Chapter 2

A CLOUD OF YELLOW DUST CHASED the tow truck as it cruised along the narrow, sun-beaten desert highway. The rolling hills and the heat waves rising from the asphalt made the outline of the vehicle shimmer. Despite the heavy construction of its faded blue-and-white body, it seemed to float over the two-lane road instead of roll along it. Painted on the doors were the words Last Chance Gas & Tow, Pop Fowler Owner.

The green, grassy verge that marked the edges of the roadway faded quickly into dry rocks and gravel. Mike Fowler leaned out of the open passenger-side window, thoughtfully studying the desolate scenery as the truck passed beneath the empty powder-blue sky. Behind the wheel of the A-frame tow truck was Mike’s grandfather, the white-haired, kindly Pop Fowler.

“Pop,” Mike said, turning his attention away from the landscape.

“Yeah, Mike?”

“What do you think about Mr. Varner telling everyone that a big hairy beast knocked down his door?” Mike asked with disbelief. “He says it was Bigfoot.”

Pop Fowler pursed his lips and leaned his head to one side as he continued to drive. “Any man that would run ten miles into town . . . with three cracked ribs . . . Well, it sure sounds like he was in an awful hurry to get away from something.”

A pair of tumbleweeds played leapfrog across the highway. A cone of dust swirling in a miniature cyclone blew particles of grit into the cab as the truck passed the mouth of an arroyo beside the road. Mike blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “So you believe him?”

Pop chuckled as he thought carefully before replying. “A bigfoot? I dunno. Silas has been known to hit the bottle pretty hard. Sheriff Smitty went out there to have a look. Didn’t find any footprints. But he did say the inside of the cabin looked like it had been ransacked.”

“The inside?” Mike questioned. The young man’s thoughts were churning as he pondered the notion of a legendary and unproven monster showing up in the barren hills that surrounded the little community of Ambrosia. “The inside?” he repeated.

“Um-hum,” Pop replied, his mind also reviewing the strange story. “And now Silas claims his stash of gold is missing.”

“Wow!” Mike exclaimed. Here was a real mystery, not just the drunken ravings of an old miner. A theft was not the same as a legendary beast. Maybe there was something here for the Last Chance Detectives to explore after all. “So, is Smitty starting an investigation?”

Pop snorted. “Kinda hard when the only witness insists that the suspect is a bigfoot!” Pop peered through the glare on the sand-pitted windshield. “Say,” he said, pointing ahead, “I think that’s what we’re looking for.”

Pop applied the brakes, gently slowing the tow truck as it approached their objective. A red late-model pickup had spun off the highway and was stuck in the deep sand at the shoulder of the road. Behind it, tipped over on its side, was a U-Haul trailer.

Standing beside the stranded pickup was a clean-shaven man wearing white trousers and a smooth leather jacket. His medium brown hair was thinning, and a few strands straggled across his forehead in the breeze. The man smiled and waved as the tow truck pulled alongside and stopped. Mike and his grandfather got out to approach the wreck.

“Man, am I glad to see you guys,” the man said eagerly. “You must be Pop Fowler.”

“Yep,” Pop agreed, shaking the man’s hand. “This is my grandson, Mike.”

The man smiled at Pop, then nodded to Mike. “I’m Dan Plummer. Appreciate your coming out here this early.”

“It’s no problem,” Pop said cheerfully. He motioned with his hand toward the pickup, and Plummer moved to stand between Mike and Pop as they looked at the scene, stopping beside the truck’s back left bumper.

Plummer plucked nervously at the wisps of hair on his head as he began to explain. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, looking off down the road. “It was late. I was tired. I must have dozed off . . . and the next thing I know . . .” Plummer gestured feebly at the wreckage and gave a sickly grin.

“Hum,” Pop said, nodding once. “You’re pretty lucky then.” Pop bent over to check for damage to the wheels and axle of the trailer. When he found that all was okay, he said, “Well, I guess the first thing is to get this trailer right side up.”

“Right,” Plummer agreed.

Pop turned to Mike. “Mike, could you go back to the truck and get my crescent wrench from behind the seat?”

“Sure thing, Pop,” Mike replied, jogging around to the driver’s side of the tow truck. He opened the door and tilted the blue bench seat forward. Spotting the silver-handled tool, the boy grabbed it, returned the seat to its original position, and closed the door.

“Here you go, Pop,” Mike said, handing over the wrench.

“Thanks,” Pop replied, carrying on with his conversation. “I thought you said you were calling me from the McAllister Place.”

