The Wolf Keepers

  She rolled on her side and peered through the gathering darkness at the splintered board. She thought of the people who had been here, the conversations they’d had, the meals they’d eaten. And now she and Tyler were joining that history, their own story seeping into the place.

  Lizzie’s whole body felt battered and bruised by the day. She thought of the curse, and the creek, and how she’d nearly drowned. She couldn’t bear to imagine how sad that would have made her father.

  As she drifted off to sleep, she pictured Mike. By now he would be frantic. She was gone, and she was hitched to everything else in his universe. I have to go home, she thought. I have to.

  Chapter 30

  HISTORY

  LIZZIE WOKE TO faint shafts of gray light sifting through the gaping boards. For a minute, she couldn’t think where she was. Then the hard ground and damp blanket reminded her. Tyler was still asleep, his back pressed against her, his breathing deep. She scanned the contours of the shed in the morning light, trying to get a better sense of it. Was there any way it could have belonged to John Muir?

  It was so small, and now so dilapidated, it was hard to even tell what it had looked like originally. Tyler was right that the makeshift tree house from the photo could have toppled over. Time and weather could have wrestled it to the ground, hidden it in vines, buried it in the bank of the creek. Now it was just a crumbling pile of boards and earth. How could anyone tell who it had belonged to?

  But, she reasoned, it was still someplace historic. It had been here a long time, and someone, perhaps from John Muir’s time, had built it. Was it more important if it had once belonged to John Muir? The shelter was just as old, and just as precious to its owner, if it had been built and lived in by someone else.

  She squinted at the earthen floor. There was nothing here now, just pebbles and leaves and splintered bits of wood. How would they ever know?

  As she lay there, thinking about it, she wondered if knowing was the point. Wasn’t it more of a mystery, more of an adventure, if they didn’t know for sure who had lived here? If the question still hung in the air, any answer was possible. Maybe this was the very shelter where John Muir had written his journals, looked out at the waterfall and the vast granite cliffs, and made Yosemite his spiritual home. Or maybe some other long-ago pioneer had lived here. When you didn’t know for sure, there was a kind of freedom. Anything was possible.

  She listened to the distant rush of the creek, and thought about things from the past … this cabin, and John Muir, and her own mother, and Tyler’s mother. She thought about how the past lingered on and on. It wasn’t ever really over. Sometimes the past was just a whisper, a murmur. But other times, the past was a roar so loud you couldn’t hear anything else.

  Tyler stirred, rolling on his side. She studied his profile. His eyelids fluttered open. He jerked awake. “Hey,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face. “How long have you been up?”

  “Not long,” Lizzie said.

  He rose on one elbow, shaking the blanket loose. “It’s cold.”

  Lizzie nodded. “But you can see better now.”

  Tyler looked around, interested. “It does look really old. But there’s nothing left. No furniture, nothing.”

  “No. Whatever was here is gone.”

  “Well, it probably couldn’t have lasted all this time, you know? Especially if the house fell off the stilts and washed down here. That doesn’t mean it isn’t John Muir’s cabin.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. There’s no way to know for sure.”

  “I mean, there may not be anything to prove it is,” Tyler continued. “But there’s nothing to prove it’s not.”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “And it doesn’t look like anybody ever found this place,” Tyler added. “So we could be the first!”

  “It does seem like it,” Lizzie agreed.

  “So…” Tyler continued, his voice warming. “I think we found it. I think we really did.”

  Lizzie looked into his bright, eager eyes. “Do you think we should tell someone?” she asked. “Since it’s a … historic discovery and all?”

  Tyler considered that for a minute. “We could be famous,” he said. “For finding John Muir’s lost cabin! It’s like finding treasure.”

  “But to be famous, we’d have to tell someone,” Lizzie said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Tyler kicked off the blanket and rooted around in the backpack, pulling out the last sodden remains of food.

  “I don’t think we should tell anybody,” he decided. “It’s enough that we found it. I don’t want people to come tramping all around this place, looking at it.”

  Lizzie bit into a chocolate chip cookie and thought for a minute. “Me neither. It doesn’t even seem like a man-made thing anymore, you know? More like it’s part of the land.”

  “Yeah,” Tyler agreed, crunching an apple. “Like it’s just … nature.”

  “What about the wolves?” Lizzie asked suddenly.

  He looked at her, startled. “What about them? Did you hear them last night?”

  She shook her head. “No. But what are we going to do about them? Don’t we have to tell someone they’re here?” She thought of her father. How could she keep such a secret from him?

  “No,” Tyler said firmly.

  Lizzie stared at him. “But they belong to the zoo. They’re not supposed to be here on the loose in Yosemite.” Even as she said it, it sounded wrong to her. Wasn’t that exactly where they should be? Loose and wild in the woods?

  Tyler finished the apple, and then the french fries, methodically, one after the other, until they were all gone. She knew he was starving. She was starving, too. “So you want them to go back to the zoo?” he demanded.

  She sighed. “No, but…”

  “Then why would you tell?”

  Lizzie realized with all this talk of telling someone, there was an implicit assumption that they would be back in civilization with someone to tell. She wondered if Tyler had changed his mind about running away.

