At six A.M. the next morning, it was early, but it wasn’t bright the way Oz had expected. Jessie woke up first, as she often did. The room looked strange—dim and more quiet than usual.
She tiptoed to the window. “Snow!” she whispered, forgetting that everyone was asleep.
The word snow was magic to Benny. Suddenly he was as wide awake as if it were the middle of the day.
“Snow?” he said.
By this time, the other children were awake, too. They joined Jessie by the window. Sure enough, flakes of snow were falling over everything.
“It can’t be snowing,” Violet said. “It’s July.”
“But it is snowing,” Jessie said, smiling at the thought of summer snow. “The guidebook says it can snow almost any time of the year in Yellowstone.”
“That means snowflakes for breakfast,” Benny said. “We just have to stick our tongues out. Can we go outside before it melts? I never saw snow in the summer.”
“I’m already getting my socks on,” Jessie said.
In no time flat, all four Aldens were outside the Old Faithful Inn. They stuck their tongues out to catch the snowflakes. And the children drew their initials in the few inches of snow on the ground.
“Now I need hot chocolate,” Benny declared after a while. “And hot waffles, too. Let’s go inside for breakfast.”
“Hey, Aldens,” the children heard when they entered the lobby. “I hope you folks will be ready for our hike in half an hour.”
The children turned around. Across the lobby stood Mr. Alden and Oz Elkhorn, bundled head to toe in parkas, hats, and mittens. Next to them were several sets of snowshoes.
“Are those for our hike?” Benny asked.
“They sure are,” Oz said. “This is going to be a real treat. A snow hike in July. I arranged it with the weatherman, just for the Alden family,” he said, winking at Mr. Alden. “I’m told there’s already a foot of snow on the upper trails.”
Snowplows made their way up and down the mountains just as if it were the middle of winter.
“See,” Oz told the children from the driver’s seat of his truck, “in Yellowstone we’re always ready for any kind of weather. We keep our snow tires on all year long.”
Awhile later, Oz pulled into the Continental Divide lookout area. “Hmmm. Some hikers are already here,” he said when he noticed a snow-covered car and truck parked at the end of the lot. “Judging by all the snow on them, it looks as if they’ve been here awhile.”
Indeed, Oz and the Aldens spotted snowshoe prints in the trails as well. Soon they, too, were deep in the woods.
“Snow hiking goes fast. No bumps,” Benny said. “It’s easier to see everything better. Like bears and stuff,” he added.
“Somebody must have been pretty determined to get out here this early,” Oz said later. “I thought we’d have caught up with these hikers by now. Whoever’s out here must be moving like antelopes through these trails. These tracks seem to be heading in the same direction as we want to go.”
The six hikers set off on the trail again. After a while, the snow tapered off. In the distance, everyone could see the sun begin to peek out between the clouds.
When the sky finally cleared, Oz pointed down to the valley. “Here, Benny. Take a look in my binoculars. They’re focused already. Just point them down that way.”
Benny did as he was told. “Hey! I can see all the way down to the Old Faithful Inn!”
Leading the hikers, Oz called out the names of the different types of trees. He saw small animals way before the children did, and he named every one.
“Did you see that muskrat?” he asked Jessie and Benny when a creature scurried by.
“It just went behind that big lump of snow over there,” Benny said. “Hey! Isn’t a big lump what we’re looking for?”
Off in the distance, everyone could see what Benny was talking about. Some pine trees had toppled over something—a rock or more fallen trees. It was hard to tell.
“Good eyes, Benny,” Jessie said. “And look at the tracks leading over there, too.”
Oz put his fingers to his lips. Everyone stood as still as snow sculptures. At first all they heard was the wind. But the longer they stood, the more they could make out voices in the distance.
“It sounds like a bunch of people talking in there,” Benny whispered.
“Let’s check it out,” Oz said.
Everyone swooshed over the snow. The voices grew louder. A few feet from the mound of fallen trees, Oz and the Aldens not only heard loud voices, they heard words.
“Please show us that bag,” a woman’s voice pleaded.
Another voice interrupted. “My sister and I think that bag might have belonged to our great-great-great-grandfather. You can check if you don’t believe me. The Tale of the Lost Cabin Miners tells all about him. His name was Samuel Jackson Crowe.”
The woman spoke up next. “Sam’s right. We have some old family journals that mention this cabin and a leather pouch the miners left behind. One of those miners was our ancestor.”
There was no doubt about the next voice. “Nonsense!” Mr. Crabtree said. “Anybody could read that book and say they were related to gold miners. In fact, everybody in Yellowstone has probably read that book. What’s to keep me from saying my ancestors were those miners? Anyway, I’m the one who found the leather pouch, not the two of you.”
“It’s time to go in there,” Oz told the Aldens. “Nobody’d even be here if it weren’t for my granddad’s map!”
Oz and the Aldens began to pull away a pile of pine branches covering the hump.
“The cabin!” Benny yelled when he uncovered a doorway.
“Who’s there?” Mr. Crabtree called out. “Is there a tour bus coming through here all of a sudden?”
Even Oz had to laugh. “Of course not, Lester. It’s me and the Aldens—hardly a tour bus.”
The hut was so small that Oz and the Aldens had to stand outside to talk to everyone inside: Ranger Crowe, Sam Jackson, and Lester Crabtree.
Oz smiled at the two young people. “I hope Lester’s not giving you a hard time. I won’t, either. But can you tell us all what’s going on?”
Before anyone else answered, Lester Crabtree interrupted. “What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. I got here practically in the middle of the night. Then, not long after, these two arrive, and now you six people. It’s too close for comfort in here.”
