Boxcar Children 61 - Growling Bear Mystery (3 page)

“The ranger let it go through without waiting in line,” Henry said. “The driver must be a volunteer who has to get in the park in a hurry.”

For everyone else, there was a long wait to enter Yellowstone. Finally the Aldens reached the log booth where a ranger handed Grandfather a Yellowstone map and a ticket.

“Here’s your receipt, sir,” the woman ranger told Mr. Alden. “Keep it near your windshield. You need it to go in and out of the park during your stay.”

“Thanks,” Mr. Alden said. “If I keep the receipt visible, can I avoid these long lines?”

The young woman shook her head. “Sorry, only people on official park business don’t have to stop.”

“What about the beat-up red car that just flew through here?” Henry asked.

Suddenly the young woman wasn’t so friendly. “What are you talking about? Now please drive on, sir. There’s a long line behind you.”

Mr. Alden pulled ahead. “I don’t imagine that car got through without the rangers noticing. We seem to have said the wrong thing.”

For a while the children were quiet. There was so much to see in the park without worrying about other cars.

“Why are we slowing down?” Benny wanted to know.

Mr. Alden pointed to a huge meadow off to the right. “There are your buffalo, Benny. A herd of them. And more crossing the road. That’s what’s causing this traffic jam.”

Sure enough, the parade of cars, trailers, and buses had come to a complete stop. A long line of furry buffalo—big and small ones—slowly crossed the road to join the rest of the herd.

“Check the rearview mirror,” Henry said. “There’s a buffalo walking alongside the cars. Roll up the windows, everybody. We don’t want that buffalo sticking its head in the window.”

“We could practically touch it,” Violet whispered when a large bushy head brushed by the Aldens’ car. “Not that I would.”

The Aldens sat back and enjoyed the buffalo parade.

That’s when Henry noticed the red car about ten cars ahead. “Ha! That old red car is stuck here, just like us.”

Mr. Alden tapped on the steering wheel. “Never pays to race around just to gain a few minutes.”

Soon the herd of buffalo was out of the road. Traffic began to move again.

“We’re almost there,” Henry said, turning around to his brother and sisters. “The Old Faithful Inn is the next turn.”

“Hey, look!” Benny cried. “There’s the Old Faithful geyser.”

Sure enough, off in the distance, a tower of steam shot through the air. The geyser seemed nearly as tall as the huge Old Faithful Inn several hundred yards away.

“Can you drive faster, Grandfather?” Benny asked. “I want to see the geyser up close.”

Mr. Alden laughed. “Not to worry. Old Faithful goes off about every seventy minutes or so around the clock. Our rooms overlook the geyser. You’ll see it dozens of times during our stay.”

In five minutes the geyser had disappeared, but the Old Faithful Inn had not. The log building, several stories high, with porches halfway around, stood directly in front of the Aldens.

“Wow!” Henry said. “The Old Faithful Inn is some log cabin!”

And so it was. When the Aldens entered the inn’s huge lobby with their luggage, they couldn’t stop looking up, down, and all around. The lobby was buzzing with guests enjoying the amazing log room with its stone fireplace, nearly three stories high. Young children ran around the balconies that overlooked the lobby. Older people sat on oversized log chairs and couches and enjoyed the view below.

After registering, Mr. Alden led his grandchildren up two flights of a staircase made of twisted logs several feet thick. “Your room is on the top floor.”

“Wow!” Benny said when they reached the third-floor balcony. “We can see everything and everybody from this balcony. This is a good spying place.”

Mr. Alden laughed. “I hope you don’t have to do any spying this vacation. You’ve already filled your schedule with your jobs here.”

Benny looked over the balcony railing. “Hey isn’t that the man we saw at Oz’s store? The one who wanted old maps? What’s he doing straightening chairs in front of the fireplace?”

The other children came over for a look. Sure enough, down below was the very same young man the children had seen a few hours before.

“He’s wearing a uniform,” Jessie noticed. “He must work here.”

Violet squinted down at the young man. “I wonder if we’ll be working with him.”

