Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things

  So Casey stepped off the trail toward them and said, “It’s important. Did you see a guy on a horse come through here yesterday?”

  They all glowered at him, and the biggest one growled, “This is our camp, kid—get out.”

  And I couldn’t believe it, but Casey went even closer. “Look, man. Someone’s been taking potshots at condors.” He pointed toward me. “We’ve got a wounded one right here. We think it was a guy on horseback. Can you help us?”

  Slowly they all stood up and started coming toward me. “Are you serious?” “You got a condor there?” “A thunderbird?” “You joshin’ me?”

  So we showed them Marvin and they showed us a lot of dirty teeth as they smiled and took turns looking at what was apparently the eighth wonder of the world.

  “Yeah, we saw a fella on horseback,” one of them finally said. “Yesterday. Around suppertime. He was riding a chestnut mare, blue and tan blanket under the saddle.”

  The other two looked at him, then started chiming in.

  “That poor horse was overloaded.”

  “Saddlebags out to here.”

  “And the cat riding her was wearin’ shades and a hat.”

  “That’s just not right. You wear one or the other.”

  They all nodded. “Not both.”

  “Unless you’ve been city-fied.”

  “Or sissy-fied,” the biggest one said with a laugh.

  I was hanging on their every word. “Did the guy say anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Just rode on through.”

  “Yeah. And he switched that poor filly every step of the way.”

  I thought about this a minute, then asked, “What about clothes, hair color, anything else . . . ?”

  “Well, he had on that hat,” the big one said, looking at the others.

  “So it’s hard to know about the hair.”

  “He coulda been bald fer all we know. . . .”

  “But he was wearing ridin’ gloves.”

  “And cowboy boots.”

  “And, a-course, jeans. . . .”

  “And a T-shirt. It was green, wasn’t it, boys?”

  The other men nodded. “Olive green.”

  Then they all glanced at each other. “That’s about it.” A crow cawed at us from the branch of a tree. The big man gave it a disgusted look and muttered, “Outta this campsite, ya oversized flyin’ cockroach.”

  I snickered, which made him grin at me and say, “Bottom of the bird barrel in my book.” He shot a look at the crow again and told it, “Go back to the rest of your murder, why don’tcha?”

  “Back to your murder?” Gabby whispered, her eyes wide.

  Cricket told her, “Flock of seagulls, murder of crows . . . ?”

  The big guy nodded. “Perfect description of their kind, too, if you ask me.” He turned back to me. “Any more we can do for you, missy?”

  I shifted Marvin to my left side. “You said the horse was really loaded. Could he have been packing something as big as this?”

  “You tellin’ me he was packin’ out a thunderbird?”

  “We don’t know that!” Gabby said. “We don’t know any of that!”

  I looked the guy square in the eye. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Let me at that sucker! Let me at that sucker and I’ll—”

  “And,” I throw in, “they used a boar to bait it.”

  They all fell quiet until one of them finally asked, “How do you know that?”

  I held his gaze. “We found the campsite. We found the boar. Big hairy beast with tusks and a big ol’ snout.”

  “Look,” Cricket said, pulling on my arm. “We’ve really got to get this condor some help.” She gave me a stern look. “So if we could get moving . . .”

  Just then we heard frantic honking in the distance, and when we looked up, we could see a spot of red on the ridge above us.

  “Quinn!” Gabby squealed. “It’s Quinn.”

  Cricket and Gabby jumped all around, hugging each other in between waving up at the ridge. One of the Camo Guys scowled. “Nature Ninja to the rescue.”

  I busted up. “Not a fan, huh?”

  He shrugged. “He’s just a little too by-the-book. Likes to nose in other folks’ business.”

  “Was he nosing in your business yesterday?” I don’t even really know why I asked. It’s not like I thought Quinn was roaming around the canyon with a shotgun or anything.

  “Day before,” he said. “Gave us the third degree.” He sort of frowned. “But what else is new? We get that from everybody.”

