The Mystery of the Monster Mountain - M. V. Carey [20]
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!”
Chapter 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 mountaintops 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.