Mr. Alden checked his watch. “You’ll soon find out. Oz said you should meet with Mrs. Crabtree in about half an hour. You kids put your bags in your room, and I’ll put mine into my room. Then we can stroll around the inn.”

When they met in the hallway, Henry pointed out a window.

“Hey, people are lining up out there for the geyser,” he said. “I guess it’s like a movie or a show.”

“Only no tickets,” Benny said.

Mr. Alden headed down the stairs. “I’m going down to the Activities Desk to check on some overnight fishing trips. Oz mentioned a tour bus that leaves every morning for the other side of the park. The fishing is supposed to be pretty good up that way. Just one small reminder. You’ll have to be extra quiet in your room. These old wooden walls are pretty thin—no insulation. You can hear every little sound.”

“Goody!” Benny said. “I like that. But don’t worry, Grandfather, I’ll only be noisy in the woods to keep the bears away.”

T
he Aldens were supposed to start unpacking, but that would just have to wait. Old Faithful, the most famous geyser in the world, was about to perform again.

“Look at all the people hurrying so they won’t miss it,” Violet said, leaning against the windowsill.

Benny knelt on a chair to get a better view. “Can we go outside and see it up close?”

“Sure thing,” Henry said.

In no time, the Aldens joined the stream of tourists heading for the geyser. They found a place at the edge of the walkway that circled the geyser area.

“Wow!” Benny said a few seconds later when a huge plume of steam rose in the air.

A whooshing sound, like the biggest hot shower in the world, muffled the crowd’s cheering and clapping. Then, a few minutes later, everyone quieted down. The plume of steam grew smaller. When the steam disappeared back into the ground, the crowd clapped and cheered again.

Henry laughed. “It
is
quite a show.”

“What makes a geyser, anyway?” Benny asked. “And all the other steamy things coming out of the ground in Yellowstone?”

As usual, Jessie knew the answer. “The ground around here has lots of cracks that go down into the earth for miles. When rain and snow fall down the cracks, the cold water hits all the hot liquid inside the earth. That makes the steam blow up into the air. I read that the Old Faithful Inn once tried to run a pipe of steam from a small geyser up in the hills to the inn.”

Benny got all excited when he heard this. “You mean we could take a geyser shower?”

Jessie laughed. “The system didn’t really work. The geyser dried up. Geysers are very delicate. That’s why there are signs all over telling people not to throw anything into them.”

“I would never do that,” Benny said. “I guess I’ll have to take plain old showers, not geyser showers.”

“Just think,” Jessie said as they walked back to their room, “in seventy minutes or so, the Old Faithful geyser will start up all over again. In the meantime, I guess we’d better head back to our room to unpack before we meet with Mrs. Crabtree.”

Unpacking took the Aldens no time at all, since they were such experienced travelers. In just a few minutes, all their vacation clothes were folded in drawers or hung on pegs.

Jessie lined up everyone’s hiking supplies on the dresser. “I’m putting our guidebooks, Oz’s map, our sunglasses, and our empty water bottles on this dresser by the door. We’ll want to get a fast start in the morning and not leave anything behind.”

Henry checked his watch. “I wish there was time for a quick shower.”

“I wish there were towels for a quick shower,” Jessie said, looking high and low for washcloths and towels.

While she was searching, someone knocked at the door.

“Who’s there?” Henry asked.

“Housekeeping,” a man’s voice answered. “Sorry, the staff delivered your towels to the wrong room.”

Henry unlocked the door. “Just what we were looking—” Henry stopped talking. “Oh, it’s . . . uh . . .”

The other children came to the door to see who was there. Standing in the doorway was Mr. Crabtree, the hiker with the orange hat. Only now he wasn’t wearing his hiking hat or his backpack or his hiking boots. Instead, he had on an Old Faithful Inn uniform and an identification badge.

Mr. Crabtree seemed just as surprised to see the Aldens—and none too pleased, either. “Here,” he said, standing there with a stack of white towels.

