Lily to the Rescue: The Three Bears Page 2

  “My survival course badge, that’s who,” Craig said back.

  Dad sighed. “Boys. Cut it out. We all need to cooperate. I’m going to ask you kids to search in a very important area. Okay?”

  Everyone nodded solemnly. I glanced at Brewster, and even he seemed to nod. Apparently, we all knew that something serious was happening.

  4

  “I need the three of you…” Dad paused. “to take the path all the way around Echo Lake.”

  There was a short silence.

  “What? We’ve hiked that a million times. We’re not going to find the bear cubs there,” Bryan blurted.

  “We’d be a lot more help off the trails, like everybody else,” Craig said.

  Dad crossed his arms. “This is interesting. Every other team is going where I’ve told them to go, and none of them are arguing.”

  “Maybe you should just do what your father asks,” Mom put in.

  Everyone was quiet for a moment. “Yes, sir,” Craig finally muttered.

  “Have you had lunch?” Dad asked.

  “There wasn’t time,” Mom told him.

  “All right,” Dad said. “I’ll give you some money. Go get some sandwiches and bottles of water up at the lodge. You can take them with you, make a picnic out of it.”

  “Thank you, Dad,” Maggie Rose said. I was watching Brewster. He was sniffing around. It was clear that he wanted to lie down for a nap, but his only choices were dusty ground or sharp gravel. He wasn’t too happy.

  “I’ll hold on to the dogs. You kids go get your food,” Mom said. My girl handed my leash to Mom, and the two boys ran off toward a very big house not far away.

  Maggie Rose did not go with them. She stayed behind with Mom and Dad. Brewster also stayed with us. Mom had his leash as well.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Maggie Rose. You’re my game warden girl,” Dad said. “Okay, I’m heading out, Chelsea. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Good luck,” Mom told him.

  Dad walked away, following Craig and Bryan. “Boys! Hold up!”

  Bryan and Craig waited while Dad went to them. They talked a little, and then Dad headed off to talk to some more grown-ups. I saw Bryan and Craig enter the big house.

  Now it was just two dogs and two people out here in the parking lot. What were we doing? Were we waiting for something fun to happen?

  Mom smiled down at Maggie Rose. “What is it, honey?”

  “Couldn’t I go with you instead?” my girl asked.

  “You heard your dad. He wants groups of three. Why don’t you want to go with your brothers?”

  “It’s just that they argue all the time. They’re not nice to each other,” Maggie Rose complained.

  “I’ll walk you over to the lodge. Come on,” Mom told her. We headed slowly in the direction Bryan and Craig had taken. “Well, your brothers like to insult each other as a way of saying they love each other. Don’t take it seriously.”

  Maggie Rose sighed. “Okay.”

  Mom paused at the wooden steps of the big building. “Tell you what, though. I’ll say something to them about it. And if it bothers you, you should say something, too. Never feel as if you can’t share your feelings.”

  Brewster lifted his nose. He’d noticed the food smells coming from inside.

  “Okay, Mom. Aren’t you going to look for the bears, too?”

  “I’ll partner up with a couple of the rangers. I can’t stay too long. I’ll call Craig on his cell phone when it’s time for us all to leave.”

  “But Mom!” Maggie Rose sounded alarmed. “What if we haven’t found the cubs before you have to go?”

  “Hon, there are a lot of people here to look for the cubs,” Mom said.

  “But we want to stay until they’re found,” Maggie Rose insisted. “Mom, please, can’t we ride home with Dad, instead?”

  Mom looked down at Maggie Rose and seemed to be thinking. “Well, okay,” she said at last. “Make sure you tell your dad. All three of you kids will ride home with him.”

  I watched in confusion as Maggie Rose climbed up the steps to the big house. Mom stayed behind, still holding my leash.

  Brewster was anxious because he had lost sight of Bryan. I could tell, even though he didn’t really act like it. Brewster doesn’t act like he’s worked up about much of anything.

