 
A Guest for Halloween

A Lex & Ricky Mystery

by

William Henderson

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY

William Henderson on Smashwords

A Guest for Halloween

A Lex & Ricky Mystery

Copyright ©2011 by William Henderson

All Rights Reserved

*****

If you like working with maps and would enjoy viewing the places that Lex & Ricky visit in this mystery, like the Tseax Cone and lava flow, then check out our map,  A Guest for Halloween at Google.

Hopefully you enjoyed the first Lex & Ricky mystery. If you have any questions regarding the story, please email me and I will respond within a few days. If you are interested in reading the next Lex & Ricky mystery coming in February 2011 and would like to receive a discount coupon, simply send me an email to:

whenderson@in2000days.com

with the answer to the following mystery question, which can be puzzled out by reading the story:

"What is the approximate age of Lex & Ricky's mom, Karen?"

*****

# A GUEST FOR HALLOWEEN

# A Lex & Ricky Mystery

TO MY BOYS, NICK AND BEN

# Chapter 1: The Coming Home

"It's my turn, now," Ricky was telling Lex for the third time, as he turned up the music even louder on his iPod, just to annoy him.

"Shut up, dickhead!" Lex dismissed him like he was brushing off a mosquito. The older brother was busy competing on-line with some guy named RangerBob to kill the most Nazi zombies.

"C'mon, Lex. It's my turn!" implored Ricky, as he reached for the game controller.

"Buzz off, puke!" Lex turned his shoulder away from his little brother. "Awww, look what you made me do, you jerk!" cried Lex as he punched Ricky in the leg. "Here, you killed me anyway. You might as well have it now!" Lex tossed the controller at Ricky who had retracted into a ball with his knees drawn up to his chest at the far end of the couch.

Ricky didn't just want to play the game, he wanted to play with Lex, like they used to. "Let's play Little Big Planet so we can both play," pleaded Ricky.

"You always want your own way. I hate you," declared Lex as he got up and walked toward the game console.

"Turn it off, Alex," the boys' mother, Karen appeared in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.

"Oh, hey Mom we didn't know you where home from work already," declared Lex looking surprised.

"Obviously, or you wouldn't be playing the game like I asked you until after dark. And if I ever see you hit your brother again you won't be playing that bloody game at all!" Karen chided Lex. "You should be ashamed of yourself. Look at the size of you!"

At twelve years old Lex was already taller than his mother and he had the raven black hair and tanned skin that she inherited from her father, a Gitselasu.

"Now it's an hour until supper. Go out and see if you can meet some of the other kids in the neighborhood. Just be back in an hour!" Karen commanded as she turned to unload the groceries on the kitchen table.

The boys felt lost since moving to the small town of Terrace in northern British Columbia. The pace of life and number of distractions were nothing like those in Vancouver. They didn't know what to do with themselves. They missed their friends and they missed their dad. To make matters worse they didn't even live in town. Their place was out in the boonies several miles southeast of town off a main road, called the Old Lakelse Lake Drive. Apparently, the house was left to their mom and her brother Jeff, by their grandfather when he passed away two years ago. It was the house she grew up in.

There were a few streets to the west on the other side of the main road but the bush seemed more worthy of investigation. Especially considering the mood Lex found himself in. Ricky found some branch and was thrashing the brush as he tagged along behind. Lex felt guilty for resenting his constant companion. Their new place was one of two lots at the dead end of a gravel street. A large field of tall grass was straight out the kitchen door. Lex wandered aimlessly across the field until he detected a trail in the bush that gradually climbed the hill before them. They followed the trail through the close bush for a while until it gave way to a stand of old growth Western red cedars, Sitka spruce and hemlock trees. What little light made it through the canopy nourished the saplings and ferns that seemed to completely cover the forest floor. The boys stood for a moment and marveled at the sheer size of these ancient trees. Their uncle told them that many were over 150 feet tall and hundreds of years old.

"Do you think it will be easy to make new friends, Lex?" asked Ricky as he swatted every flower and bush he could find.

"For you, maybe. That is if you ever shut up long enough for anyone else to do the talking," spitted Lex.

"How come you are so angry all the time, Lex? You're always mad at..."

"Shhhh, be quiet!" Lex hushed Ricky as he instinctively crouched to lower his profile on the trail. "Did you hear that?" he whispered pulling Ricky down beside him.

Crack, crack, crack, came the sound of what? Gunfire? They didn't know. Neither one of them had ever heard a real gun shot. It sounded as if it came from over the next rise in the trail. Lex motioned Ricky to follow and they did their best commando stealth moves up the trail to lay on a ridge and crawl up to peer over.

About forty feet in front of them was a kid about Lex's age loading a short clip with shells. Beyond the shooter was a clearing about the size of a baseball diamond infield with a rock face about the height of a pickup truck. A short log lay on the ground parallel to the rock face with several assorted sized cans resting on top. The shooter took aim and fired. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, reported the rifle. The clip was spent and the shooter hit only one of the cans.

"Gawwd. He sucks," remarked Ricky, a little too loud.

"I hear ya!" yelled the shooter in their direction as he removed the clip and leaned the rifle against the stump that tabled his box of shells. "Show yourselves!" commanded the shooter as he began to load the clip.

The brothers stood up and looked at the shooter.

"Well, it's not polite to spy on people in the bush around here. Come down and introduce yourselves!" yelled the shooter as he tucked the ammunition clip in the front of his jean overalls and stood squarely facing them with his hands on his hips.

The boys moved forward slowly, cautiously. They had never met a kid with a real gun before. "Hey," Lex offered a pensive greeting, arching a slight wave of his hand in front of him.

"Hey yourselves," the shooter returned the greeting. "Where did you guys come from?"

"Ah, we're new around here. We just moved in down on Crystal Road," offered Lex. "I'm Lex and this is my little brother, Ricky."

"I'm Tommy," responded the shooter sticking his right fist out for knuckle bumps from Lex and Ricky.

"So what grade are you both in? inquired Tommy.

"I'm going into grade five and Lex is going into grade eight," offered Ricky.

"Hey, so you'll be going to Thornhill Junior with me," Tommy replied to Lex, ignoring Ricky.

"Yeah, I guess so," said Lex. "Where do you live?"

"About a mile down that trail there that leads south to Marion Road. It's the next road toward Lakelse Lake from where you live." Tommy said looking at the trail that Ricky and Lex would have crossed had they not taken a detour over the berm to watch Tommy.

"Is that your gun?" Ricky asked Tommy.

"I'm shootin' it ain't I? Besides, it's not a gun, it's a .22 caliber rifle," said Tommy proudly.

"Where did you get it?" Ricky clearly admired the rifle.

"My pa gave it to me for my twelve birthday,"

"Get out! Your pa gave you a rifle?" Ricky asked incredulously.

"Most guys around here get a rifle at twelve," Tommy stated as though it was a matter of fact while removing a clip from his overall pocket and loading it into the rifle. "Where are you guys from?" Tommy asked, now with his back to them taking aim at the cans down range. Crack! Reported the rifle, once.

"You hit it!" exclaimed Ricky.

"Vancouver, well actually, a suburb of Vancouver called Delta," Lex finally got the opportunity to get a word in edge wise now that Ricky was distracted.

"Oh, yeah. Never been to Vancouver," Tommy replied as the rifle cracked off another shot.

"Ohhh, missed," reported Ricky.

"Oh, really? Thanks, squirt." Tommy leered at Ricky. "Want a shot, Lex?"

"I do!" Ricky hopped forward.

"You're too young, kid," replied Tommy dismissively.

"Ah sure," Lex stepped forward.

"Now, always keep the rifle pointed down range or up in the air. Never pass it to someone unless the safety is on. See, here is the safety," Tommy tucked the butt of the .22 into his stomach and rolled it flat so Lex could see the safety button at the heel of the trigger guard.

"OK, I get it," Lex stepped forward and took the rifle from Tommy, careful to keep the barrel pointed down range.

"Now take aim lining up the two sights on the barrel, push the safety off and squeeze the trigger," instructed Tommy.

Crack! Reported the rifle.

"Missed," reported Ricky.

"That's OK. You have two more shells," Tommy guided Lex.

Crack! Crack! Lex fired off two shots.

"Hey, you got one!" Ricky yelled excitedly as he started to run down range.

"Stop!" yelled Tommy snapping Ricky back by the shirt collar and throwing him to the ground. "Never run down range until all weapons are secured, you jerk!" shouted Tommy.

"I..I...didn't know!" cried Ricky looking to his brother for support.

"Get out of here! No little kids allowed on the range!" screamed Tommy.

Ricky slowly got to his feet looking at Lex who felt the same way as Tommy. No little kids allowed

"OK" managed Ricky. This was the first time ever that Lex didn't stick up for him and it hurt more that any stranger throwing him to the ground. Ricky slowly backed away from Tommy who was pointing the way back down the trail, while Lex turned his back on them and leaned the rifle against the stump.

A few minutes down the trail towards home, Ricky could hear the report of the rifle as Lex and Tommy resumed their shooting practice. He had never felt so alone as he did now and decided he would call his dad when he got home. Ricky was in no hurry and was taking his frustration out on the plants along the path with a stick when he happened to look up to see a dark blur disappear into the darkness of the bush. He knew nothing of the wildlife in this part of the country. All he had been told up to now was to make sure he made a lot of noise when in the bush and to never run if chased by a bear. He could smell something that reminded him of a wet dog, so in his mind that's what he thought was hiding from him.

Ricky stood on the edge of the trail and yelled, "Here boy! Here boy!" waving the stick in the air. The bush was still. Not a bird nor insect stirred and he might have thought he was dreaming had he not heard the distant crack of the rifle. "Here boy!" called Ricky as he left the trail and headed along a faint path through the ferns covering the forest floor into the bush, calling out for the dog about every ten feet. It was darker in here, Ricky was thinking but he could smell that dog. As Ricky moved around the biggest red cedar tree he had ever seen he heard something that sounded like someone pushing air through his nose. It reminded him of the sound that the bison and deer had made on one of those nature programs he used to watch with his dad. "Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!" Ricky heard the hard nasal air expelling clearly this time along with what sounded like hooves stomping the ground or maybe something hitting the trunk of a tree.

That sound made the hair stand up on the back of Ricky's neck and something, call it instinct, warned him not to go any further. As he stepped back toward the cedar his heel bumped a large pile of rocks between two large roots of the tree. No not rocks, stones, all about the same size and color. Ricky picked a stone off the top of the neatly assembled pile and noticed that it was perfectly smooth and about the size of his fist. "Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!" came the sound from the darkness ahead of him. Ricky was beginning to realize that there was no dog in the bush with him. But that smell, what else could it be?

"Here boy! Here boy!" Ricky decided to try one last time since whatever it was already knew he was here. "Here boy!" and he whistled loud, "Sooowheeet!" as he slowly looked around still half expecting to see a dog come bounding out of the bush. Just inside the dark edge of the forest straight ahead something mimicked Ricky. "Sooowheeet! Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!" came a reply. And then he could hear the sound of footfalls and someone running away from him really fast. Ricky looked down at the smooth stone in his hand and felt curious but unafraid. No other smell remained now but that of decaying vegetation and cedar. As he rubbed the smooth surface of the stone with his thumb he pondered what had transpired. Ricky watched a lot of nature shows with his dad and Lex but never once had he heard of something that could run like a man and whistle back to you.

*****

Ricky and his mom were at the kitchen table eating supper when Lex walked in the kitchen door, "And where have you been!" glared Karen.

"Well you wanted me to make friends, so I made a friend," Lex retorted as he put on some oven mitts and retrieved his supper from the oven.

"And why did your brother come home by himself?

"It's up to him, if he wanted to come home then he could come home. How is that my problem?" Lex replied indignantly.

