Once across the creek, they found a place where someone had held a campfire a long, long time ago. “Teenagers,” Perri said. “They probably did drugs here.” Kat and Josie nodded solemnly, having heard many stories about teenagers and the strange things they did. Felled trees formed a ring of benches, and Perri took a seat on one of these, indicating that Kat and Josie should do the same.
“It smells funny here,” Josie said. “Like poo.”
“The Snyders’ farm is over there,” Perri said. “Binnie Snyder smells like poo. Haven’t you noticed?”
Binnie was the redheaded girl who had wanted Josie to be adopted, the last-chosen girl now that everyone knew what a good athlete Josie was. But Josie didn’t remember that she smelled any way in particular.
“Her father is scary,” Kat said. “He comes after people with a shotgun if they put even a foot on his property. So we have to be careful and not walk too far.”
“That never happened,” Perri said. “That’s a made-up story.”
“It did. He chased my father off.”
“My dad says that’s because your dad keeps trying to buy the Snyder farm and he doesn’t want to sell.”
It was the first time that Josie had seen any kind of disagreement between Perri and Kat, and she found it fascinating and frightening at the same time.
“Well,” Kat said at last, “wanting to buy something isn’t a reason for someone to chase you with a gun. All you have to do is say no. “
They all could see the logic in that.
“I think,” Perri said, “that our club should be named after the three of us, but it should be, like, a code. So we can talk about it but no one knows we’re talking about it. We should take two letters from each of our names, so it sounds like an Indian tribe. So we’ll be…the Pe-ka-jos.”
Kat nodded, but Josie said, “Pe-ka-jos? That sounds like those little dogs, the ones with the smushed noses. What about Ka-jope?” She thought she was being clever, not trying to put her own name first.
“Because that will look funny, written down. Besides, Pekajo was a real tribe that lived in Maryland a long, long time ago. We learned about them in social studies before you came.”
Kat looked puzzled, as if trying to recall this lesson. Josie wasn’t fooled, though. She may not have been at Glendale, but she had been in Maryland, and her old school was a good one, more advanced than Meeker Creek.
“Well, if we name ourselves for a real tribe, then it’s not a secret code. It’s just…dumb.”
“Yours is dumb, too. It doesn’t sound like a tribe at all.”
They sat in silence, glaring at each other. Finally Kat spoke.
“What about Ka-pe-jos? It sounds like Navajo, sort of, if you pronounce the j like an h.”
Perri and Josie nodded, pleased with the compromise.
“Now we take a vow.” Perri began, “We, the founding tribal council of the Ka-pe-jos…”
Kat held her right arm straight in front of her, palm down, and Josie followed.
“Not like that,” Perri said. “You look like Nazis.” She put her right hand over her heart. “We, the founding tribal council-”
“But now it’s just like the Pledge of Allegiance,” Kat pointed out.
Perri adjusted her arm yet again, folding her hands as if she were praying. But she shook off that posture before the others could say anything. “We should join hands and stand in a circle.”
Kat had to suppress a small giggle, earning a frown from Perri, but Josie had no problem feeling serious and grave.
“We, the founding tribal council of the Ka-pe-jo tribe, pledge to…um, be good friends and warriors, taking care of one another as best we can. We will do good deeds in the world when possible. All for one and one for all.”
“Isn’t that the Three Musketeers?” A new version of the film had just been released on video, one with all of Josie’s favorite actors.
“So?”
Josie had no real objection. “Just saying.”
“All for one and one for all. This is our vow.”
“This is our vow,” Kat and Josie repeated in unison.
Dry leaves rustled and cracked. The girls turned and saw two girls, redheaded Binnie Snyder and the dark-haired second-grader who often trailed her on the playground. The two clutched sheaves of autumn leaves to their chests. They looked embarrassed, which Josie thought odd. Kat, Perri, and Josie were the ones who had been caught holding hands, reciting vows. Binnie and Eve were just two girls in the woods, gathering leaves. But they turned and ran.
“They’re doing the extra-credit project,” Perri said, her tone outraged. “Binnie is such a suck-up. She’s always competing to be first in class.”
“Well, she’s not,” Kat said in her mild, reasonable way. “She wasn’t even chosen for gifted-and-talented. She’s only good in math.” Binnie could multiply huge numbers in her head, in fact, but she made terrible faces while she did it.
“But they were spying on us. They’ll tell our secrets. We have to make sure they don’t.”
“How do you do that?” Josie asked, even as Kat nodded.
“You’ll see,” Perri said.
In school the next day, Perri passed a note to Kat, who sat between Seth and Chip. She smiled, refusing to show it to the now curious boys. Yet she left the folded bit of paper on her desk when she went up to the board to do her seven-times table. Chip swiped it, giving a short bark of a laugh, then slipped it to Seth as soon as Mrs. Groves stopped looking at them.
By the end of the week, everyone at Meeker Creek Elementary knew that Binnie Snyder and Eve Muhly had been pretending to be bears in the woods and had gone to the bathroom outside, wiping themselves with leaves. Some said they even had rashes on their bottoms, because they had foolishly used poison oak or sumac. Binnie insisted that it was Kat and Perri and the new girl who had been acting queer in the woods, holding hands and chanting, but it sounded weak, compared to what everyone now knew, or thought they knew, about Binnie and Eve.
“Was it wrong, what we did?” Josie asked Perri and Kat.
“They shouldn’t have been spying,” Perri said.
“I didn’t do anything,” Kat said.
PART TWO. Death, Near And Certain
Saturday
8
It was still early, not even 7:00 A.M., when Eve Muhly rose and hurried to the barn. Claude and Billy began scampering around the pen as soon as they heard her footsteps and, in their excitement, were almost impossible to harness. “Stupid goats,” she scolded them, although her voice was as fond as her words were harsh. “If you want to go so badly, then stand still. Stand still.” But she said the same thing every day, and they behaved the same way every day. There was just no reasoning with goats.