CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

As Professor Fauna was dragged out of sight, the Schmokes drank their afternoon tea, while Phipps and four heavily muscled surveyors loaded themselves and their guns into the surveyors’ truck.

Sam Brounsnout stood still as a Douglas fir, lost in thought. What would Walter Cronkite have done? he asked himself.

Then, a light went on in the young producer’s brain. He set his jaw, straightened his back, stepped up into the news van, and closed the door behind him.

The sound of the door slamming and the click of its lock caught the attention of Milton and Edmund Schmoke. They watched as the satellite dish on top of the vehicle began rising into position.

“What is happening, Edmund?” Milton cried.

“He is preparing to broadcast!” Edmund cried back.

“We must stop him! No news is good news! Where are our muscle monkeys?” Milton shouted. “Phipps! Where have you and our leg-breaking goons gone off to?”

There was no reply, of course. Phipps and the burly brutes, now heavily armed, had already roared off in the truck.

Edmund banged on the door of the van. “Brounsnout, open this door or we shall terminate your employment immediately.”

“In other words, you’re fired!” Milton shouted.

A window near the top of the van opened briefly.

“I don’t care!” the producer called down to them. “I went to journalism school! I want to bring the world the truth! The whole planet is gonna see Bigfoot! And you two can kiss my snout!” He slammed the window shut. Then he opened it again, just long enough to crow, “Stay tuned!” Then he slammed it shut again.

As the window clicked closed, the two brothers stared at each other.

“I thought you said he would do anything for money,” Milton said.

“He had been working at Ferret News before he got this job, so I just figured . . . ,” Edmund mumbled. He brought out a gold-plated smartphone and logged on to the SNERT website. The image of Grace Goodwind’s perfectly made-up face filled the screen:

“Grace Goodwind reporting live from the tribal lands of the . . . where are we again, Fabio? Oh, right . . . live from the tribal lands of the Muckleshoot Indian Nation in the Pacific Northwest. Exciting breaking news! I, Grace Goodwind, of the Schmoke News, Entertainment, and Retail Television network, am about to prove beyond any doubt that a creature from dumb old myths and stories is actually REAL!”

As the newswoman extended her arm to point behind her, the image shifted to the forest, zooming in on three dark shapes moving cautiously beneath the trees.

“There they are,” Grace Goodwind whispered, leaning in front of the lens so that her face again filled the screen. “Not just one, but three of them. Three young sassy catches.”

“Sasquatch. The plural of sasquatch is sasquatch,” Andy whispered.

Grace Goodwind gestured that her sound feed be cut—which it was not. “Quiet, Flavius. You’re the cameraman. I’m the talent. Now turn my mic back on.”

Flipping her hair back and opening her eyes wide, she again addressed the camera: “There they are, baby sassy crutches, shown at last to America and the world. This is Grace Goodwind, reporting for SNERT—wait, who are those guys?”

Out of the woods, five men were emerging.

Phipps and the surveyors.

“Oh no,” Milton moaned. “Not on live TV!”

“Perhaps no one is watching,” Edmund said.

The window on the top of the van popped open again briefly. “Largest viewership in the history of SNERT right now,” Sam Brounsnout shouted down in a triumphant voice. “All the networks are picking it up!”

“Can we call our men off?” Milton asked.

“Too late now,” Edmund moaned. “Look.”

Indeed, on the tiny SNERT feed on Edmund’s phone, things were happening at lightning speed.

“Get them,” Phipps shouted. “In the name of Schmoke Industries and the Schmoke Logging Company!”

The four surveyors with tranquilizer guns and nets quickly encircled the trio of hairy creatures.

“What are those mean men going to do to those poor little sassy couches?” Grace Goodwind said in a horrified voice.

“Sasquatch. The plural is—” the cameraman whispered.

“Shut up, Flaubert!”

A struggle ensued, streamed live for all the world to see: The Schmoke surveyors grabbed the three juvenile sasquatch and tried to wrestle them to the ground. The small furry ones fought valiantly, striking out with their fists and kicking the shins of the hard-hatted attackers. But they were overpowered and pinned to the mossy forest floor.

