Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs, page 15
Now, you may think this is one of those maudlin stories where at the very last minute you, Santa Claus, do show up, and everyone stands around laughing and wiping away tears of joy and saying this was the best Christmas ever. Forget it. You, Mr. Claus, did not put in an appearance at our house that Christmas in 1941. I hope you are ashamed of yourself.
Sure, my father tried to get you off the hook by whittling me out a little toy boat and saying it had come from you. One reason I think he said it came from you was he didn’t want to take the blame for the boat himself. Dad wasn’t much of a whittler and lacked patience. The boat was a board with a point at one end, and a long nail pounded into it for a mast. The mast was too heavy for the boat and caused it to float upside down.
“This is the worst Christmas ever!” I complained.
“Shut up,” my father said, “and go play with your boat.”
So, the way I see it, Mr. Claus, you still owe me a Christmas, and I would like to collect. If you will check your records, you will see that in my letter to you in December 1941, I requested a tin boat that you put these little wax candles into and lit them and they generated steam and powered the little boat. Having computed the interest, compounded semiannually, on that little boat over a period of forty-five years, I find that it now amounts to a thirty-eight-foot sportfisher with twin diesels and a flying bridge. I would like you to pay up this Christmas, or I shall have to turn the matter over to a collection agency.
You needn’t gift wrap the boat. Also, it would be best if you left it at the local marina, with my name on the gift tag. For gosh sakes, don’t try to drop it off at the house! It might get peppered with stray birdshot.
Sincerely yours,
Pat
The Cabin at Spooky Lake
One dark and stormy night in 1953, I participated in a strange and frightening occurrence at Spooky Lake in the mountains of North Idaho. Although the exact cause of that inexplicable event remains unknown, Birdy Thompson and Retch Sweeney advanced the theory that we were attacked by an enraged ghost. I personally find that theory to be sheer nonsense and even laughable. Sure, the ghost may have been a little upset but he certainly wasn’t enraged.
The three of us were college sophomores at the time, and had been granted an unexpected leave of absence from the university. Somehow—and this in itself is amazing—the mascot of a rival university got hold of a hacksaw, sawed the lock off its cage, and made its way over twenty-five miles of rough terrain, up the back stairs of the dormitory, and right into our room, where it managed to conceal itself from us for three days! As we told the Dean, it was a terrible shock for us to discover that we had been sleeping in the same room with a 200-pound mountain lion, old, moth-eaten and toothless as he might be. We could certainly sympathize with the fright given the dorm counselor when he investigated our room as a possible source of strange smells, a more or less routine practice of his. The man apparently possessed an insatiable curiosity.
The Dean said our shock was certainly understandable and that he was giving us the rest of the semester off, to let our nerves calm down. We replied that we appreciated his thoughtfulness but that our nerves were already much better. He insisted, however, and thus it was that we were released on short notice from our strenuous academic labors.
As we packed our belongings and cleaned up the room, no small task as the result of the brief visit of the runaway mountain lion, we debated over the most profitable use to make of our free time.
“Maybe we won’t have all that much free time,” I said. “When our folks get the letters from the Dean, they’ll probably kill us right off. I think what we should do is write letters home ourselves, explaining the whole misunderstanding and telling our folks that we are going on a camping trip for a week or so. Then we head up into the mountains and camp out until everybody has time to cool down. How does that sound?”
“Good,” Birdy said. “Where shall we camp ou ..
“You ever hear of Spooky Lake? Rancid Crabtree told me about it. Claims it’s haunted. Ha! He says nobody goes there because they’re afraid of the place. So Spooky Lake never gets fished. Rancid says it’s full of huge old trout just waiting to be caught. Boy, it’s funny how people can be so stupid and uneducated as to believe in ghosts.”
“Yeah,” Birdy said. “I hear Elk Lake is nice this time of year.”
“Or Mirror Lake,” Retch said. “I been wantin’ to get back to ol’ Mirror Lake for some fishin’.”
