cooking pot, a frying pan, plastic utensils, bowls, and cups. Put in there so they wouldn’t blow away if the wind came up. No food, however. He had read a sign about bears at the entrance to the campground. They must be keeping their food in the car.
The sleeping bag was unzipped, and the top half had been folded back, airing out the inside. He lay down on the padded cloth and wondered which side of the bag Penny slept in. He could smell some body odors, but he couldn’t tell one from another. The ground was hard. How could she sleep in this environment? Gary was torturing her. Alfred would never treat a girl like this.
There were also some items of clothing. What interested him most were a pile of maps and a spiral notebook. He picked up the notebook and opened it to the first page. It contained dates and locations. He glanced through it and realized that this was their itinerary. Valuable information.
He turned several pages and found what must be a journal of their trip in neat, schoolteacher handwriting. The first sentence that caught his eye read, “The ceremony was just perfect for us.” Penny must be writing the journal. That sentence could only have been written by a girl. He backed up to just before the description of the wedding to see what it said about Gary’s run-in with the police.
Not much. The narrative stated that Gary had been taken to the police station for questioning. Penny went to the station and talked to a motherly woman. Gary was released in about an hour. It was all a misunderstanding. There was no mention of how the misunderstanding came about. No reference to another person, which would be him. And no mention of any doubts that Penny might have about Gary.
Well, that had to change. He had to sow seeds of discontent. Alfred zipped the tent flaps together while still holding the notebook. He stood up and returned to his car, throwing the notebook onto the passenger seat. It contained useful information. They would blame each other for its disappearance. He wanted a document in Penny’s handwriting, anyway. Even if he didn’t like what she had written.
Now that he knew where they were going, he was getting out of here. Out of the rugged country and the cold weather. The outdoor life wasn’t for him. He wasn’t cut out to be a camper. He had enough money to hang on for a few more days. He would meet them a little later in their trip. Assuming that they didn’t call the whole thing off, which was what he wanted to happen.
“I had it this morning. I’m sure I put it with the maps.” Penny frantically looked through the pile of maps and guidebooks again, even though she had already done so twice. She compulsively looked in and under the sleeping bag and threw the dishes around the tent in frustration.
“I’ll look in the car,” Gary said.
“I know I put it in the tent.” But since the notebook obviously wasn’t in the tent it made sense to look in other possible places. So she let Gary check the glove compartment and under the front seats. The backseat contained a pile of food and clothing, almost to the ceiling. She couldn’t have put it there.
Penny was close to crying. She had wanted their honeymoon to be perfect, but it wasn’t turning out that way. Gary returned, empty-handed. When he saw the expression on her face, he took her in his arms.
“It isn’t worth getting upset about, honey. We can recreate our schedule from memory.”
“But it also contained our trip log.”
“This is only the third day of our trip. We can recreate that too. I’ll do it. I’m supposed to be the writer in the family, anyway. Let me keep the log from now on.”
Penny clung to Gary. More than ever, she was sure she had made the right decision to marry him.
“When we go into the village, we’ll get a notebook or something to write in,” Gary continued. “We can probably find something where we’ll buy postcards. We’ll eat supper in the village and watch the show at the lodge. I’ll try to call Henry again.”
There had been no answer when Gary had tried to call Henry before.
“You’ve just made everything all better,” Penny said. “Now can we crawl into the tent and snuggle for a while? I’m freezing.”
CHAPTER 9
“We’ve been married two whole days now.” Gary was filled with awe. He couldn’t grasp the implications of this change in his life that had happened so quickly and yet was so permanent. “Or to put it another way, this is the third day of our marriage.”
“And we’re out of the snow,” Penny added. “It’s getting warmer.”
It had been snowing while they made breakfast.
“Now all we have is rain.”
“A little rain never hurt anybody.”
“There must be enough wheat out there to feed the whole country.”
They had been passing through miles and miles of wheat fields as they neared the Columbia River, which marked the border with Washington.
“After we cross the river we’ll start gaining altitude again on the way to Mt. Rainier,” Penny said, looking at the map. “We may run into some more cold weather.”
“We’re tough. We can take it.” Gary was feeling good. Even though he hadn’t been able to get hold of Henry, he had a feeling that nothing could go wrong.
Alfred didn’t want to get too far ahead of them. He stopped at a lodge in Packwood, a few miles from Mt. Rainier National Park. Last night he had stayed in a motel in northern Oregon. Traveling this way, while not luxurious, was at least comfortable. Eating in restaurants, driving through the countryside in a leisurely fashion. He mustn’t get used to it, because he was rapidly burning through his money.
It was clear from the notebook that they intended to visit the 14,000 foot peak. He hoped they weren’t going to try to climb it. Actually, he wouldn’t mind Gary climbing it, because it was a treacherous mountain, but he didn’t want anything to happen to Penny. He, himself, had never climbed a mountain, and he wasn’t about to start now.
He spread his Washington map out on the bed and studied it. He figured that sometime tomorrow they would show up at Paradise, a village inside the park. Although the park was large, it didn’t have many roads. He should be able to spot them there easily.
He had mixed feelings about finding them. On the one hand, he wanted to see Penny again. On the other hand, if they did make it here, it meant that they were still together and getting along all right. It meant that Penny hadn’t yet seen the light.
The food served in the rustic dining room of the lodge was delicious, and there was plenty of it. The walls were dark wooden logs, just like the walls of the cabin he was staying in. That was a real log cabin, albeit with modern conveniences. From what Alfred had learned about the original log cabins in school, they were dark, cold places, and he wouldn’t want to live in one.
He was chowing down on a healthy hunk of meat when out of the corner of his eye he saw a young couple come into the dining room. He looked directly at them and then jerked his head away. They were supposed to be camping. He hadn’t seen a campground in the vicinity. Did that mean they were staying here?
He became petrified, not able to move for several seconds. Then he turned his head slightly and peeked at them. A waitress escorted them to a table on the far side of the room. Good. They were seated with their profiles toward him, meaning that they probably wouldn’t notice him.
With Gary, it didn’t matter anyway, because he no longer looked like the person who had probably been
