Francie took a deep breath of the pine-scented air. “Carrie was right,” she said, looking at Charlie. “The smell of the air in the mountains is almost better than food!”
Charlie raised his eyebrows. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, grinning. “How do you know what Carrie said? Has she been talking to you now?”
Francie frowned at him. She reached into the bag, which she’d slung over her shoulder, and held out the diary. “I found it. There was a secret compartment in her wardrobe.” She stroked the book’s soft blue binding. “Now there’s a secret compartment in my wardrobe,” she whispered.
Charlie stopped walking. He looked down at the book in Francie’s hand, but he didn’t take it—and the expression on his face looked as if he thought it might be as dangerous as a rattlesnake. “Did you read it?” He looked up at Francie, but still he didn’t take the diary.
“Parts of it,” she answered. She touched Charlie’s elbow and he started forward. “How far up Connor’s Creek will we have to go, do you think?”
He shrugged and gave her sideways glance. “Did you find anything about . . . you know, the secret?”
As an answer, Francie opened the diary to the last entry and read it aloud as they walked. She left out the date and the part about the White Mountain walking tour.
“This tree,” Francie put her finger on the diary page when she’d finished reading. “Maybe it’s the secret Carrie was talking about in the note. Can we find it?”
Charlie looked down at her. “Don’t you think it’s been cut by now? If it’s as big as she says . . .” He didn’t need to finish the thought.
Francie closed her eyes. “You’re probably right,” she said. “Do you know this man, Old Robert?”
“Old Robert.” Charlie stroked his chin and smoothed his mustache away from his mouth. “He’s that old hermit who used to live up near Connor’s Pass—Carrie took me to his cabin once. He hasn’t been around here in a long time.”
“Connor’s Pass—that’s just below Connor’s Peak.” Francie’s heart gave a little jump. Connor’s Peak was the mountain Carrie had mentioned climbing, and, suddenly, Francie wanted to climb it as well, to see the view that Carrie had described in her diary. “Let’s head up that way.” She tucked the diary back into the shoulder bag.
Charlie scratched his head. “I promised I’d get you back before dark.”
“You did not!” Francie turned on him. “You just said you’d take care of me. And besides, that was just so Father would let me go. I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Charlie tipped his hat and grinned. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were Carrie.”
Francie bit her lip. She knew he’d meant no harm by it. “I’m not Carrie, and I don’t want to be,” she said finally, her voice trembling. “Please don’t say that again.”
Charlie’s smile vanished. He swallowed and pulled his hat down so the brim shadowed his eyes. “Sorry, Francie. Guess I didn’t think.” He moved ahead of her. “If we’re going to make it to Connor’s Pass and back before dark, we’d best get moving.”
The trail to Connor’s Pass led through the basin—they followed it in silence. The huge stumps towered over them like giant tombstones. It had been a few years since the loggers had been working in this part of the basin and long grasses and brambles had begun to fill in where once there had been bare forest floor. But Francie found she could easily keep up with Charlie’s long strides. Once he turned around, and when he saw her close behind him he raised his eyebrows. He smiled, and Francie thought he was going to say something, but instead he clamped his mouth shut again, turned back, and kept walking.
After they’d been walking for almost an hour, the path forked. One branch headed on through the meadow, weaving its way around the stumps, and the other went up the hill, into forest. Charlie stopped. “You keep up pretty good,” he admitted, turning to Francie. He took off his hat and mopped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “Aren’t you hot?”
She sat on a downed log. “Now that you mention it,” she said, grinning. “You didn’t think I could keep up, did you?”
Charlie shrugged. “I wondered,” was all he said. He squinted up the hill. “Connor’s Pass is up that way,” he said, pointing with his chin. “It ought to be cooler there—we haven’t logged in that direction yet and the forest is pretty thick.
“How far until Old Robert’s cabin?” Francie looked at the sun, wondering how much daylight was left.
“I don’t rightly remember,” Charlie answered. “But it must not be too far. We’ll get there, but it’ll be slower going,” he added, examining the steep path ahead of them.
He started up into the woods, and Francie followed him. Here the trees were smaller—young pine and cedar trees and none of the giant sequoias. It was dark and cool, and the red fir and cedars gave off a piney scent that mixed with the damp smell of old leaves and needles. Francie breathed in the earthy perfume and sighed. “Perfect,” she said. “I don’t blame Old Robert for living up here.”
Charlie chuckled. “It’s a long way from civilization,” he said, grabbing onto a sturdy tree trunk and pulling himself up the steep incline. “No hot baths or home-cooked suppers out here.”
Francie just laughed and kept her eyes on the path. Even though there wasn’t much underbrush, the path was harder to see. “Not many people come up this far,” she said, pointing uphill. “Don’t we go that way?”
Charlie scratched his head. “This is the way up to the pass all right, and to Old Robert’s cabin, too.” He shook his head. “But there aren’t many big trees up this way—that’s why Connor moved the logging show over to the east end of the basin. I don’t see how Carrie’s tree could be up here.”
