Wilder Boys (12 page)

“No, Taylor. For
certain
,” Jake replied. “We have to be one step ahead of everyone—one false step, and we're finished. One false step, and we can forget about finding Dad . . . forever!”

14
With new determination, the boys followed the trail north, hugging the west side of Jenny Lake. They left Inspiration Point behind, just like their dad had said to in his letter. Passing smaller lakes along the way, they eventually headed toward the base of the mountains, keeping off the trail so as not to attract any attention. They scrambled through bushes and up and over rocks; fortunately, the terrain wasn't too steep. However, the lack of food quickly began to take a toll. Jake had to push himself up even small inclines, and Taylor fell farther and farther back. They had to find a base where they could rest for a while and think of how to get some food.

As they approached the three streams that fed into the lake, Jake heard Taylor suddenly yelp and cry, “Oh, gross!”

Jake spun around and hurried back to Taylor, fearing the worst.

Taylor held up his arm.

Jake expected to see a horrible gash or other wound, but instead his brother groaned, “Jake, a bird just pooped on me!”

Despite the gnawing in their stomachs, both brothers burst out laughing.

“I'm glad it picked you,” said Jake. “Good thing it didn't hit your head.”

Taylor gave him a glare. “It'll be aiming for you, next.”

“Go ahead and wipe it off. We're almost there.”

Taylor bent down to wipe the bird poop off on some lichen, but then paused to study it.

“What is it?” Jake asked.

“Jake, there're berry seeds in this poop!”

“So what? Let's—”

Then Jake realized what Taylor was getting at.

“Oh, I get it!” he told his brother. “Let's keep an eye out. If the bird found berries, there have to be more nearby.”

As they made their way to the spot they'd picked out, they walked slowly, examining every shrub for berries. Soon, Taylor found a bush full of dark purple berries.

“They look like blueberries,” he said. “Didn't Dad draw something like this in his journal?”

Jake quickly dug out the prized book and flipped to a drawing that showed the exact plant they were looking at.
Below the sketch, their dad had scrawled:
Huckleberry—safe!

Taylor plucked one from the bush and popped it into his mouth.

“Wow! I've just found my new favorite food!”

He and Jake quickly stripped the bush and began avidly searching for others. Soon they came upon a different kind of plant, this one covered with thorns and red berries. Jake didn't need his father's journal to recognize this one.

“Raspberries!” he exclaimed.

“Oh yeah!” Taylor said, plucking off a couple of the riper fruits and popping them into his mouth. “Jake, I can get used to this.”

The boys decided to collect as many of the berries as they could, using Jake's extra shirt as a bag. Jake moved ahead, carefully studying each of the bushes, while Cody and Taylor trailed behind him. They filled half of the T-shirt until they hit a stretch without any berry bushes at all. “Well, I don't see any more around,” Jake said. “Taylor, what are you doing?”

As soon as Taylor turned around, Jake saw his brother put a glossy red berry into his mouth. His brother whipped his head toward Jake in surprise.

“What? I was just eating another berry.”

“What kind was it?” Jake demanded, rushing up to him.

“I don't know. What's the difference? These others are all fine.”

“Taylor, some berries are deadly poisonous. Spit it out!”

“What?”

“I'm serious—before that berry gets into your system.”

Taylor spit the remains of the berries out onto the ground.

Jake handed Taylor the rest of his bottled water and studied the bush Taylor had eaten from. He again pulled out their father's journal and began flipping through pages. He stopped and showed the page to his brother.

Taylor swished a sip of water around in his mouth, then spit it out onto the ground. “ ‘Baneberry—deadly!' ” he read. Their father had underlined the word
deadly
three times.

“Jake—” Taylor was gasping, his face going pale even in the bright sunshine.

Jake threw his arm around his brother. “It's okay. We got lucky this time.”

The boys continued walking through woods, up and over a rise, until they found themselves at the west end of Leigh Lake. Three separate creeks converged here, and as soon as the boys arrived, Jake saw a trout leap out of the lake and swallow a butterfly that had been flying too close to the surface of the water.

