Secrets of Bearhaven (18 page)

Margo Lalicki is here. Margo Lalicki is HERE.
Spencer paced inside the Grizzlee Den.

“Calm. Down,” he commanded himself. It was already too late to follow Margo. Not like that was a good idea anyway. His job was to handle the cubs, not the creepy woman who just so happened to
also
be on the premises. But the cubs were nowhere to be found. And Uncle Mark and Evarita didn't know that Margo was here . . . He needed to tell them right away.

Intent on finding his uncle, Spencer left the Grizzlee Den, nearly tripping over two little kids on their way in.

“No bears?” they asked, but Spencer didn't answer. Whatever Grady and Margo had planned for Ro Ro didn't sound good. He needed to act fast.

The atmosphere of the carnival had changed since he'd entered the Grizzlee Den. Kids were racing around unattended from game to game, clutching hot dogs or boxes of popcorn. A few moms seemed to be chaperoning whole herds of children, but the majority of the adults had either gone inside the barn or were making their way toward the barn's open doors.

The show hadn't started yet, but it looked like it was about to. Spencer did a quick lap around the carnival's small grounds, scanning the crowd for either Uncle Mark or Evarita. He made his way over to the barn. If he could just slip in behind a group of adults, maybe no one would notice—

Suddenly, a boy around Spencer's age was thrust out of the barn's entrance, accompanied by a loud, gruff “No kids! Out!” from someone inside.

“You didn't have to
push me.
Nobody said there was a bouncer.” The boy turned to glare at whoever was attached to the muscular arm that had removed him from the barn. The bouncer stepped out into the sunshine, huge, muscled arms crossed. A football helmet gleamed on his head.
Ivan!

Spencer backed up and walked a few paces away, then darted around the side of the barn. He pressed his back up against the weathered wood.
First Margo, now Ivan.
Spencer reached for the jade bear. He needed to make a plan.

Carefully, he peered around the edge of the barn. Ivan still stood outside the open doors to the grandstand. Spencer looked at the giant's scariest feature: the football helmet. It wasn't the same one he'd worn when he'd first chased Spencer. This one was red. Did this creep have a different helmet for every day of the week? Ivan turned, listening to someone, then nodded. He rolled the massive barn doors closed, shutting the wide entrance to the grandstand and stationing himself outside a regular door that Spencer hadn't noticed before: an entrance to the barn that wouldn't require moving the bigger doors. Spencer eyed this new option. If only Ivan wasn't guarding it . . .

He needed to find another way in. He
had
to find Uncle Mark and Evarita. Releasing the jade bear, he started down the long side of the barn, searching for another door or a window. He saw some windows, but they were way too high to be helpful. He continued around to the back, studying every inch, when he came to a brass handle.
A door!

The door was cut right into the side of the barn, hinged so that it could swing open, and it looked identical to the door Ivan was guarding. Spencer glanced farther down the wall. The back of the barn mirrored the front, complete with its own set of wide rolling doors. They wouldn't be any help, though: Rolling them open would get the attention of everyone inside. He turned back to the smaller door, pressing his ear up against it.

“We got us some of the best hunting dogs in the state.” Jay Grady's voice rumbled out over the hum of the crowd in the creaky grandstand.

Spencer tried the handle, but the door was locked. He scanned the ground for anything he might use as a lever to pry the door open with . . .
A stick!
He grabbed for something that was half buried in the dirt. It didn't come up. In fact, it didn't budge at all.

“That's weird,” Spencer muttered, crouching to get a better look.
Wait a minute . . .
He pinched a piece of what he'd thought was bark on a stick and pulled.
This is electrical tape,
he realized, unwinding the dirty black tape to reveal a tightly packed bundle of wires. He quickly dug around it and discovered three more bundles. After studying the dismantled computer at home, Spencer knew enough about wiring to know that this was definitely not right.
This is enough wiring
to power all of Bearhaven! What could Jay Grady possibly need all this for? And why is he hiding it?

