Courage Read online

  “After our fish supper tonight, we’ll make s’mores around the fire and celebrate Jill’s birthday.”

  “You are a sneaky one, how could you keep that hoard of goodies all to yourself?”

  They roasted the fish and had a great supper; the lack of salt didn’t seem to bother them anymore.

  “Lucas do you have your I-pod?”

  “Sure mom.”

  “Can you show me how it works?”

  “Yeah, but why do you want to know?” Lucas asked.

  “I’d just like to keep up with modern technology.”

  Lucas briefly explained how to work the I-pod.

  “Attention Robinson family! Tonight we are celebrating Jill’s birthday, first we’ll make s’mores and afterwards we’ll watch a movie,” Mary announced.

  The excitement in the camp was high, Jill shrieked with delight. Lucas whooped and said, “I have a movie on the I-pod which Jill will love. It’s called ‘Lemony Snicket’ and it’s so awesome.”

  They had a wonderful evening. Jill was ecstatic that her birthday was being celebrated and not forgotten.

  “Jill we have a present for you, actually two presents, one is a chocolate bar and the other is an I.O.U. for a very expensive gift of your choice when we get back home,” Mary said.

  “As long as it’s no more than five dollars.” Lucas joked.

  They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and at the end of the birthday song, Lucas added in a deep baritone, “And many more!”

  It was a fun evening for everyone. They forgot all about their predicament and just enjoyed the moment.

  “Alicia it’s time for bed, I saw you yawning.”

  “I’m tired tonight, can I help you with the typing tomorrow morning?”

  “We’ll do it right after breakfast.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  There were occasional rain showers, but they managed to keep reasonably dry in the tent and under the protection of the large spruce tree. After every fishing trip they left a few fish for the injured wolf.

  Mary was getting much better and one day they decided that they could all go fishing.

  “If we hear a plane we’ll have to run like heck back here to light the signal fire,” Jim said.

  “I can handle that dad,” Lucas piped up.

  Deep down Jim was really worried, for two weeks they hadn’t seen or heard any search planes and even the commercial flight was hit and miss.

  They got to the stream and again were catching fish just as fast as they dropped their lines in the water. When they had 15 large trout, they decided it was time to head back. Again, as before, they left fish for the injured animal.

  “Dad why are there so many fish here but when we go fishing at home we hardly ever catch any?” Lucas asked.

  “I think it’s because this is an ideal location for fish, and there are no fisherman here so the fish thrive.”

  Jim was looking at paw prints without making it obvious. He recognized deer tracks, but next to those were large paw prints that he believed might be bear prints.

  Jim walked behind Mary, checking her walk to see if her leg still bothered her. She appeared to be walking without any difficulty.

  “Mary, you seem to be almost fully recovered. The last time I checked your leg, it looked good, obviously healing. Do you have any pain when you take a deep breath?”

  “I feel fine. The leg sometimes bothers me, but I can live with that. Maybe you should have been a doctor, you did such a good job with me.”

  As they were leaving the stream, the injured animal slunk out of the brush with its tail between its legs and took the fish.

  “That’s our gray wolf, it must have been injured by the pack or a bear,” Jim said.

  “Grandpa is the wolf mean?” Alicia inquired.

  “Wolves are very interesting. They are social animals that hunt and live as a pack. A single wolf may join a bunch of wild dogs, or if it’s lonely it may even befriend humans at times.”

  “I always thought they were just mean,” she said.

  “They can be, but there are stories where a wolf pack will adopt a human baby and raise him as their own, like Mowgli in The Jungle Book. I don’t know how true that is, but wolves are probably the smartest wild animals around.

  When they hunt in packs, each has a chore; one will chase the animal they want to catch until it gets tired while others wait at the appointed spot to bring the animal down. Even their feeding is based on hierarchy; the most important in the pack will feed first and so on.”

  “Most important?”

