The Mystery of the Monster Mountain - M. V. Carey [22]
“Makes sense,” said Bob.’
“So why don’t I search the woods on the north side of the meadow?” said Jupiter.
“I can work my way west from the ski slope. Pete, you could take the woods to the west. You might start at the big white stone and go south. Bob, do you want to go over the ground on the south side? You could start from here and keep going until you meet Pete. Every few minutes we can signal one another on our directional finders, and if something looks threatening or especially interesting, we’ll activate the alarms.”
“I’ll sure do that,” promised Pete.
Jupiter put his knapsack on his shoulders, saluted his friends with one hand, and went off to the right. Pete grinned, as if to show he was really not scared, and headed west through the long grass. Bob hesitated a moment, listening to the lonely sound the wind made on the quiet mountain. Then, holding his directional signal in one hand, he trudged to the south.
He looked back once. Jupiter had vanished among the trees on the north side of the meadow. He could see Pete, who had almost reached his section of the woods.
Bob activated his directional signal. An answering beep came from Jupiter. Another beep came from Pete, who turned and waved across the meadow.
When he reached the woods on the south side of the field, Bob paused. In the open, under the blue sky, the early morning sun had been bright and warm. But the woods looked very dim and very dense. There was a pungent carpet of pine needles under the trees.
Bob began to walk west, not quite venturing in under the trees. He watched the ground as he went, stopping every few seconds to listen. He heard a jay cry out from some hidden place. A squirrel scampered along a branch.
Then he saw it. It was a faint depression, a place where some large creature had tramped down the earth under the trees and dislodged a few pine needles.
Bob touched the signal on his directional device. After a second, there was an answering beep from the north, and a second from the northwest. He considered shouting for help, to bring Jupe and Pete running to see his find, but there was nothing distinct about the track. He knew it was very likely another bear, or perhaps even a smaller animal.
He decided to search farther in, under the trees, to see if he could find a better print. He went into the dimness under the trees. Here and there he found patches of clear earth, and he hopefully examined these, but there were no more tracks’. Twice he found places where fallen pine needles had been pressed down when some animal stepped on them, but the needles were strewn so thickly on the ground that they would not take a clear imprint. There was nothing that could be called a definite track.
Bob went on. The trees grew more closely together. The light grew dimmer, and at last the blue sky was hidden by the interlacing branches. Then, ahead, Bob saw brightness. He went more quickly, and stepped out from under the trees into a small clearing. Almost at his feet was what looked like a huge crack in the earth.
Bob edged forward and looked down into the crevice. It was a split in the ground almost fifty yards long and, in the widest places, about ten feet across. The sides were so sheer that they were almost straight up and down. At the bottom of this peculiar opening in the earth was snow, still un-melted by the summer warmth.
Bob knew what it was. While working at his part-time job at the library in Rocky Beach, he had come across a book of maps of hiking trails in the San Gabriel Mountains and the Sierras. One map of trails in the Mammoth Lakes area showed a similar crevice, caused by an earthquake that had fractured the ground. The temperature at the bottom of the Mammoth fracture, many feet below the surface, was like the temperature in a cave. It was cool even on the hottest day, so the snow that fell during