  Soon Bryan and Craig hurried out of the big doors and down the steps.

  “Did you see your sister?” Mom asked.

  Craig nodded. “I gave her some money. She’ll be out soon.”

  “Maggie Rose told me something,” Mom replied. “She said she’s uncomfortable with the way you tease each other. I told her you don’t mean it, but maybe you could ease up a little? To tell you the truth, it sometimes gets on my nerves, too.”

  Bryan and Craig looked at each other. “I’ll let up if the idiot does,” Bryan said.

  “I’ll ignore when he’s being a jerk,” Craig agreed.

  “I’m glad we’ve come to this understanding,” Mom said wryly. “All right, as soon as your sister comes out, you can get going. And remember what your dad said—stay on the path around the lake! That’s your assignment.”

  Mom left. Brewster went to Bryan and sat and I knew why. Bryan’s hands showed that he’d been touching peanut butter not long before. It’s one of the best things about Bryan—how often his fingers smell like that.

  Maggie Rose came out. “I bought some dog treats, too,” she announced happily.

  “Let’s go find a picnic table. Buying lunch made me hungry!” Bryan declared.

  We walked a short way and the kids settled in at a wooden table. Brewster and I, the dogs of the situation, sat with our mouths within easy reach. Crisp paper was unwrapped, flooding the air with wonderful sandwich-type odors.

  Soon Brewster and I went on full alert because we could hear chewing up there. There should be chewing down here!

  “Okay,” Craig said after a long, long time of little talking and no feeding good dogs. “I say we go counter-clockwise. Hike along the road first.”

  They rose to their feet. Maggie Rose handed me a cheese treat, and Bryan gave Brewster peanut butter!

  “Let’s go,” Bryan said.

  5

  Brewster and I could both sense the excitement in the children as they led us down to a paved road nearly empty of cars. We began walking along a gravel trail alongside the road. To one side was a hill covered with trees and rocks. To the other, the land was flat. Ahead I could sense the crisp smell of water. I knew there must be a huge pond there.

  It was going to be a great walk. Brewster was happy, too. He celebrated by sniffing and lifting his leg on large stones.

  “Let’s go uphill,” Bryan suggested. “The bears aren’t going to be this close to the road.”

  Brewster had found a particularly amazing scent and was checking it out carefully, so we all halted. The children looked up the gentle slope. “I don’t know,” Craig told Bryan. “That’s not really the trail. We’re supposed to stick to the trail.”

  “But our mission is to find the bears,” Bryan said. “And the trees up there are spread out enough. We’ll be able to see the lake the whole time.”

  My girl shook her head. “We should stick to the trail,” she said. “Don’t you think, Craig?”

  “Why is Craig in charge?” Bryan demanded.

  “Because I took a survival course,” Craig answered.

  “See the elk?” my girl asked.

  “Fine,” Bryan said. “I’ll go up there. You guys can stay down here.”

  “No,” Craig said.

  “Guys!”

  The boys blinked at Maggie Rose. She pointed. “See? What’s it doing?”

  I had lowered my nose to sniff what Brewster had been sniffing. It was interesting! But now I snapped my head up at a new, strong odor. Down the road from us, a large deer creature was striding back and forth at the edge of the pavement.

  “It’s afraid of the road,” Bryan observed.

 
“That’s good. Elks should be afraid of the road,” Craig said. “Even though there are hardly any cars, you never know when one might come along.”

  Brewster could smell something else, I could tell, because his gaze had broken away from the huge deer. He was looking up in the trees. When I turned my head in that direction, I couldn’t smell anything. But a faint, distressed cry came to my ears.

  There was something up there, something scared. Brewster and I both knew it. We sat, looking at our people, waiting for them to know it, too.

  “It’s acting like it wants to cross the road,” my girl said.

  “If we keep walking, we’re going to scare it even more,” Bryan said.

  Craig looked at him. “Okay, we’ll go up in the trees a little bit, keep out of the elk’s way, let it decide what it wants to do.”

