Skinny-Dipping at Monster Lake Read online

  We really did see a bobcat in Bobcat Canyon, though. It was about two years ago. He was a scrawny little thing. We thought he was somebody’s house cat at first. But he was a real honest-to-goodness bobcat.

  We almost didn’t see him at all. That’s because Zane was the one who spotted him. Usually, nobody ever listened to Zane. He was all the time making up stories or seeing stuff. If Pepper hadn’t noticed the bobcat, right after Zane did—well . . .

  We were near the head of Bobcat Canyon, where we saw the “real” bobcat, when we found Ted.

  I guess I should say, Ted found us.

  General Daniel Shift, our fearless leader, was in front of the line. I brought up the rear. With Chet close on his heels, Daniel kicked his horse and started up the steep path. He was almost to the top of the cliff when Ted Aikman sprang from behind a fallen oak log and drilled him—square in the chest—with a sunflower-stalk spear.

  Startled, and probably a little hurt, Daniel grabbed his chest. Quick as a cat, Ted sprang to the side and launched another spear at Chet. It caught him totally by surprise, but Ted missed. Chet hopped off his horse and used him for a shield.

  That’s when the idea struck me. Why wait to choose teams, like General Swift suggested earlier. We all knew that Daniel, Chet, Pepper, and Zane would be on one team. Ted, Jordan, Foster, and I would be on the other. That’s the way it always worked. So . . .

  Nudging Duke with my heels, we trotted up beside Jordan. For once he was paying attention. I slipped my rubber knife from the scabbard at my side and nodded toward Pepper and Zane.

  Jordan winked.

  “Let’s get ’em,” he whispered.

  Pepper never saw us coming. Jordan kicked his feet free from the stirrups and tucked them up on the saddle, under him. Pepper’s horse didn’t even shy when Jordan leaped from Mac and landed on his back.

  Now, Jordan was kind of in a different world, most of the time. He was, however, smart enough to know that you don’t drag Pepper Hamilton off his horse. Pepper outweighed any two or three of us put together. The chance of him landing on top of someone was simply too great a risk. So instead of trying to pull him off, Jordan just reached around and stabbed him in the chest.

  Pepper did manage to yell out, though.

  It was too late for Zane. Duke and I squeezed past Foster on the trail. We were right beside Zane when he looked up. His eyes flashed, just in time to see my blade coming toward his stomach. He sucked in, but it was no use. I got him.

  His shoulders sagged and he sneered at me before he slumped in the saddle, then slid off Gray’s back. When he yelled out, too, the element of surprise was lost.

  I didn’t even give Foster a second thought, since he always ended up on our team. I guess his new “gift” from Daniel made him forget. He grabbed the pugil stick spear from where it rested across the front of his saddle, and jumped off his horse. He looked at me, then at Jordan, then back at me again.

  Chet was closer. I turned my attention to him. Chet raised his head over the dip in his saddle. He ducked down, quick as he could. When a spear didn’t come flying, he raised up again.

  Still near the fallen log at the top of the cliff, Ted only had two sunflower stalks left. He wasn’t about to waste one on a guy hiding behind a horse. Pugil stick spear in hand, and using his horse as a shield, Chet started toward me. Ted raised one of his spears, but Chet knew it was just a bluff.

  “Jordan,” I called. “Hurry up. I’m outnumbered.”

  Kneeling, I reached for Zane’s spear. But he held on to it. I tugged. “You’re dead. Let go.”

  “It’s a ‘death grip,”’ he explained, still hanging on like a bulldog. “You’ll have to pry my fingers loose.”

  My eyes crossed when I looked down my nose at him. I reached for his fingers, then gave it up. Chet was too close. There was no time.

  “Jordan. Hurry!”

  Slicing the air with my knife, I fended off Chet’s first spear attack. He backed up, moving to the side for another try. That put Foster behind me. It was hard to watch Chet and wonder if Foster was sneaking up to stab me in the back.

  “I got Foster,” Jordan called. “Run from Chet, if you have to. Soon as I finish this guy off, I’ll come help you.”

