“Don’t run,” Sam whispered to Abby. He unzipped his jacket and stuffed his hands in the pockets, spreading his arms out wide to make himself look bigger. The bear took a look at him and halted, swinging its head from side to side and snuffling, as if trying to decide what Sam’s smell meant. Was he a threat? Was he a meal? Or was he just in the way?
“Let’s back off,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Maybe if we get away from it . . .”
She didn’t answer. Sam didn’t dare look away from the bear. He could see the heavy, dense brown fur swinging slightly on the bear’s frame; the claws, streaked yellow and brown, on its massive feet; its small, dark eyes. “Abby?” he croaked.
He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Abby was gone! She was sprinting toward a tall spruce tree uphill from the riverbank. Sam had time for a moment of astonishment—wasn’t it the worst thing you could do, to run from a bear? He’d grown up in a suburb and he knew that! And Abby had lived in the wilderness all her life! She was the one who knew how to handle the mountain lion. What was she doing?
Then the bear charged.
It was like watching a huge brown mountain heave itself into motion. How could anything that big move that fast? Without even thinking, Sam was running too. Maybe it was wrong, maybe it was right, but it was the only thing to do. He had to get away!
He tore uphill, his feet digging into slick mud, his hands pawing at rocks to get a grip. How close was the bear? He could hear breath huffing from its nose; he could hear claws on rocks. Any minute—any second—those claws would be in him!
The shadow of a pine tree fell over Sam. He looked up and jumped, grabbing a long, horizontal branch that stretched out over his head. He swung and heaved his feet up too, locking them around the branch. Something snagged his backpack and yanked. Desperate, he clung to the branch. Cloth ripped, and he was suddenly lighter. A strap of his backpack had given way and the pack dangled from one shoulder as he hugged the branch, wiggled, twisted, got his weight up onto it, and looked down.
Less than three feet below him, the bear snarled. Sam’s heart was pounding so hard, it seemed to bang into his rib cage and send vibrations buzzing down his bones. He’d never known how big a grizzly was. The thing looked like a wall of brown, like a tank—not like an animal at all.
Grimly, on hands and knees, Sam inched toward the trunk of the tree. Why did they always put bears in stories for little kids? Had none of those writers ever seen the real thing? Or smelled it? A stench of old fish and unwashed fur rose up and choked Sam’s nostrils.
He got to the trunk and, clinging to it, climbed carefully to his feet. Below him, the bear seemed to be doing the same thing. Slowly it rose up on its hind legs. No! If that thing stood up to its full height, it could swipe Sam off this branch as easily as he’d swat a fly off a windowsill. Sam grabbed a branch above him and scrambled up. Another branch. Another.
Panting, he looked down. The bear dropped back to all fours and paced around the tree. It didn’t seem to want to leave. Sam sat on his branch and hugged the trunk. He could stay up here longer than any bear could stay down there, he figured.
Then the bear rose up on its hind legs again and hugged the tree.
Was it doing this to try to shake Sam out of his perch? Were bears that smart? No, it wasn’t. Sam stared down, appalled, as the grizzly took a good grip on the trunk with its inch-long claws and awkwardly heaved itself up. The thing was climbing up after him!
Sam scrambled higher into the tree, as the bear came up below him, faster than anything that big should be able to climb. The tree shook under the animal’s vast weight, and Sam had to grip hard, his hands stinging from scratches and sticky with pine sap, his arm muscles starting to throb. He was lighter than the bear, so he could go up higher, right? Where the branches were thinner and the animal wouldn’t be able to follow him, right?
He had to stop when he reached a branch about as thick as a baseball bat that bent under his feet. The branches above were even skinnier. He was trapped. And the bear was still coming.
Hugging the tree with one arm, Sam reached back into his pack. Bears liked honey, didn’t they? Sweet things? Well, maybe he had something that would help. His fingers closed around something sticky in a crackling wrapper—his half-eaten Snickers bar.
Sam aimed carefully and let the candy bar go. It bounced off the bear’s nose and fell to the ground.
The bear shook its head, startled, and paused.
“Go on,” Sam muttered between clenched teeth. “You want it, right? Candy? Much tastier than me. Go get it!”
Maybe the bear heard him. It craned its head as if wondering where the interesting-smelling projectile had gone, and then began to move again—this time down the tree.
All of Sam’s joints felt watery with relief. He eased himself down to sit on his thin, creaky branch, gripping the tree’s trunk, as the bear scrambled back to the ground, nosed through the pine needles for his Snickers bar, and ate it in one gulp.
“Okay, you’ve had your snack,” Sam told it. “Time to get moving. Don’t you have somewhere to go?”
Apparently the bear didn’t. It seemed to have no inclination to climb the tree again, but it also didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. It scratched through the dirt at the roots of the tree and nosed through drifts of golden pine needles as though hoping another candy bar would appear.
