The Madman of Black Bear Mountain Read online

  Jim was alive!

  Our soaking-wet teacher cowered just outside the cave with his tattered rucksack cradled to his chest—and he was standing face-to-face with what looked like the same humongous bear that had ransacked our camp earlier!

  Jim shrieked. The bear yelped. And the equally terrified bear and teacher turned to run as fast as they could in opposite directions. Only Jim ran smack-dab into the cave wall, knocking himself out cold.

  And that wasn’t even the most surprising thing! It was the huge stack of partially burned money that fell out of Jim’s bag after he hit the ground.

  10

  IN DEMANTOID

  FRANK

  HE’S ALIVE!” I CRIED, LOOKING down at Jim and the bundle of strange-looking charred currency now lying by his side. The showdown between the bear, our teacher, and the cave wall had me shocked, elated, and baffled all at once.

  “And he’s rich!” Joe added, reaching down to pick up the cash. “I’ve never seen money like this before.”

  The bills were about the size of normal paper currency, but they were a pale peachy color with strange foreign writing on them and singed, frayed edges, like someone had tried to light them on fire. “I have no idea what they say, but these are all hundreds.” Joe’s pupils practically turned into dollar signs as he flipped rapidly through the stack. “There must be, like, fifty or sixty thousand bucks here!”

  I grabbed one of the bills. All the text was printed in a Slavic-looking language I couldn’t decipher, maybe Russian or Ukrainian, so the only thing I could read were the numbers. They were hundreds, all right, but instead of Benjamin Franklin, they had a picture of an old bald dude with a pointy goatee.

  “Too bad these are Lenins instead of Franklins.” I pointed to the large drawing of Communist Party founder Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. “These must be rubles from before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. They may have been worth a lot once, but you could probably buy more stuff with Monopoly money now.”

  “Jim isn’t rich?” Joe frowned at Comrade Lenin.

  “Not unless the burn marks on the bills came from a time machine and he’s on his way back to the USSR.”

  Joe asked the million-ruble question. “So what is he doing, wandering around the woods with a bundle of worthless money from a place that doesn’t even exist anymore?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as Jim began to stir. “But something smells fishy, and it isn’t the tuna.”

  “Ugh, Frank? Joe?” Jim said groggily as he lifted himself off the ground. “Boy, is it good to see you guys. I had this awful dream that I ran into a bear.”

  “Did you dream about finding a stack of rubles, too?” Joe held up the money.

  “Huh?” Jim rubbed his noggin and blinked away the fuzzies. As soon as he had his focus back, he suddenly turned two shades pinker. “Oh, that. I, um, it’s just, uh, well, you see—”

  “What we see is our teacher in the middle of the woods with a bundle of old foreign money,” Joe said before Jim could ramble on anymore. “What we’d like to know is why.”

  “I was going to give it back, I swear!” Jim blurted guiltily. “But then I got lost and—”

  “Give it back to who?” I cut in.

  “Max,” he said as Joe and I looked at each other in befuddlement. “I took a stroll before bed last night to stargaze. It was only when I opened my bag to take out my telescope and found the money instead that I realized she must have taken mine when she left. You know, because our backpacks look so much alike.” He looked sheepish. “I meant to bring it right back, but, well, I kind of misread my compass. I’ve been wandering around the woods like a doofus ever since. I guess I’m not much of a woodsman.”

  Jim looked at his feet in embarrassment as we tried to make sense of the story he’d just told us.

  “So you weren’t abducted?” I asked.

  “Abducted? Whatever gave you that idea?” Jim looked perplexed. “The only thing to blame for me going missing is my own backward sense of direction.”

  “But what about the blood we found in your tent?” Joe wanted to know.

  Jim laughed self-consciously and held up a bandaged finger. “I kind of got my finger caught in the zipper. I feel terrible if my clumsiness scared everybody. I so badly wanted everyone to have a great trip, and here I’ve gone and ruined it.”