"You haven't been very nice to Ricky since we moved here," Karen wasn't sure how to deal with the conflict between the boys but supposed it was a natural evolution as people do inevitably go their own way, no matter how close they once were. Still, it broke her heart to watch as they both used to be inseparable. It didn't seem to bother Ricky right now though as he shoveled down his supper like he hadn't eaten in days staring at that smooth stone in his hand. Karen decided to let the matter drop. "So you met a friend. Where did you meet them and what is their name?"

"Tommy ah, I don't know his last name. We followed the trail on the other side of the field and met up with him in the bush on the ridge," responded Lex.

"You were in the bush? I told you not to go too far into the bush. There are a lot of bears in this country, and other things. If you want to go in the bush, go with your Uncle Jeff, he will show you the ways of the forest," Karen tried not to let her fear of their going into the bush alone be too obvious to the boys. She believed that the more she asked them not to do something, the more tempting the forbidden action would become to them.

"OK, sure Mom," Lex lied.

"What other things?" piped in Ricky.

"What?" Karen didn't realize Ricky was even paying attention.

"You said bears and other things were in the bush. What other things?"

"Oh, I don't know," now Karen lied. "The point is there are real dangers in the bush that you boys haven't been made aware of and are not prepared for. Your uncle can tell you all about the bush around here when he takes you to work with him in the morning."

Ricky considered telling his mom about his encounter in the bush but decided it would only upset her and she would become even more anxious regarding any future forays into the surrounding forest.

Karen couldn't help but notice Ricky's fixation with the stone that he kept rubbing, "What is that you keep rubbing with your thumb, Ricky?" she asked.

"I dunno, I found a pile of these smooth red rocks just off the trail," replied Ricky.

"Off the trail. How far off the trail?" Karen was agitated.

"Not too far," Ricky muttered getting the drift of where this line of questioning was heading.

"I want you boys to stay out of the bush when you are by yourselves. Do you hear, me?" Karen waited for some sort of acknowledgement and they both bobbed their heads. "Now Lex, it's your turn to do the clean up. And Ricky, you need a shower before bed. I have lessons to prepare since school starts soon and I am so far behind with this move and all. Let's move boys, 06:00 comes early and I don't want your uncle waiting on you."

# Chapter 2: This Land is Your Land

It was still dark when they heard the truck door slam in the driveway next to the kitchen. The grey aluminum storm door opened and in ducked the boys' uncle Jeff, Karen's half-brother. He was one of the biggest men the boys had ever seen and there was no mistaking that he was native with his raven black hair and tanned skin. People often said that Lex looked as though his Uncle Jeff had spit him out; they looked so much alike. This always made Ricky feel like an outsider because he looked more like the people of their father's European heritage.

"Hey what's for breakfast, Sis?" Uncle Jeff winked at the boys as he slung his Natural Resources Canada logoed jacket over the back of a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.

"Bubble and squeak with salmon steaks just as you requested, your highness," Karen sometimes adored her older brother. He was all the family she had left other than her two sons.

"Awesome!" Uncle Jeff grinned at them. Now the boys understood why all the furniture seemed so big in their grandfather's house. Their Mom told them that the house had been built by their grandfather and Uncle Jeff over thirty years ago when he was just a teenager and they both moved south after Jeff's mom died of tuberculosis.

"Awww, can't we just have cereal," complained Lex. "What the heck is bubble and squeak anyway?"

"Ancient Indian recipe little half-breed," boomed Uncle Jeff in his best stereotypical Indian mimicry, "potato, leeks, eggs and mussels all fried up together. Doesn't it smell great?"

"Mom says half-breed is a derogatory term and that we are called Métis now," chimed in Ricky.

"Is that so?" Uncle Jeff cocked an eye toward his sister, unsure of whether he was annoyed or amused with the courage of the little fella to speak up. "Well actually..."

Uncle Jeff never got a chance to finish as his sister stepped between them and started ladling the bubble and squeak onto her brother's plate. "Yes it is and I won't have you telling them any different," Karen advised him sternly. "That war ended a long time ago and I won't have you stoking that fire in my kids. You know more than half the people in this land have native blood in them. That means we all belong to the land."

Jeff put a big smile on his face and gently put his hand on his sister's arm, "I didn't mean nothin' by it Sis. I was just goofing around. Aren't you hungry boys? This smells great!" Uncle Jeff winked at Ricky and started shoveling the food in. As much as he promised himself he wouldn't, he managed to touch that nerve in his sister again, after all this time. He could never really get over the fact that his father had married a white woman within two years of his mother's death. Karen's mom was young and had a hard time coping with a bitter native son and baby. By the time Karen was two years old her mom had run off

Jeff knew he played a significant role in Karen's mothers' decision to leave. Being back in the family home with his sister again brought back a flood of memories of stupid heated arguments on things no one could do anything about. He was so bitter back then. Although his father never came out and said it, Jeff came to blame himself for his sister leaving and going south when she was just seventeen. So when Karen phoned him up last month telling him that she was splitting up with her husband and didn't know what to do, he saw it as an opportunity to atone for past wrongs he had done to his only remaining blood relative.

"Disgusting!" Ricky declared. "I will have some of the salmon though," and he speared one of the grilled steaks from the plate in the middle of the table.

"How about you Lex? You like it?" questioned Uncle Jeff digging the tines of his fork into a mussel.

"It's OK," answered Lex as he picked out the potato that he knew he would like, anxious to please his uncle.

"Well you kids have fun and don't forget to clean up," Karen was hurriedly pulling her things together to get out the door. "I should be home by 3:00 or so, I have to spend a lot of time on my lesson plan for this new class. Have fun and mind your uncle in the bush," she reminded the boys as she kissed her sons and stumbled out the kitchen screen door.

"At last men only!" Uncle Jeff remarked as he rolled his large frame slightly to the left and squeezed one out that sounded a lot like a blast on Lex's trumpet, "I thought she'd never leave!" He roared and made another toot.

"Yeah!" Lex laughed as he belched as loud as he could.

"Copy that!" Ricky sounded off a large burp of his own.

Odd, Jeff mused to himself as he gathered up the dirty dishes, how the most rudimentary animal functions bond all males. "Well, boys let's get crackin'. Lex put the leftovers in the fridge. Ricky put the dirty dishes in the sink. You boys make sure to clean the dishes when you get home after our trip today, right?

"Right," Lex marched in step.

"Sure, Uncle Jeff," Ricky said as he quickly turned and picked up his smooth stone he had forgotten on the table.

"Hey that's one nice piece of lava you got there, Ricky." Jeff noticed as Ricky jammed the stone deep into his jeans.

"Lava? Is that what it is?" Ricky pulled back out to look at.

"Yeah that dark red brick color can only mean lava around here," Uncle Jeff was looking at the smooth stone closely in Ricky's hand. "Most are a light purple. Dark red one's like that are really rare. You had better be careful down by the river collecting those rocks, the water in the Skeena River is fast. I once knew a guy who stood in the current the wrong way, got his foot wedged under a rock and the force of the water pushed him onto his back under the water. Simple mistake and if someone hadn't been there close to him, he would have drowned."

"Oh, I didn't get it at the river," confessed Ricky.

"Well, that's the only place a smooth lava stone like that can come from. It takes hundreds or maybe thousands of years for the rivers to wear a stone smooth like that," Uncle Jeff informed the boys.

"Well, I found enough of these smooth red stones in the bush up on the ridge to fill that garbage can," Ricky said.

"Really?" Uncle Jeff was deep in thought as he took the stone from Ricky and examined it more closely, "show me."

As the three of them left the house dawn was beginning to break east over the ridge casting a rhubarb hue into the light blue sky. Ricky wasn't sure he would be able to find the same spot where he left the main trail but knew Uncle Jeff had a good eye for sign in the bush. After walking along the trail for about twenty minutes there began a light rain in the forest and Uncle Jeff, who was trailing the boys, stopped and pointed left.

"Is this where you went in, Ricky?" The long grass was pushed down, as it was obvious something had left the trail here.

"Ah, yeah, could be," Ricky wasn't really sure until he noticed the red berries all over the path. He picked up a couple, "Yeah, I remember knocking all of the berries off these plants."

"That's what I figured," said Uncle Jeff looking off into the bush. "Don't ever eat any of those red or white baneberries. Just a couple for a fella your size could stop your heart." He looked at Ricky, "show me where you found the stone."

Ricky led the way toward the big red cedar tree and showed Lex and Uncle Jeff the conical pile of stones between its two large roots.

"I don't understand what brought you in here in the first place," Uncle Jeff was down on his left knee picking up one of the scores of smooth bright red lava stones that were stacked neatly into a wide cone maybe two feet high and three feet across at the base. "And where were you Lex?"

Lex didn't know what to say. He knew he was wrong for letting his little brother go off on his own, but he was tired of being the babysitter.

Ricky had no problem telling his story. He would have told Lex last night if he had of been nicer to him. Uncle Jeff and Lex listened with rapt attention to every detail of Ricky's story. The wet dog smell, the breathing sounds and the whistling, they were fascinated.

The boys noticed that Uncle Jeff seemed very concerned, "You guys should stay out of the bush around here. And if you do go in the bush make sure you make lots of noise. Don't try to be quiet. There are lots of bears and the odd mountain lion that you do not want to surprise in the bush."

"Is that what you think it was, a bear or mountain lion?" asked Ricky.

"No. Your instincts were right there, Ricky. Animals don't whistle," replied Uncle Jeff contemplatively as he set the red stone he was examining back into it's position in the pile and stood up. "It sounds like one of the Old One's," Uncle Jeff said more to himself than the boys.

"The old one's? Who are the old one's?" asked Lex.

Uncle Jeff noticed just how thick the forest's embrace became a mere twenty feet from them and got an uneasy feeling that they might be watched at this very moment.

"Let's move out guys, we have work to do today," Jeff started back out to the trail with Lex close behind him. Ricky was quick to gauge his uncle's uneasiness but couldn't resist grabbing a couple more of those smooth red stones for his pockets.

They made it back to the house a lot faster than it took them to get to the place of Ricky's encounter with the Old One. Uncle Jeff seemed to be in a hurry but kept looking back to make sure the boys were close behind. When the boys had a chance to talk about it later that night, Lex said Uncle Jeff was in a hurry because he was late to start his day, but to Ricky it felt more like his uncle was spooked by something. When they pressed their uncle as to who the Old Ones were all Uncle Jeff would say is that they would talk about it later.

Uncle Jeff had a job as a geologist for the federal government that provided him with a dual cab, four-wheel drive Ford pick up complete with a cap on the back. They all piled in and headed north for about an hour along the Nisg'a' Highway until the wet, lush forests of the Coast Mountains gave way to a barren rocky wasteland covered in moss and lichen.

"Wow! What happened here!" exclaimed Lex who was riding shotgun.

"This is why we are here boys. We call this the Nass Valley lava flow, the most recent large scale eruption of lava in these mountains."

"I don't see any volcano. Where's the volcano? If there is lava shouldn't there be a big volcano?" Ricky was in the back seat moving from window to window looking for a volcano rising out of the rocky desert like those he had seen spewing lava on TV.

"Good point but no there is no volcano that blew its top here, guys." Uncle Jeff began to explain. "This whole area is on the edge of the Kitsumkalum-Kitimat valley, formed millions of years ago by the movement along fault lines allowing the rock of the valley floor to sink, while the adjacent rocks were pushed up to form the mountains you see all around us."

"Yeah, we talked about this in school," chimed in Lex. "Tectonic plates come together and cause huge compressive forces that over time create mountain ranges."

"That's the idea," began Uncle Jeff, but Ricky jumped in.

"But if plates are being pushed together, I thought you would get huge volcanoes?" Ricky insisted.

"Normally yes," Uncle Jeff carried on, pleased that the boys were so keen to understand how it all worked. "In this valley the force is no longer compression but the opposite. About 50 million years ago the compressive forces of the plates coming together began to relax and the land began to pull apart, breaking into fault blocks. Rocks on the bottom of the Kitsumkalum-Kitimat valley began to sink without those compressive forces holding them in place. While at the same time the Hazelton Mountains in the east and the Coast Mountains in the west were pushed up along the fault lines."

