Skinny-Dipping at Monster Lake Read online

  To Keith Wallace, Chuck Gardner, and Gary Gardner

  1

  The sound knifed through the morning air like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. The gentle swish of the summer breeze, the soft peaceful rhythm of waves lapping on the shore, the steady clip clop of horses’ hooves—all were shattered by the awful screeching sound.

  The scream sent a chill up my spine. I shuddered. Duke shied. I had to grab the saddle horn to keep from sliding off his back. The little hairs at the base of my neck tingled. I pulled Duke’s reins. Heard him snort when he stopped. And . . .

  For just an instant I almost knew how General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry must have felt when the Sioux screamed their war cries and thundered down on them.

  Then . . .

  The scream came again.

  “You boys get out of here!”

  With a tug on Duke’s reins, I turned him and headed back the way we came. I don’t know what made me glance over my shoulder. Well—I guess I did know. Jordan and I had been next-door neighbors ever since we moved to Cedar Lake. I knew him. That’s why I looked back.

  Sure enough, he was still headed toward the shore.

  “Jordan.”

  Resting the book he was reading on his saddle horn, he didn’t look up. I sucked in a deep breath.

  “JORDAN!”

  His head snapped. Startled, he blinked a couple of times, then, with a finger, shoved his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

  “Huh? What?”

  This way.

  “Why?” He frowned. “We’re supposed to find the rest of our unit.”

  “I know, but we have to go around.” With a nod I motioned toward the rickety old boathouse. “Mrs. Baum. Didn’t you hear her screaming at us?”

  Jordan shrugged. “Not really.” He pointed down at the book. “Do you know that one coaxial cable can carry up to 132,000 conversations simultaneously?”

  “Come on, Jordan,” I said with a sigh. Jordan was the only guy I knew who read books while he was riding his horse.

  He frowned at Mrs. Baum over the top of his glasses and gave a little snort. “The Seventh Cavalry wouldn’t run from some batty old hermit. Especially a crazy old woman like her.”

  “Come on, Jordan.”

  Reluctantly he tugged on Mac’s right rein. They turned and trotted after Duke and me.

  Jordan was right. What kind of cavalry officer would turn tail and run from some old grouch like Mrs. Baum? Maybe I just wasn’t officer material, after all. I’d probably be an embarrassment to the whole unit.

  • • •

  Okay. So we really weren’t the Seventh Cavalry. We weren’t even cavalry, if you wanted to get technical about it. We were just a bunch of guys who lived around Cedar Lake and had horses.

  Jordan came up with the name—The Seventh Cavalry—because there were seven of us. Well, there were seven until Foster moved in. But Seventh Cavalry sounded better than Eighth Cavalry.

  I mean, who ever heard of the Eighth Cavalry?

  Chet Bently knew nearly everything there was to know about history. He said there was an Eighth Cavalry. But he also said the Seventh Cavalry was the most famous mounted division in history. General George Armstrong Custer. Battle of the Little Big Horn. Chet said everybody knew about that. He was into history, like, big time. Straight As in class and even made it a point to straighten Mrs. Oden out if she got some of her facts mixed up. Zane Parker didn’t like history. His dad did, though. He’d overheard his father talking about General Custer and those guys, so when Jordan came up with the name, Chet and Zane wouldn’t even consider some of the other suggestions. From that day on, we were the Seventh Cavalry.

  Daniel Shift would be the general. There was no doubt in my mind about that. He always had to be the leader—the guy in charge. Daniel was popular and rich, both.

  Jordan would vote for me. If we could keep his attention long enough for him to vote. Next to Ted Aikman, Jordan was probably my best friend. Jordan could be kind of weird at times. Once when I was complaining about him, Mom said: “He just marches to a different drummer.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it probably had something to do with Jordan always having his mind on computers or reading something, instead of paying attention to what everyone else in the world was doing at the time.

  Anyway, Jordan would vote for me. Chet would vote for Daniel. They were next-door neighbors. Pepper would probably vote for him, too, as would Zane. That only left Foster. He was the wild card. Foster was usually on my team, when we divided up for sports or wars or stuff. He didn’t like it much, though. That’s ’cause we usually lost.