  It was mighty brave talk for Jordan. He wasn’t that good at hand-to-hand combat. Usually—even if he was thinking about what he was doing—he ended up tripping over his feet or leaving himself wide open.

  There was a sudden crashing sound behind me. Chet’s mouth fell open and his spear dangled at his side. I glanced over my shoulder to see what was going on.

  Tumbling and rolling like a bowling ball, Ted Aikman came from the top of the dirt cliff. Foster blinked. Then his eyes got as big around as baseballs. Ted was headed right for him.

  Foster kind of hopped from one foot to the other—trying to decide which way to dodge. It was all Jordan needed. I guess he’d grabbed Pepper’s spear, after he stabbed him. Jordan aimed it at Foster. Jabbed him in the side. The thing hit him so solid that a small cloud of blue chalk dust swirled through the air.

  Foster didn’t care that he’d been stabbed. He just wanted out of Ted’s way. Ted wasn’t rolling anymore. He was sliding. At least, I guess he was. I really couldn’t tell. All I could see was this cloud of dust, rushing down the hill like an avalanche.

  Foster started to jump left. He started to jump to the right. Only he couldn’t decide. By the time he did . . .

  It was too late.

  Ted slammed into him. There was a yell—really more like a scream—then Foster’s spear went flying. The next thing I saw were his tennis shoes. In the blink of an eye his feet were up above his head. Finally he disappeared into the cloud of rolling dust.

  When the dirt settled, Ted appeared under Zane’s horse’s belly. Blinking and eyes still rolling, he staggered to his feet. The horse didn’t kick or anything. He just wobbled his ears. Dizzy from rolling down the hill, Ted’s eyes kind of jerked and twitched a moment before he found Chet. He fumbled for his knife.

  The two of us started for the last enemy. Jordan was no help. All he did was laugh. Leaning against Zane’s horse, he pointed at Foster, then at Ted, then back at Foster. He laughed so hard that water started leaking from his eyes.

  “You—” He broke off, almost howling. “You should have seen . . . the look on . . . on Foster’s face.” Jordan finally managed. Then he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around the horse’s hind leg.

  All Ted, Chet, and I could do was shake our heads. Ted and I moved in for the kill. We came at Chet from opposite sides. Eased closer and closer, twisting our knives and watching his every move.

  Chet dropped his spear. Both hands shot over his head. “I give! I surrender. You win.”

  The only difference between surrendering and getting killed was—if you were killed you had to lay quiet on the ground for sixty seconds. If you surrendered, you could at least stay on your feet and talk some. Chet knew he lost, and there was no sense getting all dirty.

  I picked his spear up and turned to Ted.

  “I’ll watch the prisoner. You go get Jordan off the horse’s leg, before he gets kicked in the head.”

  We probably had the best horses in the whole country. They weren’t much good for racing or roping or anything like that, but when it came to fighting wars . . . our horses couldn’t be beat.

  Two years of jumping out of trees and knocking people off their backs—two years of leaping from one horse onto another while galloping across a field—two years of getting hit with spears or sunflower stalks and having your rider fall off . . . the whole bunch of them had gotten used to just about anything.

  Ted unwrapped Jordan’s arms from around the hind leg and brought him over to where Chet and I stood.

  Daniel got up and started dusting his jeans off. “That’s cheating. Kent and Jordan were riding with us.”

  Jordan quit laughing just long enough to suck in a deep breath. “Kent and I weren’t really on your team, Daniel.
We were spies for Ted’s team.” With that, he looked back at Foster and burst out laughing again. The drops of water that leaked from his eyes left little mud trails down his cheeks.

  I smiled, amazed at how sharp Jordan could be sometimes. Daniel folded his arms.

  “It’s not fair,” he grumped.

  “You’re dead.” I smiled at him. “Shut up or I’ll kill you again.”

  Grudgingly, Daniel plopped down on his bottom and pouted.

  “Thousand one,” Ted began. “Thousand two . . . thousand three . . .”

  “I’m tired of this war stuff.” Daniel cupped his hands under what little chin he had, and stared at the dirt. “Let’s go do something else.”

  Ted threw his hands up. “Now I got to start all over again.”

  I nudged him with my elbow. “I’ll count. Thousand one . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . thousand two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . thousand three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .”

