The Mystery of the Monster Mountain - M. V. Carey [15]
— giants and ogres who lived in caves and ate kids who stayed out past dark.”
Bob laughed. “That sounds like a story some mother made up to keep her kids in line.”
“Probably,” agreed Richardson, “but we believed every word of it, and what the grown-ups didn’t tell us, we made up ourselves. We scared each other half to death telling how terrible creatures came out on nights when there was a full moon and prowled around houses, looking for ways to get in. An old trapper lived here once, and he swore he’d found the footprints of some huge man in the snow high up near the glacier. Said it was a barefoot man. That was pretty silly. A man would freeze his toes off running barefoot up there.”
“Sounds like you had fun being scared,” said Pete.
“Oh, we had fun, all right, but we didn’t stay out after dark, you can bet. Funny!
You’d almost think the hermit knew those stories and they worked on his mind, but he didn’t.”
“A hermit?” Bob sat down on a boulder near the picnic table. “First monsters and then a hermit. You had a colorful childhood.”
“Oh, the hermit wasn’t around when I was a kid!’ said Richardson. “He wandered in here three… no, it was four years ago. He climbed on foot from Bishop with a pack on his back — a young man, maybe twenty-five or thirty. It was summer when he came and there weren’t too many people around, so when I saw him standing in the middle of the street looking kind of bewildered, I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted a good place to meditate. I told him we didn’t have a church here in Sky Village, but that wasn’t what he had in mind. He wanted a place where he could just sit and let his spirit blend into the universe.
“That sounded like a harmless thing to do, so I told him he might try the meadow up above the ski slope. Hardly anyone goes there in the summer. I figured he’d go there for an afternoon and sit in the grass and think a bit, but I was wrong. Darned if he didn’t go up the mountain and build himself a little shack. He bought lumber and tar paper and a few nails in the village, but never any food. Guess he lived on berries, like the bears, or acorns, like the squirrels.”
“Back to nature, huh?” said Bob. “What happened to him?”
“Well,” said Gabby Richardson, “I personally think it addles a man’s brains to be alone all that much. That young hermit didn’t talk to anybody, and if anyone went up the mountain, he’d shut himself up in his shack. He lasted it out about three months.
Then one day he came down and went through the village like a shot. I didn’t see him, but Jeff, who boxes things over at the market when it’s open, said he was yelling about a monster in the meadow. Last Jeff saw, that hermit was making tracks down the road to Bishop.”
In spite of himself, Pete shivered. “You never saw him again?” he asked.
“Not hide nor hair,” said Richardson.
Jupiter Jones looked up at the peaks towering above them. “Monsters,” he said. “I wonder…”
Richardson snorted and sat up straight.
“Don’t pay too much mind to that story,” he said. “The boy got to seeing things up there all by himself. Anybody would. It isn’t healthy for a man to be so alone.”
He stood up. “If you want to camp out here, camp out. Don’t worry about monsters, and the bears won’t give you trouble if you don’t give them trouble. Just don’t leave food around.”
He threw his burlap sack over one shoulder and started toward the road that led back to Sky Village. At the edge of the campground he stopped and turned back to warn, “And don’t litter!”
“We won’t,’ promised Bob.
The gas station attendant tramped up the road. In a few minutes he was out of sight.
“Monster Mountain,” said Bob. “Those had to be stories the grown-ups told the kids to keep them in line. There couldn’t have been monsters here. The Sierras aren’t the Himalayas. Why, there’ve been pack trains and tourists and campers ever since—”
“Not everywhere,” interrupted Jupiter. “This range covers a vast area. There must be many places where the hikers and campers can’t go.”
Pete shuddered. “Jupe, you give