  Course Foster didn’t like much of anything. He especially hated his name. It used to be Foster DeJarno. Then his mom and dad got a divorce. His mom remarried a guy she used to work with named Cliff Foster. When he legally adopted Foster, that made his name Foster Foster. (I couldn’t help but grin every time I thought about it.) Anyway, Foster Foster could go either direction. If I got to him first and convinced him to vote for me . . . well . . .

  That would give us a four to four vote. Maybe we could think of some kind of competition to break the tie, and I could beat Daniel. Maybe . . .

  • • •

  Jordan snapped me from my daydreams about being general of the Seventh Cavalry. He rode past me, swung down from his horse, and started to open the gate.

  “Jordan.”

  He lifted the wire from the top post. I took a deep breath.

  “Jordan!”

  Shoving his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, he looked around. When he spotted me, he smiled.

  “What?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Opening the gate.”

  “Why?”

  He stood there a moment with his mouth open. Finally he shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  Duke and I headed up the path along the fence. With one foot in the stirrup, Jordan hopped about three times, then swung his leg over Mac, and they trotted after us. Mrs. Baum never yelled if we went across the back of her place. She didn’t even seem to notice, for that matter, if we practically rode through her backyard.

  She just didn’t want us riding between her house and the lake.

  Really we didn’t have to go across her place at all. We could ride a little farther west and go by way of Mr. Heart’s farm. He didn’t mind. But if we went that way, we had to go through five fences instead of just two. Ended up taking us twice as long. Staying down by the water was even shorter. That’s why we forgot, sometimes, to ride behind Mrs. Baum’s house.

  “I always thought it was kind of weird,” I said, as much to myself as to Jordan. “I mean, if her front yard was beautiful and landscaped or something like that, I could understand. But her front yard looks terrible. There are so many gopher mounds in it—well, it looks like some little kid was playing with a toy dump truck and left hundreds of fresh dirt piles. I can’t understand why she gets so bent out of shape. Can you?”

  Jordan didn’t answer.

  “Jordan! What do you think?”

  Head cocked to one side, my friend finally shrugged.

  “I think they should have named it something besides Cedar Lake. I mean, every place we went on vacation last summer, we found a Cedar Lake. There’s one in Kansas and one in Colorado. Montana’s got a Cedar Lake, and there are two in Oregon. Most folks just call this Monster Lake, anyway. Why couldn’t the people here come up with something more original? Like Loch Ness Lake. I mean, we’re supposed to have a monster living in the lake, just like in Scotland. My father said that he saw the eyes one night when he and Mom were driving home from the movies. Why don’t they just call it Monster Lake? Or Lake Nessie? Or . . .�
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  My mouth fell open.

  For a moment I was totally lost and confused. Then I couldn’t figure out why I felt that way. After all, for Jordan, it wasn’t that unusual. Here I was, talking about Mrs. Baum and her ugly front yard. Naturally . . . Jordan would be thinking about something altogether different. I shook my head, closed my mouth, and kept riding.

  We had to get to Foster before Daniel did. Somehow, I had to talk him into voting for me.

  Duke stopped quite a ways from the gate at the far side of Mrs. Baum’s place. I kicked him and he went a few steps farther, then stopped again.

  I should have known—right then.

  Swinging down from the saddle, I tugged at the reins and practically dragged him to the fence. Once there I reached for the wire latch on the gatepost. The second I did, I realized I was in trouble.

  Duke tugged at the reins and tried to back up. My eyes flashed. Twigs snapped from a pile of brush to my left. My head jerked around, just in time to see the spear.

  Ambush!

  Split-second reaction was all that saved me. I jumped back, leaning to the side. The spear missed me and hit Duke in the shoulder.

  Jordan and I were unarmed. We hadn’t even picked a spear yet.

  Another spear hit Jordan. He yelled. I saw the disgusted look on his face when he swung down from the saddle and turned to fall.