"So the lava seeped up through cracks?" Ricky puzzled it out.

"Exactly!" Uncle Jeff was excited, he had no idea these kids were so bright.

"Well then why is all that lava out there all broken up into big chunks instead of all smooth like tar?" Ricky asked.

"As the lava is forced up through the fault line it is about 1000 degrees Celsius, very hot and very viscous, molten rock. But as it begins to cool, say below 700 degrees Celsius, the lava begins to solidify on top but the molten rock below continues to run forming lava tubes," Uncle Jeff explained.

"Ah, I get it," Lex began to describe the process in his own terms. "Just like the skin on the chocolate pudding that mom makes for us. As the pudding cools a hardened skin forms and cracks on the top while the hot stuff stays runny below."

"You got it. And as the lava flow dissipates or the volume becomes less and less these lava tubes become large and cavernous but cannot support their own weight. As the lava rock cools and contracts the lava tubes cave in on themselves and you get this landscape of lava rubble."

Uncle Jeff pulled up to a small white, padlocked shack with a communications aerial on top, "This is one of the seismic stations I have to run through a maintenance routine. You boys don't wander off too far, this won't take long."

Lex and Ricky were amazed at the size of the lava flow and took several minutes just scanning the area. Rubble and ponds of lava seemed to fill the whole valley as far as the eye could see. There was very little vegetation growing on the lava fields and the boys concluded that this must be a fairly recent event.

"How long ago did this happen, Uncle Jeff," Lex asked as Jeff pushed his tools from the tailgate to the bed of the truck and closed up.

"Well, you tell me. How long ago do you think this happened?"

"Don't know, we were just trying to figure that out," piped up Ricky.

"It happened in the mid-1700's, about 250 years ago," Uncle Jeff responded.

"That long ago and still nothing grows here?" Lex's found this fact incredulous.

"You have to have soil to grow. How long do you think it will take for enough organic material such as weeds, moss and lichen to break down and create soil deep enough to support the cedar and spruce trees that used to grow here?"

"A long time," Ricky pondered aloud.

"A very long time to us. Another thousand years of what you see here, small weeds, moss and lichen. The rain will weather and break down some of the lava. Grasses will slowly take hold and eventually smaller bushes until finally after hundreds and hundreds of years, there will be enough topsoil for a forest again. Now hop in we have to get to the next seismic station quickly, I am behind."

"I call shotgun!" Ricky bolted for the passenger side door and hopped in leaving Lex shaking his head and hopping in the back seat.

"Was there anybody living around here when the lava came through?" Ricky asked, looking out at the endless rubble desert.

"Well, yeah," Uncle Jeff gave Ricky and Lex a long sideways glance wondering if Karen had told these boys anything of their ancestry. "Our people, your grandfather's people, we are all related to the Nisga'a people that lived here."

"What happened to them?" Lex was leaning forward with his arms folded on the back of the front seat.

"C'mon man, lean back and put your seatbelt on, your mother would skin me alive if anything ever happened to one of you boys," Uncle Jeff admonished Lex. "Well, it was a long time ago but they say most of the people were killed quickly and in two villages, more than two thousand people died."

"Wow, that's a lot of people. How come so many died? Didn't they have any warning?" Ricky was astounded.

"Remember that it happened 250 years ago when the fastest thing was a horse and there wasn't even a telegraph anywhere, let alone a telephone. Molten lava can move incredibly fast when it is forced out of the ground. It took the path of least resistance like any other liquid and flowed down the Tseax River valley to the Nass River valley and the Nisg'a' villages," Uncle Jeff painted the picture.

"What? Were they sleeping? Did it happen in the middle of the night or were they caught off guard somehow? How come they couldn't outrun the lava or get out of the way?" Ricky was perplexed.

"Precisely Ricky, they were caught off guard. They never had a chance because the carbon dioxide released through the fault moved down slope with the wind and killed them all through asphyxiation before the lava ever came close to them," Uncle Jeff said as they pulled off the road.

"You mean they died from poison gas?" Lex concluded.

"No. They died from lack of oxygen. The sheer volume of carbon dioxide that seeped out of the fault at the time of the lava flow, pushed away all of the oxygen to the point where the people simply couldn't breathe."

"Like a fish out of water?" Lex surmised.

"Unreal," Ricky simply stated.

Over the next couple of hours they made several stops to inspect and maintain the seismic stations along this leg of the fault block.

"This is our last station to inspect boys, the Tseax Cone, the place where it all started. It may not look like much but the lava pooled up there before the cinder cone dam burst open and lava was pushed out from below."

"Is it still active?" inquired Lex as he looked up the 100-meter slope.

"Sure is," said Uncle Jeff, "that's why we monitor this area so we can warn people when it starts to rumble.

"Is it dangerous? We won't be gasping for air around here will we?" Ricky looked concerned as he got out of the truck.

"No, the sensors we have would detect abnormally high carbon dioxide levels along with any seismic activity. We're pretty safe here," Uncle Jeff assured the boys as he removed his toolbox from the truck.

"I suppose we could outrun the gas in this truck anyway, eh Uncle Jeff?" Ricky was patting the tailgate at the back of the truck.

"I am sure," smiled Uncle Jeff as he checked his instrumentation.

"Of course, it takes oxygen to burn gasoline, so the truck may not get us very far if the carbon dioxide comes out really fast like last time," Lex said as he jumped in to ride shotgun, delighted with the uncomfortable look on Ricky's face.

*****

It was mid-afternoon by the time Uncle Jeff dropped the boys off and they knew they had better clean up the kitchen before their mother got home. It didn't take long. Lex washed and Ricky dried the dishes and swept the floor. By the time Ricky was finished his end of the bargain, Lex had already planted himself in front of the flat screen and hogged the Playstation in the living room. Ricky wasn't interested in fighting about the game today, so he threw on his jacket and grabbed his shoes headed back through the living room through the sliding glass door to the to the deck out back. The rectangular, aged grey cedar deck extended from corner to corner, the entire width of the back of the house. He stood there for a moment looking through the sliding glass door into the living room where Lex sat on the couch less than twenty feet away. Lex must have caught Ricky's movement out of his periphery vision because he turned and smiled briefly at him before returning to his game. Ricky took a couple of steps back and sat on the bench attached to the railing that ran along the whole outside boundary of the deck, and laced up his running shoes. Ricky was grateful for one more day with Lex the way it used to be.

Next week he was starting at a new school with no friends and for the first time, no big brother to look out for him. Ricky felt a chill and stood to zip up his jacket thinking it was much colder up here than in the city for this time of year. Theirs was one of only six houses scattered along a gravel road maybe three soccer fields long, carved out of a forest that loomed all around. The backyard was long and there was no real separation from their property to the adjacent field they trekked across to take the trail into the bush. Although it wasn't yet 3:00 it seemed like dusk wasn't far off because the sun was cresting the Coast Mountains to the west, casting long shadows that didn't seem right for the strength of the light.

As Ricky surveyed the area a familiar odor beckoned his subconscious and he noticed the empty doghouse at the back of the yard. He was crestfallen when he learned that his parents were splitting up and he would be moving so far away from his father. The double tragedy was in losing his golden retriever, Ginger. He wanted to bring her with him but mom said it was impossible because they had enough challenges moving to a new place and all. Ricky slowly approached the old white paint flecked, tarpaper shingled doghouse feeling all melancholy about his Ginger girl. He was thinking that it must have been made for a large dog but a long time ago and noticed a small fist sized shape giving a reddish glow deep in the shadows of the doghouse. Ricky bent down and reached in to pull out a smooth, dark red lava stone just like the three he had already collected from the pile in the bush off the trail. He stood up and looked into the forest behind the doghouse holding the stone cupped in his hands one over the other feeling the heat that still radiated from it, but he was not afraid.

# Chapter 3: Something is Happening Here

Lex must have heard his mom's car door slam because the game was off and he was watching TV when she entered the living room.

"Where's Ricky?" she asked.

Lex leaned forward and pointed out the sliding glass doors where Ricky stood by the doghouse, "Right there," and slouched back drawing his legs up to his chest.

"Oh good," now that she was no longer concerned about the Ricky's whereabouts, Karen registered the resentment in her oldest son's body language and thought she had better take some time to smooth things over.

"You know, I depend on you a lot since we have moved here." Karen sat down beside Lex and put her arm around him pulling his head to her chest. "I know it's not fair to ask you to look after your little brother all of the time, but you're all I've got Lex. I promise it will get easier," Karen kissed him on the head and slapped him on the knee. "C'mon, if you peel the potatoes, I'll wash the dishes and you can go back to playing your game after supper."

"What game?" Lex feigned innocence as he looked innocently at his mom.

"This game," Karen laughed as she took the remote and pushed the button to convert from TV to game mode.

"Oh that game," Lex looked embarrassed for lying, "I didn't know you knew how to do that.

"I didn't know you knew how to do that," Karen mocked him and put him in a headlock and rubbed her knuckles hard against his scalp, the proverbial noogie.

Ricky came upon this mother and son melee and decided to join in on Mom's side by jumping on Lex like he used to do. Lex realized Ricky was on his back and threw him to the floor, narrowly missing the coffee table.

"You always ruin everything!" screamed Lex with his face all red and tears streaming down his face.

"Alexander! What has come over you?" Karen was shocked and realized Lex was more resentful than she feared. "You never treat your brother that way again. Do you hear me?" She was trying to keep herself under control as she helped Ricky up off the floor.

Ricky wasn't hurt, not physically anyway. He had been dealing with Lex's frustrations for a while now, since before their parent's break up. He shot Lex a grimace and bounded upstairs to his room.

Karen let her anger get the better of her and walked over and turned off the game.

"Awww...I had a high score on the game. See? He ruins everything!" yelled Lex.

"I simply don't know who you are anymore," Karen chided Lex wondering if it was a good idea to keep the boys together instead of leaving one with their father. She was determined to let things settle down before she gave this any more thought, "Come out and peel the potatoes for me," she calmly asked Lex who was sitting with his head in his hands crying and obviously frustrated with all of the changes in his life. "C'mon Lexy. Come help me with supper," beseeched Karen as she tugged him gently by the arm.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Lex said wiping his face dry with his sleeves as he followed her into the kitchen.

"I'm sorry too, Lex. I didn't know that you were having such a hard time with everything. But you have to promise me not to take it out on your brother," Karen commanded as she turned and took his big head between her hands and stared up into his face. "He loves you and looks up to you. You are so much bigger than him, like your uncle, and Ricky is almost three years younger and smaller like your father. You could really hurt him and that I will not have. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mom," Lex would say anything to please his mom.

"Promise me," she ordered Lex.

"I promise, Mom," Lex responded as he really had no wish to hurt his brother, he just sometimes wished he would go away.

"Do you know how much I love you," Karen offered as she smoothed back his thick black hair and gave him a big hug.

"Yeah, I know Mom," Lex became the quintessential embarrassed teenager recoiling from his mother's affection and prepared to peel the potatoes.

Karen, feeling somewhat relieved decided to check on her other son. As she headed toward the kitchen door to head up the stairway to the bedrooms she ran into Ricky sitting half way up rubbing a red stone in his hands again. "Hey, are you coming down to help with supper?"

"Sure," Ricky said bouncing up and running down into the kitchen. Up to now things seemed roll off Ricky like water off of a duck's back. He was quick to forgive and move on. "What can I do?"

"Well, you can set the table. Make sure we have butter, salt and pepper, and such," Karen tried to make Ricky feel useful.

As Ricky set to his task, Karen noticed Lex shaking his head in disapproval and was beginning to understand the depth of the jealousy he felt toward his little brother. She knew that she was going to have to find a way to separate the two of them more and give Lex some space. Hopefully, going to different schools and having different friends would alleviate some of the tension between them.

As they were finishing up a rather strained and quiet supper Karen wanted to lighten the mood by moving the conversation in another direction. She commented on Ricky's stone as she noticed he had been rubbing it all through the meal, just as he had done at supper last night. "Is that your new lucky stone or something, Ricky?"