Francie pulled out the diary and looked at the entry again. “ ‘I saw Old Robert again today,’ ” she quoted. “ ‘He took me up over the mountain and showed me my tree. My tree! It is enormous, bigger than any other sequoia in the entire valley. Maybe it’s the biggest tree in the entire world!’ ” She listened to the words as her lips formed them and her voice gave them sound. When she finished the sentence, Carrie’s words seemed to hang in the air, and Francie’s stomach gave a queer lurch. It was almost as if Carrie herself were there, saying them. Without meaning to, Francie looked around as if she might see Carrie step out from behind a tree.
Charlie was scratching his head. He didn’t seem to notice how odd it was to hear Carrie’s words spoken here, in her mountains. “I guess ‘up over the mountain’ could be over Connor’s Pass. But there’s nothing really to say which mountain she was talking about.” He sighed. “It could be anywhere.”
Francie refused to become discouraged. “But it makes sense that it’s Connor’s Pass, since Old Robert lived nearby. He probably knew this mountain better than any other.”
“That’s true,” Charlie admitted. “We can check, anyway.” He settled his hat back onto his head and gestured for Francie to go ahead of him.
Under the trees the dim afternoon light was already fading into dusk. Occasionally the trail was crossed by rivulets of running water, turning the steep path into a slippery slide. Francie found herself clutching at the branches of nearby trees to keep her footing. She could hear Charlie grunting.
“Are you sure this trail leads to the pass?” she asked him, stopping to catch her breath. “Nobody must come this way regularly.”
“It’s one of the more difficult climbs,” Charlie said, panting. “It’s not dangerous, but it takes a lot of stamina.”
“I can see that!” No wonder Carrie was so proud that she’d climbed all the way to the top. “What about the peak? Could we get to the summit today?”
Charlie gave a short laugh. “I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to get home in time for supper. The hike to the peak takes two days.”
“Carrie did it in one,” Francie said, touching the bag. “She says so in her diary.”
Charlie gave her an odd look. “I thought you didn’t want to compare yourself to Carrie,” he said quietly.
“I don’t,” Francie answered. She felt her cheeks go hot. “I’m not like Carrie.”
“So why do you want to climb Connor’s Peak?”
Francie closed her eyes. “Because,” she said slowly, “because I want to see what she saw.” She glanced at Charlie to see if he understood, but he was frowning and looking on up the mountain. How could she explain it when she didn’t understand it herself?
“We must be close to Old Robert’s cabin,” Charlie said. He pushed his hat back off his forehead. “Funny we can’t even see a trace of it from here.”
About a hundred yards on ahead, the path leveled off. “The pass is that way.” Charlie pointed. “And the cabin,” he made a quarter turn to the west with his arm straight out in front of him as if he were a living compass, “should be that way.” He frowned. “Unless I’m way off in my reckoning.”
He moved on, and Francie followed him, wondering how far from the path they would have to go before they found the cabin. Would they lose their way entirely? A brief vision of her father flashed across her mind. She shook it away but looked around to find some landmarks she could remember for later. “This twisted pine,” she whispered, touching the gnarled trunk with her fingertips. A bit farther on she picked out a large rock about the size of a footstool. “And there’s that fallen log on the left . . . it’ll be to the right on the way back . . .”
If she hadn’t been looking so carefully at her surroundings, she might not have noticed the mountain dogwood about twenty-five yards down the mountain from where she stood. Dogwood! She stopped short. “Charlie, wait!” She grabbed the diary out of the bag.
“I know I read about it somewhere,” she mumbled, thumbing through the scrawled pages. She headed down the mountain in the direction of the dogwood tree.
“What’s the matter!” Charlie nearly ran into her as he careened downhill. “Are you hurt?”
Francie looked up. “Dogwood,” she said, pointing to three small trees covered with creamy white blossoms. “Carrie said there was dogwood growing beside Old Robert’s cabin. She opened the diary and began to read. “ ‘It’s a beautiful place—surrounded with wildflowers. Dogwood grows all around, and monkeyflower, and a stunning bunch of phlox where the sun shines most of the day. You wouldn’t expect to find that one in the woods—not enough light except in that one place.’ ”
Francie looked around the clearing. Though the sun had dropped below the tops of the trees, there were the yellow monkeyflowers and pink phlox blooming still. But blackened logs lay all atumble as if some giant hand had scattered them like a child’s building blocks. A pile of stones at one end of the clearing was partially covered with vines. “What happened to the cabin?” she whispered.
“Burned down.” Charlie pointed to the pile of stones. “Even the chimney fell,” he said. “It must have been some blaze!” He looked up as if trying to imagine the flames licking the tops of the trees.
“What do you think happened to Old Robert?”
Charlie’s answer was the one that had occurred to Francie as well. “Maybe he was caught inside,” he said. “He hasn’t been seen around here in years—at least that’s what I heard.” He walked around the perimeter of what was once a small cabin, kicking charred pieces of wood out of the way and staring down as if he were looking for some sign of the old man.
But Francie quickly stepped outside. “Let’s go look for the tree,” she said quickly. Somehow it felt wrong to be there, as if she’d been standing on someone’s grave.