Henry held out his arms for the towels. “Thanks, Mr. Crabtree. We’re the Aldens. We met this morning, up near the Continental Divide, remember?”

“Don’t forget to mention Oz’s store,” Benny whispered to Henry.

“And we saw you at Elkhorn’s General Store, too.” Henry moved closer to take the towels, but Mr. Crabtree held on to them. “I’m Henry Alden, and these are my sisters, Jessie and Violet, and my brother, Benny. We’re friends of Oz’s, too. He told us your name.”

Mr. Crabtree ignored Henry’s introductions. “Here are your towels. They get changed every couple of days. If you need more, call Housekeeping.”

With that, Mr. Crabtree put the towels on a small space on the dresser. The stack of towels was so tall, it toppled over, knocking several items off the dresser.

“This is where we usually deliver the towels,” Mr. Crabtree said sharply. “If you clutter up the space, there’s no room.”

Benny whispered to Violet, “He just picked up Oz’s map.”

Sure enough, Mr. Crabtree clutched Oz’s map in his hand along with a water bottle and some suntan lotion that had slipped off the dresser. When he realized all four children were staring at him, Mr. Crabtree put everything back in a jumble. Without another word, he left the room.

“Oz was right,” Jessie began. “Mr. Crabtree sure isn’t too friendly to the guests. Maybe he was hoping nobody would be here.”

“You’re right, Jessie,” said Henry. “It looked as if he was after the map. If we hadn’t been here, he could have easily picked it up.”

At five o’clock sharp, the Aldens reported to the front desk of the Old Faithful Inn. Long lines of people were waiting to register. Others stood in line waiting for the inn’s beautiful old dining room to open for dinner.

The Aldens looked around the bustling lobby. The lodge was such a busy place.

“I bet there are all kinds of jobs we can do here,” Jessie said. “There’s so much going on.”

At that moment, an older woman with curly gray hair came over to the children. “Are you the Aldens?” she asked, a bit out of breath. “I’m Eleanor Crabtree. Sorry I’m a little late, but we’re short of help. I got behind on my work.”

Henry shook the woman’s hand. “We’re the Aldens—Jessie, Violet, Benny, and I’m Henry. Glad to meet you.”

The woman took a deep breath. “And am I ever glad to meet you! We’re shorthanded this week. I just finished straightening out a problem with our towel deliveries.”

“Our towels went to another room,” Violet said. “But your husband, Mr. Crabtree, dropped them off right before we came down here.”

Mrs. Crabtree look relieved and seemed to relax. “I’m so glad to hear that. So I guess you met Lester. He likes to keep to himself. Usually he stays behind the scenes in the kitchen or the laundry room. But today I had to give the staff some extra chores.”

“Mr. Elkhorn told us you need some extra people to fill in for some college students,” Jessie said. “I hope we can help. We’ve worked in lots of places before.”

Mrs. Crabtree smiled at the children. “Well, if you can start right now, I’d love you to supervise some young children for about an hour. We offer baby-sitting to parents so they can have a nice, quiet dinner in our dining room.”

“We like taking care of children,” Jessie said.

“Because we are children,” Benny added, “we know what they like—games and stories and solving mysteries.”

Mrs. Crabtree had to laugh. “Then I know Oz Elkhorn sent me the right helpers. I don’t know about solving mysteries, but you’ve solved a lot of problems just by showing up. Anyway, there are about six children you can look after.”

Mrs. Crabtree pointed up to the first-story balcony. “See those parents and children up in the corner? Well, one of my other workers, a college student named Sam Jackson, is up there with them. Now that all of you are here, you can stay with the children while their parents go to dinner. I need Sam to tidy up some of the rooms instead. Just follow me.”

As the children climbed the log staircase to the balcony, Mrs. Crabtree explained where everything was and what to do. “There’s a cabinet full of art supplies, books, games, and some toys. The children can draw or listen to stories or play games. And don’t forget our geyser. That’s our biggest entertainment. It goes off in a little while.”

“May we take the children outdoors to see it?” Jessie wanted to know.