Mystery of the Eagle's Nest

Tamra Wight

Description

Trouble has returned to Wilder Family Campground. When Cooper and Packrat find their geocache box full of illegal eagle parts, their lazy summer is over. Someone wants those valuable parts back. And if they can't get the parts back, they'll settle for holding one of the rare Pine Lake eaglets hostage instead. Cooper, Packrat, and Roy must elude two goons, tolerate an annoying teenager, keep tabs on a shady new camper, and stake out the eagle's nest-all without getting grounded. Tamra Wight has written an exciting follow-up to Mystery on Pine Lake, a tale ripe with adventure and natural history, but above all, one of compassion and friendship.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Islandport Press
• Date de parution: 21 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781939017369
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

COOPER AND PACKRAT
Mystery
of the
Eagle’s Nest
By Tamra Wight Illustrations by Carl DiRocco
ISLANDPORT PRESS
P. O. Box 10
Yarmouth, Maine 04096
www.islandportpress.com
[e-mail]
Copyright © 2014 by Tamra Wight
Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Carl DiRocco
First Islandport Press edition published August 2014.
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-939017-36-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922660
Printed in the USA
Dean L. Lunt, Publisher
Front and back cover art: Carl DiRocco
Book jacket design: Karen Hoots / Hoots Design
Book design: Michelle Lunt / Islandport Press
For David, Alex, and Ben for oh, so very many reasons
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Eagles mostly eat fish, but will steal both live and dead food from other eagles or birds of prey, such as osprey or heron .
There were only three ways to get to the floor of the super-cool canyon in my family’s woods. One: You could jump the twelve feet down, but you’d probably break your neck; and two: You could follow the brook flowing along the north side and jump down the waterfall into a not-so-deep pool of water. Either way, if you could still walk, then you’d have to go a hundred yards downriver, before squeezing through a wicked narrow gorge at the back of the canyon.
Or, three: You could use the secret entrance.
My back against a tree trunk, I carefully leaned out and around to peek back the way I’d come. Darn it! The two humongous men who’d been chasing me were now trying to cross the swollen brook. I knew how to pick stepping-stones; the higher and drier, the better. But these suit-and-tie goons were obviously not the hiking type. About halfway across, blue-tie guy stepped on a dark green rock with his shiny black shoes. Not a good combination. He leaned left, then right, then back to the left before grabbing red-tie guy’s arm. The two of them wiggled on their rocks, swearing like crazy, arms waving so fast I thought they’d take off like a duck who’d just been surprised by a guy in a camouflage suit. Finally, red-tie guy shook off blue-tie guy.
After getting their balance back, they stood perfectly still for a second, looked at each other, and laughed. Then, whoosh! Their feet slid out from under them. Lying on their backs in the middle of the brook, they swore between groans as they slowly rolled over and tried to stand.
It was the break I needed.
Creeping along the edge of the canyon, I tried to keep the pine tree between the goons’ line of sight and me. I parted two blueberry bushes to drop my green, plastic geocache box into the hole between them. When it clunked on the rock floor six feet below, I winced and peeked back at the goons.
They were still arguing. Whew .
I put my feet in the hole, gave three chickadee calls so my friend Packrat would know I’d made it, then wiggled my waist through. As I balanced on my elbows, I looked for a foothold with the tip of my left hiking boot. It slipped on the damp dirt. Surprised, I just let go and my bare knee scraped the wall as I dropped the last couple of feet to land in a crouch. The bushes sprang back into place above me, blocking out most of the light.
The canyon opened up before me. I was still a good five feet up from the floor, and I knew from experience that the only way anyone would find me was if they laid on their stomach above me, slid forward, and hung over the edge. As long as I didn’t do something stupid like sneeze, I was pretty safe here.
I was breathing hard, blood rushing through my veins. After my mad dash through the woods, my heart was pounding so loud, I couldn’t think. Why the heck did those guys want my geocache box so badly? They’d crashed through the woods just as Packrat and I had reached the coordinates for one of our caches, the one hidden in the old stone wall. Next thing we knew, they’d started swearing and running toward us! When their coats flapped open, I could’ve sworn I saw a gun in their waistbands. Thinking back, I wasn’t really sure. But I do remember grabbing the box and running like a deer. Yeah, I knew right away it was a pretty stupid thing to do. It made them keep chasing us. So I held the rectangular box over my head, hoping the goons would follow me, while signaling Packrat to go around the long way in case he had to go for backup.
