The Alaskan Adventure (3 page)

His rival didn't even turn his head.

“Gregg! Gregg!” David called again.

Gregg ignored him and continued driving his team away from town.

“I guess he didn't hear us,” David said.

Frank wasn't so sure about that. On the frozen flat river nothing stopped sound from traveling a long way. Frank thought Gregg was pretending not to notice, as a way of showing his resentment toward David. He didn't realize that David was trying to alert him to an emergency.

Ironheart led the team up the riverbank. When they reached a flat spot near the cabin, David stopped the team and Frank and Joe jumped out of the sled.

By now the townspeople had formed a bucket brigade between the cabin and another one nearby that had a cistern full of water inside. Three men came running up with a long hose connected to a hand pump.

“No fire trucks?” Joe asked, looking around.

“Nothing,” David said.

The men and women handed sloshing buckets along the line. A broad-shouldered man at the end of the line took each bucket in turn, threw the water onto the flames, then tossed the empty bucket to someone in the second line to be handed back and refilled.

“Here, take these,” David said. He grabbed two snow shovels and tossed them to Frank and Joe and took a third one for himself. “Throw snow on the fire. My aunt and uncle are over
there”—he pointed with the shovel—“we'll talk to them later.”

Frank threw one shovelful of snow after another through the gaping window of the cabin. It was heavy work. His panting breaths formed a dense white cloud that left a rim of ice particles on his eyelashes. Next to him Joe grunted as he tossed each new load of snow. Others had joined in by now, and the burning cabin was surrounded by a wall of firefighters.

At last Frank realized he was no longer looking at flames, only billowing white smoke. The Arctic cold, which had been kept away by the heat of the fire, rushed back in. Frank felt a shiver that started in the small of his back and traveled right up his backbone.

As the townspeople realized they had won the battle against the fire, a cheer went up. Frank, Joe, and David exchanged wide grins and pounded one another on the back.

Then David took the Hardys over to meet his aunt Mona, uncle Peter, and cousin Justine. They looked stricken. Everything they had in the world now lay in charred ruins.

“I'm sorry about the fire, Mrs. Windman,” Frank said.

David's aunt managed a weak smile. “Thank you. Please call us Mona and Peter. We're not
formal up here,” she said. “I'm sorry, too. I'm afraid we can't do much to welcome you to Glitter,” she went on. “We don't even know where we'll sleep tonight.”

David gave her a quick hug. “Don't worry about that,” he said. “You can use Mom and Dad's cabin until you rebuild yours.”

David's uncle went over to the doorway, peered inside the cabin, and then returned.

“How's it look, Dad?” Justine asked. She looked as if she was about thirteen.

“The worst of it is in the back,” Peter reported. “I think we can save most of the clothes and furniture and stuff.”

“It'll need a lot of airing out,” Justine said. “It really stinks.”

“I'll get the stove going at our place,” David said. “Then I have to take care of my team.”

“Can we help?” Joe asked.

David shook his head. “No, thanks, I'm fine,” he said. He went down the path to a cabin just beyond the one where Frank and Joe were staying.

Frank turned his attention back to Peter. “How did the fire start?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Peter replied, shaking his head. “We were out gathering firewood, and when we got back, I saw the glow through the
windows. It wasn't a chimney fire, that's one thing I know.”

“How?” Joe asked.

Before Peter could answer, Justine whispered, “Daddy, watch out. Here comes Willy Ekus.”

Peter's face tightened. “Let him come,” he said.

Frank glanced around. The man who was coming toward them had an odd, lopsided smile on his face. That, and his slow, almost aimless walk, made him look, as Frank's father would say, “a few bricks shy of a load.” But there was a shrewd glint in his eye that made Frank wonder if it might be an act.

“Too bad about your cabin, Peter,” Willy said in a singsong voice. “I guess you'll have to build a new one now. But you're good at building cabins, aren't you? You're better at that than at trapping, aren't you? Maybe you should give up trapping and just build cabins, Peter. Too bad if they burn down, but then you can build another one, can't you, Peter?”