Spencer examined the place where the wires disappeared into the ground. It was obvious that someone had tried to bury the four bundles but hadn't dug quite deep enough. A little ridge of dirt gave them away. Spencer followed the ridge as if it were a trail, and was led into the nearby trees. A few steps more and he found himself standing in front of two silver doors on the side of a hill that he hadn't been able to see from the barn. Spencer had spent enough time in Bearhaven to know that even though the doors were aboveground, whatever they led to must stretch out far below, cut into the earth and hidden from view.

Evarita was right. Something bigger than Jay Grady's bear baying was definitely going on here. Spencer pressed his hands against the silver doors. There was no handle or button or anything that might allow him to enter. He pushed, but the doors didn't budge.

“This place is as bad as the Lab,” he muttered.
Or maybe it's just like the Lab!
Even though Spencer didn't think Jay Grady was half as smart as Professor Weaver, he had to give it a shot. He looked around, making sure nobody was watching. Leaning closer, he blew a big breath of air on the doors.

When nothing happened, Spencer cleared his throat and straightened his flannel shirt. Nobody had to know he'd tried that.

He ran back through the trees to the barn and headed for the front entrance. He had to find Uncle Mark and Evarita
now.
Even if that meant he had to go through Ivan to do it.

Ivan was still blocking the only open entrance to the barn, but Spencer had planned on that. He headed straight to the Grizzlee Den, grabbing the materials he needed from the ground and abandoned picnic tables as he went. By the time he ran up the stairs and burst into the empty room, he had two plastic cotton candy bags, a popcorn box, a plastic fork, and a plan.

He let himself into the unlocked cage. It stank, but Spencer had planned on that, too.
This'll teach them to clean up after their bears,
he thought, his anger flaring as the image of two cubs being caged in such a horrible place filled his mind again. Using the popcorn box, he scooped bear droppings off the ground and filled the bags.

With a bag of poop in each hand and the fork in his back pocket, Spencer sprinted from the Grizzlee Den, descending the stairs in one giant leap. He raced to the barn, ducking behind a trash can just as Kate had shown him in Bear Stealth training. He stayed crouched, hidden not far from where Ivan was standing.

A loud cheer burst out of the barn.
I just have to get in there,
Spencer assured himself.
The noise and the crowd will cover me once I'm in . . .
He pulled the fork from his pocket
and quickly jabbed holes in the two bags, tearing at the plastic with the fork to widen the punctures.

“Here goes nothing.” Spencer crawled to one side of the trash can. He focused on a spot beside Ivan's feet, took a deep breath, and lobbed one of the bags.

Nailed it!

The bag of poop smacked down on the ground beside Ivan, causing the hulking man to grunt and jump away from the smelly mess. His footwork was surprisingly fast for a lumbering giant, but Spencer couldn't worry about that. Now was his chance. With the second punctured bag in hand, Spencer pulled his cap down and his T-shirt up over his nose. Ivan looked angrily in his direction. Just then, Spencer leaped up.

As Ivan stalked toward him, Spencer aimed at the cage of Ivan's football helmet. He threw the second bag of poop as hard as he could, like he was rocketing a baseball straight into a catcher's glove, nailing a game-ending out. Spencer's accuracy was perfect. Cheng would have been proud.

Smack!

Ivan bellowed, but another cheer erupting from the barn drowned out the giant's voice. Spencer dashed forward, easily avoiding Ivan's swinging arms. The bag of poop had done its job. Lodged in the cage of Ivan's helmet and oozing bear droppings, the successful hit bought Spencer the time he needed to get through the door and into the barn. He'd have to thank Ivan later for wearing that creepy football helmet. Without it, the bag would have just dropped messily to the ground. Instead, it was stuck in the plastic cage, blocking Ivan's sight and filling his face with the disgusting muck.

Spencer slipped into the raucous crowd, weaving through the first row of cheering people as fast as he could. He needed to put as much space as possible between himself and that door. Spencer shimmied out of his flannel shirt and plunged it deep into a nearby trash can. Ivan would probably come looking for him, and he might as well make himself a little harder to identify.