  I wanted to say, Well, maybe if you didn’t dress like trees and give people the evil eye when they came through camp, they wouldn’t think you were boar-hunting wackos. But were they boar-hunting wackos? Maybe they were thunderbird-worshiping, tree-hugging wackos. It was really hard to tell.

  “Come on, Sammy,” Cricket was saying, tugging on my sleeve. “We’re going to eat some lunch while we wait for Quinn to show up.”

  “Snake?” Billy asked, looking around. “Did someone say snake?”

  Casey rolled his eyes and yanked him along. “More like sticks and berries, dude.”

  I laughed, then followed, calling, “Thanks a lot!” to the Camo Campers.

  But the minute we were out of earshot, Gabby started hissing in my ear. “I can’t believe you were talking to them! They’re so creepy!”

  “But they gave us a lot of valuable information!”

  “Couldn’t you tell they were making all that stuff up?” She snorted. “A chestnut mare, a blue and tan blanket, an olive green T-shirt, riding gloves, cowboy boots, a hat and sunglasses . . . they were stringing you along!”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “Why are you putting me down? I’m just trying to help figure out who shot Marvin. And I thought they were really helpful!”

  Gabby smirked. “They played you bad. They acted all sincere and helpful so you wouldn’t think they shot Marvin.”

  “But—”

  “And how convenient that they didn’t talk to the guy—”

  Now I was getting mad. “Did they talk to us when we came through? No! They—”

  “And how convenient that he was wearing gloves and a hat and sunglasses so they couldn’t tell you any real details about him!”

  I zeroed in on her. “That’s exactly what you’d want if you’d just bagged a condor!”

  “Nobody just bagged a condor! Marvin’s with us, and I got a really strong reading on AC-34. She is fine.” She leaned in closer. “And get this straight: I’m the one who found Marvin, not you! So quit acting like you know everything!”

  So that was it.

  I screwed my mouth into a little knot and said nothing.

  The others had found a place to park and wait for Quinn to arrive and were digging into Billy and Casey’s trail mix. I was all for that, but Gabby was more interested in proving that she was right and I was wrong. She fired up her receiver and got busy tuning in the signal for Marvin’s mom.

  “See?” she said to me, turning the controls so the chirping sound it was making was loud and clear. “That’s AC-34’s frequency. Nobody packed her out of here. She’s fine!” She turned the volume down and murmured, “And close!”

  Everyone looked up, checking the skies for a really close condor, but saw nothing. And there was definitely no thundering. All we could find was that same stupid crow, perched near the top of a tree in front of us. It cawed down at us, loud and hard. Like it wanted our food and was mad at us for taking so long to leave.

  Billy chucked a rock at it, which made it flap awkwardly out of the tree. But instead of flying off, it fluttered down to the dirt a few yards in front of us.

  “Can that be the same crow that was in that camp you found?” Casey asked me. “Did you notice how gimpy it was flying? This one’s doing the same thing.”

  “You’re right. That’s weird. . . .”

  “Brazen beast,” Billy cried. “Quit stalking us!”

/>   But Gabby was staring at the receiver, and her little mouth was shrinking into a teeny-tiny wad of lips, while the tops of her big ears seemed to glow red.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She picked up a pebble and chucked it at the crow, then played with the controls of the receiver as the crow flapped up into another tree.

  She gasped, and now everything except her ears was chalky white.

  And that’s when I understood what was wrong.

  According to Gabby’s receiver, Marvin’s mother was nothing but an oversized flying cockroach.

  FIFTEEN

  I whispered, “Cricket, can I have the binoculars?” and when she handed them over, I zeroed in on the crow. “Yup,” I said, passing them to Gabby, “he’s got a transmitter on his back, which is why he’s flying funny.”

  Gabby took the binoculars and checked it out herself. “But why?” she said, lowering the binoculars and looking at me. “Why does he have AC-34’s transmitter?”

  From the look in her eye, I could tell that she had bubble brain. It didn’t mean she was being stupid—it meant that her brain was just having a hard time letting in the truth.