“That’s right,” Plummer replied.

“They would have let you spend the night there, and we could have picked you up on the way out this morning,” Pop said, rubbing his forehead.

Plummer smiled with gratitude. “Ah, well, that would’ve been kind, but I have a lot of expensive equipment in this trailer. I wanted to guard it.”

Mike walked around to the back of the trailer, wondering what could possibly be so valuable as to keep a man out in the desert all night long.

“Why didn’t you just lock it up?” Mike heard Pop ask. Of all the spooky things, to spend the night in the truck along a lonesome road in the desert.

Arriving at the trailer doors, Mike noticed that they had been bent and deformed by a tremendous force. The tops of both panels were curled outward and down as if some enormous power had been peeling a banana skin. When he took an even closer look, Mike discovered huge scratch marks on and around the doors. Excited, he called to his grandfather, “Pop, come here! Look at these doors . . . the way they’re bent back!”

Pop moved rapidly toward where Mike squatted, pointing at the scrapes in the metal. Plummer followed slowly.

“And these look almost like claw marks! What could have done this, Mr. Plummer?”

Plummer stood fidgeting with his hands in his pockets. Finally he answered, “Uh, I don’t know. I must have hit a rock or something when I went off the road.”

Pop looked around, inspecting the roadside up and down the shoulder. The slope was dirt and gravel for hundreds of yards in both directions, and there were no obvious obstructions. “This is a sand shelf,” he protested. “I don’t see any rocks.”

Plummer chuckled. “I just don’t know, fellas. But I’ll tell you one thing: If we don’t get moving, I’ll never make it to Albuquerque by this afternoon.” He slapped the side of the capsized trailer with his hand. “Don’t you think we better find out if this thing’ll still roll?”

Pop was startled out of his thoughts by the sudden noise of Plummer’s hand against the trailer and the animated tone of Plummer’s words. “Right,” he agreed, wrinkling his forehead. “I think the three of us should be able to get this right side up, and the hitch doesn’t look too bad off. Just let me get the tow truck backed around.”

Pop started the tow truck’s mighty engine and pulled the machinery around so that the A-frame winch faced the side of the trailer from about ten feet away. Mike grabbed the sturdy hook that dangled from the cable and pulled out several feet of cord, dropping the slack onto the gravel. Dan Plummer watched as Mike wrapped the cable around the axle of the trailer, hooking it securely onto the frame underneath.

“All right now, Mike,” Pop ordered. “You stand clear while I get this beast back on its feet.”

“Sure thing, Pop,” Mike agreed, retreating to the barbed wire fence on the hillside behind the accident scene.

As Pop revved up the electric motor of the hoist, Mike curiously studied the broken and twisted strands of wire. From some of them hung long, coarse clumps of dark brown hair. Mike plucked a sample from the barbs and stuffed it in his pocket. Then, turning his attention toward the shape of the fence, he noticed that the strands had been pushed apart in a strange way: The top two were pushed upward and the bottom two downward, leaving an oval outline large enough for something big and hairy to have crawled through.

Pop lowered the trailer back down into an upright position. It bounced and creaked as if happy to once again be on two wheels.

“Bravo,” Plummer applauded. The pickup and the trailer were reunited in no time.

Mike was thoughtful as he and Pop Fowler drove away. He patted the pocket containing the sample of hair and wondered how soon he could get together a meeting of the Last Chance Detectives. A mystery had once again come to Ambrosia!

Shining as bright as a second sun, the chrome body of the B-17 bomber glistened in the light of early afternoon. Pop Fowler had restored the vintage World War II aircraft to be airworthy. He named it the Lady Liberty. Nearby was the Last Chance Gas and Diner. Relics of Route 66, the plane, diner, and pumps appeared to be deserted beside the empty stretch of highway.

But inside the retired winged creature, the Last Chance Detectives were gathered, piecing together the first clues of another case. Wanted posters, photographs of old Western movie heroes, and legendary comic books covered the curved interior walls of the plane.

Spencer Martin, the Last Chance computer whiz and electronics genius, his coffee-colored forehead wrinkled in thought, typed frantically away on his laptop computer. He was seated at the small, wooden radio operator’s table located directly aft of the cockpit.

Mike and Wynona Whitefeather stood immediately behind Spence, watching as he typed. Just to the right of the table, sitting cross-legged on the floor, the fourth member of the team, Ben Jones, slurped a soda while watching a rerun of an old sitcom on the television.

