His mouth was suddenly dry. There was an open can of beer on the bench, and he took a swig from it.
‘Why don’t you go get us a pack of those things from the grocery?’ I suggested. ‘Think things out while you’re there. If you want out, we’ll get your camera from the car and you can catch a cab back into town.’ I made to hand him some money.
‘I don’t need your money, Mike. I can stretch to a few beers.’
‘Okay then.’
And he was gone. Archie put his head round the door.
‘Sorry to interrupt, but that lady out there is going to put you in the poorhouse.’
‘We’ll be the best dressed paupers there.’
He laughed. This was turning into a more interesting day than usual for him. He looked at what I was doing. ‘Nice gun. Give you some help there?’
‘I might just need it. The receiver and the sight-mounting are all wrong.’
‘Well, let me take a look. No extra charge.’
‘It’s all yours, Archie.’
It took us a little while, but Archie had a few bits and pieces in the back, and one of them seemed to be what we needed. It made the gun look like something from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but it seemed okay.
‘I never ask customers what they’re planning to shoot,’ said Archie.
‘Maybe an animal or two,’ I said.
‘Yeah, maybe, but that other gun you’ve got there, that’s strictly terror.’
I grinned. ‘I hope so, Archie. I really do.’
When we went back out front, there were no new customers and Clancy hadn’t come back.
‘Where’s the nearest place to buy beer?’ I asked.
‘There’s a grocery on the corner,’ Archie answered. I nodded to myself. It looked like Clancy had just walked away.
‘Better start adding this lot up, Archie.’
‘And then maybe I better close for the day for restocking.’ He got to work on his calculator.
Bel was back in her ordinary clothes. She hadn’t worn anything on her feet but the cowboy boots since she’d bought them. ‘Where’s Sam?’ she said.
‘I think we’re on our own.’
‘He didn’t even say goodbye. Will he tell anyone?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I admitted I wasn’t a reporter.’
‘Did he see the guns?’ I nodded. ‘No wonder he ran. They have that effect on me, too.’
Archie had paused in his addition so he could fill a few carrier bags with goods already totted up.
‘Just put them straight in the rucksacks, Archie, we’ll sort them out later.’
I added another torch to the total.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I know you may not need it, but I’m giving you a first aid kit and some mosquito repellent. Plus all my cash customers receive a ten percent discount.’
‘Thanks.’ I turned back to Bel.
‘So we’re going on our own?’ she said.
‘I suppose so. I think we can find the ferry terminal, don’t you?’
‘We can also save some money.’
‘How’s that?’
‘We don’t need two tents now, and one big sleeping bag would do us.’
‘You’ve got a point.’ But just then the door opened and Clancy staggered in. I thought he was hurt, and moved forward, but he was only staggering under the weight of the shopping bags he carried.
‘A few provisions for the trip,’ he said, putting down the bags. ‘Beer, potato chips, cans of chili, tuna, franks, and beans.’ He put his hand into one bag. ‘Look, I even packed the tin opener.’
We all laughed except Archie, who was too busy on his calculator. When he’d finished, it was his turn to laugh. I counted out the money, and Clancy snatched the receipt.
‘If you can’t claim, maybe I can.’
‘Then you can pay for the boat tickets,’ I said, hoisting a rucksack on to my shoulder.
‘It’s a deal.’
The ferry was busy with families heading off on holidays.
‘Where are they all going?’ I asked Clancy.
‘The same place as us,’ he said. ‘The Olympic Peninsula’s popular this time of year.’
‘I thought it was wilderness.’
‘Mostly it is. The folks you see here probably won’t get more than a couple of hundred yards from their vehicles all the time they’re away. There’s a highway circuits the Peninsula, but almost no roads at all in the National Park itself. Here, I brought a map.’
It was the map the National Park Service handed out to visitors. As Clancy had said, there were almost no roads inside the park, just a lot of trails and a few unpaved tracks. The one good road I could see led to the summit of Hurricane Ridge. We were headed west of there, to Lake Crescent. Clancy pointed it out on the map. Outside the National Park boundaries, the rest of the peninsula was considered National Forest. The National Park ended just north of Lake Crescent.
‘See, what Provost did, he took over a house that was already there. They’re very cautious about new building inside the park, but there’s nothing they can do about homes that were there before the area was designated a National Park. He didn’t have too much trouble getting permission to add a few log cabins of the same style. He even had the timber treated so it looked weathered.’
‘I bet he’s kind to dumb animals too.’
We were part of a slow-moving stream coming off the ferry. There were backpackers trying to hitch a ride with anyone who’d take them. Bel smiled at them and shrugged her shoulders. Everybody took the same road out of Bremerton along the southern shore of Hood Canal. There were no stopping places, other than pulling into someone’s drive, so Clancy just pointed out Nathan’s house to us as we passed. It had a low front hedge, a large neatly cut lawn, and was itself low and rectangular, almost like a scale model rather than a real house, such was its perfection. Beyond it we could see the canal itself, in reality an inlet carved into the land like a reverse J. We kept along Hood Canal for a long time, then headed west towards Port Angeles.
‘From what I’ve heard,’ said Clancy, ‘as well as what I’ve seen today, I think our first priority should be to find a campsite.’
He was right. Fairholm was the closest campsite to the Disciples’ headquarters, but by the time we got there it was already full. We retraced our route and called in at Lake Crescent Lodge, but it was fully booked. So then we’d to head north towards the coast where, at Lyre River, we found a campground with spaces. It was less than a mile from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, beyond which lay Vancouver Island, Canadian soil. The air was incredible, intoxicating and vibrant. You felt nobody’d ever breathed it before. It wasn’t city air, that was for sure.
Clancy had been telling us that there was bad feeling in the Pacific north west about logging. A lot of loggers were losing their jobs, a lot of logging towns were going broke. They’d asked if they could go into the National Forest and ‘tidy up’ fallen trees, but this request had been rejected. There were other forests they couldn’t touch because of a protected species of owl. They were getting desperate.
‘One man’s paradise...’ I said.
At the campground, there was a box full of envelopes. We put our fee in the envelope and pushed it through the posting slot. Then we stuck our receipt in a little display case on a post next to our own little site.
‘Isn’t this cosy?’ I said. Bel looked dubious. She’d been sleeping in too many real beds recently to relish a night under the stars. It was about fifteen miles from here to the Disciples’ HQ, so we pitched our tents. Or rather, Clancy and I pitched the tents while Bel walked by the river and chatted to a few other campers. Then, happy with the state of our accommodations, we got back in the car and headed off. We were on the wrong side of Lake Crescent, as we soon found. No road went all the way around the lake. The main road went round the south, and to the north it was half unpaved road and half trail. We were the trail end, which meant we couldn’t take the car anywhere near the Disciples without going all the way around the lake and heading in towards them from the west along the unpaved road. We took the car to the trail-head past Piedmont and got out to think. It looked like it was about a three-mile walk. Driving around the lake might save a mile of walking.