"Yeah, something like that. Uncle Jeff says it is a piece of polished lava from the river bank," Ricky seemed eager to share this knowledge.

"You're not going close to the river, I hope" Karen expressed concern.

"Oh no I found it in the bush, remember?" Ricky had told her about going off the trail last night.

"Oh yeah, right. And you told me you boys were going to stay out of the bush. Remember?" Karen reminded the boys.

"Unless we go with Uncle Jeff," chimed in Lex.

"Yes Uncle Jeff knows the forest and all of its dangers," conceded Karen.

"That's why we took Uncle Jeff to show him the pile of stones this morning," Lex smiled looking right at Ricky.

"This morning? Why would Jeff be interested in some stones in the bush?" Karen asked knitting her brow, perplexed.

"Uncle Jeff got all upset at hearing Ricky's story of finding the stones and wanted to see exactly where they were," Lex spilled the beans.

"That was supposed to be our secret," Ricky was wounded by his brother's betrayal.

"Secret what secret? We have no secrets in this family. Spill it, little man," commanded Karen.

Ricky told the whole story of finding the pile of stones in the forest and Uncle Jeff taking them to find the same spot this morning before they left for the Tseax Cone.

"Uncle Jeff says it is one of the Old One's," blurted out Lex.

Karen was upset with several aspects of this story, not the least of which the fact of Ricky discovering a pile of stones in the bush, by himself. "He does, does he? And does he know where you were when your brother was off finding a pile of stones placed in the bush by Bigfoot?" Karen leered at Lex, trying figure out if she was angrier with him for leaving his brother on his own or at her own brother for telling the boys silly local legends.

"Oh, he was off shooting with this Tommy kid we met in the woods. Bigfoot? Really?" Ricky blurted out before he could decide what was more overwhelming, the opportunity to get a jab back at Lex or the fact that he might have gotten a glimpse of Bigfoot.

"You're dead!" shouted Lex.

"No! You're dead! If I ever hear that you left your brother in the bush by himself again!" screamed Karen before she could bring herself under control. "What were you shooting? A pellet gun? A paint ball gun? A bow and arrows? What?" Karen wanted to know.

"A .22 caliber rifle," Lex confessed.

Slam! Karen's hand slapped the table so hard tears came to her eyes. Neither of them could remember their mother being so angry.

"That does it. I can't trust you two on your own. Until I can find someone to watch you both, neither one is allowed to leave the house. Grounded! Do I make myself perfectly clear" Karen leered at both of them in turn until they capitulated.

"Yes, ma'am" said Lex.

"Yes, ma'am" said Ricky.

"You two miscreants stay here and do the dishes. Lex, you wash and sweep up. Ricky you dry and clear the table," Karen ordered while she was putting on her boots and jacket.

"But, I thought..." Lex started to complain but his mother shot him a look that made him think better of it.

"I am going over to see your Uncle Jeff, I won't be long. And if there is any fighting I will send you both packing to live with your dad and his girlfriend!" she almost immediately regretted saying that as she left the house slamming the kitchen door behind her.

Jeff lived some 500 meters toward Old Lakelse Lake Drive, on the same side of the street. He told her that he was able to buy the old Dickson property for a song since it was sitting empty for so long. He tore the old place down and put in a doublewide house trailer. Her old home town of Terrace had seen better economic times and she knew she was fortunate her brother held some sway with the council or she would never have gotten a teaching job at the school. Karen had walked this road many times as a child and it didn't seem any shorter now. Crystal Road had few houses; she had one neighbor directly across the road that she had yet to meet. Other than that there was only one other home about halfway through the 400 meters of forested road between her and her brother. It took Karen maybe ten minutes to reach Jeff's place and if she hadn't of been so angry she would have paid closer attention to the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.

Karen was glad to see her brother's truck was in the driveway. She needed to blow off some steam.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Jeff heard the knuckles on the door, "Thanks for the heads up. I owe you one, little brother," Jeff said as he replaced the receiver of the phone back onto the cradle just as Karen walked in.

"C'mon in why don't ya, " Jeff stepped back a couple of paces as Karen came to with striking range of him.

"Well, what a kwinky dink, you just getting off of the phone as I come through the door," said Karen, all of maybe five foot six standing there looking up at her brother with her fists on her hips, marveling the coincidence.

"Kwinky dink. Kwinky dink?" Jeff repeated, "Is that a new English word Teach? Because it sounds more native to me," Jeff foolishly started to laugh believing he could toy his way out of this situation.

"The Old One's!" Karen stepped closer and grabbed him by the scruff of his plaid red and white, lumber jack shirt pulling him down to her level. "The Old One's? How do you ever expect me to keep those boys out of the bush now, Kemo Sabe!"

"Hey, I see no reason to insult me Sis, I was just trying to..." Jeff gave up as he felt his shirt collar tighten in the little woman's grasp.

"I need someone to keep a close eye on them now that they will be looking for Bigfoot! What is wrong with you? There is no better way to get them interested in the forest than telling them those old fairy tales!"

"But I just thought..." Jeff tried again.

Karen was on a roll, "Since you are so tight with your little nephews, you get the job of keeping an eye on them until I get them settled into school and find someone who is more mature. Understand?" she turned on her heels and headed for the door.

"Uh, OK, but I have to be on the road by 7:00 in the morning, so I'll see you at 06:30 for breakfast? French toast, maybe?" Jeff pleaded as Karen headed out the door without acknowledging him.

Karen walked for a couple of minutes from Jeff's trailer to the gravel of Crystal Drive and stopped now feeling those hairs on the back of her neck as they bristled anew. She had forgotten how dark it could get outside of the city as she slowly looked around. Looking back at Jeff's trailer she caught a peripheral glimpse of a big dark shape cross the road quickly, back along the way to her place. Instinctively she began to move toward big brother keeping her eyes on that spot down the road until the forest obscured it and then she bolted for the trailer. As she did she heard several cracks in the bush of something big moving parallel to her and closing the gap incredibly fast, until she crashed through Jeff's door, again.

Jeff was standing in the middle of the room in only his boxers, "Damn, Karen you should knock you know!"

"There's something big out there!" she declared, "It was running through the bush at me. Grizzly, I think!" Karen had her back against the door heaving for breath.

"They don't usually come this close unless they are old or sick," said Jeff as he grabbed his old Belgian made .762 caliber rifle and slipped a magazine in the breach." He quickly slid into his pants, shirt and boots and turned on the floodlights twenty feet up on a pole in the front yard. Jeff went outside and jumped onto the flat bed of an old Ford he used for general mucking about. He surveyed the bush for a few minutes with a flashlight on the rifle barrel, the safety off and his finger on the trigger guard; ever on the ready for a maniacal bear attack, but nothing happened.

"C'mon, I'll drive you home. Whatever it was it's gone now. In the morning, I'll see if I can find any tracks."

# Chapter 4: Relatively Midden

The boys had finished cleaning up after supper by the time Karen got home last night and figured it would be prudent to make themselves scarce by reading in their rooms for the rest of the night to allow things to cool down. This morning started out much more pleasantly with the boys salivating to the aroma of bacon in the air and the promise of lots of French toast. They heard the truck door slam and in ducked Uncle Jeff through the kitchen door.

"Good morning, men," Uncle Jeff smiled at the boys seated at the table while removing his jacket.

"Good morning, Sis," Uncle Jeff went over and kissed Karen on the cheek she offered.

"You're early," Karen said as she put the pan on the stove and lit the burner.

"Ah, only a few minutes," Jeff replied, "I brought some real maple syrup for the French toast."

"Oh, yeah!" Ricky loved the good stuff.

"How 'bout you, Lex? This is one of the few good things to come from the east," Uncle Jeff declared holding up the large glass liter sized bottle of No. 1 grade maple syrup.

"Yeah, I'll have a little on the side, maybe," Lex danced around any confrontation.

"Lex, likes to spread butter mixed with sugar and ground cinnamon on his French toast," his mom helped him out.

"I will have some on the side though, to dip my toast in," Lex included, forever the people pleaser.

"Excellent!" boomed Uncle Jeff, still navigating his way through the new family dynamics. "Man, how come your French toast smells so much better than mine?" Jeff declared, remembering that it smelled the way her mother used to make it but cautiously avoiding any touchy subjects by not saying it out loud.

"A pinch or two of nutmeg in the batter, Big Guy," Karen said as she put the bacon in middle of the table for them to nibble on.

"Ah, nutmeg in the batter," Jeff smiled as he repeated the secret ingredient knowing that things were all right if she was calling him Big Guy.

"So where are you guys off to today," inquired Karen as she removed the stack of French toast that had been kept warm in the oven and placed it on the table for everyone to help themselves.

"I have some seismic stations to inspect down in the hot springs," Uncle Jeff said as he stabbed a triple stack and removed it from the platter.

"Good," Karen declared as she sat at the table, "then you might as well tell them all about Bigfoot since that is where most of the sightings have been reported over the years." Jeff looked surprised that Karen would bring the matter up but she figured she might as well acknowledge the elephant in the room and get it over with.

"Really? There are Bigfoot this close to where we live? Do you think we will see one?" Lex was excited at the prospect of this adventure.

"Well first off, there are many names for the Old One's. Bigfoot, wild man, hairy man, even clam eater, every tribe and sometimes even different villages within a tribe, had their own name for the Old One's. These days most people refer to them as Sasquatch, which is the white's version of the Salish people's word for 'wild man'. And no, we won't see one unless they want you to see them, they are too smart and too fast."

"Why do you keep calling them the Old One's?" Ricky asked.

"Because your uncle believes in these fairy tale legends and has searched for the Sasquatch his whole life," Karen sneered.

"Yes, I respect some of the old ways and legends and believe they have a lot to teach us," confessed Uncle Jeff. "They may not all be true but the elders have something to say on the matter."

"And what is that old wise one?" Karen had nothing but contempt for superstition and put the legends of the Sasquatch in the same category as witches, vampires and werewolves.

"Well the same as the Christians had their story of the snake tempting the people with the fruit of knowledge, our people had the story of what many refer to simply as the Old One's," began Uncle Jeff. "Long ago we and the Old One's were all one people but we came down out of the mountains and began using fire. With the knowledge of fire came the tools we made to hunt with like spears, canoes and fishing nets. Over time we separated ourselves from the land that gave us life and became two different peoples. We could no longer return to the land, we are no longer equipped to survive as the Old One's live. So they shun us as those who turned their back on the land. Whenever they smell or see us in the bush they avoid us and will not mix with us."

"What a bunch of xenophobic snobs," Karen shook her head sarcastically, amused with her brother's seriousness on the matter.

"Enough of the ghost stories, Jeffery," Karen finished her coffee and got up to put her dishes by the sink. "I need you to help me keep an eye on these boys today until school starts on Monday. This one left his brother alone in the bush the other day because he was playing with a rifle he got from some kid named Tommy," Karen explained as she patted Lex on the head. "Please explain to my sons that it is not only illegal to be playing with guns at their age but that real guns, unlike video games, really do hurt and make you bleed when you get shot."

"Wow. Yeah, we'll talk about that right now," Uncle Jeff said in all seriousness.

"You boys clean up and I'll bring home pizza tonight," Karen tugged at her brother as she headed for the door. "Hey Jeff, have you got a minute?"

Outside as Karen loaded her stuff into the car, she asked, "Well, did you find any tracks?"

"Not a single one, but the bush is covered in spruce needles and tracks are hard to find anyway. It would be a good idea to be careful about wandering around outside at night anyway. You know how wild it is around here," Jeff advised.

"Yeah OK, thanks. I gotta run. See ya later," Karen wasn't satisfied but she wasn't one to dwell on things out of her control.

Jeff waved his sister off and stood there looking at a clump of finger length, reddish brown hair he had pulled from his jacket. Barely an hour ago he had found the hair snagged shoulder high on a hemlock sapling, just steps inside the bush next to his place.