  I hate bubble brain. It’s an awful feeling. A confused feeling. And when something finally does puncture the bubble, your brain tries like mad to patch it over. Tries to keep the truth out. Eventually, though, the bubble cracks and the truth floods in, and when that happens, you’re left feeling completely destroyed.

  Like when it finally sank in that my mom was not coming back—that being a movie star was more important to her than being my mom. I wanted so badly to go back to believing what I used to believe, but when the bubble finally bursts, there is no going back. All you can do is hobble forward and eventually learn to deal and accept and even understand. But getting there can take a long, long time.

  So even though she’d been really hostile about the Camo Guys, when Gabby looked at me and asked, “But why?” I didn’t think, Man is this girl slow, or, Yeah, Snotty, take that! I just felt bad for her because I could tell there was a bubble around her brain. A bubble that was trying to protect her from the truth.

  Quietly I said, “I’m sorry, Gabby. I know these birds are very important to you.”

  “Crows? I don’t give two hoots about crows!”

  “No, condors.”

  “Of course condors are important to me! Would I have come down here if they weren’t?” She squinted at me hard. “What I don’t understand is why someone would put a condor’s transmitter on a crow!”

  So I took a deep breath and said, “Because they didn’t want anyone to know what happened to the condor.”

  “What do you mean, what happened to the condor?” She turned to Cricket, who caught my eye, then said to her, “Someone down here was poaching condors, Gabby.”

  “Poaching condors!? Why would anyone poach a condor!”

  Billy had the binoculars now, and from behind them he muttered, “So they could say, Tastes like chicken?”

  “Not funny, Billy!” Cricket and I shouted.

  “Yeah, it is,” he said, still looking through the binoculars. “You guys just don’t appreciate death humor.”

  “Death humor?!” Gabby’s eyes were enormous. “Are you telling me AC-34 is dead?”

  The bubble had been penetrated.

  But then her brain tried like crazy to patch up the hole. “I don’t believe it!” she said. “There’s no way!”

  “Gabby,” I said gently, “she’s either dead or captured. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “To you maybe.”

  Cricket nodded. “To me, too.” Then she added, “And I don’t know how you’d keep a live condor.”

  Gabby stared at us for a minute, then turned to Billy and Casey. And when they shrugged like, Yeah, we agree, the bubble finally burst. “But why?” she wailed. “We try so hard to get them to live and someone comes along and kills them?”

  So while she was coming to grips with that, Billy and Casey tried to sneak up on the crow to catch it and remove the transmitter. But even with the two of them working on opposite ends, they couldn’t get close.

  After watching them for a little while, Cricket said, “I bet they used the shooting net to trap that crow.”

  “Who did?” Gabby asked.

  “Whoever broke into the Lookout.” Cricket looked at me. “Don’t you think?”

  I nodded.

  Her voice went up a little with hope. “And if they used it on the crow, maybe they also used it on Marvin’s mom.”

  I looked at Cricket. “But why catch one condor and shoot the other?”

  She looked instantly dejected. “I know. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “None of this makes sense!” Gabby wailed. “Why kill a condor? Why capture a condor? What are you going to do with it?”

  None of us could come up with an answer, so we just watched Billy and Casey try to catch the oversized cockroach. It was ridiculous entertainment, and I was just about to get up and join the fun when the crow flapped up to the safety of a tree branch.

  Gabby was still struggling with things. “But how do you know that the person who broke into the Lookout is the person who killed the boar? And how do you know that the person who killed the boar is the person who shot Marvin? And how do you know that—”

  I wasn’t sure how long she was going to go on, so I said, “The person who broke into the Lookout stole three things.”

  “But you don’t know that! Maybe they’re just misplaced!”

  “Okay. But the three things that are misplaced are a receiver, a shooting net, and an activity log. They used the receiver and the activity log to find Marvin and his mom, and the shooting net to trap a crow to use as a decoy.”

  “And maybe also to catch a condor,” Cricket added.

  Just then Quinn’s pickup truck came around the bend. The instant it stopped, Bella jumped out, and two seconds later she and Gabby were hugging and crying and saying they were sorry.