“This will be a good place to hang out for a while,” Jake said. Despite Taylor's close call with the poisonous berries, the food in his system had revived his spirits. Taylor had recovered by now too.

“Where should we set up camp?” Taylor asked.

“Let's scout around.”

Normally, Jake would have chosen a spot right next to the lake, but a hiking trail came down one of the drainages. It didn't look well used, but Jake didn't want to take any chances. Taylor, though, discovered a small clearing screened by trees.

“This will be perfect,” Jake told him.

“I wish we had a tent,” Taylor said.

But Jake had been thinking about that all day. He told Taylor about the beaver lodge he'd seen earlier.

“If a beaver can build a house made out of sticks, we should be able to,” he said.

They began gathering thick branches and dead logs. Cody even got in on the act, dragging a branch after Taylor.

Then they found a small spruce that had been knocked sideways so that it lay parallel to the ground, at about head height with Jake.

“If we lean a bunch of these branches on top of this, it should give us a lean-to big enough to crawl under,” Jake said.

Together they angled the larger branches against the fallen spruce, and then they began laying other branches perpendicular across that. It took them a while to figure out how to do it. More than once, several of the branches came loose and tumbled to the ground. Eventually, though, they'd created a fairly stable framework. With that in place, they began laying smaller branches filled with green needles over it all to form a thatch.

The boys and Cody crawled inside and looked at each other, grinning.

“Not bad,” said Jake.

Cody also seemed to like it, and he eagerly sniffed every corner of their new home.

Taylor breathed in the sweet fresh scents of the green branches around them. “This is like the forts we used to build in the jungle back home—only better!”

Jake laughed. “Yeah. I forgot about those.”

As they thought about home, the smiles faded from their faces. After a moment of silence, Taylor asked, “Jake, how do you think Mom's doing?”

Jake picked up a pine needle bundle and began peeling it apart. “I don't know. I'm sure the doctors at the hospital know what they're doing. I hope they can fix her up.”

“But then what?” Taylor said. “She'll still be with Bull, won't she? What's to stop him from just beating her up again—or killing her?”

Jake didn't have an answer for that one.

“Jake, from here we can probably hike to a phone. Maybe we should do it—and get some more food while we're at it?”

Jake shook his head. “It's too risky. People are looking for us now: rangers, maybe even the cops. If we call anyone, they might trace the call. Then they'll find us for sure.”

“We'll make the call short,” said Taylor. “You know,
like they do in the movies. It takes them, like, thirty seconds to trace a call, doesn't it? If we use a pay phone and—”

“No!” Jake spoke more harshly than he'd intended. “Mom wouldn't want us to risk it either. If Bull finds out we're here with his money, it'll be bad. Real bad. And we're witnesses, Taylor—that makes us targets.”

But Bull wasn't the only reason Jake didn't want to call home. He thought about how bloody and beaten their mom had looked on the gurney as they'd loaded her into the ambulance.

She might already be dead,
he thought, swallowing hard.
If that's true, it'll be better if Taylor doesn't know—at least for now.

He cleared his throat and said, “C'mon, let's get our stuff inside our new home.”

The boys put their backpacks inside their shelter. Jake also hung the T-shirt containing the berries from a branch in the roof.

“That ought to keep it out of reach of squirrels and chipmunks,” he said.

Taylor said, “Yeah. I already saw a couple of them around here. Do you think we could eat one?”

“Hmm.” The thought had never occurred to Jake before, but it wasn't a bad idea. The darned things were so fast, though, he and Taylor would have to build some kind of a trap.

“That's a good idea,” he told Taylor, “but it might be
easier to catch some fish first. Let's see if we can make a fishing pole and catch us and Cody a meal.”

Both boys had learned to catch and clean fish the previous summer, but at camp they'd had modern rods and reels. Now they had nothing and were once again forced to improvise. They each found straight sticks about six feet long, and they cut off lengths of the string they'd brought for fishing line.