"Hey, you guys really come on like gang busters. Your first week here and you have a run in with Bigfoot and Rambo on the same day," Uncle Jeff said humorously as he came in and started to clear the breakfast dishes.

"Well, we just met this kid up the trail by the ridge who was firing target practice at a bunch of tin cans and he asked me if I would like a couple of turns," Lex confided in Uncle Jeff.

"And your brother wasn't included, I guess, huh?" Jeff noted.

"Well Tommy said he was too young to handle a rifle," explained Lex.

"I'd say all of you guys are too young to be in the bush with a rifle alone without supervision," opined Uncle Jeff. "I know things are a little different up here than it is in the city and most people here strongly encourage self sufficiency. But someone responsible needs to make a determination on whether a young person is both mentally mature and well trained in the use of a firearm before letting them loose with a weapon that can kill. You don't just let anybody into the bush with a weapon like that or accidents will happen."

"They don't let us do anything like when you were kids, Uncle Jeff," complained Lex.

"Yeah, they took Lex's jack knife from him at Scouts," chimed in Ricky.

"Yeah, my dad gave me this old jack knife with a real flimsy blade that he got from Scouts when he was a kid, with the Scouts emblem on it and everything. When one of the Scout leaders saw me with it he took it and made my dad come to the hall to get it back. Heck they used to hand them out to kids and now they confiscate them if they catch you with them," Lex recounted the event with indignation.

"I agree with you about the knife, but that is different than what we are talking about regarding the rifle," Uncle Jeff began to explain. "You guys should have your own knife at your age and if you want I will get you each a good Buck lock blade and teach you how to use and care for it."

"Get out! Really?" Lex knew he could handle the responsibility if given the chance.

"Me too?" Ricky didn't expect to be trusted with a real knife of his own.

"Absolutely, you too!" Uncle Jeff promised. "We'll make a deal with your mom. If we get you guys your own lock blades to keep and care for and you promise not to take them to school, then you guys also promise not to be in the bush alone firing rifles. Deal?"

"Deal!" it was unanimous.

Now all Jeff had to do was convince his sister. However, Karen did agree with his view about being a responsible individual within society. It really irked him to hear the lament of today's leaders regarding the lack of responsibility in the people they never taught or allowed to be responsible as children. Treating everyone with the lowest denomination of trust is not warranted just because a few individuals had been irresponsible in the past. Jeff felt this conflicting message from authorities debased everyone.

It didn't take long to clear up the breakfast mess and hop into the truck. The boys were excited to have even the slightest prospect of seeing one of the Old One's. As the pickup made the stop at the end of the street, the sun hadn't appeared over the mountains that shadowed their street behind them. Turning left to head south along Old Lakelse Lake Drive there was a warm honey colored glow pushing back the dark veil of night leaving a few remnants of frost on the truck's windows.

"It's only about 20 minutes or so to our first station check boys," announced Uncle Jeff.

"I don't understand why you have seismic sensors monitoring down here so far away from the lava fields," Lex pondered aloud, riding shotgun.

"Do you remember those fault lines we talked about yesterday?" asked Uncle Jeff.

"Yeah, sure," acknowledged Lex.

"Well, we pretty much live on top of one," smiled Uncle Jeff casting Lex a sideways glance.

"No way!" Ricky bounced up from the back seat. "You mean we could have an eruption of lava here at anytime, just like up at the Tseax?"

"Not very likely, at least not in our time. Our life span is relatively short when we talk about geological time."

"What is 'relatively'? I don't understand that," Lex was thoroughly engaged in what Uncle Jeff had to say, just as Ricky seemed to be. Jeff couldn't decide if he simply enjoyed teaching or just liked these kids.

"Let's see," Uncle Jeff had to ponder a moment before he could find a way to explain it, "the earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old. That's how many zeroes guys?"

Ricky looked to Lex. "Aw, I hate math, I always have to help Ricky with math," whined Lex.

"You hate math?" Uncle Jeff laughed, "Or you just don't know how to think because you aren't willing to take the time to figure it out? I know you guys like the challenge of a game so you must like to figure things out. So how would you figure this out?"

The boys looked at one another and shrugged, not knowing where to begin.

"Well, how many zeroes in a billion?" asked Uncle Jeff.

Both of the boys drew a blank and shrugged again.

"How many zeroes in a million?

"Six!" volunteered Lex.

"Right," said Uncle Jeff. "And a billion is a thousand million. So how many zeroes in a billion?"

"Ah, nine?" said Lex pensively after a substantial pause.

"Exactly, do you get that Ricky?" Uncle Jeff asked looking at him in the rear view mirror.

"Ahhh, no." Ricky confessed.

"It's all about the zeroes," continued Uncle Jeff, "if we start with a base of one thousand. How many zeroes do we have?"

"Three," replied Ricky.

"And Lex tells us that one million has six zeroes, which is three zeroes more than one thousand. So if we add three more zeroes to the six to get one billion, how many zeroes do we have?"

"Nine," answered Ricky wondering where this was going.

"Right. So if the earth is 4.5 billion years old, you could restate that as 45 hundred million years. Get it?"

"Not really," Ricky was lost and Lex looked lost as well.

"Well if you think about sliding that decimal place in 4.5 billion back three places, we are then talking in terms of what? Moving from nine zeroes to six zeroes gives us what? Billions, millions or thousands?"

"Millions," volunteered Ricky.

"Right, so the earth is 4500 million years old and I am 45 years old. So 'relative' to me, the earth has been around 100 million years for every year I have lived," Uncle Jeff had finally made his point.

"Geez and what were we talking about again?" Lex wisecracked as he stared out the window. He either lost the point of the whole exercise or didn't find it all that instructive. Ricky's grasp on the import of his explanation didn't seem to overwhelm him either, as he sat back and took out his iPod.

"You asked what the term relative meant. So that means that relative to me, last year dinosaurs roamed the earth and the supercontinent of Pangaea was breaking up into the continents we know today," Jeff suddenly knew how some comedians felt when they were losing the interest of their audience. "Wow, you guys are one tough crowd."

"What?" asked Lex looking confused.

"I said, there's Bigfoot!" muttered Uncle Jeff and watched Ricky bounce off the back seat to look out the front window.

"Where?"

"Ah, made you look," laughed Uncle Jeff joined in by Lex.

"Jerk!" Ricky responded defiantly when he knew he was had.

Jeff decided that maybe he was no teacher but he sure liked these kids.

"So why do you think most of the Big..ah, Old One's have been spotted around here, Uncle Jeff" Lex asked as they pulled up to the first seismic station.

"You boys go over and stick your hands in that creek and tell me what you find, while I run the maintenance routine on this seismic sensor," Uncle Jeff said pulling his toolbox off the tailgate.

Less than ten minutes later Jeff was loading his tools back into the truck as the boys climbed back up from the stream. "Well, anything unique about that stream?"

"It sure is clean," said Ricky, "I'll bet I could drink that water without any filter or chlorine."

"And as warm as bathwater," Lex jumped in.

"That's right, this creek and many others that feed the Lakelse Lake watershed come from springs and warm seeps along the fault lines higher up the side of the valley," Uncle Jeff continued as he led the boys back down to the creek.

"Warm seeps?" questioned Ricky.

"Yeah, as rain and the snowpack melt and percolate down into the ground, the cold water runs down the fault lines to a depth where the pressure and radioactive decay creates great heat. The hot water comes rushing back up like steam in a kettle and you get water that can be as hot as 89 degrees Celsius in some springs. That is hot enough to scald you. But in most cases it causes warm seeps in springs and the bottom of the lake, which can be observed in the winter as the ice melts in some spots."

"So you think the Old One's come here for a bath?" Ricky figured this was a logical extrapolation from the preceding lesson.

"Well, maybe," Uncle Jeff laughed as he walked along the bank of the sprawling creek as if looking for something. "But most likely the Old One's are looking for fish because a lot of Coho salmon and steelhead spawn late into the fall in these streams. Many steelhead overwinter or live year round in the lake because it is so warm."

"Ah, so the Old One's are big time fish eaters," concluded Lex.

"Absolutely, any animal that size would probably go out of their way to find a good source of protein considering the amount of calories it must need," Uncle Jeff pondered as they were now a good distance from the road and well out of sight of any human traffic.

"What are you looking for?" asked Lex as they trudged through the gravel and roots of the stream bank.

Uncle Jeff stopped for a moment and then approached a large Sitka spruce about twenty strides from the creek bank, "Remember that I told you one of the names our forefathers had for the Old One's was clam eater?"

"Not really? I remember Bigfoot, Wild Man, Sasquatch. But not clam eater," Lex replied honestly.

Uncle Jeff turned to them both and smiled, "I'm not surprised. Those names bring to mind so much more danger and mystery. What would you rather do, hunt a dragon or a lizard?"

"A dragon," replied Lex without hesitation.

"Well, they would both be pretty cool, but if I had to choose. I would go with the dragon," agreed Ricky.

"My point exactly, clam eater doesn't evoke any fear or mystery, does it boys?" Uncle Jeff asked rhetorically as he turned and walked to the base of the spruce tree.

"Wow, that is one big tree!" exclaimed Ricky looking up at the tree as it disappeared out of sight into the dark canopy above.

"Yeah, who knows how old this tree is. One thing for sure is that its life is measured in the hundreds of years to get this size," agreed Uncle Jeff. "But it holds an even bigger mystery for me."

The boys looked at their uncle and waited. He seemed to be looking around for something again. "You guys have been so mesmerized by the size of this Sitka that you haven't looked at the base of the tree," he said as he walked over and grabbed a hefty branch about five feet long about the thickness of his arm off of the ground.

"Wow! Holy crap!" Lex and Ricky alternated expressions of amazement.

"Look at all those clam shells!" Ricky exclaimed as he reached down and grabbed a handful of what must have been many wheelbarrows of shells lying between the trunk roots of the enormous spruce tree.

"Where did they all come from?" asked Lex not believing how many there were.

"Well they come from that stream there, I imagine," Uncle Jeff looked over his shoulder back to the creek. "They are what we today call freshwater mussels. I found this spot three years ago when we were installing that seismic sensor up off the road."

"How did they get here?" asked Ricky.

"I have seen smaller piles of shells in other places but always closer to a stream. Biologists tell me they are muskrat middens," explained Uncle Jeff as he leaned on his stick.

"You mean muskrats ate the mussels and piled all of those shells there," Lex said incredulously.

"Well, that's what bothers me," confessed Uncle Jeff. "This one is different. I have never seen one quite like this. It's too far from the creek to be muskrats. I don't think they would bother bringing the mussels all this distance. Besides that stack would take many generations of muskrat to pile up and my father told me there wasn't any muskrats native to this valley when he was a kid."

"I have a hunch," Uncle Jeff said as he started clearing a hole in the center of the midden with his stick. After many minutes of clearing the shells from the center of the midden, Uncle Jeff hit something that made a sound as though balls had just been struck on a pool table.

"Did you find something?" Ricky asked as both boys eagerly waited for Uncle Jeff to pull his arm back from the pile of shells.

"I would say so," Uncle Jeff smiled at the boys as he held up two smooth pale green stones.

*****

Checking the remaining three seismic sensor stations Uncle Jeff had on his maintenance list took until early afternoon and by the time they were pulling back onto Crystal Road it was just after 2pm. The only conversation after finding the smooth green stones at the bottom of the midden had been about the Old One's. Uncle Jeff regaled the boys with the local legends passed down by tribal elders and an eyewitness account of a mother at Ruby Creek who escaped the family farm with her children when an Old One approached and ransacked her home and storage shed. Legend said that if you saw an Old One it would be best to simply run the other way but if it caught you not to struggle, lest the Old One crush you by accident. It was said that an Old One had reddish blond hair about three to four inches long and stood a foot taller than Uncle Jeff's six foot eight inches. It could move through the bush much stealthier and faster than any man and that some sensed an Old One's presence by detecting a slight odor of skunk or wet dog.