  “I mean, what Karen did was wrong,” she said slowly.

  “Well, yeah,” Tyler said, as if that were obvious. “She made them sick! She could have killed them. And then she stole them from the zoo.”

  “Right,” Lizzie said. “And that big new exhibit was built just for them. It cost a lot of money! Now only half the pack is there, and my dad is going to be in trouble for the wolves dying, but they didn’t really die.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Tyler said. “But it’s done. You can’t send them back. Once they’ve been free like this, and had this different life, how could you ever send them back to how it was before?”

  Lizzie looked at him, not sure they were still talking about the wolves. “We can’t stay in Yosemite forever,” she said softly.

  Tyler sighed, not meeting her gaze. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But I wish we could.”

  “We’re almost out of food and water.”

  He nodded.

  “Tyler … even John Muir left to see his family,” Lizzie said. “And even the wolves have a pack.”

  He didn’t answer, but she knew he understood.

  Lizzie rolled up the blanket. When they had everything zipped in the backpack again, they got onto their knees and crawled over to the loose board that Tyler had wedged open. Lizzie took one final look around. She tried to picture John Muir here, scribbling his letters furiously by candlelight, or maybe sitting with a tin cup of tea, talking to one of the famous people who had visited him in Yosemite. Had Teddy Roosevelt been here? And Ralph Waldo Emerson? The wooden boards held their secrets, giving nothing away.

  Tyler crawled through the opening and then held the splintered board so Lizzie had more room. As she squeezed through, he warned, “Don’t snag my shirt.”

  “Are my clothes dry?” she asked. She was crouched on her hands and knees, about to stand, when something bright and flashing caught her eye.

  “What’s that?” she asked Tyler,
pointing to the shallow rivulet at the edge of the creek.

  “What?” He squatted next to her.

  “In the water. Something shiny.”

  He reached into the creek, then turned to her, his palm outstretched. In the soft dent of it, she saw a coin.

  “Is it a penny?” she asked.

  His brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”

  She plucked the coin from his palm and stared at it. It was old and misshapen, caked with dirt. But in the places where the dirt had rubbed off, she could see a glint of silver.

  “Can you wash it?” she asked. Her heart beat faster.

  Tyler took the coin and crouched over the stream.

  “Don’t lose it,” Lizzie cautioned. “And don’t fall in.”

  He leaned over the water, rubbing vigorously with both hands. Then he wiped it on his shirt, peering at it in the sunlight.

  “Hey…” he said slowly.

  “What?” Her eyes were glued to his face.

  “Lizzie. There’s a date on it.”

  “What does it say?”

  He looked at her with huge, shining eyes. “It says 1869!”

  Chapter 31

  OUT OF THE WILD

  THEY LEAPT TO their feet simultaneously, staring at each other in shock.

  “But that means—”

  “It could be—”

  “It’s from the time he lived here—”

  Their words spilled over each other.

  “That’s when John Muir lived at the mill!” Lizzie cried.

  “It really is his cabin! I told you!” Tyler crowed.

  “Well, wait,” Lizzie said. “Finding a coin with that date doesn’t mean it was John Muir’s. It could be anybody’s … but that does mean someone was here way back then!”

  They danced across the bank of the creek, slipping in the mud, shouting with happiness. “We found it!” Tyler kept saying. “We found it!”

  “Let me see the coin again,” Lizzie said, worried he would drop it.

  He handed it to her, and she ran her fingers gently over the cold, damp surface. On closer inspection, it looked like a nickel, except that it was larger and heavier, and very, very old. It had some kind of ornate, striped shield on one side. In faint letters, the words In God We Trust arched over it, and the date 1869 was inscribed below. On the other side, there was a large numeral five ringed by stars, and more letters, but they were too worn for Lizzie to read.

  “Do you think it’s worth anything?” Tyler asked excitedly.

  “It’s worth a lot to us,” Lizzie said.

  “I know that,” Tyler said impatiently, “but maybe it’s worth a lot for real. We’ll be rich!”

  Lizzie smiled at him. “I think it’s just a nickel. But,” she allowed, “a really old nickel could be worth something.”

  “I wouldn’t sell it anyway,” Tyler decided. “It belonged to John Muir!”

  “Where should we put it?”

  Tyler knelt on the ground with his backpack. “I’ll put it in the special pocket, where I keep important stuff,” he said.

  “With the picture of your mom?” Lizzie asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, not looking at her. “That one.”

  Still in a state of disbelief, Lizzie collected her shirt and shorts from the tree branches where Tyler had spread them to dry. They were a little damp. She folded them together, and he stuffed them into the top of the backpack.

  Then they were standing on the bank of the creek, blinking at each other in the morning sun, with the water rushing past, burbling and splashing over the rocks.

  “Which way should we go?” Lizzie asked, waiting.

  Tyler gestured resignedly back the way they’d come.

  “Out of the canyon,” he said. “Back to that sign for Yosemite Village.” He looked at her. “Right?”

  Lizzie took the backpack from him and hoisted it over her shoulder. “Right,” she said quietly.

  “At least we found what we were looking for,” Tyler said.