“What are we going to use for fishhooks?” Taylor asked.

“I don't know,” said Jake. “Any ideas?”

Both boys began looking through their packs. Jake didn't find anything—not even wire. After a moment, however, Taylor pulled out a handful of paper clips.

“Hey, Jake. What about these?”

Jake laughed. “These just might work. Why don't you find some bait while I see what I can do with them?”

“You got it.”

While Taylor went off into the trees with Cody, Jake began trying to turn one of the paper clips into a fishhook. His pocketknife had a little pair of pliers on it, which he used to fashion a loop to tie the paper clip to the string. Then he curled the other end of the paper clip so that it resembled a fishhook. He kept tinkering with the paper clip, bending down the very tip so that it formed a little barb.

That's about the best I can do,
he thought, and then
proceeded to make three more of the little fishhooks.

Taylor returned. “Howsitgoin'?”

“Okay,” Jake said, showing him the poles with the string and hooks attached.

“Cool! I caught a caterpillar and a couple of grass hoppers for bait.”

The boys took their poles down to the lakeside. The lake stretched more than a mile across, and as soon as they reached the shore, they saw another fish jump.

“That's what I'm talkin' about!” said Taylor.

Standing on some rocks that jutted out into the water, they baited their hooks with the grasshoppers, then cast their strings out into the water. Almost immediately, Jake felt a tug on his line.

“A fish!” he shouted.

Taylor also felt a tug. “Me too!”

Unfortunately, as soon as the boys tried to bring in their poles, the trout wriggled free.

“That's okay,” said Jake. “Let's try it again.”

The boys kept trying, but the paper clip hooks just wouldn't hold the fish. Finally Taylor threw his pole down in despair.

“This is never going to work, Jake. We need
real
fishhooks.”

Taylor stomped down the shore, with Cody trotting along behind him. Jake cast his line a couple more times, but then he gave up too.

“You're welcome for the free food,” he told the trout as he headed back to camp. “I hope you enjoyed it.”

Jake ate a few more berries, then tried to make the camp as comfortable as possible before the night ahead, while Taylor went foraging. All the while he was wracked with worry—if they didn't have something proper to eat soon, there'd be no chance of finding their father. They'd starve to death before they got anywhere near the moose's neck—if they could even figure out what the clues meant. Jake's stomach had long since gone past rumbling; instead it was starting to seize up.

“Jake, look what I found!” Taylor shouted as he returned to the camp.

Taylor held out four bird's eggs.

“Nice!” Jake exclaimed. “Where'd you find them?”

“I saw this bird. It looked like some kind of seabird. Cody and I started looking around, and we found these eggs.”

“Good job, Taylor.”

“The only thing is, we still don't have anything to make a fire with, do we?”

“Uh, no, but I suppose we could eat them raw.”

The boys stared at each other, disgust twisting their mouths, but fresh pangs of hunger piercing their stomachs.

“You go first,” Taylor said.

Still grimacing, Jake walked over to a nearby rock and squatted down next to it. Carefully, he cracked the shell and gently tore away half so that the raw egg sat cupped in the
bottom half. The yellow and orange yolk quivered. Jake felt queasy just looking at it.

But this is what real mountain men do,
he told himself, and brought the eggshell to his lips. With a quick movement, he threw his head back and tried to swallow the egg without tasting it.

It didn't work. The egg tasted like a big glob of snot as it slid down his throat. He coughed and sputtered.

“Blech!” he said.

Taylor's face scrunched up. “That bad?”

Jake shook it off. “Kinda. Your turn.”

Taylor followed Jake's example and quickly washed out his mouth with water from his water bottle.

“Yech.”

“Yeah, I know. I'm thinking we should give the other two eggs to Cody.”

Taylor looked at him. “I was thinking the same thing.”

By now the sky was beginning to darken, and it was time to think about making some sort of bed for their shelter. The boys gathered fresh pine boughs and leaves, and made themselves as comfortable and warm as possible.