully layer upon layer on the lean-to floor, Mr. Bateau's words of instruction echoed in their minds: "Break little! Break little! You want to sleep on da boughs of da hemlock tree, not on da tree!"

  Doing the things Mr. Bateau had taught them, hearing his gentle instructions in their heads, made the boys feel better. It seemed as though Mr. Bateau were there with them, and his presence, even if it was only in their imaginations, made them feel more comfortable, more secure.

  With the soft, springy, deliciously sweet bed of hemlock complete, the boys tacked their tarp over the rafters and then covered it with branches to keep it from flapping in the wind.

  They wove the boughs into the sidewalls and the lean-to was complete. There would be time later for the little refinements, the cozy touches, that would make the lean-to a homey place to spend time. It looked good; Mr. Bateau would have been proud of them.

  The lean-to had taken a long time and most of the afternoon was gone. The boys really should have turned immediately to the construction of the fireplace and cooking range, but since they both were feeling better now and wanted to try some fishing, they agreed they could get along without it for one meal. They got their fishing gear together and headed upstream to find some trout.

  The fishing was better than their wildest dreams. Far up here in the mountains the trout had never even seen a hook before, and they lashed out voraciously each time a worm tumbled down the current toward them. Seth and Daniel soon discovered that although the trout hit hard, they were wild and very wary of any strange shadow across the water. If the boys accidentally approached a likely-looking hole with the sun at their backs so that their shadows reached the brook before they did, there would be no action in that place; it would seem as if there were no trout there. It wasn't long before they learned always to approach a hole with the sun in their faces and to keep low. These trout had to be stalked. The new method of fishing was exciting. It was more like hunting than fishing, and the results were magnificent.

  Quickly their creels filled with small but fat brook trout with the dark, almost black bellies that are so often the sign of high, wild mountain trout.

  As the boys worked their way slowly upstream, the crystal-clear, glacial-blue brook water gradually began to darken. Now there were fewer and fewer cleanly washed stones, more and more rocks covered with a dark green moss. Both boys had seen this happen to a brook before. It always meant still water ahead. And the only thing that still water meant was a pond, and in a place like this only beavers made ponds. As the boys pushed forward, they could see on both sides of the brook that telltale beaver sign, pointed stumps sharpened like pencils.
They clambered over the tangle of sticks and twigs that was the dam and found themselves looking across a small beaver pond that stretched out in front of them through a maze of drowned trees.

  "Wow! Look at that!" Seth said.

  "Yeah, that thing must be full of trout. I bet nobody has ever fished it. Let's give it a try."

  "I think we should get back to camp," Seth said.

  "It's going to be dark soon and we've got to cook supper. It'll be here in the morning. Besides we've got more than enough to eat."

  "Go ahead back. I'm staying."

  "Come on, Daniel. It's suppertime."

  "Cook it yourself!"

  There it was again, Daniel's anger, welling up apparently out of nowhere.

  "Okay! Be pigheaded!" Seth shouted. "I'm going back, but don't think I'll have supper ready for you when you get there. You can fix your own damn supper!"

  Seth stomped off down the brook. Daniel stood on top of the beaver dam and watched Seth disappear.

  As Seth poked his way back to camp, he wondered what was eating at Daniel. At times like this Seth felt that he didn't know Daniel at all, that Daniel was a complete stranger.

  It wasn't long after Seth arrived at camp that Daniel showed up.

  "Did you get anything?" Seth asked.

  "Nah, I didn't even fish it. I followed you right back down. Seth, I'm sorry about up there."

  "It's okay."

  "You don't sound like you mean it."

  "I don't. What's wrong with you?"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "There you go again! You're always saying that! You've been meaner than a she-bear all afternoon and all you can say is you don't want to talk about it. How can we ever be friends?"

  "What do you mean? We're friends."

  "I don't know, Daniel. I don't think we really are. What's wrong with you?"

  Daniel turned his back to Seth and said nothing.