  I figured that the children had heard the tiny, mewling call, because we turned away from the road and began to climb up the hill.

  “Hear that? What was that?” Maggie Rose cried.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Bryan answered.

  “There! Hear it?” my girl said.

  The soft call came down out of the trees again.

  Craig straightened. “Yes!”

  “It’s the bears!” Bryan exclaimed.

  * * *

  All at once, everyone decided to run. My girl and I fell behind Bryan. Craig was out in front.

  “Craig!” Maggie Rose called. “Wait for us!”

  Craig halted. We all reached him and stopped. Brewster’s tongue was lolling out of his mouth.

  “You’re right, Maggie Rose. We need to stick together,” Craig said.

  “I see something,” Maggie Rose told him. “See? It’s moving.”

  The way Brewster’s nose twitched told me that he could smell what I could smell. Another creature was close by, one that carried pretty much the same odor as the giant deer we had seen by the road.

  “Yes!” Bryan said. “I see it!”

  I caught a flicker of movement. A much smaller deer raised its head and bawled at the sky.

  “It’s a baby!” my girl said. “Why is it crying?”

  Craig turned and looked back the way we’d come. “Its mother is on the other side of the road. They got separated.”

  “Can we help?” my girl wanted to know.

  Craig was silent.

  “Maybe we should call Dad?” Bryan asked.

  Craig nodded slowly. “We could do that. But he’s busy leading the search for the bear cubs.”

  “The elk was by the side of the road because her baby crossed over here,” Maggie Rose said. “But the mother’s afraid to walk on the pavement.”

  “You know what we could do?” Craig said. “We could head up the hill and come back around the calf from behind. Sort of shoo it back toward the road. Once it sees its mother, it’ll run to her.”

  “Let’s do it!” Bryan said.

  I could still see the little deer. I hoped we’d go up closer so that everyone could smell it. But instead we struck off in a slightly different direction.

  Brewster glanced at me. I decided to trot confidently at my girl’s side so that he would think I knew what we were doing.

  The small deer had stopped bawling and was watching us with dark eyes, not moving.

  “What if we can’t scare it?” Maggie Rose asked.

  With a toss of its head, the deer wheeled around and headed deeper into the woods. The children watched it go, their shoulders slumping.

  “I don’t think we need to worry about not scaring it,” Craig said.

  “It’s going in the wrong direction.” Maggie Rose sounded worried.

  “We were too close,” Craig told her.

  “So let’s go up even farther, so that we’re for sure behind it,” Bryan said. “Circle around from like fifty yards away.”

  Craig nodded. “We could do that. But we’ve kind of forgotten about the bears.”

  “The bears could be around here,” Bryan told him. “We can search and help the elk calf at the same time.”

  Craig looked at Maggie Rose.

  “I think we should help the baby elk get back to its mommy,” my girl said softly.

  6

  The children led us farther into the woods. I could tell we were all about to do something important.

  The slope flattened out, making the going easier for Brewster. He wanted to mark most of the big stones and logs we passed, but Bryan didn’t slow down to let him. Brewster would sort of raise his leg and wave it past a tree and keep going, pulled forward by Bryan’s hand on his leash.

  I could still smell the small deer.

  “Where did the baby elk go?” Maggie Rose asked, peering into the trees.

  “I see it. Look, close to that rock? It’s moving,” Craig told her, pointing.

  “It’s moving the wrong way,” Bryan said.

  “Poor little thing.” My girl sounded sad.

  Suddenly, Brewster wasn’t interested in sniffing along the tree roots anymore. He stood stiffly, staring back behind us into the thick woods, nose lifted. Could he smell something special? I sniffed the air, but I just got the usual scents of Up in the Mountains.

  “Come on, Brewster,” Bryan told him. “We need to keep going.”

  Brewster knew what Bryan wanted and went along, following the leash. But after a few steps he twisted to look back.

  “Brewster smells something,” Bryan said.