  There was no time to run. I bent over and grabbed for the spear on the ground. Another spear flew from a huge cottonwood, behind me and just a little to my left.

  The second one got me—right in the . . .

  Well, I was bent over.

  2

  Making sure I had a good hold on Duke’s reins, I dropped to my knees.

  I sure didn’t like it, though.

  But when you’re wounded, you have to fall. Once on the ground, I checked around for sand-burs or goatheads. Sandburs grew on stalks and were sticky, but they really didn’t hurt. Goatheads were the hard, brown stickers that grew on flat vines. They were thicker than sandburs and could jab right through a thick pair of jeans. Sure it was safe, I lay down on my right side.

  “It’s not fair.”

  “You’re dead. You can’t talk.” Daniel Shift stood over me, smiling. I glared up at him.

  “I’m not dead. I’m just stuck in the . . . well, I’m just wounded. It’s not fair to ambush us on Mrs. Baum’s place. It’s, like, off limits or something. We weren’t expecting it and—”

  “That’s why it’s called an ambush.” Daniel kind of stuck his nose in the air, sneered, and wobbled his head back and forth. “An ambush comes when and where the enemy’s not expecting it.”

  “It’s still not fair.”

  “If you don’t shut up, I’ll finish you off.” He raised his spear.

  “Not fair,” I mumbled under my breath.

  Guess I didn’t mumble it soft enough. Daniel scratched his chin. Only he didn’t have much of a chin. Instead of sticking out like everyone else’s chin, his kind of sloped from his bottom lip back toward his neck. Anyway, he scratched where his chin should have been. Smiled and jabbed me in the chest with his spear. I felt my lip curl when I looked up at him. Then I closed my eyes and fell limp on the ground.

  “This one’s dead,” he boasted. There was a moment of silence, then: “This one’s dead, too,” Zane Parker’s voice called back.

  “Thousand one, thousand two, thousand three. . . .” Chet Bently began. I felt my eyes roll inside my closed eyelids. Chet Bently could count slower than anybody. It was going to take him forever to get to sixty.

  I scrunched my eyes and gritted my teeth, tight as I could.

  I hate being dead.

  • • •

  When we had first started playing “war,” we’d used sunflower stalks as spears. In fact, that’s what Jordan, Ted, Foster, and I still used. They worked pretty well, only they didn’t fly very straight when we threw them. There was usually enough dirt on the roots that it left a spot when we hit somebody.

  Last summer Daniel was watching a movie. It had this one part about army boot camp or training or something. Daniel saw these things that the army called pugil sticks. The soldiers wore football-like helmets with face masks. They used the pugil sticks sort of like a rifle—pretending one end was a bayonet and the other was the butt of the gun—then they’d try to stab or clunk each other over the head with the things. They were long sticks, padded on both ends with rubber and wrapped in canvas.

  Daniel had thought they were really cool. He’d kept talking about them and pestering his dad. Mr. Shift’s computer company did some stuff for the army. He talked to a couple of bigwigs on the phone, and the first thing we knew, four of these pugil sticks arrived in the mail, addressed to Daniel.

  Most of the guys were on summer vacation with their folks when the things came. Daniel called on the phone, and Jordan, Zane, and I were the only ones who came. Before we even started playing with them, Zane asked why they were named pugil sticks.

  We lost Jordan.

  He took off and spent thirty minutes going through Daniel’s Grolier Encyclopedias. When he couldn’t find anything there, he hopped on his horse and rode home. About two hours later, he came back and announced that he’d found it on his computer. The word pugilist meant “fighter” or “boxer.” So pugil sticks were sticks or clubs used to fight or box with.

  He seemed real proud of himself and was ready to play. None of us cared. By then we were already worn out, bruised, and wanting to do something else.

  Over the next week or so, we did have fun with the things. Playing army like Daniel had seen in the movie didn’t work out too well. That’s because, without the helmets . . . well, getting clunked in the head with those things—even though they were padded—sure gave us a headache. So after a few days we decided to use them in a different way.