"Do you think the Old One's are gathering these stones into piles, Uncle Jeff?" Ricky asked as they climbed out of the truck as it came to a stop in their driveway.

"Yeah, how did you know there would be stones at the bottom of that midden?" added Lex.

"Good questions," conceded Uncle Jeff, "it was just a guess digging to the bottom of that midden. The explanation for that pile of mussel shells has gnawed at the back of my mind ever since I found it. When Ricky told us of his encounter and showed us that pile of smooth red stones up on the ridge it occurred to me that it could be a marker of some kind."

" So what's the deal with the different stones then?" Lex wondered.

"Well they are more the same than different," replied Uncle Jeff taking the two stones from his pockets and placing them on the kitchen table. "

"Ricky, go get your red stone and let's look at them, all together," Uncle Jeff said taking off his jacket.

By the time Uncle Jeff had sat down at the table with Lex, Ricky was bounding down the stairs to set four stones on the table, "here ya go, Uncle Jeff."

"What? How come there are four," Uncle Jeff looked at Ricky, surprised and concerned. "You haven't been back there?"

"Oh no, this is the original one and I picked up these two red ones when we were back there the other day with you. And this purple one I found in the doghouse, yesterday," Ricky quickly pointed out his collection.

"In the doghouse?" Uncle Jeff looked puzzled.

"Yeah, the one at the back of the yard," Ricky continued, "I was out back and looked in the doghouse and found that purple stone, but it was warm"

"Still warm and in the doghouse," Uncle Jeff repeated. "I am not sure I like the implications of that revelation, Ricky. You need to tell me right away if you find any more stones or see anything unusual. Do you understand?"

"Sure, no problem, Uncle Jeff," Ricky didn't really see the big deal.

"OK, so we have smooth red brick stones roughly the same size as your fist," Uncle Jeff began working on the evidence pushing the thought of a stone so close to the boys' house to the back of his mind for the time being. "And we have smooth purple and smooth pale green stones about the same size as the red stones. Other than being worn smooth and about the same size, the other thing they have in common is that they are all made of lava."

"So what do you think it means?" Lex asked.

"Well, I have never heard of any animal that makes piles of stones in the bush. These piles could mark trails and the different colors could have different meanings. Maybe different colors are used by different family groups or indicate different types of food are available in that area. I don't know what it means, it's a mystery."

# Chapter 5: And So It Begins

The Labor Day weekend came and went without further adventure or incident. Ricky and Lex made mention of their discovery and requisite theories to their mom at supper that Friday night, but Karen was used to passively listening to all of the legends of the Old One's from her father and brother. She had heard the same stories her whole life and found nothing new in the retelling of them. Not that much this side of fantastic could distract her from preparing for life as the new English teacher at Caledonia Senior Secondary. So Karen spent most of the weekend in the large study behind the kitchen that she had converted to her office. Her father used to spend most of his time in that room reading everything he could get his hands on. The shelves were lined with everything from Robert Burns and Oscar Wilde to H.G. Wells and William Shakespeare. Apart from really enjoying the books he read, the old man seemed to take a particular pleasure in knowing more about English literature than most of the white people he had ever met. Perhaps on a deeper level it was his way of compensating for being assimilated without his consent.

On the other hand, the boys spent the entire weekend searching the Internet for everything they could find about the Old One's. They had amassed and digested quite a pile of material on the subject. Some of their research included several accounts of the Ruby Creek incident as well as reviewing the Patterson video on YouTube. But to their absolute joy, the gem of their research was a page that detailed accounts of local reports of the Old One's, complete with locations and the names of the people making the observations. They now felt they were experts on the matter and were determined to gather evidence on the existence of the Old One's.

"C'mon boys, finish up or you will be late for your first day at school," Karen tried to light a fire under them.

"Ah Mom, why can't you just drive us? It's on your way and we don't mind getting to school a bit early," pleaded Lex, dreading being the new kid.

"Maybe once we get settled and you meet people, I will give you a ride every once in awhile. But for now, I want you to dive in and meet everyone, get to know the bus route, the town and just meet people," Karen insisted.

"Ricky! Where are you? Do you want to be late?" Karen yelled up the stairs.

"What? I don't have to leave for another 25 minutes or so." Ricky declared coming out of the living room, pleased that he is able to get a few minutes on the Playstation without being bullied by Lex.

"Oh, what time does the bus pick you up Lex?" Karen inquired.

"It says 08:09 at the corner of Woeste and Lodge Pole," Lex answered.

"And you, Ricky?"

"The schedule says 08:35 at the same stop, number 357," Ricky replied.

"Oh darn! I forgot about the bus route time difference between the Elementary and Junior High. Well, it's 07:30 Lex you better get going soon. It's at least one kilometer of walking to get to your stop," Karen reasoned.

"No problem, Mom. I'll leave in a couple of minutes," Lex wasn't too concerned since he figured that if he was late he could just take the Route Seven bus.

"You had better and if you think you can just hop on Ricky's route then think again. That little trick only works once and if I were you I would wait until I really needed it," Karen advised.

"OK, OK, I'm going," Lex replied pulling on his boots, not realizing he had been so transparent.

"Since I am going the same way right now I'll drop you at Woest Ave," Karen said watching Lex struggle to pull on his only Aeropostale hoodie.

"Sweet!" Lex yelled and ran out the door to jump in the Jeep.

"Now make sure you leave no later than 08:00," Karen leaned over to kiss Ricky on the forehead before heading out.

"Sure Mom, no worries," Ricky said somewhat distracted as he was trying to beat this level in Little Big Planet that Lex had created.

It was only 07:45 when Karen dropped Lex off at the head of Woeste Avenue. Lex took his time since he had scouted out stop number 357 days ago with Ricky on their bikes and knew he had lots of time. There was only one house on the southern corner where Woeste Ave teed in at Old Lakelse Lake Drive. Other than that one house, beyond the ditch on each side of the road the spruce, hemlock and cedar trees loomed tall, thick and dark the whole five minute walk to Lodge Pole Street.

Lex was alone for five minutes or so and then he noticed a lone figure slowly closing in on his position from the direction he had come. It seemed certain that this person was making for the bus stop also since he had yet to see anyone walking just for the sake of it this far out of town. As the figure got closer Lex noticed it was a girl about his age with blue jeans and creamy yellow sweater with strawberry shoulder length hair tucked into a matching yellow tuque. She wore the biggest smile with the whitest teeth and the bluest eyes, Lex had ever seen.

"Hi, my name is Jane," she said offering her hand with a slight sideways cock of her head and red flush coming to her cheeks.

"Hey, I'm Lex," he responded slipping his knapsack to the opposite shoulder and accepting her hand. Looking back, whoa so many years later, this would be one of those rare moments in his life that Lex would be able to recall with crystal clarity.

The sun was a full hand span above the Hazelton Mountains in the east by the time Ricky left the house for the school bus right at 08:00 like Mom said. It was a crisp, chilly morning but the bright sun was quickly warming things up pulling a heavy fog from the cool bush. He had just rounded the crook in the road when he heard a sharp crack in the mist-shrouded bush, maybe twenty feet to his right. He stopped and listened. Nothing. He turned and took a couple more steps up the road and he heard another sharp crack coming from the same spot as before. The fog was thick as he left the crunch of the gravel road toward the sound for only a few paces when a large cedar stump maybe three feet high came into view. Though he could not see the entire stump, there was something beckoning him forward, until a pale green stone came into view. He felt that he was being watched but was not afraid. Ricky calmly lifted his knapsack onto the stump grabbed the stone that he was being offered and took out the three large McIntosh apples his mother had packed with his lunch; his favorites. He raised the stone high above his head, then smiled and pushed it in his pocket as he turned and walked back to the road and on to the bus stop. Ricky was happy that he had made his first friend in his new home.

Although Ricky had no other children to pass the time with at stop 357, there were lots of kids on the bus and he made friends easily. By the time he reached Thornhill Elementary, Ricky was chatting it up with a kid named Gary from Sockeye Crescent, the stop just before 357. Ricky knew that everyone liked to laugh and the best way to break down people's defenses was with humor. So as they milled around the schoolyard waiting for the bell to ring, Ricky tried out some of his standard repertoire on Gary.

"What d'ya call a guy with no arms and no legs in the harbor?"

"I dunno," said Gary.

"Buoy!" replied Ricky eagerly awaiting the response.

Gary laughed politely but this did not dissuade Ricky, as he knew it took a while to warm up an audience.

"What d'ya call a guy with no arms and no legs at the front door?"

"Dunno."

"Matt!"

Gary laughed legitimately this time at Ricky exaggerating someone wiping his feet and Ricky knew he was closing the gap.

"What d'ya call a guy with no arms and no legs in the pool?"

"Dunno."

"Bob! Get it?" Ricky asked bobbing up and down with his arms at his side.

"What d'ya call a guy with no arms and no legs in a pile of leaves?"

"Ah, dunno."

"Russell!" Gary really liked that one and was laughing as much at the joke as this new kid who was trying so hard to be his friend.

"What d'ya call a guy with no arms and no legs hanging on the wall?"

"Ah, picture? Painting?...no, Art!" yelled Gary and they both laughed.

"Hey, you're good!" acknowledged Ricky placing his hand on Gary's shoulder and mockingly wagging his finger at him.

"What d'ya call a guy with no arms and no legs lying in a hole?"

"Ah, dunno." Gary was still laughing, shaking his head, feeling as though he was really getting the hang of this 'no arms and no legs' humor.

"Phil!" shouted out Ricky, making the motion of filling a hole with a shovel.

"Awww, that's awful!" groaned Gary. "Hey I got one! What do you call a girl with no arms and no legs at the front door when it's warm out?"

"I don't know?" said Ricky looking surprised that Gary was making up his own.

"Summer!" Gary laughed hysterically grabbing Ricky by the shoulders as the school bell rang saving him from forcing himself to laugh at his new friend's warped sense of humor.

*****

The month of September went by quickly with the boys making lots of new friends at school and Karen settling in as a high school English teacher. A career she had never seriously considered while taking her masters at the University of Toronto, but now felt more rewarding than any job she could have imagined. Lex seemed to have developed a real interest in getting up and off to school on time every morning, Karen never had to wake him or chase him out the door for school even once. And Ricky seemed to develop a real appetite for fruit, salmon and shellfish, for which his Uncle Jeff demonstrated his approval by bringing by as much salmon and mussels as Ricky could handle.

It was cold that early October morning when Ricky headed off to school and his morning routine. When he got to the stump he found his polished green stone and laid out some salmon steaks in wax paper that he took from the fridge along with a few large Bartlett pears. Lately the dark figure just inside the tree line made little effort to conceal its presence and as long as Ricky didn't look directly at it, his friend would stand half hidden behind a tree and just watch him. Ricky figured his friend was about a head taller than Lex, which made it taller than mom and about as tall as Uncle Jeff's shoulder. He had no way of knowing for sure, but because of the size he figured it must be a kid like him. Ricky felt that he and the young Old One had been building a foundation of trust.

Today turned out to be different. As Ricky finished taking his offering for the one he left he heard the same "Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!" he had heard up near the ridge all those weeks ago. The sound was definitely close and in the 9 o'clock position relative to him and the stump. Within seconds the sound came again, "Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!" but much closer and Ricky could see a very large figure looming in the bush, maybe sixty feet away. His friend in the 12:00 position now stood completely in the open and appeared as a man wearing a big fur coat. It was only a shape he could see, no face or other defined features. "Sooowheeet!" came the whistle and the younger one rotated his body a quarter turn while the head still faced Ricky. ""Sooowheeet!" came the whistle again along with the "Thump! Thump!" and Ricky could see the large one to his left banging an arm on a spruce tree. "Sooowheeet!" came the response from the younger one as he rapidly faded into the darkness of the bush. By the time he looked back for the large one, he was gone. Ricky looked to that stump as he passed by every morning for weeks but he never again found an offering there. He even looked in the doghouse a few times, but it appeared that his friend had gone.