  Joe turned to me, looking every bit as baffled as I was. “So if he wasn’t abducted, then who—”

  “So wait,” Jim cut in, nervously eyeing the bundle of rubles still in Joe’s hand. “If I didn’t imagine the whole thing about finding the money, does that mean the bear wasn’t a dream either?”

  “Nope.” Joe pointed to giant paw prints in the mud, causing Jim to blanch. “And you didn’t dream about it raiding our camp last night either.”

  “You mean that beast was in our camp?” he gasped, clutching the soaking-wet, torn rucksack to his chest like it was a kid’s blankie.

  I wanted to trust him, but I was having trouble piecing together what had happened to us the night before and how Jim wandering off with Max’s bag fit into it. I looked from the “accidentally” taken money back to Jim. I was starting to get a sneaking suspicion about someone else who might have had a reason to lure that bear into camp.

  “Did you find anything else in Max’s rucksack with the rubles?” I asked.

  “N-nothing exciting, really, just some regular gear, you know?” Jim started to turn pink again and gripped the bag even tighter. “I didn’t mean to take it, though, the stuff in the bag. Which was just stuff and nothing important, really.”

  Jim chuckled nervously.

  Joe eyed him skeptically. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, then how come you’re acting so shady?”

  “Shady? I’m not shady! Why do you think I’m shady?” he blurted shadily, his words running together in a nervous jumble.

  “Then you don’t mind if we take a look?” I asked.

  Jim looked genuinely hurt. “Don’t you guys trust me?”

  “We really, really want to, Jim,” I said. “But we’re going to need your help.”

  Jim stared at his feet and handed over the bag without meeting our eyes. “I’m sorry if I let you guys down.”

  Sunlight began to peek through the rain clouds, giving me a good view inside the tattered rucksack. At the very bottom, under a water bottle and some rope, was a ratty leather pouch. A sparkle of light escaped as I opened the drawstring and pulled out a gleaming green gemstone.

  “Whoa!” Joe exclaimed.

  But green was only the beginning. The clouds parted as I held it up and rays of sunshine burst into the forest, hitting the stone and sending a brilliant rainbow of colors sparkling over us.

  “Is that . . . ?” I started to ask, but I was too stunned by the light display refracting through the gemstone to get out a complete sentence.

  “Yup.” Jim nodded. “It’s an uncut demantoid green garnet.”

  “I used to dream of finding one of these when I collected rocks as a kid,” I said in awe. “It’s one of the rarest precious gems in the world! But what’s it doing here? I thought the good ones were found almost exclusively in only one part of Russia.” I looked through the pouch and found two other demantoids, though neither one as big.

  “I have no idea,” Jim replied. “But I doubt anyone has discovered one that big in nearly a century. There might only be a few in the entire world!”

  “That money you found may not be worth much, but I bet this sure is,” Joe said, dropping the stack of rubles and holding the green stone up to the light.

  I looked from the Russian money to the Russian gemstone, and it hit me. There was another notable foreign import to Black Bear Mountain that might connect the two.

  “What if that Russian mobster’s plane was carrying more than just the Russian mobster when it crashed thirty years ago?” I asked.

  11

  IT’S A TRAP

  JOE

  I COULDN’T STOP MARVELING A
T the gem and the way it put on a zillion-color light show when the sun’s rays hit it just right. It felt like holding a Ping-Pong-ball-size magic disco ball in the palm of my hand!

  “I wonder if this is the important ‘work’ Max tried to cancel our trip for,” I said. “Do you think she was so anxious to get rid of us because she’d stumbled on a treasure left over from the wreckage during her research?”

  “Makes sense.” Frank nodded. “How else would she end up coming across a stack of burned Soviet-era bills and rare Russian demantoids on Black Bear Mountain? I’m guessing that gangster’s ill-gotten gains crashed along with him aboard that plane.”

  “A crash like that could have scattered debris over the entire mountain,” I said. “Investigators never would have been able to find every piece of the wreckage, especially not in rugged terrain like this.”