The people around him were on their feet, stomping and yelling in the rows of bleachers that made up the grandstand. Spencer pushed through, trying to get a good look at the dirt ring in the middle of the barn.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jay Grady's voice roared. “You have waited long enough!” The crowd grew louder. Spencer pressed forward, squeezing between burly men, ducking in front of cheering women. “I promised you a show,” Grady cried over the loudspeakers. “And now you're gonna get one!”

“Gotta be better than last week,” a bearded man in front of Spencer shouted to the man beside him. “That grizzly's no fighter.”

She's not supposed to be a fighter! And she's NOT a grizzly!
Spencer wanted to shout, but yelling at them wouldn't help anything. Instead, he rammed his way past. Breaking out on the other side of the two men, Spencer finally had a view of the ring.

Immediately, he wished he didn't.

Chained to a thick metal stake dug deep into the dirt, Ro Ro was pacing at the far side of the ring. She stopped for a moment to paw the ground and let out a pained cry, then resumed her pacing.

“Let's see if this ol' mama bear can't find her fighting spirit!” Grady cried. The crowd cheered in response. “Bring 'em in, boys!”

On the far side of the barn, two men appeared, holding a metal ring, straining to pull something forward. Attached to the single ring were two chains, and at the end of each chain, with metal collars clamped around their necks, were Ro Ro's cubs. The cubs thrashed and dug in their heels, trying to fight the men who continued to drag them forward. Their terrified whimpers filled the grandstand.

No!
Spencer's pulse raced. His stomach twisted and turned. The cubs were only a little smaller than Kate and looked just as spirited and incredible as any cub he'd seen in Bearhaven. How could anyone treat them this way?

One of the men yanked hard on the chain of the closest cub. The animal was jerked forward, and in the moment of imbalance the two men got the cubs into the ring and their shackles attached to the stake.

Ro Ro rushed frantically back and forth between her cubs. They were two little brown balls of fluff crouched behind her, their chains tangling, their panic identical to their mother's.

A bell rang, and four mangy brown-and-white dogs streaked across the arena, released from a passageway between two sets of bleachers.

Spencer gritted his teeth, afraid he might vomit. He hadn't expected four dogs. He also hadn't expected . . . these dogs. Hurtling toward the bears, barking ferociously, the dogs looked underfed, their ribs visible beneath their hides. At least two of them had scars, and all four looked crazed.

The dogs launched themselves at Ro Ro, who snapped and growled at them, trying desperately to stop them from reaching her cubs. She cuffed one of the dogs with a heavy paw, and it tumbled backward into the dirt.

The crowd cheered. Spencer wanted to scream. How could so many people stand here and watch this happen? How could they
enjoy
it? He stared into the ring, his eyes welling with tears of anger.

Ro Ro strained at her chains, shaking and miserable, while her cubs bleated in terror. The dogs snarled at them, then moved in to bite Ro Ro's paws and the soft fur of her throat. They kept on coming, barking and snarling and grabbing at her fur.

As soon as two of the dogs started to drag Ro Ro down into the dirt, another lunged around her to go after a cub. Ro Ro roared and threw herself on top of the dog. The fourth dog leaped on top of her, sinking its teeth into her throat.

“Ro Ro! No!” Spencer cried. He couldn't stop himself. He felt as trapped as she was.

For an instant, Spencer thought that Ro Ro might have heard him. He was sure he'd seen her head flick in his direction. Then, it didn't matter if she'd heard or not. Ro Ro was rising up on her hind legs. A new snarl rippled through her body. She grabbed one of the dogs by the collar and thrust it aside. The audience gasped, then erupted into screams and whistles.

Spencer wanted to look away. The sight of so many animals fighting for their lives was too much . . . too horrible . . . but he kept his eyes locked on Ro Ro, willing her to be strong enough to protect herself and the cubs. At least until this horrible show was over and Uncle Mark, Evarita, and Spencer could get to them—

A hand clamped down on Spencer's shoulder.