Cooley wrapped the picture and the jewel box in a pillowcase, put everything else back where he had found it. On the way home he looked into the jewel box -- a few garnet rings and pendants that looked old, some junk necklaces and earrings, a gold two-and-a-half dollar piece. He kept the coin and threw the rest of the jewelry into a ravine. Let them wonder.
Chapter Three
Trees Reach up in darkness
Fingers tasting water Secret drinkers
Light Filters up their trunks
Their itchy toes Dabble in the sun
--Gene Anderson
Five miles from Dog River, up an old logging road, there was a hunting lodge, formerly the property of Dr. C.B. Landecker, who gave it to the Boy Scouts in 1938. The lodge consisted of a large living room, a primitive kitchen and pantry, and two small bedrooms downstairs; upstairs there was a loft full of camp beds and cots. In the clearing behind the house there were two outbuildings in an advanced state of disrepair, a well, a barbecue pit, a clothesline, and a heap of old lumber, the remains of a third outbuilding, which the Scouts had been using for firewood. There were recent tire-marks in the soft ground when Gene came into the clearing at twilight, but the building was empty and dark. He felt the lock with his fingers, turned it and went in.
Vague shapes of furniture loomed in the darkness; there was a stale smell. Gene felt his way into one of the bedrooms, took two blankets and carried them outside. Under the sagging porch he cleared away a few rocks and tin cans; spread his blankets, and rolled himself up in them for the night.
Out in the deep darkness there were howls, cries of anguish, with long silent intervals between them. Even in his refuge, there were mysterious and alarming sounds -- skitterings of tiny legs, crunches, clicks. The apples he had eaten on his way through the orchards were a hard lump in his stomach. He knew that he would lie awake all night and be tired in the morning; in the middle of this thought, he fell asleep.
In the morning, the clearing was empty and silent. Gene went into the house again and looked around. In the kitchen and pantry he found some useful things, a pot and a skillet, a knife, fork, and spoon, a can-opener, a can of pork and beans, a box of matches, a salt-shaker and half a box of crackers. He copied the pot and skillet, for fear they would be missed; the rest of the things he simply took. He rolled everything up in the blankets and tied them together with a clothesline. Then he slipped out of the house and into the trees, following a little stream.
In the hills above the river, the trees stand shoulder to shoulder, more than a hundred feet tall and five hundred years old: Douglas fir, western hemlock, red cedar, Ponderosa pine, Oregon white oak. Some of them were full-grown in 1579, when Sir Francis Drake sailed up the Pacific coast looking for a northwest passage. Where the land is level, the trees stand by themselves in a brown gloom, but on the slopes and in the narrow valleys they are surrounded by an anarchy of underbrush, hazel and mazzard cherry, bracken fern, trailing blackberry.
Before noon Gene Anderson had found the place he wanted, in a thick stand of fir and oak on a hillside so steep that no one would think of climbing it. Halfway up the hill, entirely screened by tall firs, stood a giant oak. Its trunk was more than two feet across, gray and fissured like an elephant's body; the thick branches curved out knobby and strong to support the crown fifty feet overhead.
Gene ate his pork and beans on the hillside, then rolled everything up in the blankets again and hid them under a log. He went back to the Boy Scout camp; the clearing was deserted except for a few sparrows pecking around the kitchen door.
In one of the outbuildings he found a hammer and some nails, a hatchet, a saw, a pick, and a little shovel. He wrapped these in a tarpaulin and carried them back to his hillside. By that time it was late afternoon, and it was dark under the trees. He ate pork and beans again, spread the tarpaulin under the log and slept there wrapped in his blankets.
The next day he went back to the camp and sorted out pieces of usable lumber from the pile in the clearing; He carried these up to the hillside and went back for more. Exhausted, he slept again under the log.
Early the next morning he climbed to the fork of the old oak, pulled up lumber with the clothesline and began to build his house. He notched the limbs to make the floor level, and braced it underneath with pieces cut from two-by-fours. By nightfall he had the framing up and the floor laid, and he slept there that night, under the tarpaulin, in a cold drizzle of rain.
The house took shape as he had seen it in his mind: eight feet square, eight feet high at one end and seven feet at the other, with a sloping shed roof. He covered the roof with a tarpaulin and nailed it down around the edges. The only opening was a narrow door, hinged at the top with shoe leather. Along one side he made his bed of fir branches; on another wall he put up shelves for his belongings, and on the third wall, the one opposite the door, a wider shelf that could serve as a desk or workbench.
On Monday he went down to the Boy Scout camp again. No one was there, but he saw fresh tire-marks in the road, and that made him uneasy. He determined to get everything he needed in this one trip and not come back again.
Inside, the living room was in some disorder; sofa cushions and scattered newspapers were on the floor. Gene went through into the pantry, found a gunny sack, and began to fill it. He took cans of soup, condensed milk, Spam, beef stew, green beans, corn, and peaches; a tin plate and cup, a candle, and a roll of toilet paper; a flashlight and some batteries, a kerosene !amp, a bar of soap. In one of the closets he found a pair of heavy boots, a sheepskin coat, and a hat with earflaps; they were all too big for him, but he took them anyhow.
The gunny sack was full, and he began on another one. In the tool shed he found a gallon jug, a bucket, a screwdriver and some other tools, a yardstick, a rusty pair of scissors, some brushes and cans of paint. He finished filling up his sack with the books he found over a desk in the living room: a dictionary, a cookbook, the "Boy Scout Handbook for Boys," and four novels in worn cloth bindings. He copied and replaced all the books, because he was afraid their absence would be too conspicuous. He gathered up the newspapers from the floor and put them in too, and an old copy of "The American Boy." A little kerosene heater and a can of kerosene went into a third sack, along with a pillow from one of the beds.
He now had far more than he could carry in one trip, but it was getting late, and he was afraid of being caught in the house if someone should come back. He carried the gunny sacks, and a folding canvas chair that caught his eye at the last moment, a few hundred yards into the woods and left two of the sacks there while he carried the third sack home. By the time he had come back twice, for the other two sacks and the chair, he was too tired to sort out his belongings. He set up the kerosene stove, filled and lit it, and for the first time had a hot meal in his own house: vegetable soup, Spam, pork and beans, with condensed milk to drink and a chocolate bar for dessert.
Afterward he took the folded newspapers out of the sack and put them in order. One was the "Oregonian," the other the "Dog River Gazette." On the first page of the "Gazette" was an article headlined "Missing Boy Sought in Death of Juvenile."
Police are seeking a 9-year-old Dog River boy for questioning in connection with the death of another boy Sunday. The dead youth is Paul Cooley, 12, son of Chief of Police Tom Cooley.