?e have to get out before they come back!?I said, my back hair bristling as I scanned the woods for movement. Something massive had crashed through the site, destroyed the camp and chased off the hunters. But if I knew anything about baldfaces, they wouldn? be gone for long.
Hannah chewed on the braided rat tail of hair hanging from her neck. She glanced at her sister, trapped under the debris of what used to be a truck. Ruth? arm was bent at an odd angle, and her full brown beard stuck straight out, a sign she was in great pain.
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Hannah and I set to work, freeing Ruth from the wreckage. The baldface camp was a hairy tangle, much like my life. Many moons ago I was just a sasquatch gathering nuts, roots and berries for winter, but that changed when the baldfaces showed up.
These two-legged beasts rode smoky machines that choked out the air with what Grandma Bertha called ?ull-ution? because the burning feeling the smoke created made her want to pull her throat out. The hunters trampled the shrubs and flowers in the forest in search for sasquatches. A group of them had captured me and took me away from my mountain home. A cruel baldface wanted to rip out my hair to cure baldness in his kind. I would have been lost forever if not for a baldface girl who helped me return home.
When I got back, I learned that my troubles had only just begun. More baldfaces were crashing around the woods in search of my tribe, and they had nabbed Hannah Hairyson. I followed her to a faraway island and, with the help of a baldface named Lysander, I rescued Hannah from a creature collector named Mr. Roland. Now that we were back in the mountains, we were in a hairy tangle: a traitor sasquatch named Dogger Dogwood. But as I looked at the wreckage around us, I realized there was an even bigger tangle.
Broken perma-ice and twisted bars were scattered across the ground like autumn leaves after a windstorm. The only thing left standing was a giant perma-ice cage big enough to house at least six sasquatches. The giant box loomed over the flattened debris. This cage must have been well-built to have survived the furious attack that had levelled the rest of the camp.
?ou?e going to be fine, ?Hannah said. ?room your hair. We?l have you out in a squirrel-tail shake. Barnabas, don? just stand there.? Hannah rushed to her sister? side and fussed over her arm. Her moustache was pointing straight out from both sides of her nose, a sign she was frazzled. She nervously stroked her moustache, trying not to let Ruth see how much the hair stood out.
?top touching my arm, ?Ruth hissed.
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She backed off from her sister and stood up, her blond beard catching the afternoon sunlight, and headed off to the woods. Ruth nodded thanks to me. I smiled at her, then combed the nearby area for anything to help splint her arm. A few strides over, under some broken boards, I found some yellow vines, which the baldfaces often used to tie things down. Hannah returned a few breaths later carrying two straight branches. As I took the sticks from her, I noticed she had a bright green bag in her other hand. ?hat? that I asked.
She sheepishly held it up so I could smell it. Inside was the dried soil we called delicious dirt but the baldfaces called coffee. The baldfaces poured the dirt into hot water and drank it. On one of the sisters?treks to the baldface camps, they had discovered the delicious dirt. They loved the taste of it, saying it tasted like the bittersweet cedar bark they sometimes found in the valley. This coffee gave the sisters endless energy.