Mr. Alden spoke up now. “Well, what’s everyone arguing about? After all, the lost cabin isn’t lost anymore.”
Everyone stepped out of the cabin to settle matters.
Lester Crabtree was holding on to a leather pouch, about the size of a school-bag. Suddenly Sam made a grab for it, and five or six yellowish rocks rolled onto the snow.
Mr. Crabtree bent down. “These aren’t gold!” he said in a disgusted voice. “They’re just a bunch of plain old Yellowstone rocks.”
Oz Elkhorn couldn’t help smiling. “That’s why Yellowstone is called ‘Yellowstone,’ Lester. I hope none of you folks was counting on getting rich from what was in this bag. Looks as if those lost miners didn’t leave much behind but this old hut.”
Sam Jackson picked up the leather pouch. He looked inside. “Hey, there are some old papers in here, too. Look, Emily,” he said to Ranger Crowe.
Everyone crowded around to see what Sam Jackson had found.
Sam began reading:
“The unforgiving Yellowstone winter is over at last. The deep snows are melting. We begin the next leg of our trip back to Missouri today, six months after our terrible journey through these mysterious mountains. We leave behind our dreams and return to our old farmland. Samuel Jackson Crowe, 1850.”
“Samuel Jackson Crowe?” Jessie asked Sam. “Is that your full name?”
Sam clutched the old, yellowed paper in his hand. “That is my name. This is my sister, Emily Jackson Crowe. I just used my middle name Jackson out here. Emily and I were afraid that if everyone realized we were a brother and sister with the last name Crowe, they would figure out that we were searching for the lost cabin. So we didn’t tell anyone we were related.”
Ranger Crowe looked upset when she saw all the puzzled faces. “I started working in Yellowstone last year. I knew my ancestor had been a gold miner, but not a successful one. He wound up a poor farmer in Missouri. But then I started hearing stories about some miners leaving gold behind in this old cabin. So I got Sam to come out here, too, so we could look for the cabin together. Now it looks as if our relative just left this bag of rocks.”
Oz took off his hat and unzipped his jacket. “It looks as if your relative played a funny joke on you folks. Now I have to ask you two, did you steal my map? That didn’t belong to you or your relatives. It belonged to my relative—Granddad, then my cousin, then me. Nobody else had any business with that map.”
Sam looked down at his snowshoes. “I took the map when I realized you’d left it in the copier. I know I shouldn’t have. As soon as I discovered you had a mailbox at the inn, I returned it there when no one was looking.”
Ranger Crowe didn’t look any happier than her brother. “Sam was the one I let through the gates when you arrived in Yellowstone,” she explained. “I was allowed to let him go through, of course, since he works in the park.”
Jessie needed to know something. “Did you put the sign up saying the trail was closed?”
Ranger Crowe explained. “This summer, I signed up for all the trail-clearing duty. I worked so hard at it, I was put in charge. Whenever I was out working on the trails, I put up the sign. I didn’t want someone else to find the cabin when we were so close. And I changed the markers, too. There are plenty of other hiking trails around here, anyway.”
Benny listened to all this, but he needed to know more. “What about our map? Oz made a copy, just for us. Henry found it in the Dumpster.”
Sam looked Benny straight in the eye. “I guess it could have fallen off of the dresser and into the trash. But I didn’t notice it when I emptied the trash can into the Dumpster. I just did my job.”
“Same here,” Mr. Crabtree said, “though I wouldn’t have minded using a map instead of my brains to find this cabin. I’ve been looking for this place every summer since I started coming out here with Eleanor.”
The children looked at each other, full of questions.
“But why did you tell Mrs. Crabtree you weren’t hiking yesterday? She said you told her you were in your trailer all day. But we saw you through our binoculars, right before our bear scare.”
Mr. Crabtree looked more upset than Sam and Emily Crowe put together. “Well, I might as well tell the rest of the story,” he went on. “Eleanor doesn’t care much for hiking, so I go by myself. I know I shouldn’t go too far in the woods alone. But once I had a bee in my bonnet about the lost cabin, I kept going farther and farther on the trails. I just didn’t want to tell Eleanor about hiking alone, you understand?”
Everyone was smiling now, except Mr. Crabtree.
“There, there, Lester,” Oz said. “If you don’t want Eleanor to know about this, we don’t have to mention it. After all, you found the cabin, and you’re safe and sound. No harm done.”
Mr. Crabtree pulled down the brim of his orange hat. Without looking up, he continued talking. “Well, there is some harm done to these four children,” he said, turning to the Aldens. “And it has to do with bears.”
“You saw a bear!” Benny cried.
Mr. Crabtree loosened the straps of his backpack and dropped it to the ground. He reached inside. Everyone heard a button click on. “Grrr,” they heard next. “Grrr.” The growls were followed by some thuds and the sounds of snapping branches.
Everyone but Mr. Crabtree felt prickles of fear on the backs of their necks.
“This tape recorder is the bear you heard,” Mr. Crabtree said. He held up a portable tape recorder and showed it to everyone. Mr. Crabtree pressed another button. “There. I’m erasing this. I made this bear tape to keep hikers away from here, especially after I saw the four of you come down from the trails the other afternoon when I was up on the porch of the inn. I knew I was getting closer to the cabin, and I just wanted to find it once and for all. I owe everyone an apology.”
“But there was a bear,” Benny insisted. “I know there was.”
Everyone looked at each other and smiled. There was no way of checking on Benny’s bear.
Benny jiggled his bear bells. “See these? They scared away our bear, and it never came back.”
“Grrr,” Jessie said, putting her arms around Benny. “Have a bear hug.” |