  “Yes, the leader male is the most important in a pack, he’s the ‘big daddy.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  “This is Search and Rescue HQ, report ‘Foxfire One’ and ‘Two’.”

  “This is ‘Foxfire One,’ we have completed the grid search 50 kilometers from base line east and west. No sign of the plane or the survivors. Out”

  “This is Search and Rescue HQ, extend the search to one hundred kilometers east and west of base line. Full detailed grid search, we have to find something.”

  “Understood. ‘Foxfire One’ and ‘Two’ Out.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Another typical day, the berries that Lucas found were okay to eat, at least Jim hadn’t had any ill effects from them, but they weren’t very tasty. The fishing was going great, the wolf at times would follow them back to the tent, but then would run away although it was getting friendlier every day.

  “Lucas, Jill do you know what day it is today?” Mary inquired.

  “I don’t know mom, is it someday special?” Jill asked.

  “Well it’s kind of special, it’s September 6th.”

  “I know, today would be our first day back at school.” Lucas replied.

  Jill started to cry again, “I miss all my friends.”

  “It’s okay Jill, we’re having lots more fun here than the kids back home are having,” Lucas reassured her.

  “It looks like there’s a storm brewing in the west,” Jim said, pointing at the dark clouds.

  By two o’clock that afternoon, the storm was right above them. The lightning and thunder reminded Jim of the storm when they crashed, although this one wasn’t as severe.

  “Why don’t we all go into the tent and tell ghost stories?” Lucas suggested.

  “I don’t like ghost stories, can we watch another movie?” Jill responded.

  “I have one other movie on my I-pod, Madagascar: Escape 2. Your choice, Jill,” Lucas laughed.

  “I think Madagascar: Escape 2 would be my choice, but I’ll go with whatever the majority decides,” Jill said.

  “Jill, think about it. How big is the screen on the I-pod? You and I are okay to watch it but even then we have to put our heads together to see the screen so I’m pretty sure that all four of us can’t watch at the same time,” Lucas said.

  The children watched the movie while Mary and Jim curled up for a rare afternoon nap.

  About four in the afternoon, the sky cleared and everything smelled fresh and clean. They crawled out of the tent to see the sun shining brightly and a rainbow was visible off in the distance.

  “It’s absolutely beautiful here,” Mary remarked.

  An entire month had passed; it was mid-September and Jim decided he should start planning for the approaching winter. He was finally able to tie the knife securely to a 6-foot pole with a torn t-shirt and then used it to reach berries that were high up and out of reach. He also figured that the ‘spear’ could provide a good fighting weapon against wild animals if the need arose.

  They hadn’t heard any rescue planes or helicopters yet and were getting very discouraged. Mary had been drying berries, but to live on berries all winter would take tons, and there just weren’t that many. Jim didn’t know what would happen to fishing if the stream froze over.

  “What are you doing dad?” Lucas asked.

  “I remember seeing a documentary a while ago where kids in Africa were able to catch birds with a box and a
stick. That would be a nice change from fish.”

  “How does it work?”

  “It can be a box of any shape or even a basket. This thing I’m trying to make, well I’m not sure what shape it’s going to be when it’s finished, I just hope it’ll work. You know what you can do for me?”

  “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  “Get you sister and see if you can find long pliable, skinny sticks or twigs, maybe an eighth to a quarter inch thick, any length but at least a foot long.”

  “Here you go again; dad we don’t know inches, we only know centimeters.”

  “Okay, I guess I’m from the old school. The sticks should be thinner than your little finger and about,” Jim spread his hands “this long or longer.”

  “Come on Jill, we need to help dad. Whatever he’s doing probably won’t work but at least it keeps him busy. Can I have the knife?”

  Lucas and Jill went off in search of twigs, Mary laughed and asked Jim, “Do you think it’s going to work?”

  “Don’t know for sure, but it worked on TV.”

  After a while the kids came back with an arm full of skinny sticks.

  “Is this what you wanted dad?”

  “They’re perfect, thanks kids.”

