The Owls were starving by the time they returned to the campsite on Big Crow Lake. As they drew near they could smell smoke, and it carried the hint of something delicious. Mr. Dillinger was back and cooking up a late lunch. In the distance, Travis could see Muck’s party also paddling back towards the campsite. He knew, without even asking, that there was no news.
“Not a sign of anything,” Muck said as he hauled his old red canoe up onto the beach.
“None of us saw anything, either,” Mr. Dillinger called from the firepit area, where he was whipping up some sort of pasta dish in a large tin bowl.
“What do you think happened?” Sarah asked.
Muck shook his head. “We’re only presuming the plane passed over us. Nish saw something all right. A plane, I would guess – but maybe not that plane. And even if it was, who’s to say it didn’t go on for miles beyond?”
“I saw the plane,” Nish argued. “It was in trouble.”
“I thought it was a flying saucer,” sneered Sam, “and it was you that was in trouble.”
Nish said nothing. None of his usual cracks about her outfits. Not even a stuck-out tongue.
Travis knew his friend was too upset to act like the normal Nish – if, in fact, there was such a thing as a normal Nish. He had been ridiculed for his story about the alien abduction, and now he had to deal with the fact that his new NHL hero was missing, perhaps dead in a plane crash. Not even “perhaps.” Probably.
They ate in relative silence for a peewee team that had, essentially, grown up together. The Owls were, by now, almost a family: the players got along, or did not get along, much as brothers and sisters, with Muck and Mr. Dillinger each a sort of extra parent to every youngster on the team. Silence wasn’t usual for the Owls, particularly when they were out on an adventure. But silence seemed appropriate, under the circumstances.
Mr. Dillinger was pouring out hot chocolate when the quiet of the campsite was broken by a strange, distant drone from well beyond the tops of the high pines.
“Another plane,” said Fahd, pointing out the obvious as usual.
They laid down their cups and hurried out onto the point in order to see.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a large yellow bush plane broke with a roar over the treetops, banked steeply, and went out over the lake, turning and slowly descending.
“It’s coming in!” shouted Fahd.
The plane seemed to pause in mid-air as it neared the water, then touched down lightly, skipped up, touched down again with a large spray, then settled on the lake, a high rooster tail of water pluming from each pontoon.
“He’s carrying canoes,” Mr. Dillinger said.
Travis could see two dark-green canoes lashed to the pontoons. What a wonderful way to travel, he thought. Flying into lakes, then having the canoes to explore the shoreline. But then it struck him that these rangers were not here to explore; they had come to find Jake Tyson’s plane.
The yellow Otter taxied up to the beach, the doors opened, and two young rangers jumped out into the water, the splash spreading black up the legs of their green work pants.
The pilot cut the engine, and the absence of sound was almost as startling as the roar had been when the plane first passed over the treetops. The engine died with a wheeze, the propeller slowed, and the two rangers muscled the plane in closer to the beach area, where it settled, soft and safe, on the fine sand just as the propeller came to a complete stop.
The front doors opened, and two more rangers, older men, one grey-haired, one completely bald, used the wing struts to swing down onto the pontoons.
The young rangers unlashed the two canoes, turned them over, dropped them down into the water, and pushed them towards the sand.
“Pitch in,” Muck said.
The Owls flew down into the water, helping the rangers haul the canoes up onto the sand and then forming a human chain to help load the canoes with the supplies the rangers were pulling from a rear cargo door: paddles, life preservers, tents, ropes, a radio pack, a stretcher, food barrels, rain gear, and cooking utensils.
The older rangers jumped off the end of the pontoons, splashed lightly in the shallow water, and then hiked up the sand and the small ridge in front of the camping area to talk with Muck and Mr. Dillinger. The four men moved back to the firepit area, where Mr. Dillinger had coffee brewing over the fire.
Travis looked at the two younger rangers. They seemed so big and fit, almost like hockey players – one had dark, curling hair that splashed over his collar, the other was blond, or likely blond, as he had shaved his head bald and was tanned darker than the ranger’s uniform he was wearing.
“You kids with a summer camp?” the dark one asked.
“We’re a hockey team,” Fahd told him.
“A hockey team?” The ranger burst out laughing. “This lake won’t freeze over till Christmas. You plan to wait here that long?”
“We’re here for the week,” said Sam. “And we don’t play on lakes. We play in the Tamarack rink.”
“Ohhhh, a little sensitive, are we?” kidded the dark-haired ranger.
Nish couldn’t resist. “Ask her about her sissy camping clothes. You’d think she’s a figure skater, not a hockey player!”
The rangers looked at each other, making faces. “I’m not touching that one,” said the dark ranger.
“Me neither,” laughed the blond one. “You kids know who Jake Tyson is?”
“We know,” said Fahd. “We heard about it on my radio. Nish here saw the plane go down.”
Both rangers stopped what they were doing and turned to Nish, who was stepping forward to brag.
“Yeah, I saw it,” said Nish, beginning to blush.
“He said it was a flying saucer,” said Sam.
“Put a cork in it, fancy pants!” Nish snapped. “I saw a plane go over last night – lights on, but no engine. It was coughing and choking and then nothing.”
The rangers looked at each other, suddenly very curious. “Where did it go?”
“He doesn’t know,” said Sam.
Nish ignored her. “That way,” he said, pointing vaguely across the lake.
The rangers looked out. “Towards the river?” the dark one asked.
“We searched the river,” said Sarah. “Nothing we could see. We also checked the bay and the far shore. Nothing there, either.”
“What do you know about it?” Travis asked the rangers.
The blond one looked hard at Travis, then shook his head. “Probably not even as much as you. The plane’s missing. That’s about all we know. The air base at Trenton thought they picked up the emergency signal and placed it somewhere around Big Crow Lake, but then the signal went dead. They’re still flying search-and-rescue – you probably saw some planes go over.”
“We saw them,” said Fahd.
“We’re here for a preliminary ground search,” said the dark ranger. “If they pick up the signal again at the air base, they can radio us and we should be able to get to them.”
“Do you think they’re alive?” asked Fahd.
The rangers looked at each other as if trying to decide whether to say what they truly felt.
“We don’t know,” said the dark ranger.
“We can only hope,” said the blond ranger.