~Chapter 3~

"Man, this is hopeless," Barry sighed.

The O'Reilly gang was gathered over dinner in the camp mess hall, picking at some beef stew, that, for obscure adult reasons had cinnamon sticks in it. Their mood was glum.

All day they had tried to sneak away from the Camp to go hunt for the treehouse and the treasure and all their attempts had failed. Ms Green's long happy life in nature had apparently given her eyes like a hawk and a powerful sixth sense for boy sneakiness.

Whenever the gang tried to sneak away, while she was busy, she seemed to materialize out of thin air in front of them, ushering them back to wood-cutting or corn-gritting or whatever. Whenever one of the gang had asked to be excused, she had immediately engaged two of the others in some activity, keeping them there until the third member couldn't pull the bathroom visit any longer.

Finally, in desperation, Barry had tried to fake a sprained ankle, and asked in a weak voice if Eggy and Kyle could help him back to the camp. Ms. Green had felt his ankle a bit, declared that it was "fine, just a bit sore" and pulled out a jar with some weird herbal ointment she had smeared on his ankle, before tying some gauze around it. She claimed that the Cherokee swore to it, and indeed Barry had had a few choice words to say about the foul-smelling concoction as soon as Ms. Green was out of earshot.

In short, the obstacles between the O'Reilly Gang and the three thousand forgotten Yipper cards in Sector M's old treehouse, had grown to tremendous proportions over the afternoon. And the evening until bedtime would be occupied with Indian legends and stories in the big teepee by the river. The big teepee with only one, closely guarded exit.

"So, Eggy," Barry asked, "You got a plan."

Egbert didn't answer. He was staring down on his untouched beef stew as if it had personally offended him. Barry and Kyle send each other a worried look. When Egbert was in that mood, bad stuff tended to happen.

XXX

Numbuh Thirteen's log, Saturday, 6:15 PM

The KND "Find your way" department is as incompetent as ever. They said that Camp Gribwald was only two miles away from the treehouse, and now I have been walking for four hours and passed the same rock three times and still the camp is not in sight. Boy, those guys are going to get yelled at when I get back.

The terrain is extremely hostile, I have fallen into four brooks, torn my wrist on some brambles and been severely bitten by an ant. Fortunately, I am an expert survivalist, so I will now eat my emergency candy bar and then build a shelter, where I can spend the night.

Numbuh thirteen out.


A bit shorter than my usual updates, but this is also more of a leadover to the more action packed parts of the story.

I hope to be able to update more frequently in the future.

As always, all comments and reviews are welcome

Best wishes

Ulathon

Update: I made a small change in that now Barry is the one woh fakes a sprained ankle instead of Eggy - this solves a problem later in the story.