then Freddie yelled, “What’s that?”
Nancy and Edison saw the problem immediately: An overturned canoe abutted one of the large stones, a young girl clinging to the side.
Both adults paddled toward the trouble spot, with Edison’s canoe getting there first. He caught water to bring the boat to a stop, reached over carefully to avoid tipping, and with Freddie’s help lifted the girl aboard.
“Nancy, I’m going to take this child to the rendezvous point with Galen. She doesn’t appear hurt, just in shock. Will you show Carmelita how to salvage an overturned canoe and follow us to the bridge crossing?”
“Sure,” she replied. “We’ll be right behind you.”
The girl was conscious but moaning softly.
“My sister, where is she?”
Edison bent toward her.
“Was someone else in the canoe with you?”
She started to cry.
“We got into an argument, and somehow the boat tipped over.”
“There she is!” Freddie yelled and pointed toward a second rock farther on.
Edison paddled hard toward the other girl, who appeared unconscious. Suddenly Freddie leaped out of the boat. Before Edison could stop him, he swam toward her. He reached her quickly and instinctively threw his arms around her to raise her up. Edison arrived a few moments later, positioned the canoe, and slowly lifted the child into it.
Then Freddie spotted his brother and Galen, but before he could call out, Edison had reached over and wrenched him into the canoe by his shorts.
“Freddie, I could…” He paused as he thought better of his words then quickly paddled to the river bank, where Galen and Tonio were standing. Nancy and Carmelita were not far behind, with the girls’ canoe in tow. All the boats ran up the sloping bank together.
Galen reached out and pulled both canoes farther onto the sandy soil then scanned the two new occupants of Edison’s canoe. The older girl, about twelve, was still crying. The younger one was breathing but not moving. He gently picked her up, placed her on the riverbank, and examined her for injuries.
“Tio Galen, will she live?” Freddie whispered.
“Oh yes,” Galen said, smiling, as the girl opened her eyes and saw the wet boy standing next to the big man.
At nine years old going on sixteen, Freddie couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her hazel eyes seemed to penetrate his water-soaked skin. Wet, blonde hair closely framed her baby-round face.
“What happened?” he asked.
The older sister answered first.
“We were visiting Grandpa Alex and Grandma Debbie here in Front Royal. Our daddy is with the Air Force—Colonel Luke Daumier. He’s being transferred to a post in Pennsylvania next week, so we thought we’d do one last canoe trip. But then she started to act like a brat, and the canoe overturned.”
Freddie moved closer to the younger girl. He had never seen anyone so pretty.
She looked up at him.
“Did you save me?”
Freddie didn’t know what to say, so Edison said it for him.
“Yes, my dear, he did.”
“What’s your name?”
“Freddie Hidalgo,” he stammered. “Wha … what’s yours?”
“Lilly Daumier.”
Before he could jump back, she sprang from the ground and threw her arms around him.
“Okay, let’s get the girls back to their folks and the boats back to rental,” Nancy said. She and Carmelita helped the two girls along the path, accompanied by Freddie, who wanted “to keep them safe.” Galen and Tonio brought up the rear, while Edison alone powered the armada of rope-linked canoes back up the river.
“Tia Nancy, why did Freddie do that … I mean … jump into the river?”
“Because he’s a boy, Carm. Because he’s impulsive, impetuous, and…”
She thought back to the day that a certain scrawny, cross-eyed young man had climbed into her canoe despite her protests. She sighed.
“Tio Galen, why did Freddie turn all red when the girl hugged him?”
“There are several answers to that, Tonio. The scientific one has to do with dilated blood vessels just under the skin. The human one has to do with feelings. Unfortunately, we can’t control either one. Let’s head back now.”
Bear and cub moved in unison along the trail.
CHAPTER 2
Moonsingers
“Bob, where’s Galen? Didn’t the two of you come home together?”
The men had headed out at the crack of the autumn dawn, her Bob to play with his beloved old locomotives at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, and Galen to one of the city’s free clinics where he “kept his hand in,” as he called it, by volunteering medical care for the indigent locals. The work had helped to lift the dark clouds that still seemed to take hold of him periodically in the six years since he had joined his friends on the mountain. He felt useful again. With the three kids progressing so well in school now, Nancy also kept busy volunteering for the Red Cross.
“He’s somewhere in the woods,” Edison said. “He asked to get out of the kidmobile on the way up. Said he was carrying out some observational experiment with the forest animals. I gave him one of the phones, so we can call him when the school bus drops the kids off. Better he keeps his mind active. I don’t want to see him slip into another depression.”
Nancy nodded and returned to the kitchen and her dinner preparations. Three adults and three preteens could scarf down a lot of food.
Galen sat in the blind he had set up as his observation post, quietly waiting and watching. He had trained his binoculars on an opening in the rocky hillside, upwind from the blind, and he mentally reviewed his notes. He still couldn’t believe it—Canis lupus, the gray wolf! Actually two of them, male and female. What were they doing this far south? He had always thought them to be northern predators.
Must be the ever-encroaching developments forcing wildlife closer to the cities and suburbs.
He had read that even his beloved Northern Virginia was seeing an influx of coyotes. Deer were overwhelming the subdivisions, and traffic incidents involving the animals had become near-daily occurrences. One poor black bear paid with his life for wandering into a hospital.
There! He saw the movement. The male, must be a good eighty to ninety pounds, carrying a dead rabbit in its mouth to the den opening. Then he saw the reason why: The smaller female was limping—she couldn’t hunt. He adjusted the