  4

  Okay . . . so I overdid it on the counting. Trying to make it as slow and painful as possible . . . well, I took so long that even Ted and Jordan got a little ticked at me.

  Besides, playing war was about all we had done for the three weeks that school had been out. It was getting kind of old. So when Pepper announced (at “a thousand twenty-eight”) that his mom was making a batch of chocolate chip cookies when he left the house this morning—the war was over.

  Dead guys leaped to their feet and ran for their horses. Even Jordan quit laughing long enough to wipe the mud streaks from his cheeks. I was ready to quit, too. I didn’t even try to make Daniel lay back down.

  “We can eat at my house and swim,” Chet called. “I’ll have Mrs. Garcia make some sandwiches.”

  The whole bunch of us charged off.

  Jordan followed me south, back down Bobcat Canyon, alongside Sinkhole River, and across Wilson’s Swamp. Ted rode west to his farm and the rest of the guys headed north.

  Jordan and I lived in South Shore Estates. There were ten twenty-acre lots on the south side of Cedar Lake—five lake-front and five lots across the road and up the hill. We lived in the very first house, right on the lake. Jordan and his family were next door. West of their house were the Fergusons, then the Brocks. Across the road is where the McBrides and the Taylors lived. Both those couples were sort of old, but they were nice. The lot next to Mrs. Baum’s place was still for sale, as were the three across the road.

  Mom and Dad got our twenty-acre lot before anyone else knew that Mr. Gregg, the dairy farmer who used to own the land on this side of Cedar Lake, was dividing it up.

  That’s ’cause Dad fished Mrs. Gregg out of the lake.

  For a long time, Mom and Dad had been wanting to move out of the city. Dad was a paramedic with the fire department. We did okay, but paramedics aren’t what you’d call rich. About three years ago, on his day off, Dad and one of his buddies were fishing near the Point, when they saw this hay truck bouncing and careening down the hill. It went smack-dab into Cedar Lake. They raced over and Dad jumped out and got the old woman loose from the truck before it went completely under. Mr. Gregg came running down the hill. His wife was fine, but when the truck lost its brakes and ended up in the water, it scared both of them half to death.

  The Greggs thought Dad was a regular hero. Dad thought he was just doing what anybody would do, especially since he was a paramedic. They wanted to give him something or do something for him to show their appreciation, but Dad wouldn’t have it. So they kind of sneaked around behind his back and went to Mom.

  Somehow Mrs. Gregg found out that Mom was completing her real-estate license. She didn’t pass the test the first time she took it. But six months later she did. How Mrs. Gregg knew, nobody could figure. But the day Mom passed her real-estate exam, Mrs. Gregg called and told her that they were retiring from the dairy business and were going to divide up their farm and sell it. She asked Mom to handle all the details and stuff that needed done. In return for her services, she would give us our choice of lots.

  Now Mom was doing pretty well with her real estate sales. But back then we could never have afforded a place on Cedar Lake.

  • • •

  I put Duke’s saddle and bridle in the shed, turned him into the pen, and gave him a helping of oats and sweet feed. Then I asked Mom if I could go swimming at Chet’s, wrapped my bathing trunks in a towel, got my bicycle, and waited for Jordan.

  And waited for Jordan . . .

  And waited for Jordan . . .

  After about twenty minutes I went after him. Mrs. Parks opened the door. She looked at me and gave kind of a helpless sigh.

  “He was supposed to meet you, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her shoulders sagged. She motioned toward Jordan’s room. “He’s on the computer.”

  Before I even opened the door to his room, I sucked in a deep breath.

  “JORDAN!” I screamed as I burst through the doorway.

  Startled, he looked up. “It might work.” He smiled over at me and shoved his glasses up. “As many times as our dads have cut the line with their lawn mowers, we’d have to run it through PVC pipe, though. Otherwise, the moisture would short it out.”

  I must have looked like a total idiot. My mouth fell open so wide, a bird could have flown in and built a nest. My plan had been to startle him. Instead . . .

  “What in the world . . .” I gasped.

  “The telegraph cable.” He shrugged. “If we bury the thing, it might work.”