“I’ll have it up in a minute, guys,” Spence promised. On the computer screen an animation box appeared. It soon filled with a frozen image labeled Mysteries of the Animal Kingdom. The Legend of Sasquatch. 1967.

“Okay, Ben,” Spence announced. “I’ve got it.”

“All right,” Ben answered, gulping down the rest of his Coke. Dropping the can, he burped, then hurried over to join the rest as the image on the screen began to flicker and come to life.

The gang watched the screen as the blurred form of a large fur-covered, man-shaped creature crossed a creek bed. “Terrific, Spence,” Mike exclaimed, leaning closer. “Where’d you get this?”

Spence moved the computer mouse, clicking an arrow at an on-screen box. The digitized film loop reset to the beginning and the movement of the animal repeated. “I tracked it down on the internet,” Spence reported, running the loop again. “This is the famous Murphy footage of Bigfoot from 1967.”

Ben, breathing heavily, squinted at the beast as he watched. “Holy cow! Look at that thing!”

“But how could there be a bigfoot around here?” Winnie argued, tossing her long, straight hair in a gesture of skepticism. “In the desert?”

Mike turned to the overall-clad girl and, raising his dark eyebrows, replied, “They’ve been reported all over.”

Spence froze the frame just as the animal turned to look at the camera. The electronics expert enlarged the view, then turned in his chair. Nodding, he agreed with Mike. “In the Pacific Northwest they call him Sasquatch. Down south it’s known as Mud Monster, and in parts of the Midwest they call him Old Orange Eyes. Yeti, the Abominable Snowman . . . different places, different names.” Ben gazed at the screen with horrified amazement as Spence continued. “The problem is, no one has been able to produce any real proof.”

“Then what do you call this?” Ben said proudly, grabbing the sealed bag of coarse hair from Mike’s hand and holding it up.

Spence shook his head. The glow from the computer screen danced across the lenses of his eyeglasses. “All we have is some hair that we can’t identify.”

“Did the driver see anything?” Winnie asked Mike.

“Mr. Plummer?” Mike answered, pausing a moment to reflect. “He didn’t want to talk about it. He kept changing the subject.” Mike’s brown eyes took on a deep, faraway look as they often did when he was pondering a problem. “But I got to thinking,” he resumed. “What if he didn’t really fall asleep at the wheel?”

“Huh?” Ben snorted, looking around to see where he had left his Baby Ruth candy bar.

“What if he swerved off the road to avoid hitting something?” Mike continued.

“Yeah,” Winnie interjected, going along with the thought. “What if he swerved off the road to keep from hitting it, and then it attacked the trailer, like it did the old miner’s shack?”

“Whoa! The bigfoot,” Ben replied in an awestruck tone. The stocky boy abruptly threw the bag of hair into the center of the table. “But why wouldn’t he just tell you the truth?”

Mike shook his head. “You saw what happened to Mr. Varner. Everyone thinks he’s crazy.” Mike leaned so that one hand rested on the table while he expressed his excitement with the other. “It’s just possible that we have two sightings instead of one.”

“But how can we prove it?” Winnie asked, biting her lip and frowning.

“I’ve got it!” Ben exclaimed, waving his hands to get everyone’s attention.

“Oh, brother,” Winnie said, flicking back her long black hair and rolling her eyes. She had heard plenty of Ben’s sudden brainstorms before. They were almost always far-fetched and made sense to few others besides Ben himself.

“No, really,” Ben insisted as he made eye contact with each of them in turn. “Listen! All we have to do is go out to Mr. Varner’s place and see if we can find any hair.” Retrieving the bagful of rough strands, he concluded, “If it’s a match, bingo!”

Mike, Winnie, and Spence looked at each other, surprised that Ben, for once, had come up with a good idea.

“Not bad, Ben. Not bad at all,” Mike complimented his friend, patting him on the back.

Winnie lifted her hands to express one final reservation. “But what if Mr. Varner doesn’t want anyone poking around?”

“Oh, come on,” Ben mocked, his chubby cheeks glowing with pride. “He’s probably just a sweet old man.”

The gang considered the proposal. Mike edged away from the table. The leader of the Last Chance Detectives knew how to get an investigation off and running. “I know,” he said, capturing the group’s attention. “Race you to the quads!”

The four enthusiastic sleuths scurried out the hatch in the fuselage and headed for their four-wheelers. They already felt excited, hot on the trail of their first lead in the search for Bigfoot.