“Nope,” I said. “It’s settled. We’ll go to Spooky Lake, unless you guys happen to believe in ghosts and are too chicken to—”
“Naw, sounds okay to me,” Birdy said. “Educated men like us don’t believe in spooks, right, Retch?”
“Right,” Retch said. “I still think Mirror Lake would be nicer, though.”
That settled, we wrote our letters home and finished up the packing. I checked to make sure we had all our stuff: three shotguns, three .22s, two .30-06s and a .30-30, six flyrods, six casting rods, twenty fishing reels, three backpacks, three sleeping bags. “I guess that’s about it,” I said.
“Wait,” Birdy said. “Where’s the book?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “We did have a book, a history of something or other.”
“What the heck,” Retch said. “We can always get another book if we have to. Let’s go. Man, what a relief to get away from studying all the time!”
We stopped in our hometown long enough to stock up on grub at the mercantile, and then headed out to Rancid Crabtree’s shack to get directions to Spooky Lake.
“Spooky Lake?” Rancid said. “You sure you fellers want to go up thar?”
“Why not?” I said. “Don’t tell me you believe that story about the ghost that haunts the lake?”
“Course Ah do.”
“Well, we don’t,” I said. “We’re college men now, Rancid. College men don’t believe in all the superstitious nonsense about ghosts. The phenomena people call ‘ghosts’ are quickly revealed to be nothing other than natural occurrences, if investigated by means of objective and rational thought.”
“Ah didn’t know thet,” Rancid said, “Ah guess the ghost Ah seen at Spooky Lake didn’t know it neither.”
“You’re joshing us, Rance. You didn’t see any ghost.”
Birdy cracked his knuckles. “Know anybody else who claims to have seen the so-called ghost, Mr. Crabtree?”
“Oh, mebbe a couple dozen folks is all, most of them timid souls. Pinto Jack claims the ghost jumped him up near the old Spooky Lake cabin one day, but you fellers know Pinto. Can’t believe a word he says. Swears the ghost gave him that white streak runs through his ha’r. Ah tells him, ‘Good, It’ll match the yeller streak runs down your back.’ Ha! Well, thet riled him, and he comes back at me with—”
“Rance,” I said, having heard about the exchange of witticisms many times before, “did you just mention a cabin?”
“Yup. Thar’s a cabin thar all right, but Ah’d steer clear of it iffen Ah was yous. Got a bad feelin’ about it, thet cabin. Belonged to an old trapper. B’ar broke both his legs. He drug hisself into the cabin, tied splints on his legs with some rawhide, climbed into his bunk, and died. Coulda saved hisself the trouble of makin’ the splints. Now as Ah was sayin’, Pinto comes back at me with …”
We spent the night at Rancid’s shack and left early in the morning for Spooky Lake. I had asked Rancid if he wanted to go along, but he said his old legs weren’t up to a hike like that anymore. He stood in the doorway and waved good-bye as we drove away. “’Member what Ah told yous,” he called after us. “Don’t go n’ar the cabin!”
I laughed. “Rancid doesn’t fool me. He’s just as scared of the Spooky Lake ghost as anybody. Did you hear that malarkey about his tired old legs? Last summer I saw him walk straight up Blacktail Mountain without even stopping to rest. I was glad to hear about the cabin. We can stay there. What say, guys?”
“I say we give Mirror Lake a try,” Retch said, cracking his knuckles.
We left the car at the end of a logging road and started our climb up the mountain, according to the complicated directions given us by Rancid. If there was a trail, it had grown up with brush, and now was impossible to find. I began to wonder about the reliability of Rancid’s directions, vaguely recalling a map of the area that showed a supply trail that ran to a Forest Service fire lookout station. If I remembered correctly, the trail offered a much shorter and easier route to where Spooky Lake was supposed to be. Still, Rancid knew this country like the back of his grubby hand, and there was no reason I could think of that he would deliberately give us bad directions. He did love a good practical joke, but this would be too cruel even for him.