  We went through our “Knights of the Round Table” era. We used old, wooden baseball bats as the swords. (They were about the right size and weight. Even Sir Lancelot had to use two hands to wield his sword.) We used the pugil sticks like jousting lances.

  That didn’t work too hot, either.

  Without a hand guard, like on a real sword, our fingers kept getting smashed. Smushed fingers ended the sword fighting real quick. Our horses weren’t too crazy about these pugil sticks flying around their heads. When we’d charge at the other knight, the horses usually shied away and we couldn’t stab anybody. On the few occasions we managed to keep our horses going straight long enough to make contact, we figured out why the knights wore all that armor. Getting knocked off a running horse and landing flat on your back in the middle of the pasture was no fun at all. We gave up on our Knights of the Round Table thing and went back to being the Seventh Cavalry.

  Zane Parker’s dad was a brick mason. He had boxes and boxes of this bright blue chalk. He used it to coat string that he and his crew stretched and thumped against the ground to lay out straight lines for walls and stuff. Since there was plenty of it, Zane talked him out of a box. We’d dip the ends of the pugil sticks in the blue chalk. That way, whenever you hit somebody, there was no chance of lying about whether you got speared or not. The blue spot on your shirt was enough to . . .

  • • •

  “. . . thousand fifty-eight, thousand fifty-nine . . .

  The sound of Chet’s voice snapped me from my daydreams. As soon as I was alive again, I needed to take off before Daniel figured out where I was going. If I could find Foster . . . if I could talk him into voting for me . . .

  “. . . thousand sixty!”

  I opened both eyes and sat up.

  Foster Foster leaned down next to me. He reached out a hand and picked his pugil stick spear off the ground. It was the one that came flying at me from the pile of brush.

  “Thanks for the new spear, Daniel,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s great. I’m going to have to throw it a few more times before I get accurate with it. I should have had Kent with that throw. But it’s really neat.”
r />   Daniel shrugged. “Don’t mention it. Soon as I get a little more money saved up from my allowance, I’m going to buy sticks for Kent and Jordan and Ted, too.”

  When I saw how proudly Foster held his new pugil stick, my heart sank.

  Daniel Shift beat me to him. He bribed Foster with his very own pugil stick spear.

  “It’s just not fair,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, quit complaining.” Daniel laughed. “It was a good ambush.”

  I wasn’t even talking about that, but I couldn’t say anything. Leading Daniel’s horse, Zane rode up on his dapple gray mare and handed him the reins. “Where to now, General Swift?” He stuck his hand to the brim of his baseball cap like a salute.

  “General?” I asked.

  When Daniel stuck his nose in the air, it made him look like he had even less chin than normal.

  “Yep. General.”

  My shoulders sagged. “I thought we were going to vote.”

  “We did. Chet, Pepper, Zane, and Foster all voted for me as general.”

  “But—”

  “That’s a majority,” Daniel interrupted. “Even if Jordan and Ted vote for you, that still puts me one vote ahead. I’m making you captain, though. After Chet, you’re next in command.”

  I stood there with my mouth open. Daniel put his foot in the stirrup, bounced once, and swung to the saddle.

  “Troop, mount up!” he ordered. “We have to ride by Ted’s and get him. Then we’ll pick teams and have a real war before lunch.”

  Duke and I rode at the back of the line.

  Captain Kent Morgan. It was almost enough to make me sick. Here I had dreams of being general of the Seventh Cavalry, and without even getting to vote, I’d been demoted to captain.

  Bummer.

  3

  We rode across Wilson’s Swamp, alongside Sinkhole River and headed up Bobcat Canyon.

  Okay . . . Wilson’s Swamp wasn’t really a swamp. It was just sort of a muddy spot where one of the creeks flowed into Monster Lake—I mean, Cedar Lake. Right now it was all dried up because we hadn’t had a rain since early June. Sinkhole River was really a little dried-up creek. We called it “Sinkhole” because there were a couple of deep pools that still had slimy, oozie green water in them. And “river” just sounded a lot more exciting than “creek.”