I saw Mrs. Monroe exchange a worried look with her husband. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s getting late. Our boys should be in bed soon.”
“Oh, Mom,” Toby whined. “We go to bed later than this at home.”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “We have to toast marshmallows yet and sing some more songs.”
“And tell scary stories,” said Toby. “We can’t go to bed until we tell scary stories.”
“The boys are right,” Mr. Monroe said. “This is meant to be an adventure. And you don’t go to bed early on an adventure. Come on, Ann, let’s go.” He reached out his hand, which Mrs. Monroe reluctantly accepted. “What do you say, boys,” he said, turning to us, “how about a little exercise? Harold, with the way you’ve been eating lately, you could stand to lose a pound or two.”
I tried to ignore Howie’s chuckling as I struggled to my feet. Dawg came over. “You’re going to like Breakneck Falls,” he informed us. “One hundred feet of falling water.”
“For you droolers and spitters on our tour,” Chester said, “here’s one sight you won’t want to miss.”
“I have the feeling yer friend is making wise at my expense,” Dawg said with a snarl. “If he is, he’d better watch out.”
“Threats don’t frighten me,” said Chester.
“Well,” Dawg said, as the light from Spud’s knife glanced off the fire in our direction, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“Spud,” Bud shouted. “Spud, take these folks up to the falls. Spud. Spud, I’m talking to you.”
As we set off, Chester turned to Howie and me and said, “How comforting to think that Spud knows these parts like he knows his own name.”
NOW THE TRUTH of the matter is that had it not been for Mr. Monroe’s crack about my weight, I might never have taken that hike. Vanity, thy name is flab. I consoled myself that having worked off an astonishing number of calories, I would be entitled to an extra portion of s’mores on my return. But as I traveled the wet and buggy path up Latawata Creek, I began to worry. Not about s’mores, but about the night itself. I don’t know if it was Spud’s silence, which spread like contagion among the Monroes, or the unfamiliar sounds of the forest, but something was definitely beginning to spook me.
By the time we’d reached Breakneck Falls, I was too unnerved by the creatures I’d begun to imagine lurking behind every tree along the way to care much about its beauty. My lack of enthusiasm disappointed Dawg, and I suspect I have no one to blame but myself for the trouble that ensued after I commented to that effect.
“Ain’t that a sight?” said Dawg.
“Wow,” Howie uttered breathlessly.
“Not bad,” Chester remarked.
“It reminds me,” I said, “of the time Pete left the water running in the upstairs tub.”
“That all?” said Dawg. “Then I’ll show you something that will really impress you. Follow me.”
He bounded off through the woods. Without thinking, Howie and I bounded off after him.
“Come on, Pop!” Howie cried over his shoulder.
I saw Chester looking back and forth between us and the Monroes.
“Come back!” Mr. Monroe was calling.
“Harold!” Mrs. Monroe shouted. “Howie come here!”
Spud spoke then, for the first time. “Don’t worry about them,” he said. “Dawg knows his way around these woods like he knows his own name.”
Spud might have said something else then or maybe it was the glint of his knife as he pulled it from his belt that did it, but the next thing I knew, Chester was behind us.
When we caught up with Dawg at last, there was just enough daylight left to see that we were in a clearing of some sort, surrounded on all sides by tangled trees and vines.
“Dawg,” I said, catching my breath.
He regarded me with a vacant stare.
“Dawg?”
“Actually, Dawg is my nickname,” he said then. “My real name is Teufel. It’s German.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“I know,” Chester said, as the last remaining light fell away and there was no one left in the stillness of the place but the four of us and the shadows. “It means … ‘devil.’ ”
“Oh,” I said, “should we call you Teufel?”
“No, no, Dawg’s jes fine. I wanted to clear up my real name, that’s all.”
“Things are not what they seem,” Chester said to me. Then to Dawg, he said, “Well, as long as you’re clearing things up, where is … whatever it is you wanted us to see?”
“Well, that’s hard to say,” Dawg said.
“Wh-where are we?” Howie asked, starting to whimper.
“Oh, now, that’s easy,” said Dawg. “We’re lost.”
Chapter 4
Nobody Here But Us Chickens
“LOST?!!” CHESTER SHRIEKED.
With that, Howie’s whimpering quickened by several rpm’s. I decided the last thing an impressionable young puppy needed at the moment was hysteria.
“Chester,” I said, “calm down. Dawg knows these woods like he knows his own name. Right, Dawg? Dawg. Dawg, I’m talking to you.” A whimper started to rise in my throat. “Well,” I said, swallowing it, “at least there’s a full moon, so it should be easy enough to find our way back to camp.”
Just then, a cloud passed over the moon.
“Aw, you guys are so lily-livered,” Dawg said. “You’d think these woods was full of ghosts er something.”
“Er something,” said Chester.
“May-maybe we should go back to camp,” Howie suggested.
Dawg sidled up to Howie. “Whatsa matter?” he said. “You chicken?”
“No, sir!” Howie said. “We’re not chicken, are we, Uncle Harold?”
“Of course not,” I said. “It’s just—”
“We’re not chicken, are we, Pop?” Howie asked Chester.
“Buck-buck-buck-buck!” Chester cackled.
This made Howie laugh. “That was pretty funny,” he said. “You’re a regular Hen-ny Youngman, Pop.”
Chester scowled.
“Who’s Henny Youngman?” I asked.
“An old-time comedian,” Chester said. “Howie’s been listening to Mr. Monroe’s nostalgia tapes again.”
“Yep, that was pretty funny,” Howie went on. “Just watch out that your next joke doesn’t lay an egg, though.” He chortled merrily, having forgotten our predicament, it seemed.
Dawg took advantage of the situation. “Come on, Howie,” he said, “what do you say? I’ll show you what I wanted to show you and get you back to camp before you know it.”
“All right!” Howie shouted. “Let’s go!”
“I thought we were lost,” Chester pointed out.
“Well, we are,” Dawg replied. “So at least we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Makes sense,” I said, as we started off.
“Something else is beginning to make sense,” Chester whispered to me. We were trailing several yards behind Dawg and Howie.
“What?” I asked.
“Dawg wants us lost.”
“Oh, come on, Chester,” I said. “Why would he want that?”
“I don’t know, but there’s something fishy about this whole thing. I think he’s leading us somewhere, Harold. Leading us to our doom.”
“Well, at least we’ve eaten,” I said, trying to humor Chester out of his gloomy thoughts.
“Our last meal, perhaps,” Chester mumbled. And then he stopped dead in his tracks.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’ve figured it out,” he said. “The Monroes, they—”
“What?” I said, beginning to feel alarmed. Chester has a way of doing that to me at times.