Alexis and the Lake Tahoe Tumult - Erica Rodgers [16]
“What kind of sound?” asked Alexis, but then she heard it—a small popping noise—right before something hard stung her cheek.
“Ow!”
Alexis stumbled and almost pulled Angelo onto the ground. There were a few more popping noises, and then a completely different sound tore through the forest.
It was the roar of a cranky bear.
“Run!” called Lisa. She grabbed Bailey and took off toward the snowmobile. Alexis and Angelo followed, but the snowshoes were hard to run in. Alexis looked back just in time to see a huge brown bear emerge from the mouth of the cave. It took one sleepy look around and started running right for them!
Fortunately the snowmobile was a bit downhill from the bear cave. That downhill slope helped the young humans run faster, while it slowed down the bear. Alexis briefly remembered a Discovery Channel special on bears, which revealed that bears run uphill much faster than they run downhill.
Of course it’s not good to have bears running after you, fast or slow! she thought.
Lisa and Bailey reached the snowmobile and clambered on. Lisa fired up the engine and turned to pull Alexis and Angelo aboard. Soon they were on their way back down the mountain. Alexis turned to see if the bear was still following them, but she wasn’t holding on to Bailey. She slipped sideways and fell into the snow. She hit hard and rolled down the mountain about ten feet before stopping near a half-buried tree stump.
Lisa circled back around, and Angelo helped pull Alexis back onto the snowmobile.
“Good thing I wasn’t holding on to you!” he laughed.
“Wait!” said Alexis. “My camera! I dropped it when I fell!”
Luckily the bear had taken off in another direction, and the camera was easy to find. It was right where Alexis had fallen, tangled up in a pile of dead branches. The branches kept it from falling into the wet snow, which might have damaged it.
“It’s still on,” said Bailey. “You might not want to waste the battery!”
The group headed back to the office. All of them were quiet. They knew that they had barely escaped being attacked by an angry bear. What were those strange noises? And what could have awakened the bear? Alexis asked Jake her questions back at the office, but he wasn’t worried about answering them at the moment.
“The most important thing, Alexis, is that we find that bear! We need the tranquilizer gun, Karen. Call the ranger, too. Maybe if we put it back in its den, it will sleep out the rest of the winter.”
“What if you can’t find it?” asked Bailey.
“That’s what we’re worried about,” said Karen. “Bears that wake up early run into lots of problems. Right now, most of the smaller animals are hibernating, too, and the rivers are frozen over. There isn’t much food out there for a bear. If he’s awake long, he’ll burn up all of the fat he stored for the winter, and then he’ll have to be put in captivity or …”
“Or what?” asked Alexis.
“Or he’ll die,” said Jake.
Kate’s Helping Hand
Back at the hotel, the girls left Angelo to go meet Alexis’s family for dinner. First they went to the room to change clothes. When Alexis looked in the mirror, she saw a huge red bruise with a purple center on her right cheek.
“Eew!” she said. “That looks awful! Bailey, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Well, we were too worried about the bear, weren’t we?” said Bailey. “Besides, it didn’t look that bad at the reserve. It’s definitely pretty.”
Alexis pressed her fingers gently to her cheek.
“Ouch! What could have done this?” she asked. “I remember getting hit with something before the bear woke up, but I never saw what it was.”
“Could it have been a rock?” asked Bailey.
“Maybe. Oh well. We’d better get down to the restaurant.”
Alexis threw on fresh jeans and a sweater before slipping on her sneakers. They were so much easier to walk in than her heavy snow boots. After tromping in boots all day, she felt as light as a feather. Bailey tied her hair up in a tiny ponytail, and they took the elevator to the second floor to find the steak house.
“There they are!” said Bailey, pointing into the crowded restaurant. Alexis looked