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Chapter 21
The city of Spearfish Lake sits at the root of the north side of a point jutting out into the lake itself. The north side of the point is relatively high and sandy, with a broad, sandy ridge perhaps twelve or fifteen feet high not far back from the lakeshore. Point Drive runs out
along this ridge to the tip of the point, then a little ways back on the south side of the point before it turns to a two-rut, then peters out. Close to town, Point Drive is lined with large beachfront houses, some a century old or more, making it the best neighborhood in Spearfish Lake.
People with money like Frank Matson, and his father, Garth, like Ryan and Brent Clark had their homes there. Farther to the west, Point Drive and the lakefront are lined with somewhat more modest summer cottages, though the prices on those had been rising rapidly in the past
few years.
No cottages lined the south shore of the point, or most of the south side of the lake, for that matter. Though potentially valuable, the ground was very low, only inches above the lake and frequently flooded. God had insufficently divided the waters from the lands here;
while there were places that a boat could float, they were relatively rare, and getting to them was tough. There were places that were high, or at least a little higher than the others, where a booted foot might only sink into the mud an inch or so. Foliage ran to ferns and marsh
grasses, just greening up nicely at this time of year. The trees ran to tamaracks so grubby and hard to get to that even the pulp cutters had bypassed them.
In another two or three weeks, the mosquitos would be so thick that they could drain a person quicker than a battalion of nurses at a Red Cross blood bank. Only an aggressive mosquito control program started decades before kept the town relatively free of the little vampires.
Thinking ahead a few weeks, Pam Appleton wondered if the idea of spending the summer in the swamps south of town looking for snakes was such a good idea after all. Thanks to the mosquitos, the damp, and the humidity, the Spearfish Lake swamps were not a
place where sane people went in the summer months. At times, upon reflection, flipping patties at the Burger Bummer in Athens all summer seemed positively appealing.
There had been no point in trying to deep into the swamp on Saturday, at least partly because Pam didn't want to scare the boys off, but partly she wanted to closely investigate areas where the swamp got close to the sewer system. If the snake had entered the sewer
system from outside, then one of those had to be a likely point of entry, and perhaps there might be other specimens nearby. It was one of the logical things that Pam knew she had to check out, to try to reduce the search from being a needle in a haystack.
The four of them had seen a dozen or more sipedon sipedons, but even a casual glance at each one of them, even from a distance, showed that none was a sipedon gibsoni; none had the distinctive color pattern that Pam remembered so well from the little specimen
she'd seen in the lab at Athens.
Taking a break on a downed log at a relatively dry spot, Pam had given a little vent to the hopelessness of it all. "I'm not sure why we're even out here," she said. "After all, the snake was in the sewer, and that's where we ought to be looking. But, how we could look
up the lines through the grating of a storm drain, I don't know."
At least Pacobel hadn't been a problem Saturday night; he had been so wet and muddy, like the rest of them, that dealing with him hadn't been a problem.
They hadn't planned to go out Sunday, so Pam had been a little surprised to see Josh and Danny knock on her door about nine on Sunday morning. "We got something you'd like to see," Danny said.
For an instant, her hopes rose that they had turned up another gibsoni, but what they showed her was almost as good: a contraption they'd rigged up. It had a mirror down on the end of a stick, with a couple of flashlight bulbs and reflectors on either side of it. The
flashlight heads were powered by a wire to a battery pack that could be slipped in a pocket. There was a lot of duct tape involved, but the head of the device was small enough to go down through the grates of a storm drain, and shine light a fair ways up the drain itself, though the
field of view was necessarily small.
"This is a great idea," she'd told the two of them. "I'm proud of you two for thinking of it."
The three of them spent most of the day Sunday looking down storm drains across the south side of Spearfish Lake. They saw all sorts of junk and garbage, and once they saw a rather rusted revolver that caused them to call the police, who called the Department of
Public Works to get down inside the sewer. A couple of times they saw sticks, and once a piece of rubber hose, but they never saw any snakes. After the heartening start to the day, it ended rather frustrating.
On Monday, Pam was ready to give up. Rather than go out in the swamps by herself again, she got in her car and drove back to Athens. If the funding came through, then she'd clear out her grubby apartment and move back home for the summer; if not, it was time to
get applications in at the burger places.
She found Dr. Gerjevic in his office. "Not much in the way of good news, I'm afraid," she reported.
"Ah, but I have some," he said. "I've been waiting for you to call. This came in the mail this morning." He handed her a letter.
The letter was from the Fish and Wildlife Service in Minneapolis. She read through it quickly. The grant had been approved! She read on and frowned. "Darn," she said. "Only about half the request."
"Not unexpected," he said, "Especially on this short a notice. If we don't find anything this summer, and they're still interested in the specimen, then we stand a good chance of getting full funding for a larger search next year."
"That's something," Pam admitted. "Because at fifty percent funding, after this last few days, I'm doubtful that we're going to turn up anything without a TV survey of the sewers. We did get a look at them yesterday," she said, showing Gerjevic the invention that Josh
and Danny had come up with, "But we didn't find anything."
"Nice idea," Gerjevic said, checking the contraption out. "Who made this?"
"A couple of high school kids I drafted," she said. "I'm not sure, but I think they're the ones that came up with the tentative identification, not Pacobel. They told me they had an idea for an improved version, one that uses a small telescope."
"It's not TV, but it's better than nothing," Gerjevic said. "But it would be better if you had TV. I've been holding off on the further funding requests until I saw how the Fish and Wildlife Service grant came out, but I dropped them in the mail as soon as I opened that
letter. Those folks are quicker than the government. If we get anything at all, we should hear about it in a few days."
"You deserve a black belt in grantsmanship for getting this one through so quickly," Pam said.
"Oh, I've written a few in my day," the professor said. "Anyway, we've got enough to get you started. I would think that you should check the storm drains repeatedly, especially if we don't get money for televison surveillance."
"That seemed pretty obvious," Pam agreed. "That's why I was so delighted when the boys brought me this. It doesn't solve the problem, but it takes the edge off of it."
"Well, maybe we'll get the extra funding," Gerjevic said. "You realize, if you turn up a gibsoni, that this project could carry you through to your doctorate."
"I know that," Pam said. "But, if I don't find one, then I've shot a summer and gotten nowhere."