  Then Quinn and Robin piled out of the cab, followed by a short man with a tidy brown and gray beard, khaki shorts, and little wire-rim glasses on his very long, pointy nose. Immediately he glared at Billy, who was tossing rocks at the crow in the tree. “What do you think you’re doing, young man?”

  Billy sized him up—or, I should say, down—quick. And in true Billy fashion, he put on English airs and said, “I’m flushing out a condor, sir.”

  The guy’s glare became as sharp as his nose. “Flushing out a . . . why, that’s no condor!”

  “Tut-tut,” Billy said. “My mistake.” Then he pointed over to where Quinn and the others were tending to Marvin. “That lad’s the condor.” He chucked a rock up at the crow. “This fella’s just the wannabe hanger-on derelict ne’er-do-well caw-meister.”

  Ol’ Needle Nose looked at the tent, then the crow, then Billy. “What are you babbling about?”

  Billy hitched a thumb over at me. “Perhaps she should clarify.”

  Spectacle Schnoz turned to face me. “You? And who are you?”

  “I’m with Robin’s group.”

  His eyebrow arched. “A name would be constructive. . . .”

  He was being all condescending and hyper-quizzical, so I peered at him down the length of my nose as I said, “Yes, it would . . . !” And after we’d stared at each other a minute, I gave an overly exasperated sigh and said, “And you are . . . ?”

  “Me? I’m Professor Prag. The question is, who are you?”

  But just then Cricket comes skidding over, saying, “Get in the truck! Quinn says we need to get Marvin out of here now. He’s radioed for a helicopter to meet us at the Lookout. They’re going to fly Marvin to an animal hospital!”

  So I start for the truck, but Professor Pragface actually grabs my arm and says, “First, I demand to know who you are!”

  I squint at him. “You demand? What are you, the name police? Let go of me!”

  He lets go of me, but his eyes don’t. And let me tell you, th
ey drill me like he’s gonna kill me.

  “Come on, Sammy,” Cricket whispers. “Billy! Casey!” she calls. “Get in the truck! We’ve got to go!”

  Mr. Pint-sized Name Police gives me the steely eye. “So it’s Sammy.”

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to steely-eye him right back.

  “Short for Samantha?” he says, like ooooh, isn’t he smart.

  So I look at him like, Ooooh, aren’t you smart.

  And yeah, I was being bratty, and no, I didn’t care. There was something about his oh-so-superior airs that was totally tweaking my beak. I hate oh-so-superior, and I now understood exactly why Vargus Mayfield had hated him as a teacher.

  “What about the crow?” Billy called. “Shouldn’t we get the transmitter off of him?”

  So Quinn produced a mini-bazooka from behind the front seat of his truck, which turned out to be a shooting net.

  “I thought that got stolen from the Lookout,” I whispered to Cricket.

  “It must be another one,” Cricket whispered back.

  So we all stood back while Quinn took aim at the crow, which was now on the ground under a scrub oak about twenty feet away.

  “You’re going to have to twinkle him out,” Dr. Schnoz whispered.

  I pulled a face at Cricket like, Twinkle him out? and she gave a little shrug back like, You got me. . . .

  But Quinn said, “Go ahead,” so ol’ Pragface starts tippy-toeing toward the crow. I’m not kidding. Here’s this angry-looking guy with little round-rimmed glasses tippy-toeing toward an oversized flying cockroach.

  Billy and I look at each other like, Whoa, is he freaky or what? And then Billy starts pretending he’s the professor, squishing his face so his nose is all pointy, putting his hands up like bunny paws, and tippy-toeing in place.

  And really, I’m doing my best to not crack up, but it’s like holding in a sneeze. You can do it for a little while and then ka-choo—it busts out whether you want it to or not.

  Lucky for me, the laugh escapes just as Quinn shoots the net. And like a sneeze, the net bursts out fast. It’s big, too. Big enough to catch a handful of people.

  Anyway, it sails through the air and traps the crow no problem, and then Professor Needle Nose swoops in and says, “Gotcha!” with way too much glee. He turns to Quinn. “And why are you monitoring Corvus brachyrhynchos ?”