It was the Friday night before Halloween that Sunday that the boys had a sleep over and invited "one friend each" as directed by Mom. Ricky invited his warped buddy Gary and Lex brought Tommy the rifleman. Karen brought home two extra large pizzas with enough chips and pop to keep the boys belching all night. After supper the boys settled into the living room and began to argue over who got to play what game on the large screen TV.

"OK, we'll flip ya to see who goes first," Lex said. "The winners get their choice for an hour of play."

"Half an hour of play," Ricky countered.

"I'll flip," Tommy jumped at the opportunity, pulling a quarter out of his pocket. "Heads we win. Tails you lose."

"Very funny, jerk off!" retorted Gary.

"Hey listen, whitey!" Tommy said as he leaned forward on the L-shaped sectional couch.

"Don't start, guys?" interjected Ricky, forever the peacemaker. "Heads we win."

Tommy flipped the coin and let it land on the open newspaper on the large four by four square coffee table in front of them.

"Heads, we win!" shouted Gary.

"For half an hour," Lex belatedly agreed.

"Yeah, and you're lucky we let you whities go first?" advised Tommy.

"Well, we won the toss you jerk!" retorted Ricky. "And what's with all the white man remarks, you turd? I'm as much native as Lex and probably you too. Both of your parents aren't native, so cut the crap with all this I'm First Nations and you're white garbage." It was Ricky's home and he was tired of listening to all of Tommy's crap about not being native enough to hang around with him and Lex and their other friends. He wished Lex would stick up for him in all this racist crap that Tommy spouted off all the time.

"We were here first and are part of the spirit of the land and the nature in it," Tommy challenged snobbishly.

"Ah, you're just a bigot. Where do you hear all that crap anyway?" Ricky was tired of this argument and dismissed Tommy's ignorant ranting.

"At least Lex and your mom look native. You don't," jabbed Tommy.

This really hurt Ricky and his mouth went off without thinking. "Well if you've been here all of your life how come you've never seen one of the Old One's and I have?" Ricky taunted Tommy.

"What are you talking about, Old One's?" Tommy asked.

"Sasquatch, Bigfoot , Wildman, Old One. You don't even know what they're called but you're so native," shot back Ricky.

"You've seen a Sasquatch?" Tommy leaned forward and laughed infuriating Ricky.

"It's true," said Lex, finally stepping in on Ricky's side.

"No way," insisted Tommy, "I know people who have searched their whole life for evidence of the Sasquatch and you guys move into town and see one in the first few weeks you're here? My dad has seen footprints and gone into the bush many times looking for other evidence of the Sasquatch and he has never seen one."

"I'm telling ya," it's true, Lex insisted.

The brothers spent the next hour going over the details of their discoveries regarding the Old One's with Gary and Tommy. Video games were forgotten as they got all swept up in Bigfoot fever. They used the Playstation instead to search the Internet for information and watch Youtube videos into the early morning hours, long after Karen went to bed. Before turning in to sleep that night the boys made a pact to prove the existence of the Sasquatch and become rich and famous.

"Do you think you can find the spot up on the ridge where you found those smooth red stones once again, Ricky?" Tommy was asking.

"I dunno. But I am willing to try," Ricky replied all excited to be of a mysterious adventure.

"OK, in the morning, when your mom goes out shopping we will all go up to the ridge and see if we can find the spot with the pile of red stones and any other sign of the Old One's," Tommy said to universal agreement as Lex turned off the lamp and each settled into their respective sleeping bags strewn about the living room.

# Chapter 6: Forgive All Trespasses

Karen was up late reading and had to force herself out of bed at 06:45 if she was to shower and meet her friend for breakfast in town that Saturday morning. She should have known the boys were up to something when she came down into the kitchen and found the four of them silently shoveling cold cereal into their mouths.

"Hey guys, what's up?" she circled the table in awe since she knew they were still up surfing the Internet and quietly scheming when she went to bed.

"Oh nothing, we just figured it was a beautiful day to waste and we should get up and go for a walk," Lex volunteered.

"Oh sure, and I'll bet you have some dry Florida land for sale cheap," Karen mocked him.

"What?" Lex didn't understand the inference.

"I suppose that if I told you to stay out of the bush, I would be wasting my breath." Karen knew moving young boys to a place with the wild all around them, was like putting a bowl of candy in front of them and telling them not to eat any. "Well, your uncle has taken you along the trails many times and you should know how to be safe in the bush by now. Tommy you know the trails up on the ridge, be careful and make sure you take these." She removed two bear air horns from the case in the cupboard that Jeff had given her and plunked them down on the table.

"You mean we can go?" Ricky unwittingly confessed their intention.

"I'd rather you didn't, but if you have to, be careful," Karen admitted as she tussled Ricky's hair and ran up the stairs. As she got ready for her breakfast date, she calmed herself with the knowledge that bear encounters were extremely rare given the number of bears in close proximity to them. Bears wanted nothing to do with people and would go out of their way to avoid them. It was only on the rare occasions that people surprised a bear that there were problems. Karen seriously doubted that four boys crashing through the bush could surprise a bear.

"You know maybe these aren't a bad idea," said Gary examining the bear horn. "I don't want to surprise anything out there and if we blast these every few minutes we will be letting the animals know that we are around."

"That's what there for, dork!" Tommy snarled at Gary.

"Oh, I thought they were to scare a bear, if you saw one," Gary shrunk back in his chair.

"Ya know, you can be a real jerk!" Ricky said to Tommy defending his friend, while Lex ate his cereal with his head down.

"I hope you boys can get along today," Karen broke in as she came into the kitchen pulling on her jacket. "And if you are going into the bush I need you to stick to the trail and stick together. No splitting up and heading off in different directions. Do I make myself clear?" She looked each boy in the eye in turn to make sure they nodded in agreement. "Tommy?"

"Yes, ma'am." Tommy agreed.

"If you are not home by noon, I will send your uncle after you and make sure Tommy's dad is told when he returns. Is that clear?" Karen knew that if there was one person her boys respected it was their Uncle Jeff. And as for Tommy, the mere mention of telling his father about any misbehavior on his part got his full attention.

After Karen drove off at 07:30 the boys got dressed and started filling their backpacks with bottled water and snacks for their trek toward the ridge. They were on the trail by 08:00 and figured they had plenty of time before noon to find the spot where Ricky had found the stones and get back for lunch. After 30 minutes they were almost at the spot where they met Tommy firing his .22 rifle and decided they had better backtrack down the trail paying closer attention in looking for the path to the stones. The forest seemed different now that all of the flowers and ferns were beginning to die back.

Ricky seemed to have no trouble finding the path working from the down slope direction and they were on their way into the bush in 10 minutes.

"Are you sure this is the path?" Gary asked looking around.

"Yup, see that large red cedar right there? The stones are on the other side of it," Ricky was certain.

"Good," Gary raised the air horn above his head and let off a long blast until Lex grabbed the horn from him.

"Geez, Gary! Are you trying to make us all deaf?" Lex admonished him.

"I just wanted to make sure everything around knew we were here," Gary said, nervously looking around.

"Yeah well I think you succeeded numb nuts," Tommy verbally jabbed Gary.

"See? What did I tell ya?" Ricky said standing beside a perfectly symmetrical cone of smooth red stones as the others rounded the massive trunk.

"Wow!" exclaimed Tommy as he stared at the pile of red stones between two huge cedar roots couched by emerald green ferns, still wet with the morning mist. "The way they glisten in the dappling sunlight reminds me of like,...rubies, no, peeling back the skin of a pomegranate to find the seeds glistening, each cloistered as a pearl in its own shell, beckoning us to enter a realm heretofore unknown," Tommy fell to his knees in front of the pile and held one up to a beam of light making its way through the forest canopy.

The three boys standing looked at each other mouths open as if they had just seen Bigfoot. They were in such awe of the words just uttered by this person they had previously considered to be a Neanderthal, an ignoramus; it took a few moments for one of them to speak.

"Man, now I've seen everything," mused Gary, "we come out here to find a lost species and we really do find one. Just not the one we expected."

Ricky and Lex laughed and turned their backs on Tommy shaking their heads.

"What?" Tommy turned to look at Gary, confused.

"Are you making fun of me?" Tommy snapped out of his reverie and stood up looking menacingly at Gary.

"So what now?" said Lex stepping in between Gary and Tommy.

"Let's look around and see if we can find anything else unusual," volunteered Ricky, setting his backpack down.

"OK, let's take a few minutes but nobody leave the sight of the group, only a few feet and stay in the light."

The red cedar was large enough to drive their uncle's Ford pickup straight through and still leave a couple of feet on each side. After ten minutes of looking around the saplings and ferns surrounding the cedar the boys wandered back to the stone pile.

"Didn't you guys say you dug to the bottom of that pile of clam shells you found?" asked Tommy.

"Mussel shells," Ricky corrected Tommy.

"Do you think there is anything under this pile of red stones?" Gary pondered aloud.

"Let's see," Tommy fell to his knees once again and started removing the stones from the top of the pile.

"Do you really think we should be doing this?" questioned Lex.

"Yeah, are we going to be able to rebuild it the way we found it?" asked Ricky.

"We'll rebuild it just the way we found it," Tommy said removing the stones one by one and then layer by layer until he had removed about two feet off the top of the cone and a cream color began to show between the stones.

"I don't think this was a very good idea, Tommy. We shouldn't be messing with this and I don't know if we can put it back the way we found it," Lex said voicing the concern of the others as they began nervously looking around.

Tommy ignored his friend's trepidation as the anticipation of a treasure just fuelled Tommy's desire to get at what it was that was buried below. He now heaved the stones out of the hole faster and faster with no regard as to how he was going to rebuild the cone, until he reached down one last time and pulled out a large skull.

"Wow, look at this! It must be almost twice the size of my head!" Tommy squealed with excitement.

"Put it back," said Lex, "this is wrong. We're not grave robbers."

"Are you kidding? This isn't human! Look at it!" cried Tommy. The skull was indeed much larger than any human skull and was kind of flat on top with ridges of bone above the eye sockets, a huge jaw and teeth worn smooth.

"All the more reason to put it back," said Ricky.

"No way," said Tommy as he hurriedly dumped everything from his backpack and wrapped the skull in a sweatshirt and stuffed it back in his pack. "My dad has been looking for something like this his entire life. He is going to be so proud of me," Tommy said as he turned tail toward the path and began to jog.

"Where are you going?" yelled Gary.

"Haven't you been listening? I am taking this to show my dad," Tommy yelled over his shoulder before disappearing down the path, toward the trail, on his way home.

"What should we do?" Ricky looked to Lex.

"We shouldn't have come, but what is done is done. Let's get outta here," Lex was anxiously looking around.

"But shouldn't we fill this back in? I can see more bones down there," Ricky was distraught with the thought of leaving an open grave.

"Lex is right," Gary said. "I don't want to get caught grave robbing an Old One, do you?"

Ricky followed Lex and Gary along the path to the trail and home. He couldn't believe how sour this whole thing had gone. He just wanted to impress his friends. But this adventure had gone wrong real fast.

As they got to the trail they found Tommy standing there waiting for them.

"I thought you were going home?" said Lex.

"My dad is gone to Prince George, remember? I am supposed to stay at your place and go home after school Monday." Tommy recounted.

"Well you're not bringing that skull to our place," Ricky stepped forward and was adamant.

Just then Lex felt something whiz by his head and heard it bounce off the tree on the other side of the trail and roll to their feet. Ricky and Lex looked at each other horrified when they saw it was a smooth red stone.

"Run!" Gary absorbed the stone's message instantly and took off around the other boys and down the trail as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Leave this!" Lex said grabbing the pack on Tommy's back but Tommy wrenched himself free, pushed Lex to the ground and ran off after Gary.

Ricky helped Lex up as they heard the "Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!" sound in the bush and then felt a couple more stones whiz by them.