  Lizzie smiled at him. “We sure did.”

  * * *

  They walked along the creek, retracing their route as best they could, staying well away from the slippery rocks at the water’s edge. The sun was up now, and Lizzie could see the steep walls of the canyon rising precipitously above them. Birds twittered nervously in the trees, flapping away when they drew close. The canyon was silent and empty.

  “Do you think we’re going the right way?” Lizzie asked once. The shore was so overgrown, it was impossible to tell if they were on the same path or not.

  Tyler nodded. “As long as we follow the creek, we’re good.”

  So they kept walking. After a while, they stopped and finished the second bottle of water. Tyler took the backpack from her as the sun rose steadily higher in the sky.

  “What should our story be? For how we got to Yosemite?” she asked.

  Tyler strode through the brush, not turning around. “We’ll say I’d never been to Yosemite. And when your dad saw us at your house, we figured he’d send me back to my foster family, so you came with me here, before I had to leave.”

  Lizzie nodded. It wasn’t so far from the truth. “But how did we get here?”

  “Hitched a ride?” he suggested.

  “At night? Going to Yosemite?” It didn’t sound very believable. “I guess we could say we got a ride to Lodisto, and then we climbed on the back of a truck heading down Highway 40, toward the park.” It was one lie after another … hitched to everything else in the universe.

  “Yeah, that sounds good,” Tyler answered. She thought he seemed quiet, preoccupied. She wondered if he was thinking about going back to his foster family.

  “So Jesse is already gone?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll see him again.”

  “I hope so.” Tyler didn’t look at her.

  “And we’ll still see each other,” she said firmly. “We’ll still be friends.”

  He made a noise that was halfway between a snort and a grunt.

  She tried to catch his gaze. “I mean it. We will. When you’re back home—”

  “It’s not my home.”

  “Well, with your foster family. It’s not like we won’t see each other again.”

  He nodded, looking doubtful.

  “Really, Tyler. I promise,” Lizzie said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But you never know what’ll happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I ran away, so … sometimes they won’t take you back after that. I’ve never been in the same place for more than a couple of years.”

  “Well, maybe your mother will come for you—” Lizzie began.

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  Suddenly, they heard voices. Just ahead of them, picking their way through the brambles, they could see a man and a woman, carrying backpacks. Lizzie and Tyler froze.

  “Look at this,” the woman said, laughing over her shoulder. “It’s a wilderness! We are so out of our league.”

  “Hey, speak for yourself,” the man responded. “I’m an Eagle Scout.”

  “You think that’ll make a difference when that wolf comes after us?”

  Tyler turned to Lizzie and grabbed her arm.

  The man snorted. “I told you, it wasn’t a wolf. It was a coyote.”

  “Well, it certainly looked like a wolf—” The woman stopped, staring right at them. “Oh, hi. I’m sorry … did we scare you?”

  “No,” Tyler said carefully. “Did you see a coyote around here?”

  “Just one,” the man told him. “A big guy, on the other side of the creek. My friend here is sure it’s a wolf, but I told her, there are no wolves in Yosemite. She’s not used to the woods.”

  The woman rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “I know what I saw,” she said. “And why shouldn’t there be wolves in Yosemite? Argh, there isn’t even a trail here.” She glanced upstream, then looked directly at Lizzie. “Where are you two going? Aren
’t your parents with you?”

  “We kind of got lost,” Lizzie said. “We’re trying to get back to Yosemite Village.”

  “Oh my goodness, then I’m glad we came this way,” the woman said. “This is not a good place to get lost! We’ll take you back to the village with us, won’t we, Alan?”

  “Sure,” the man agreed, then whispered loudly to Tyler, “It gives her an excuse to turn around.”

  “I heard that.” The woman took Lizzie’s backpack. “I’ll carry that for you, hon. How long have you been out here? Are you thirsty? Hungry? We have plenty of water. Here, have some granola bars and fruit. Alan, give them something to eat.” And she began fussing in a motherly, insistent way that Lizzie and Tyler could only be grateful for. It was good to have someone else take charge, good to be taken care of.

  “Where did you see it?” Lizzie asked shyly.

  “The wolf?” the woman asked. “Right over there.” She pointed. “But he’s gone now.”

  “What color was it? Gray? White?”

  The woman looked at her questioningly. “Well, I didn’t really notice. Gray, I guess. I was more focused on the fact that it was a wolf. A very big wolf.”

  “Coyote,” the man corrected.

  Lizzie squinted across the fast-flowing water, staring hard into the tangle of vegetation on the other side. At first she didn’t see anything, just the trees and the dense foliage of the bushes growing close to the creek. And then she did. Hidden behind a cluster of leaves and branches, she glimpsed two glowing silver eyes.

  She sucked in her breath, standing perfectly still. Everything fell away then: the creek, the trees, the other hikers, and even Tyler. It seemed like she and Lobo were the only two creatures left in the world. She stood watching him, steadily, feeling the thrill of his freedom pulse through the air between them. She thought of all the other times she’d stared at him, through the wire mesh of the fence at the zoo. She wondered if she would ever see him again.