After three hours of climbing through steep, thick woods, we finally broke out into the open on a rocky ridge. There, down below us, Spooky Lake sparkled like a blue jewel in the sun. Even from that distance, we could see the rings of feeding trout rippling out all over the surface of the water. I instantly regretted all the mean thoughts I had begun to harbor about Rancid.
At the far end of the lake stood a grove of massive cedars. In the shadowy, parklike area beneath the cedars we could make out the shape of the trapper’s cabin. It didn’t look the least bit scary. “The cabin seems fine from here,” I said. “I think we’re going to need it, too.” I pointed to a mass of thunderheads looming over a distant range of mountains to the west.
“Yeah,” Birdy said. “Looks like rain, all right.”
“What are we standing here yacking for?” Retch said. “Let’s go catch some of those fish for supper.”
The fishing was fantastic, for half an hour. We hauled in one nice cutthroat trout after another, and soon had plenty for both supper and breakfast. Then, as is the case with most high mountain lakes, the bite ended abruptly. The lake grew still and glassy, and the rising thunderheads cast a soft, ominous light into the tiny valley. We headed for the cabin.
Up close, the cabin did not appear so fine. It looked as if it had been tucked away among the cedars for a hundred years, which probably was the case. The mud-and-moss chinking had cracked out of the spaces between many of the whitish-gray logs. Moss covered the thick shake roof. The door to the tiny cabin was massive, made out of split cedar logs. It leaned unhinged against the doorway, held in place by a stout limb someone had wedged against it. Retch kicked the limb out of the way and, grunting mightily, set the door aside, commenting that it was a good thing he was along, because Birdy and I between the two of us probably couldn’t have moved it.
“Yeah, sure,” Birdy said. “Well, give me brains over brawn any day. Yeeesh! Look in there!”
The cabin was a mess. Garbage, animal droppings, pieces of old clothes, a rusty tin plate, bones, and various other debris not easily identified cluttered the floor. “Looks almost as bad as our dorm room,” Retch said.
“Well, at least a mountain lion hasn’t been cooped up in here for three days,” I said. “Let’s get the place mucked out. We aren’t at college now.”
By evening, we had the place tidied up and a fire built in the little tin-can stove, which, after Retch had set the heavy door back in its opening, gave off the only light in the cabin. The mixed aromas of sizzling trout and bacon and fried potatoes with onions filled the air, as did the raucous sounds of our mirth at recalling our surprise at finding the runaway mountain lion in our dorm room. Quickly, the strain of intense study vanished from our countenances, and a disinterested observer might never have guessed that we had any college education at all, so quickly did the three of us revert back to our true, carefree natures.
“Ah, this is the life,” Retch said, munching a crisp trout held in his fingers like an ear of corn. “You know what our problem was at college? We was just getting too civilized, that’s what.”
“Yeah,” I said, blowing on a handful of fried potatoes. “But a man needs an education. Now, you know, most folks probably would be afraid to stay in this cabin, because of all the ghost talk and all. We take the rational view, shrug off all that superstitious nonsense, and we’ve got ourselves a nice cozy cabin to spend the night in.”
“Speaking of the ghost,” Birdy said, “I wonder where the old trapper was buried around here.”
“What?” Retch said. “Buried? You don’t suppose they buried him around here, do you?”
“Probably wasn’t much to bury,” I said. “According to Rancid, they didn’t find him until ten or fifteen years after he died. Found his skeleton in that bunk over there, with the rawhide and splints still on his broken leg bones.”
The three of us looked at the bunk. At that moment, thunder shook the tiny cabin and slivers of light leaped through the cracks between the logs. Big drops of rain began splattering down on the shake roof. An eerie gloom filled the cabin as the fire sputtered lower in the tin stove.
“Throw another stick in the stove,” Retch said.
“Good idea,” I said. “It’s, uh, starting to turn cool in here.” I mopped sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. “By the way, who wants to sleep in the bunk?”
“Why, I think I’ll roll my bag right out here on the floor,” Birdy said.
“Me too,” Retch said. “You take the bunk, Pat.”