“You listen here, Willy,” Peter began. He took a step toward the other man. Frank tensed up, ready to help break up a fight if one started.

“Too bad about your cabin,” Willy said again, with the same steady, lopsided smile. “You'll have to spend all your time building a new one.
Not much time for trapping. Not much time at all.”

Peter scowled at him. “Willy?” he said tautly. “Did you have anything to do with the fire?”

“Yes, I did,” Willy said. “I helped put it out. I passed the buckets. I wanted to help, even if you are working a trapline that belongs to me. I guess you won't be working it for a while, will you?” he added with a giggle.

Frank looked over at Joe, who rolled his eyes.

“Do you know how the fire got started?” Peter continued. “If you do, you'd better tell me.”

“Maybe a match, maybe a torch, maybe a lamp that fell over,” Willy replied. “Too bad about your cabin, Peter. But that's the way things go. Now you'll have to build another one, instead of poaching on another man's trapline.”

He turned and walked away. Peter started after him, but Mona grabbed his arm and held him back.

“No,” she said. “Leave him be. Let's get inside, out of the cold. I'll make a pot of tea, then we can think about dinner.”

As they walked up the path toward the cabin, Justine said to Frank and Joe, “Willy and Dad have been arguing about that trapline for years. I wish they'd quit it. And now they've got that ThemeLife plan to argue about, too. Did David tell you about that?”

“Uh-huh,” Joe replied. “What does your dad think about it?”

“He's against it,” Justine told him. “He says if it goes through, we'll be like animals in the circus, showing off for visitors instead of being free to live our lives the way we always have.”

Frank asked, “What about Willy? Why is he for it?”

“Who knows why Willy does anything? He's weird,” Justine said. “He always has been. Maybe he's for the plan because my dad is against it.”

“Do you think Willy's weird enough to set fire to your cabin?” Joe asked her.

She looked at him with wide eyes. “Nobody's that crazy!” she exclaimed. “Look around—the whole town's made of wood. If there'd been any wind, all of Glitter could have burnt down. And then none of us would make it through the winter.”

David's parents' cabin was still a little chilly, but Frank could feel the warmth radiating from the cast-iron woodstove. Mona took off her parka and hung it on a peg behind the door, then poured water from a five-gallon can into a kettle and put it on top of the stove to heat.

“I'll bring more water from the spring,” Justine said, picking up two empty cans.

“Let us help,” Joe said, reaching for one of the cans.

Justine smiled. “It's okay,” she said. “I'll use the sledge. It's no trouble at all. I do it all the time.”

As she went out the door, David came in. “Well, guys,” he said to Frank and Joe, “you're getting a pretty rough introduction to our way of life up here.”

“Rougher than you know,” Mona remarked. “While you were gone, Willy came by and tried to pick a fight with your uncle.”

“What about?” David asked. “The ThemeLife plan?”

“Not this time,” Mona replied. “I'll say this, though. I'll be glad when the voting is over with. It's been going on too long, and it's dividing the town. Everybody's getting mad at everybody else. That's no way to live.”

“Which side seems to be winning?” Frank asked.

Peter shrugged. “We won't know until the vote on Friday,” he said. “A lot of people don't want to say what they think.”

“Jake Ferguson won't say which way he plans to vote,” Mona said. “He's so money hungry, I guess he's afraid he'll lose customers if he takes sides.”

“People around here have to buy at the store and pay Jake's prices, whether they like what he thinks or not,” Peter pointed out.

“What about Gregg?” Joe asked.

David smiled. “The only thing Gregg thinks about these days is coming in ahead of me in the Iditarod,” he said. “But his dad, Reeve, is pretty tight with Willy, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're for the plan, too.”

“I've tried talking to Reeve,” Peter said. “He won't say much, but I didn't feel I was getting through to him. Too bad. People think nothing will change except that they'll start making a lot of money.”

Frank glanced out the window at the back of the cabin. The edge of the dark forest loomed just a few yards away. How hard would it have been for someone to slip out of the woods and put some kind of firebomb inside Mona and Peter's cabin, then escape unnoticed into the woods?