  Jim took some of the thicker, straight branches and slowly weaved the thin sticks around them. He repeated the process many times. After about two hours of hard work, he had what appeared to be a hat without a top or a basket without a bottom.

  “Mary, kids, come here. So, what do you think?”

  “That’s nice, but what is it? If you have no top or bottom, wouldn’t the birds just fly out?” Mary asked gently, not wanting to hurt Jim’s feelings.

  “I thought we could attach a t-shirt or something on top.”

  “Why not just place cross pieces of sturdy branches from one side to the other and then weave more of the skinny branches into them?” Mary offered.

  “I’m going to need more skinny sticks, kids!”

  Jill and Lucas raced off again but were back shortly.

  “Is that enough?” Jill asked.

  “I think so, but we’ll soon find out.”

  Jim worked with renewed energy, and by late afternoon it was finished. The shape of the basket well, it was hard to describe; it was sort of oval at one end and kind of square on the other end with sides of about ten to fourteen inches or so. It was roughly two feet by one foot, an odd shape to be sure, but quite sturdy.

  “So how does it work?” Mary asked.

  “Here, let me show you!” Jim exclaimed excitedly.

  He turned the basket upside down, lifted one end and carefully positioned a branch about 6 inches long to support the raised end, then scattered some berries on the ground underneath.

  “When a bird goes in to eat the berries, it moves around and knocks the stick out like this. The basket then falls down, trapping the bird and voila, we have fowl for supper. You really should have a long string tied to the stick that holds the basket up, but we don’t have anything like that.”

  “Let’s try it out dad!” Lucas shouted.

  Jim set the trap up a short distance from camp and they all hid and very quietly waited. After about an hour, Lucas grew tired of waiting and said,

  “Dad, maybe there aren’t any birds here.”

  So for their supper that night, it was fish again.

  “Guess what Alicia?”

  “I know, it’s time for supper and bed”.

  “You are one perceptive little girl, you must take after Grandma.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Next morning Lucas was the first one up again. He crawled out of the tent and looked around for the trap.

  “Dad, mom the trap is gone!”

  The others crawled from the tent and Jim said, “We have to look for it, it was set up just over there and it couldn’t have just disappeared, could it?”

  They walked over to where the trap had been set up and realized that somehow the trap had been dragged into the bushes. Lucas ran around a small spruce tree shouting, “Dad it’s still moving!”

  “Don’t touch it!” Mary warned Lucas.

  They surrounded the trap and looking between the woven branches saw, much to their surprise, a rabbit staring back at them.

  “Dad it works, you caught a rabbit!” Jill exclaimed.

  “This will be so awesome, no fish tonight!” Lucas said.

  “I never would have believed it, my husband, the hunter,” Mary said proudly.

  For the next four days the trap remained empty, so fish and berries were back on the menu.

  They tried to dry some fish since they were so plentiful, but that didn’t work; by the time the fish dried, they had spoiled. The kids were also getting pretty tired of eating fish. They were losing weight and had lost some of the spunk they had shown earlier. Jill became more and more homesick and was crying most days now. Mary was much better, but she too felt the strain of the unknown and was worried. The weather was changing, becoming more fall-like and a very cold rain lasting three days dampened their spirits even more. It was late September now and while the fish were still plentiful, they just didn’t feel like eating them anymore. They would toss ten fish to the wolf. It was becoming quite friendly; one morning when they woke up, they found him sleeping, curled up at the front of the tent.

  “Dad, there is that plane again.”

  “It’s probably another commercial flight, but they are at least thirty-forty thousand feet up, they can’t possibly see us.”

  That day they all went to pick the last of the berries. When they got there, they came face to face with a large black bear that was also foraging for berries. Jim quietly told them to just back up slowly and not make eye contact. Luckily the bear was intent on eating berries and didn’t pay too much attention to the family.

  “You know, I remember reading someplace that there’s a berry called Bearberry. I wonder if that’s what we have here?” Jim explained.