“Naw,” I said. “Too cramped for me. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Sleep evaded me. All my senses seemed to be standing guard in the darkness of the cabin, alert to every rustle and scratch. The fire died out. Minutes crept by like lame hours. Then I heard a strange thumping behind the cabin, as though some creature were trying to pound its way through the logs. A chill filled the inside of my sleeping bag. I wondered if I should disturb Retch and Birdy from their slumbers.
“Guys,” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“What?”
They seemed alert enough. “Do you hear that strange thumping sound?”
“Been listening to it,” Retch said.
“What could make a sound like that?” Birdy whispered.
The sound stopped. We listened. All was still, except for the cracking of knuckles and dripping of beads of sweat. Then something climbed to the roof of the cabin. We stared up into the darkness, above which the unmistakable sounds of two feet crunched across the shake roof in the direction of the tin chimney.
“Something’s on our roof,” Retch said unnecessarily.
“Probably just a …” I said. I couldn’t think of what it might be.
“Sure,” Birdy said. “Th-that’s all it is.”
A hideous moaning came down our chimney: “Ooooooooahhhhhhhhhhh! Ooooooaahhhhhhhhh! Maw leeeeeeeeeeggggss! Ooooooahhhhhhhh! Ma w.w.w.w leeeeeegggggggs! Ooooooooo …”
That at least was what the hideous moaning sounded like. It was difficult to hear it clearly because of all the hyperventilation going on inside the cabin. A few frantic moments passed. Slowly I began to collect my wits, even as my heart beat wildly.
“Let’s calm down,” I said.
“Good idea,” Retch said. “No point in getting ourselves all worked up over nothin’.”
“All we have to do is think this thing through,” Birdy said.
“No need to panic,” I said. “There has to be a rational explanation for this.”
“Yeah,” Retch said. “I got one for you. It’s that old trapper’s ghost!”
“Right,” Birdy said. “It’s his ghost.”
“I know that,” I said. “But what’s the rational explanation for its wanting to bother us?”
At that moment we raced onto the rocky ridge above the lake and paused to see if we were being followed.
“You can drop the door now, Retch,” I said.
“Well, shucks,” Retch said. “So that’s what was slowing me down!”
We got back to Rancid’s cabin just before dawn, but he was already up. He was sitting in his underwear having a cup of coffee. His pants, shirt, and jacket were spread out around the stove, drying.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Fell in the crick,” he said. “What brings you fellers back so soon? Thought yous was gonna stay up at Spooky Lake fer a week or so. You educated fellers run afoul of the ghost?” He wiped a big hand across his mouth, in a vain attempt to conceal his concern for us.
“Rain,” I said. “Too much rain. We decided to risk going home early.”
“I hate rain,” Retch said.
“Me too,” said Birdy. “Say, Mr. Crabtree, you know, that Spooky Lake is kind of, well, weird. I don’t think I’d go up there ever again if I were you. Its name is pretty darn appropriate, if you ask me.”
“It should be,” Rancid said. “It was named after the trapper what built thet cabin—ol’ Tom Spooky. Say, did Ah ever tell you boys about the turble thang what happened to poor ol’ Tom? A b’ar broke his legs and—”
“Yeah,” I said. “You told us.”
Outdoor Burnout
I recently received a letter from a young fellow who has spent several months working in a state park. “It is a 27,000-acre park and wood reserve with three hundred head of American bison, deer, antelope, turkey, elk, and bighorn sheep, as well as nongame species such as coyotes, porcupines, coon, golden and bald eagles, and an assortment of ground critters.” He went on to describe the beautiful lakes and streams stocked with brown, rainbow, and brook trout.
It seemed like a wonderful place to work, and I thought perhaps he was getting around to inviting me up for a visit. But then he said, “When I first arrived here I mentioned to my associates that ‘it would take a lot of this to make me sick.’ Well, I’ve reached my saturation point!”
In other words, he was fed up to the eyeballs with beautiful streams and lakes, forests, mountains, bison, bighorns, golden eagles, the whole sordid mess. I knew at once that he was suffering from a classic case of outdoor burnout.