Frank was turning to ask Peter about the damage inside the cabin when he was startled by a loud crash. Mona let out a scream as broken glass sprayed across the room from a shattered window.

Without thinking, Joe flung up his arm to protect his face. Shards of glass showered him and tinkled to the floor. At the same moment he heard a thump. A charred log, about two feet long and three inches in diameter, rolled past him and across the floor. Someone had hurled it through the window. Joe grabbed his parka and ran for the door.

Outside, the only person in sight was Justine. She was about twenty yards up the path, pulling a loaded sledge toward the house.

“Did you see anyone just now?” Joe called out to her.

“No,” she called back. “Is something wrong? What happened?”

Frank dashed out of the house and stopped next to Joe. “Did you see him?” he demanded.

Joe shook his head. “No. He could be anywhere by now.”

“I don't like this a bit,” Frank said. “It's lucky nobody was hurt.”

Justine ran up to them, just as Peter and David came running outside. Peter was holding a piece of firewood like a club.

“He got away,” Frank said, his voice full of disgust.

David told Justine what had just happened.

“That's terrible!” Justine said, her eyes blazing. “What's happening to our town? Everyone's turning on one another like wild animals!”

Peter looked down at the log in his hand, as if he didn't remember how it got there. Then he sighed and said, “We'd better cover that broken window with something before the cabin freezes.” He led the group inside.

While Peter and David taped a sheet of black plastic over the gaping window, Mona swept up the broken glass. She made the pot of tea, and they all sat down to drink it.

“David's parents cleaned out the cupboards before they went to Fairbanks,” Mona said.
“There's not much to eat here. We'll have to lay in some groceries. I'll make a list.”

Frank stirred his tea to cool it, then cleared his throat and said, “We still don't know how the fire started. But we do know the log didn't fly through the window on its own. Somebody threw it. Any idea who?”

“If I knew for sure,” Peter growled, “I wouldn't be sitting here. I'd be going after him.”

“A lot of things like this have been going on,” Justine said. “Crazy things. Things that shouldn't happen.”

“That's true,” David said. “People in town have been having more accidents than usual. And it's getting worse.”

“So you're not the only targets?” Frank asked.

Justine gave him a serious look. “David told us about you and Joe,” she said. “He said you've solved all kinds of mysteries. Do you think you can solve this one?”

“We don't have a police department in town, any more than we have a fire department,” Mona said, looking up from her grocery list.

“If we need the police, we call in for state troopers,” Justine added. “But we never need them.”

“We'll do our best,” Frank promised them. “What about the accidents? Is there any pattern to them?”

“Life isn't easy out here in the Alaskan bush, Frank. You've already seen that,” David said. “We're always near the edge of disaster. And we don't have a lot of the safety nets you're used to in the Lower Forty-Eight. No water system, no hospital or doctor for a hundred miles or more.”

“What David's getting at,” Mona said, “is that we shrug off things. We don't even remember them a week later. But if somebody set our cabin on fire, that's not something we can shrug off.”

“Can you think of anybody who has a grudge against you?” Joe asked.

“Willy Ekus,” Mona and Justine said promptly.

“He's been fighting with Peter over that trapline for ten years or more,” Mona added.

Peter looked troubled. “Willy's crazy enough to do it,” he admitted. “But I don't think he's got the nerve. He's all talk. What I'm thinking is, you make a lot of money if you do well in the Iditarod. And if David here is upset about what's been happening to us, he's not going to do as well in the race.”

“You think Gregg's doing this?” David asked. “If he is, he'd better look out. I'll settle him once and for all!”

“Wait,” Frank said. “Peter, I get the idea you're the leader of the group that's against the theme park plan. Do you think that might have something to do with this?”

“I don't know,” Peter said slowly. “It's pretty clear that Curt Stone's got a lot riding on this plan of his. But I'd hate to think he'd try to burn us out because we're on the other side. He seems like an okay fellow, except for wanting to ruin our town. And even there, he probably thinks he's doing us a favor.”