  “Dad, are you just saying that because of the bear?” Lucas asked.

  “No, no I’m serious, I’ll bet you that’s what these berries are called.”

  “Why are the bears so vicious?” Alicia asked.

  “Again, honey it’s not that they are vicious, they protect their food source and their cubs. If a human walks toward a bear and the bear has a cub, the bear will likely attack him because she thinks its cub is in danger. If a bear is feeding and another bear, wolf or a human is approaching his food source, it will probably attack.”

  Early one morning they were woken by a loud commotion with sounds of grunting and sniffing outside the tent. Jill immediately started to cry, while the rest were terrified too. The sound changed from one of grunting to one of half barking and growling. After a while the commotion died down a little and they peeked out to see the wolf growling menacingly at the large black bear just yards away from the tent. Jim picked up the pole with the knife and ventured out of the tent, the wolf didn’t move as Jim patted it on the head. He approached the bear, yelling and brandishing the pole and knife. At the same time the wolf attacked the bear as well and the bear backed up, got down on all fours and lumbered away.

  Jim went to the wolf wanting to pat him again, but it also ran away.

  “It’s still skittish, he still doesn’t trust us.”

  “Then why is he here?”

  “I think because we feed it. Maybe he feels he owes us something, but I don’t know. Anyway, he saved us from the bear.”

  “Jim, will that bear come back? I’m really afraid for the children,” Mary said quietly as she didn’t want the children to hear her concern.

  “We may see the bear again, but it should soon be going off by itself to hibernate till spring. In the meantime, though, it will be foraging for food. We’ll just have to be very careful.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The weather was getting much colder and winter was definitely drawing near. It was the end of September, they had been stranded on thi
s mountain for seven weeks and they were sick of it. One day as Jim and Jill went to the stream in the early morning to get water and catch more fish, they spotted some deer drinking at the stream. Jim thought if he could trap one somehow, they would have meat for a long time. They held a family meeting to discuss this; everyone needed to understand that they had to kill the deer for meat and for the hide as winter was fast approaching.

  Jill said, “Yuk, I don’t want to see you do it, I’ll eat the meat, but I don’t want to watch you do it.”

  “You’re just being silly, do you think the meat you buy in the grocery store wasn’t killed by someone?” Mary asked.

  “I still don’t want to see it happen.”

  “Dad, you and I’ll go tomorrow morning and see if we can catch one,” Lucas said.

  “It’s not going to be easy, we may not be able to get close enough to them.”

  Early the following day Jim and Lucas set out for the stream.

  “I feel like the big white hunter, without a gun,” Jim joked.

  “But at least you have the pole with the knife, I have nothing.”

  “I don’t know if this is going to be enough, the deer have a keen sense of hearing and smell. They can detect us before we see them.”

  When they got to the stream, there were no animals of any kind to be seen.

  “We need to be upwind of the stream,” Jim said.

  “How do you know where upwind is, dad?”

  “You’re supposed to lick your finger, then lift your hand in the air. The finger should be cooler from the wind direction because the wind makes the moisture evaporate.”

  He demonstrated to Lucas as he described the maneuver.

  Lucas tried it. “I don’t feel anything on my finger.”

  “It’s supposed to work.”

  Lucas tried it again. “I got it dad, we have to go left!”

  “That’s the sense I get too, we should hide behind those bushes.”

  The settled in and waited, hoping the deer would show.

  The wait was short, three appeared, one buck and two does, cautiously looking left then right, they walked toward the stream. Out of nowhere, their gray wolf attacked the deer, driving them toward the waiting hunters. As the deer bolted directly toward them, Jim lifted the pole with the knife, and like a javelin, hurled it toward one of the does. It connected, just above the doe’s right front leg. The doe was able to shake it loose and ran after the other two deer. The wolf, ignoring Jim and Lucas, took off after the deer. Jim picked up the pole and shouted.