  “It would have been like searching for a gemstone in a haystack,” Frank agreed. “That stuff could have ended up under a rock somewhere and no one would have even known it was missing.”

  “Or maybe someone did know,” I said, eyeing our gem-stealing science teacher. “I know you said you picked up Max’s bag by accident, but how do we know you didn’t have a sparkling green ulterior motive for choosing this place for our camping trip to begin with?”

  Jim stepped back like he’d been slapped. “What? No! I had no idea what was in it. How would I?”

  “We’re not saying you did, but you were the one who coordinated the trip with Dr. Kroopnik, and you did insist on us coming here even though you’re terrified of flying,” Frank reminded him. “Even when the rest of us thought about leaving last night, you still wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “He could have lured the bear into camp to create a distraction, staging his own abduction so he could steal the jewel for himself,” I suggested to Frank. I didn’t like painting one of my favorite teachers as a villain, but his disappearance with the demantoid raised a lot more questions than he had answers.

  “Joe, Frank, you have to believe me,” Jim pleaded. “I didn’t mean to steal it, I swear! Dr. Kroopnik took my bag and then I got lost. I didn’t even know a bear came into camp last night. I would never do anything to hurt my students!”

  “We want to believe you, but if you didn’t mean to do it, why did you lie to us about finding the demantoids?” A hurt tone from our teacher’s possible betrayal crept into Frank’s voice. “Why not just tell us?”

  Jim took a deep breath. “The truth is, I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t let me keep them and sell them.”

  Well, that was certainly a lot more honest than we were expecting. He must have realized how bad it sounded, because he scrambled to explain.

  “I was going to do it for the Geccos. You guys know how little funding our club gets from the school. If it weren’t for the generosity of Randall’s parents, we never could have afforded this trip. Think of how many other great ecological expeditions we could go on with the money from those gemstones! All the good we could to do to help the environment!”

  In a backward way, his logic kind of made sense. If he was telling the truth, those gems really could make a huge difference to our education as well as GECC’s conservation mission. His idea had a flaw, though.

  “Only they don’t belong to you to sell,” I said.

  “They aren’t Kroopnik’s, either,” he rationalized. “If she stole them from the crash site, then she’s just as much a thief as I am. Worse, even. A man died in that crash—she’s practically a grave robber! At least I was going to do something good with them.”

  Jim pouted, kicking stubbornly at the dirt with his foot. “And besides, she owes us for ditching us after we went so far out of our way see her. What kind of person crushes the hopes and dreams of a bunch of kids like that? She doesn’t deserve something as special as those demantoids.”

  It sounded like the kids weren’t the only ones feeling let down by Max. Not only had Jim looked up to her as a scientist, but from the way he’d gotten all tongue-tied when Max unexpectedly rode into our lives yesterday, I think he might have had a crush on her as well. Because Jim was our teacher, it could be easy to forget he was really only a few years older than us. He was kind of almost a kid himself when you thought about it, and just then, with his brokenhearted puppy-dog pout, he looked like one too.

  “Assuming you are telling the truth, what did you plan to do with the demantoids when you made it back to camp?” Frank asked. “Max has probably noticed she has the wrong backpack.”

  “I hadn’t really figured that part out yet,” he admitted. “I thought about just hiding the gemstones somewhere, but with my sense of direction, I’d probably never find it again. I guess I’m not much of an outdoorsman or a criminal.”

  “Speaking of never finding things again,” I interjected, “we have to figure out a way back. The rest of the Geccos are still all by themselves at camp, and none of us are safe until we find a way off this mountain.”

  “Right, we can discuss this later,” Frank agreed, his guard shooting back up as he scanned the woods for signs of movement. “We’ve wasted too much time already. Let’s try to find that research station before he finds us.”

  I carefully placed the giant demantoid in its pouch with the others, stowed it back in the rucksack along with the rubles, and followed Frank as he crept away from the cave toward the brook.

  “Hold on a second,” Jim called from behind us. “Before who finds you?”

  “Dude, where have you been?” I asked him. “The Mad Hermit.”