"Let's go!" Ricky said pulling Lex up to run down the trail after their friends.

Running down that trail was longest 15 minutes of the boy's lives. It sounded as though they had a team of horses crashing through the bush behind them. They were so scared none of them were going to take the chance of tripping up by looking behind them to see what it was. When they finally made it to the house they crashed in with no regard of the noise. Without a word to each other they locked every door and took up positions to view the field open field next to the house.

Karen was in the kitchen making sandwiches when the boys crashed in and was mystified by the looks of horror on their faces. "What the hell is going on!" she demanded.

"Something is after us!" Ricky yelled. "Something big!"

Karen looked out each window with the boys and waited for a few minutes for everyone to settle down. "What was it? A bear?"

"Bigfoot!" shouted Gary, not taking his eyes off the ridge.

"Oh, this is getting out of hand..." Karen began to say as they all heard a loud thump, thump on the back deck as something bounced and then smacked into glass. As they all ran to see what it was they immediately noticed the outside pane of glass on the sliding glass door was shattered into a spider web pattern. Moving closer they could all see a smooth red stone lying on the deck.

Karen reached in her jeans and flipped open her cell phone, pressing a speed dial number. "Jeff, how fast can you get here? Ten minutes? We need you at the house as fast as possible."

When Jeff pulled in the driveway a few minutes later, everything seemed calm. He walked to the kitchen door and Ricky unbolted the heavy solid core inside door and let him in.

"Hey little brother, what's going on?" Uncle Jeff said and thought it was strange that Ricky didn't answer or meet his eyes. That is, until he got into the kitchen and saw something stranger.

Karen and four boys were standing around the kitchen looking at a large skull on a burgundy towel in the center of the kitchen table.

"Oh...My...God," Jeff said as he slowly circled a skull the like's of which he had never seen.

"OMG? OMG?" Gary repeated as he began backing out of the kitchen in a daze, "WTF OMG? OMG BTW FYI U U U U U AKA FUBARed TTYL," Gary giggled like a madman, pointing to each one of them in turn, obviously upset and beginning to unravel heading for the door.

Ricky grabbed Gary by the arm and slapped him on the face. "Cut it out Gary!" then shoved him in a kitchen chair.

"JK. JK," Gary acquiesced raising his arms in surrender then resting his head on the table.

"We're all sticking together until we can figure this out," Ricky said looking around.

"Oh, all for one and one for all," Gary said mockingly, looking at Tommy. "Well he should have thought of that before he took the skull. Jerk!" Gary screamed across the table at Tommy.

"Jeff?" Karen snapped her fingers in front of Jeff's face to snap him out of his skull-induced trance.

"OK, settle down boys." Uncle Jeff said without taking his eyes off the table, leaning against the kitchen counter with a .306 slung over his shoulder. "I can't believe what you boys have found. This will change everything."

"We can't keep it Uncle Jeff," Lex said.

"What d'ya mean, we can't keep it? Anthropologists have been looking for concrete evidence of the Old One's forever. This is a major discovery. You boys will be famous!" Uncle Jeff could barely keep his excitement in check.

"We have to give it back," said Ricky.

"Give it back?" asked Uncle Jeff laughing, "Give it back to whom?" Jeff said looking around the room but again, no one would meet his eyes but Karen. "OK, spill it. Where did you find the skull?" Jeff finally asked the critical question.

"We ah, kind of, dug it up," volunteered Tommy.

"Kind of dug it up, where?" asked Uncle Jeff.

"On the ridge," piped in Ricky. "We told Gary and Tommy about how we found the midden with the polished green lava stones beneath it and got the idea to look below the cone of stones we found on the ridge. When we removed a bunch of stones from the top we found the skull below and other bones below that."

"I understand your curiosity and I suppose I am to blame for fuelling it but what would possess you to rob a grave? That's one of the biggest taboos in any society," Uncle Jeff was shocked.

The boys were all looking at Tommy, and he knew it was up to him to respond for the group. "All I could think of was how happy it would make my dad to see this. I thought we would all be rich and famous. I wasn't thinking"

"Yeah, well now we have Bigfoot after us because of you," Gary pointed at Tommy.

"That's why I called you," said Karen. "I don't know what these boys have gotten into but come take a look at the sliding door."

"Who do you think could have done that? They were all inside with me when I heard that rock hit the glass. They have ticked someone off enough to throw rocks at our house."

"I don't know but I think we had better put the skull back just to be on the safe side," Jeff took out his phone and made a couple of calls.

Within the hour four of Jeff's friends showed up with rifles of their own and Jeff came back into the kitchen and put the skull into the backpack. "We are going to put this back were it belongs."

"I'm coming too," Ricky said jumping up and grabbing his jacket.

"Not a chance, buster!" Karen said ripping the jacket from him.

"Your mom's right, Ricky. It's too dangerous. There is no telling what you boys have awakened."

"But I know where the stone pile is..." Ricky really wanted to go, to somehow make up for what they had done.

"I know where it is too, remember? Now you boys stay inside until I get back and take care of your mom." Jeff said pulling Karen outside the kitchen door.

"Now, take my .306 and keep it at the ready, just in case. Bill and Larry are armed and will be in their truck at the end of the driveway if you need them." Jeff nodded in Bill and Larry's direction and they waved at Karen as they sat on the tailgate of their truck, smoking.

"Isn't this a little much for someone throwing rocks at the house?" Karen really did wonder if all the men in her life were over the top reactionaries.

"We'll be back in an hour or two," said Jeff rubbing her shoulder and smiling.

"OK, men let's go," Jeff signaled his two friends to follow, "it's not far, maybe 20 minutes up the trail. I just hope I can remember where the path off the trail is."

They had no problem finding the path. As they got close they began to find the smooth red stones strewn all over the trail, like ripe apples had fallen from an invisible tree. The path itself looked like a dozen men had marched up and down along its length; all of the ferns were stomped into the ground. They reached the giant red cedar but the stone pile was gone. All that remained was a hole about chest deep to Jeff. No bones or stones were in sight anywhere in the area. The men were alone and the forest was still.

Jeff realized the skull had to be returned to the Old One's and considered leaving it in the hole by the red cedar. But he felt this was not the proper way to redeem themselves for their transgression into the Old One's realm. He just knew it wouldn't be that simple.

*****

Karen heard truck doors slam from inside the kitchen and met Jeff at the end of the driveway barely an hour after he had left. "So? What happened? Did you find anything? Why does that pack look like its still got something in it?"

"We found the spot, but there was nothing there but a deep hole," Jeff said.

"Well, I think the boys found and took something from someone they shouldn't have and now they are angry and want it back. So why didn't you just leave that skull up there so they wouldn't bother us anymore?" Karen confronted Jeff.

"What are you saying? You think I know who chased the boys and broke your window?" Jeff replied incredulously.

"Well, don't you? You make one phone call and within minutes four brothers show up with rifles. Aren't you plugged in to all of the secret tribal stuff that goes on around here, protecting the land and such?"

"Yeah, maybe I am. We all stick together and we are here for you, too. But we had nothing to do with this and I would know if it was one of us." Jeff understood that he was talking to a mother protecting her kids.

"Well, I don't buy into this superstitious legend about the Old One's," Karen moved back toward the house.

"You're probably right. I mean what are the chances of the boys stumbling across the grave of a Sasquatch when people have been looking for that evidence for what, hundreds of years?" Jeff was attempting to placate his sister's fears. "I am going to get some things at my place and will be back soon. I'll ask Bill and Larry to stick around until I get back in case you get any more rock throwers."

"Wait. You might as well take Ricky's buddy Gary home over on Sockeye Crescent before his parents come looking for him," Karen said as she entered the kitchen.

Gary was only too happy to leave. The thought of Bigfoot running after him through the forest would haunt his dreams for years to come. Karen wasn't too happy about Ricky going with them but she couldn't very well deny him taking his scared little friend home. She could only guess at the phone call she would get later from the kid's parents wondering what kind of scary movies she had let them stay up all night watching on Halloween weekend.

Ricky let his friend ride shotgun while he sat in the back and stared out the window behind him. As the sun rolled behind the Coast Mountains he watched the strange orange light dance on the dead trees standing amongst the living in the forest. Listening to the crunch of the gravel beneath the truck tires, the crook of the road slowly straightened to reveal that old cedar stump where he used to meet his friend, now piled high with smooth red stones. Ricky closed his eyes and felt the warm glow of the stones long after they would have passed from view and knew what he had to do.

That night was Devil's night, the night before Halloween. There was no moon and it was black outside of the city but the stars seemed to be enough to light the sky. Karen turned in early to read in bed. The boys stayed up till the early morning hours talking about what they had learned of the Old One's on the Internet and discussing legends and theories with Uncle Jeff. No one knew what to do with the skull now that the gravesite had been moved. They did however agree not to tell anyone of their discovery. It would be pointless anyway since they needed the skull to prove their story and they knew they couldn't keep it. No one would ever believe them and they were not sure they cared.

Ricky lay there with his clothes on inside his sleeping bag for a long time until he was sure Lex and Tommy were asleep. Uncle Jeff had gone upstairs to sleep in his room some time ago. He grabbed the backpack off of the kitchen table and picked up his boots, registering that the clock read 4:15. Carefully and quietly he walked past the others sliding open the door to step out onto the deck. It was really dark and took awhile for his eyes to adjust as he sat there lacing up his boots, watching his foggy breath dissipate in the radiance of the deck lights.

Walking along the road he couldn't see anything other than the frost glittering off the gravel in the faint starlight. He snickered to himself at how aptly Crystal Street was named. A dark figure ahead took three strides and crossed the road. Ricky froze in his tracks wondering if he was doing the smart thing being out here alone. As he listened, still, without the crunch of gravel below his feet, came sounds of several entities moving about him off the road. "Clack! Clack!" came a sound like two stones banging together some distance ahead, but how far he couldn't be sure. He walked for a couple of minutes and heard "Clack! Clack!" once again but this time to his right, off of the road.

Ricky stood there a long while unsure of heading into the darkness off of the road. Suddenly a ray of green and purple light flickered across the dark sky from the Hazelton Mountains in the east, to his right. It was much too early to be sunrise but what could it be otherwise, Ricky wondered. Again, "Clack! Clack!" the sound of the stones beckoned him forward and he could now see the cedar stump by the light in the sky. Forward he waded through the ferns and tall grasses thoroughly soaking his clothes.

The stump was bare; there were no stones. Ricky looked about but there was only silence and that thin ray of unusual light in the sky, maybe two fingers wide. He fumbled with the backpack and got the skull out and placed it on the stump and waited. Nothing. And he waited. Minutes passed and still he waited. The ray in the sky began to get brighter and broader. Ricky looked up and watched as the eastern horizon fluoresced in the most spectacular range of greens, reds and purple he had ever seen. A ribbon of light undulated atop the mountains like the dance of a dozen snakes, all of different colors. "The aurora borealis!" Ricky said aloud to himself as he looked up in awe. He had been told of this and even looked up videos on the Internet but the real thing was entirely different. He was mesmerized.

Ricky had no idea how long he stood there watching the light show but as it faded he remembered what brought him there and looked back to the stump to find the skull gone. He hurriedly looked about to find some trace of the Old One's who took the skull but the darkness was returning and the lights in the sky had diminished his night vision. Ricky detected a faint glistening from the surface of the stump and put his hand out to feel three smooth stones. They were too dark to see so he put them in the backpack and stumbled in the darkness back to the road.

The walk home was somehow different than the walk to the cedar stump. Ricky had touched something outside of himself that made him feel as though he belonged here, in this time. He didn't feel so much apart as part of this place now. The land had accepted him.

He stepped up onto the deck at the back of the house and sat down on the bench. "I took the skull and did what I had to do," said Ricky.

"I know little, brother. I know," said Uncle Jeff as he leaned forward opposite Ricky out of the shadows and into the light.

Unclasping the backpack Ricky dumped three stones onto the deck between them. One green. One red. One purple.