Sam thought of pitching pinecones down at the bear, but maybe that would just make it mad. So he sat. After a while the bear sat too. Then it stretched out with a long, whiffling sigh that Sam could hear all the way up the tree.
Sam groaned.
His butt was beginning to go to sleep. Cautiously he eased himself down to a slightly lower, slightly thicker branch. He sat for a while more. He alternated between looking down at Smoky the very lazy bear and out at the view.
Under other circumstances, it would have been pretty—he could see the river meandering through its valley, a thick rope of gray and white and silver spilling and splashing over smooth, dark stones. He could see the mountains surrounding the valley, steep slopes carpeted in light green, then dark green, then bare rock, then, on the highest peaks, snow. He could see a clearing in the forest not far from the river, where eight trees had grown in a circle. Kind of odd, really. He remembered Abby saying that nothing in the wilderness went in a straight line, not for long. So what in the wilderness grew in a perfect circle?
But never mind about that—where was Abby? The bear had followed Sam, so Abby must be okay . . . he thought. But if she was okay, wouldn’t she try to find Sam? He strained his eyes, hunting for a trace of Abby’s purple jacket down there in all that green, but he didn’t see anything.
He did hear something, though.
A loud blast on a whistle. Another. The bear stirred and shook its head, as if it didn’t like the sound.
Another. The loud shrill noise tearing through the forest. Grumpily, the bear heaved itself to its feet, growled, took a final swipe at the tree with its claws as if to prove a point, and lumbered away between the trees.
Was it gone? Sam eased himself down a few more branches, but not all the way to the ground. He could hear more blasts on the whistle now, and feet tromping through the bushes, and voices calling, “Sam? Sam!”
Marty! And Abby! Sam slithered down a few more branches just as the two girls, with Theo behind them, appeared at the foot of his tree.
“Hi, Sam,” Marty called, looking up at him. “Did you decide to build a nest up there?”
“Very funny.” Sam climbed down the rest of the way and jumped to the ground, his pack swinging from one shoulder.
“Sam, I’m so sorry.” Abby’s eyes were wide and full of remorse. “I can’t believe I took off like that—I just panicked! Then I ran into Marty and Theo, and we headed back to find you.”
“You should have had a bear whistle, Sam,” Marty told him, waving her bright silver whistle at him. “If you make enough noise, the bears hear you and get out of your way.”
“I wouldn’t have needed a whistle if you hadn’t sent us straight toward the bear!” Sam shot back. “What was that all about, Marty? Telling us to go northeast?”
Marty blinked, startled. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“Sure you did. Do you think I can’t read Morse code? You said, ‘Bear NE.’”
Marty shook her head. “You thought that meant—? I was trying to warn you about the bear! That there was a bear to the northeast!”
Oh. Sam thought for a second. So Marty’s message hadn’t been “Bear NE”; it had been “Bear! NE!” That did kind of make more sense, now that he thought about it.
“Anyway, never mind.” Marty flapped a hand, brushing away Sam’s near-mauling experience. “We found the next clue! Theo and I could see it from up on the cliff. There are eight trees near here—”
“Planted in a circle! I saw those!” Sam said.
“I don’t think it’s a circle. I think it’s an octagon!” Marty’s eyes were gleaming. “Remember Thomas Jefferson and octagons?”
“Let’s go!” Sam said, leading the way. “You know, Marty, since you saw those trees from the cliff, and I saw them from a tree by the river, maybe we were both right about the clue on the tombstone.”
Marty, falling into step beside Sam, gave him a quick glance out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe.”
Silently, Theo followed them. Abby had dropped several paces to the rear, so she wouldn’t have to walk beside Theo. Sam glanced back, thinking maybe he should walk with Abby, but for the moment he decided to stay where he was.
They hiked under trees for perhaps half an hour, finally reaching the clearing Sam had sighted from the top of his tree. They eyed the ring of trees in the center, a circle perhaps fifteen feet across. “Eight of them. Definitely an octagon,” Marty said, her eyes narrowed as she thought.
“I wonder who planted them. Maybe it was Josiah!” Abby started toward the ring of trees. The others followed more slowly.
Once inside the circle, Abby paused by a birch tree and looked startled. “Huh. That’s weird.” A metal plate had been set into a knot on the narrow white trunk, and a long, thin lever stuck out from it.
“Abby, don’t—” Marty started to say.
“Not a good idea!” Sam burst out, moving quickly forward.
But before they could warn Abby that, when you were dealing with the Founders, it was best to be careful about pushing buttons or turning handles, she had taken hold of the lever and pulled it.
They heard a loud, grating squeal, as if a rusty hinge was opening, and the ground shook hard beneath their feet.