The Man with the Red Bag by Eve Bunting Page B

seemed as innocent and interested as the rest of us. I tried hard to stay awake and not miss anything, but it’s possibleI overlooked a couple of those hot springs.
    We were back at the inn in time for dinner. I ate a lot because I wasn’t going to get much sleep and I needed to keep up my strength. I’d tried cajoling Geneva again into helping me keep watch on Stavros, using the same paper-scrap-in-the-door trick, but I’d had no success.
    â€œThanks a whole lot,” I’d told her. But sarcasm got me nowhere.
    Three times that night I got out of bed and stumbled along the corridor to check that Stavros was still in his room. He was. The paper scrap was still in place, exactly where I’d put it.
    It was maddening to think of him, the bad guy, in there sleeping peacefully all night long. Life is definitely not fair.
    The morning of day seven, we were on our way to Cody. Historic Cody, Wyoming, founded by Buffalo Bill in 1896.
    More of Declan’s good information.
    I sat with Grandma. I was dozing and pondering, pondering and dozing, and she was letting me.
    My grandma knows when to talk and when a guyneeds quiet to think.
    In front of me was Charles Stavros, his bag on his lap. Behind me were Geneva and her dad. Last night Grandma and I had sat with Midge at dinner, and that was part of my ponderings. Midge had been telling us about a dog she had in her kennels. A rottweiler.
    â€œPeople are scared of rottweilers,” she said. “No one has ever wanted to adopt Bogie and he’s the sweetest dog you could ever imagine. And then we have another that looks like a rottweiler, but isn’t. One glimpse of him and people shake their heads. Even looking like a rottweiler is bad news.”
    â€œThat’s the way it works,” Grandma said. “Everybody judges.”
    Well, I was judging Charles Stavros and I couldn’t seem to stop. Maybe what he had in that bag was totally innocent. But…I squirmed in my bus seat. He hadn’t shown Declan anything, had he? Seeing is believing. And I was pretty sure what I’d seen hadn’t been any Native American artifact wrapped up and tied with string.
    We were driving down winding mountain roads.
    â€œWestern Wyoming,” Declan said. “Home of oil wells and cowboys.” And then he got excited. “Look! See the cowboys, driving their cattle…to the left of the bus. Port side, everyone.”
    Scotty slowed to an almost-stop and we crowded to port side to see. There they were, straight out of a movie. That could have been John Wayne, herding his cattle to market. No chuck wagon kicking up dirt behind them, though. Nobody shouting “Git along, little dogies!” At least, not that I could hear from inside the bus.
    I love those old movies.
    In the bus, still cameras clicked. Video cameras roamed.
    â€œKevin,” Millie whispered, close to my ear, “want to see something strange? Or not so strange? Beth and I have been looking over the pictures we’ve taken so far on the trip. We got them developed in the photo shop at the inn. Check them out.”
    â€œBetter sit down, Kevin,” Declan called from the front as Scotty revved the motor again. I slid into one of the empty seats and began riffling through the photographs. In a nanosecond Geneva was beside me.
    â€œWhat have you got?” she whispered.
    It didn’t take me long to discover what I’d got. Twenty-eight pictures. There were the Doves, sitting on a wall at Jackson Lake; the Texans, the four of them posing sidesaddle on a log as if it were a horse, waving their cowboy hats at the camera; Buffo and Blessing, striding out of Great Salt Lake, seaweed wrapped around them like banners; Grandma and Midge on a bench, gazing at Old Faithful, which looked like a plume of smoke in front of them; Geneva and me on the pier, waiting to go on the Snake River raft trip, Geneva’s dad, reading on the porch of the Jackson Lake Lodge;