I squatted next to the long, skinny box. It was one of six just like it, all hidden in different spots along a trail that my friends and I had made this spring. The trail began and ended at Wilder Family Campground, the campground on Pine Lake that my family owned and where we lived all year long. Each box held a small notebook with a pen, to log in the date you’d found the box, and some cheap plastic toy prizes for younger hikers. There were six more boxes, much smaller ones—no bigger than a matchbox, really. These had only a mini golf-type pencil and some scrolled-up paper to log in on; these were harder and more fun to find.
All twelve of these geocache boxes were camouflaged to blend in with the woods. Packrat and Roy (my two best friends, both seasonal campers at our campground) and I had searched high and low for cool places to hide them, like hollow trees and dark holes between rocks. People who wanted to hike the trail and look for the boxes could rent a handheld GPS from Mom in our campground office. The GPS can tell you exactly where you are on the planet. We had entered the latitude and longitude coordinates for all twelve geocache boxes into the GPS device, to get hikers within twenty-five feet of each one. From there, they had to use our written clues to find the actual box. Once they logged in, they closed the box up tight and hid the container back in the same exact spot for the next geocacher. It was kinda like a high-tech hide-and-seek game.
Just last week, I’d checked this box’s hiding spot, and all the usual stuff had been in it. I’d thrown in a few campground postcards to add to the prizes, and replaced the pencil that had gotten stubby.
I didn’t get it. Why had these goons chased me? I reached a shaky hand toward the large clip on its skinny side.
“Where’d he go?” asked one of the goons, his voice above me.
I froze. Breathe slow , I told myself. Don’t move .
“I don’t know! I swear he was standing right here a minute ago.”
“Ha! Maybe we scared him to death and he jumped off the side.”
They walked back and forth along the edge above me, just like Packrat and I had done when we’d found the place and were looking for a way down. I slowly stood up as dirt, pine needles, and last fall’s brown leaves fell in front of my face, into the canyon. The goons stopped. Their shoe tips hung over the edge. I prayed they’d slip on moss and fall. I imagined the look on their faces as they passed by the ledge, seeing me safe and sound with the box. I’d smile. Maybe wave.
“You see him?” said a goon.
“Nah. Let’s go follow the brook down, get a look at the bottom of this thing.”
“Are you crazy? We almost broke our necks trying to cross it! Besides, he headed this way; I saw him.”
“You’re just sore ’cause you got your new shoes wet.”
“Shut up, you.”
Neither one said a word as they walked back and forth again, trying to find a way down. After a couple of minutes, I heard a frustrated groan right before a short log flew over the edge. I watched it land on the water-soaked canyon floor with a splat.
“We lost him. And I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I could pick him out of a lineup.”
“You idiot! It’s us who’ll be in the lineup if we don’t find him. Either of them!”
“Those kids took off so fast, Mikey! A blur of shirts is all I saw. One was red—no, wait, brownish. Maybe maroon? And orange. Yeah. The other was definitely orange.”
I heard a sigh from Mikey, the one I now thought of as the smarter of the two.
“And we’re dead, you know,” continued the dumb one. “When the boss finds out we let a couple of kids get those parts, we’re dead.”
I picked up the box. The parts?
Mikey spoke up. “Well, whose idea was it for us to stuff them in a box, hide it in the woods, and tell the buyer to make a switch with the cash? Huh?”
“You agreed to it! It was a great plan. The buyer wouldn’t see us, and we wouldn’t see him. How was I supposed to know there’d be another box out here? And that the buyer would grab the wrong one!”
“It would have been a great plan if you’d remembered to put the tracking device on the box; then we would’ve known exactly where to find those parts. But now the buyer doesn’t have the parts. We don’t have the parts. Some bratty kids have the parts!”
The dumb one started whining again. “Cement blocks are gonna be tied to our feet when the boss finds out. We’ll be dropped in the lake! We’re dead, Mikey. Dead as—”
“Would you shut up already about being dead? We’ll just explain what happened. Tell the boss—”
“Hey! What’s that?”
More dirt rained down and I backed up as far as I could until my back met the cool earth. The geocache box felt like a hot potato in my hands.
“Over there. By that big tree.”
The two sets of heavy footfalls became fainter as they walked away. I looked down at myself. By the tree? Did I drop something? My geocache GPS? No, it was still around my neck. Backup compass? Utility knife? Notebook? Water bottle?
It was all still here. What could they—
“Hey, it’s a pen! Do ya think it still writes? It’s a nice one. I like fat pens, you know, ’cause I have big hands and—”
“Gimme that!”
“Hey, I found it! Finders weepers and all that stuff. Besides, it has a moose on it, see? And my nickname’s Moose.”
No, no, no, no! I checked my pocket, groaned