  • • •

  The guys had finished their sandwiches and cookies and were already in the pool by the time we got to Chet’s.

  Mrs. Garcia, the Bentlys’ housekeeper, left a couple of sandwiches and some chips on the poolside table. I didn’t eat mine. Instead I went for the chocolate chip cookies.

  Guess I couldn’t help myself. Pepper’s mom and dad were rather large people—like Pepper. Mrs. Hamilton was about the same height as my mom, only she was kind of round. Mr. Hamilton was about six feet five. Every so often our families got together at their house for neighborhood cookouts and stuff. Next to our dads, Mr. Hamilton looked like a giant. Both of Pepper’s parents were fantastic cooks. Pepper couldn’t help being big.

  The cookies were delicious.

  After we swam for a while, the diving competition started. We really didn’t choose sides, but all Daniel’s guys gave his team good scores. And my guys—even when I tried to do a flip and ended up doing a belly-buster, gave me a 4.6.

  Like I said, we didn’t choose up teams, but . . .

  When we got tired of diving and swimming, we dried off and got dressed.

  • • •

  The next day we chose up sides again and played bicycle polo. It was kind of like polo, only instead of using horses, we rode our bicycles. And instead of a wooden ball and mallets, we used a basketball and baseball bats.

  The parking lot next to the boat ramp was our polo field—the outhouse was one goal and the “Permit Required” sign was the other. It was a fun game. We raced around on our bicycles, whacking that old basketball. Laughed, giggled, and had a regular blast, until . . .

  Daniel’s team got two goals behind. That’s when it got serious. They tied the score, then Pepper crashed into the side of a pickup that some fisherman had parked there. It didn’t leave much of a scratch. Even so, we headed for home as fast as we could go.

  • • •

  The next day we played football. Their team won. The day after that, we swam in Daniel’s pool. We won the relay races. They won the diving competition. Today we did bicycle polo again.

  We were lying around, resting, and just looking up at the sky when Daniel said: “Let’s have another war, tomorrow.” It sounded more like an order than a suggestion.

  Jordan yawned. “I’m tired of playing war.”

  Nobody said anything. We just kind of grunted our agreement and kept watching the clouds.

  “I got another idea,” Daniel said
. He sat up and looked straight at Ted. “Let’s go fishing. We could choose up teams, and whoever comes in with the biggest and the most fish—”

  “No!” Ted barked.

  Mouths opened, the whole bunch of us sat up so quick it’s a wonder we didn’t pull a stomach muscle. Ted always wanted to go fishing. Ted loved fishing as much as Pepper loved eating. He lived and breathed for fishing. If someone so much as mentioned bait or worms or hooks, the smile on his face stretched clear up to his ears.

  None of us could believe he was the one who yelled, “No!”

  5

  I thought you liked fishing,” I said.

  Ted sighed. “I do. I love to go fishing. But if it’s going to be a competition . . . if we’re gonna choose sides . . .” He sighed again, then took a deep breath as if he was trying to get himself back together or something.

  “I love fishing,” he repeated. “But I just want to go fishing. Have fun. We can’t do anything without picking sides and trying to beat each other. We play war to see who wins. We play games like baseball and bicycle polo.

  “I just want to catch fish—all of us—just to have fun. No contest. No game. Just fish. If we can’t do that, I don’t even want to go.”

  “Yeah,” Jordan agreed. When he nodded, his glasses slipped. He had to shove them back up. “Ted’s right. We’re all the time having a contest. We can’t even swim without making it a challenge. Remember how we judged the diving? We can’t even play in the pool without trying to see who wins. Why don’t we just go fishing like he said? We could maybe spend the night and cook out and . . .”

  “Yeah.” Zane leaped to his feet. “The lake monster only comes out at night. If we sleep out, maybe we can see it.”

  Like usual, we all ignored him.

  “Our moms probably won’t let us stay out all night, anyway,” Chet grumped.

  “Why not?” Daniel asked. “They wouldn’t let us spend the night on the lake last year, but we’re twelve, now. We’re old enough. I bet we can talk them into it. And”—he smiled at Ted—“we don’t have to see who catches the biggest or the most fish. We can just go together.”