
                        Little Trisha in Big Trouble

                             by Georgie Porgie
                              13 February 2003


                         Chapter 1: Trapping Trisha

     In the Great Smoky Mountains, there are two adjacent scout camps,
named in the language of the native tribe with words meaning cleverness
and beauty, respectively: Camp Gunagitchu for Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts,
and Camp Qatchuntakmi for Girl Scouts and Brownies.  The two camps are
separated only by a wide but shallow stream.

     The Boy Scout camp is constantly occupied by several dozen troops
averaging 20 boys per troop, in tents.  Likewise the Girl Scout camp
hosts a fairly steady population of a few hundred girls, but in cabins.
The few leaders the camps can afford to hire have a very difficult time
keeping track of them all.

     One of the Boy Scout troops present on a hot day in August was
troop 2469.  The highly acclaimed and beloved scoutmaster who had led
the troop for the previous thirty years had recenly been arrested, and
committed suicide, over a sex scandal, causing great grief and anger
among the boys in the troop, but the troop's planned trip to camp had
gone ahead without a leader.

     Three new members, Jeff, Mark, and Curt, had made plans to get
their Merit Badges in tracking and trailing, woodcraft, and knots.  At
least, that's what they told the other boys, which gave them an excuse
to spend all day, every day, away from the rest of the troop, doing
their 'tracking and trailing' stuff, and an excuse to bring lots of
ropes and other assorted equipment to camp.

     On the other side of the wide but shallow stream, Brownie troop 321
finished breakfast and returned to their cabins to begin the first day's
activities at camp.

     Six-year-old Trisha, humming the tune the girls had sung to the
birds at the opening ceremony, turned from the road and approached her
assigned cabin.  The other three girls who shared the cabin were not in
sight, having lingered to play with a camp counselor who seemed to like
them, swinging them around and tickling them.  Trisha's parents had told
her repeatedly to stay away from any adult who seemed to like her, so
she had run away to her cabin to avoid the stranger danger.  She wished
she could have fun like the other girls did, with adults who liked them
and made them so happy.  Still, Trisha was always a good girl, and knew
that her parents were never wrong.

     Slightly out of breath, she tucked her long brown locks behind her
shoulder and straightened her Brownie beanie, then reached for the door
handle.  She wondered at the muddy footprints on the step.  She stopped
and looked beside the trail, surprised at what she saw.

     "Sugarpuff!  What are you doing there!" she exclaimed.  "Come here
this instant, you naughty kitty!"  Now, Trisha was old enough to know
the difference between a real kitten and her little white kitty-cat
doll, but she liked to pretend Sugarpuff understood her.  Even so, she
knew she had to go get the doll herself, wondering how it had got out of
her cabin at all.

     Just as she bent over to pick it up, the doll leapt and tumbled and
ran into the woods, toward the stream.

     "Sugarpuff!!  You come back here!" Trisha shouted, chasing after
her disobedient kitty.  She spotted it going down the bank, and ran
faster.  She reached the top of the stream bank, and spotted the little
doll at the edge of the stream.  "Sugarpuff!"  She could see the bright
white doll pausing at the edge of the stream, though her eyes hadn't yet
adjusted to the shadows of the tall thick trees above her.

     Without looking back, the little kitty doll leapt into the water
and splashed across the stream and up the other bank.

     Annoyed, Trisha ran down the bank and looked around for a way to
cross it without getting wet.  Seeing no way, but not wanting her little
kitty cat doll to get away, she ran through the stream herself, her feet
sinking into the mud.  She ran up the other side of the bank, calling
"Sugarpuff!  You naughty kitty, come BACK here!"  She spotted the little
doll, still white but a little muddy, running along a trail between four
trees, directly away from the stream.  She charged down the trail as
fast as she could run, certain she could catch up to her dolly before it
got much further.

     "Aahhie!" she screamed, when she tripped and fell headlong into a
tangle of... what?  She didn't know what had stopped her, she hadn't
seen anything in the dim light under the trees, but she felt herself
tangled up in a mass of tiny strong cords running between the trees.
"Eeeie!" she screamed, twisting and struggling, finally calming down
somewhat and beginning to disentangle herself from the morass of tiny
invisible cords that held her suspended in the trail.

     "We got one!  We got one!  This way!" a boy yelled.  Footsteps
crashed through the underbrush, and two boys stepped out onto the trail
behind her.  "Hey!!  You're no deer!  What are you doing here?" the
biggest boy challenged.  "You're a Brownie!  You're not supposed to be
in the Boy Scout camp!  You're going to be in BIG trouble when we tell
on you!!"

     "Look what she did to our snare!" the second boy complained.  "She
ruined it!  We can't catch any deer in this now!"

     "I- I was trying to catch my dolly," Trisha stammered, frightened,
still trying to pull free from the cords.

     "Your what?" one boy asked.  "Your dolly was in our snare?  Where
is it now, then?"

     Trisha tried to look around, but didn't see Sugarpuff.  "I saw it
run right through here," she gestured awkwardly, still laying over on a
web of unseen lines.

     "Your dolly?" the other boy mocked.  "Your doll was running from
you, huh?  Liar!"

     "It was," Trisha moaned, weakly.  She knew how silly it sounded.

     "So you're a liar on top of everything else too," the first boy
accused.  "Coming into the Boy Scout camp where you're not allowed to
be, wrecking our snare so we'll have to do the whole thing over again,
and lying to us, and not only that, look at your shoes!"

     Trisha lay in the cords, half over, helplessly tangled, trembling
in fear.  She looked at her feet and saw the mud all over her shoes,
even some just visible on her Brownie socks.

     "You're in big big trouble!" a boy added, unnecessarily, as he
stepped forward and stood glowering down at her.  The other boy came up
beside him.

     Trisha squirmed in the snare, afraid they were going to hurt her.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!  Please don't tell on me!" she pleaded.

     The two boys stood with hands on their hips, angrily staring at
the struggling little Brownie.

     Meanwhile, a third boy off in the bushes put down a fishing rod and
cut a loop of nearly-invisible nylon fishing line from the neck of a
muddy white kitty-cat doll, a loop he had tied half an hour earlier.  He
struggled to suppress his laughter, listening to Trisha's increasingly
desperate pleas.