  “The bears?” Maggie Rose asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bryan answered.

  Now that we were all standing still, the faint breeze ruffled the tree branches and I suddenly understood what Brewster had noticed. There was a dog-smell on the air, but it wasn’t dog. It was dog and not-dog at the same time.

  “There are two of them, see?” Craig said softly. I glanced at him because he seemed tense.

  “No, see what?” my girl asked him.

  “Just to the left of where that tree is leaning over. They aren’t moving. Just watch. There!” Craig pointed.

  “I saw something,” Maggie Rose said.

  “Me, too,” Bryan said. “What are they?”

  Craig gave them a solemn look. “Coyotes. Young ones.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment. Brewster still stared hard into the trees, but I was focused on my girl. I knew she and her brothers were worried.

  “They’re hunting,” Craig said.

  “They’re hunting us?” Maggie Rose gasped. Alarm flashed off of her skin.

  Craig shook his head. “No. Two young coyotes wouldn’t come after three humans and two dogs. No, it’s the elk calf they’re after. That’s why it’s been running away. Somehow the coyotes got between it and its mother, and now we’re between it and the coyotes.”

  “We have to protect the baby!” Maggie Rose said.

  “That’s what we’re doing,” Craig told her. “All we have to do is stay between the calf and the coyotes, and it’ll be safe.”

  “Let’s do it,” Bryan said.

  We turned from the not-dogs and began moving briskly on the trail of the small deer, tracking her scent. The humans had decided that they would rather play with the small deer than the not-dogs.

  The deer trotted on thin legs ahead of us. We followed as it kept going deeper and deeper into the woods.

  Bryan glanced over his shoulder. “They’re still behind us.”

  Craig looked back as well. “Yes, but not any closer. They’re hanging back because of us, and because of the dogs.”

  “Good dog, Lily!” Maggie Rose told me.

  I straightened a little, happy I was being a good dog. Brewster peered at me, wondering what I was doing that he wasn’t.

  The going became easier because we were headed downhill. The trees thinned out, and I could easily see the small deer far ahead.

  Every so often it would stop moving and peer around. I decided it could smell Brewster and me, but it wasn’t yet sure about playing with us. Some animals are like that. They d
on’t understand that playing with dogs is the most fun there is.

  Behind us, the two small not-dogs were tracking us, moving from tree to tree, almost as if they were hiding. Brewster was more upset about them than I was. He kept looking back.

  Brewster is older than I, and sometimes I wonder if there have been things in his long life that make him a little careful about other creatures. Maybe that’s why he naps all the time—because he’s tired from all the things that have happened to him.

  I’m not like that. I’m always happy to play with any other animal, until it shows me that it’s not a good playmate.

  Up ahead, I heard the small deer make a sound. It was unhappy and afraid.

  My girl heard it, too. “It’s really scared!” she said.

  “I don’t think it understands that we’re trying to help,” Craig said. “As far as it’s concerned, we’re chasing it, just like the coyotes.”

  We’d gone a long way, past many trees that I knew Brewster wanted to mark. Everyone was focused on the small deer except Brewster. He was still paying attention to the not-dogs behind us.

  When Brewster’s whole body stiffened, I knew that he had sensed something. I turned my nose backward and realized that the not-dogs had gone away.

  “Look at that!” Maggie Rose exclaimed.

  Everyone halted.

  The air brought with it the odor of the small deer. Its scent had gotten stronger, somehow. I turned my gaze forward and realized that it wasn’t just one small deer, now. There were lots of very large deer, lurking in the woods. All of them raised their heads as the small deer made a mewling noise and ran to them.

  It was a pack of giant deer, and the small deer belonged with them. It was her family!

  “And look, there’s the mother elk from the side of the road!” Bryan said.

  7

  The children all beamed at one an- other and at the huge deer. One of them smelled familiar. I’d smelled it before, back when we’d first started our walk. This one walked over to the small deer we’d been following and lowered her head to the little one. They touched noses briefly.