“This is horrible publicity!” Edmund groaned as Milton kept banging on the door of the van.

“Stop! Halt! Cease! Desist!” he yelled, but to no avail.

Then, as the horrified Schmokes and millions of viewers watched, the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the face of one of the small sasquatch—and its head fell off.

“AHHHHHH!” Grace Goodwind shrieked. “It’s . . . Wait . . . Is that a . . .”

Indeed, it was. For when the false head was dislodged, it disclosed the sweaty, grinning face of Raven.

She looked directly at the camera. “Good afternoon, America,” she said.

The Schmoke goons stepped back as the two other heads were removed by their wearers—Elliot and Uchenna.

“Oh no,” Phipps groaned. “The masters will not be pleased. This was yet another hoax. Bigfoot, indeed!” He sighed. “Men, follow me.”

As Phipps hurried off, followed by his chastened crew, the trio of costumed children stood up and waved at the camera.

Grace Goodwind ignored them.

“On me, Bob,” she said to the cameraman. “And so, thanks to our fearless reporting, we now know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Bigfeets are nothing more than a meaningless prank. But now we have another mystery to unravel. Why would the employees of Schmoke Industries attack what appeared to be a harmless furry family? Stay tuned for my next explosive report!”

Edmund switched off his smartphone.

“She is so fired,” Milton snarled. “SNERT is over!”

“Indeed,” Edmund agreed. “If we had wanted journalism, we would never have started a cable news channel.”

“We can still bring in our logging team and slash down this nasty forest—and make a healthy profit,” Milton growled, waving his arms at the big trees around them. “We have our agreement with those credulous Muckleshoots.”

“Oh, no you do not,” a deep voice said.

The brothers turned to look.

One of the surveyors was standing there, hands on his hips.

“It appears to be one of our goons,” Milton said.

“What’s he doing here?” Edmund asked, puzzled. “Didn’t he go with the others?”

“Allow me to disclose—by removing ‘dese’ clothes—my true identity,” Mack gәqidәb said. He pulled off his hard hat, his orange vest, and his blond wig with a dramatic flourish.

“I still don’t know who he is,” Milton said to his brother. “Though I do like that wig.”

“I’ll tell you who he is, you vile miscreants!” Professor Fauna stepped out from behind a tree.

“Not you!” Edmund said. “We had you tied up!”

“My fine Muckleshoot friend freed me,” Professor Fauna said, placing his hand on Mack’s shoulder. “And he has also cleverly engineered your downfall! Show them, amigo mío.”

Mack held up his phone. “I videoed your speech about clear-cutting our forest. Sent it to the tribal chair. He wrote back pretty darn quick.”

Edmund shook his head, resigned. “Well, that is disappointing.”

“Losing the lumber deal doesn’t matter that much, brother,” Milton snarled. “Now that we know Bigfoot isn’t real. We only wanted to clear the forest to catch him.”

“But why?” Mack asked. “I don’t get how you could hate sasquatch?”

“Hate?” said Milton. “We don’t hate the Bigfeet!” He removed his own hard hat to reveal his hairless pate. “Our last encounter with the Unicorn Rescue Society left us hairless! And this cannot be! We are the world’s handsomest billionaires!”

“Now the baldest . . . ,” Edmund grumbled.

“By collecting the Bigfoots of the Pacific Northwest,” Milton continued, “we were hoping to find a way to regrow our hair. DNA extraction, gland reproduction—”

“A huge collection of wigs . . . ,” added Edmund.

“Whatever it took!” concluded Milton.

Just then, their huge black Humvee pulled up, piloted by Phipps. The Schmokes’ henchmen began to climb out.

Fauna reached down to remove his shoe.

“Forget it,” Edmund ordered their men, as a siren sounded from down the road. “The police are on their way. Come, brother. There are more fish in the sea.”

“Yes, but do fish have hair?” Milton added, glaring at the professor.

He climbed into the vehicle, followed by his brother. The door slammed, and with a roar of the engine and a spinning of the tires, they were gone.