  “The Mad Hermit?” Jim scoffed. “Don’t tell me you guys still believe Max’s silly story.”

  Frank and I looked at each other. Thankfully, Jim hadn’t been kidnapped like we thought, but that meant he didn’t know what we knew about the Mad Hermit of Black Bear Mountain.

  “He’s real,” I said. “We saw him.”

  “You can’t be serious,” he said.

  “Deadly,” Frank said. “We were lucky to escape with our lives.”

  Jim must have realized we weren’t joking, because he started scurrying after us, peering over his shoulder as he went.

  “If you’re trying to find the research station, I know where it is,” he volunteered.

  “No offense, Jim, but with your backward sense of direction, I think we’re better off just following Frank,” I said.

  “No, I saw it! I spotted it while trying to find my way back to camp. I was heading for it when I smelled someone cooking fish.”

  “Bon appétit,” I said, handing him the can of tuna, which I’d inadvertently crammed in my pocket after blowing it out when the bear showed up. “Now lead the way.”

  “It should be just over that ridge.” He pointed uphill from the brook.

  Amazingly, Jim was right. When we crested the hill, the station popped into view just a couple hundred yards away, atop the next ridge. The square cabin hovered on the edge of the ravine on a one-story-high set of stilts, giving it a 360-degree view of the entire valley from its wraparound porch. For a forest ranger, it would have made the perfect lookout for fires and poachers. We were just hoping it would make the perfect place to radio for help. We couldn’t see the rapids, but we were close enough to hear them rushing down the mountain through the ravine below.

  “I’ll take the lead,” I said. “There isn’t a lot of cover once we get past that next grove of spruce trees, so just try to stay low and follow me.”

  We were about halfway there when Jim shrieked like he’d been launched out of a cannon. I spun around to run to defend him, only he wasn’t standing behind me anymore. He was dangling upside down from a tree!

  12

  MAXED OUT

  FRANK

  T WANG! WHOOSH! AIEEEEEE!

  The sound of the trip wire reached me a split second before the snare whisked Jim off the ground by his ankle.

  We’d been so busy looking up for threats, it hadn’t occurred to us that the hermit might be hunting for his meals from below
!

  “He’s got me! He’s got me!” Jim screamed.

  “It’s okay, Jim. It’s just a tree that has you, not the hermit,” Joe assured our upside-down teacher. “Hang tight and we’ll have you down in a minute.”

  “I’m hanging tight, all right!” Jim whined.

  Cutting him down wasn’t a problem. Getting him to stand? Well, that was another matter.

  “I think it’s sprained, guys.” Jim collapsed to examine his already swollen ankle. “I can’t put any pressure on it. You guys are going to have to radio for help and then come back to get me.”

  “We’re not leaving you behind,” Joe declared.

  “Thanks, Joe. I’m not so keen on being out here by myself either, but it would take forever to carry me all the way up that hill. The most important thing right now is getting you and the rest of the Geccos back to safety as quickly as we can.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “His ankle is so swelled up, it’s turning into a cankle. Even if we were able to fashion crutches for him, he might not make it. At least here in the trees we can find him some good cover until we get back.”

  We got to work splinting Jim’s ankle and making a quick lean-to nearby where he could rest comfortably, out of sight of hungry eyes.

  “I know you guys still don’t trust me about just finding the demantoids, and I know I’ve got a lot of work to do to rebuild that trust after lying to you,” Jim said while we worked. “But I’ve been thinking about the whole thing, and, well, what about Randall?”

  “What about him?” I asked, curious to see what Jim was getting at.

  “I know it may sound like I’m just trying to deflect the blame, and I feel awful possibly pointing the finger at one of my own students, but Randall is the one who gave me the idea for the trip. He said his parents would pay for our entire stay at Bear Foot Lodge if I could arrange for the Geccos to study with Dr. Kroopnik. I hope I’m wrong about this, but his family’s been coming here for years, and he’d be a lot more likely to have known about the treasure than me.”