Description: 1 Wolves and Badgers and Thrilling Boy Detective Stories Max the Wolf was a wolf in exactly the same way that foothills are made up of real feet and a tiger shark is part tiger, which is to say, not at all. Max was in fact a boy, between twelve and thirteen years old, and entirely human. He was dressed in a Boy Scout uniform. His loose cotton shirt and shorts were a light greenish tan in color, as were the knee-high stockings that rose out of the weathered brown leather hiking boots he wore. Many brightly colored cloth badges, of every odd shape and size, were sewn onto the front of his shirt. More badges were sewn onto the breasts and back of the dusty red jacket he wore zippered halfway up over his shirt. A blue and white triangle of cloth was draped around his neck, its tightly rolled end points connected in front by a neckerchief slide, deftly hand-carved into the shape of a gray wolf's head, its fierce jaws open to reveal white fangs. Max had blue eyes and fair skin, lightly dusted with freckles. He had a wild mop of brown hair that he frequently had to brush out of his eyes. Usually his hair was restrained by his cap, but he seemed to have lost his cap recently, though he couldn't exactly recall where. Now that Max thought about it, not only could he not remember how he'd lost his cap, he couldn't recall where he was or how he'd arrived there. This was troubling for many reasons. In all the years he'd been a member of Troop 496, Chief Seattle Council, in the countless hikes and camping trips he'd enjoyed, and the many adventures he'd had, Max the Wolf had never once been lost. He was a wizard with map and compass and had earned his Orienteering merit badge while still a Tenderfoot Scout. And he'd never suffered a loss of memory, nor even the briefest moment of blackout. And yet here he found himself walking down the slope of a hill, in the midst of a great forest of mixed broadleaf and evergreen, or so at least it appeared from his limited vantage place. As he walked he passed in and out of the shade of the leafy canopy high overhead. To any observer, and there was at least one, the infrequent pockets of undiluted golden sunlight made Max seem to suddenly shine brightly, like a character in a painting, before he stepped once more into the subdued, heavily filtered light of deep green shadow. The enclosed world was alive with the usual sounds of a forest. Birds sang and bugs chattered to each other from their many hidden enclaves. Many foresty scents drifted on the cool, soft breeze. "Well, Max, it seems you've landed yourself in another adventure," the boy said out loud, even though there didn't appear to be anyone on hand to talk to. "At the beginning of the mystery," he continued, "the best way to isolate what you don't know is to first take stock of everything you do know." This was one of Max's five most important rules of detection. Reciting it helped him to order his thoughts and prepare his mind for the coming investigation. "First, I am in the middle of a forest I don't recognize, though it is so much like the familiar forests of the Pacific Northwest, I'll assume I'm still in that general area, until evidence suggests otherwise. Second, I don't know how I got here." He ticked each point off on his fingers as he mentioned it. "Judging by what I can see of the sky," he said, counting a third finger, "it's about midday and not likely to rain any time soon, so I'm in no immediate danger of exposure. I can't hear traffic sounds, so I must be at least a few miles from any well-traveled road." Now that he was back in a detecting frame of mind, the uneasiness brought about by his initial confusion began to fade. Max was seldom if ever fearful, not even during the Mystery of the Gruesome Grizzly, but he'd never suffered a loss of his mental faculties before. No matter what, he'd always been able to trust his ability to reason, until now. Talking out loud in such an odd situation comforted him just enough to help keep the unfamiliar traces of panic at bay. "I must have been involved in some Scouting activity," he continued as he strolled downhill, "because I'm in uniform. If our Troop was on a camping trip I'd have a backpack, or at least a canteen for a day hike. But I could've lost those along with my hat." As soon as he thought of his possibly missing backpack, Max checked his pockets for his Lost Kit, which an experienced Scout always carried apart from his backpack, just in case he ever became separated from the rest of his gear in the wild. He found his Lost Kit in his left front pants pocket, exactly where it was supposed to be. Inside a small watertight cylinder were a dozen strike-anywhere matches, a candle, a roll of fishing line with two hooks, a few bandages in sterile wrappings, and a needle and thread. A length of heavier twine was wrapped around the outside of the plastic cylinder, since it didn't need to be protected from the elements. Along with his Boy Scout knife, which he discovered safely in his right front pants pocket, he had the minimum basic tools necessary for a resourceful Scout to survive in all but the most extreme sort of wilderness. Since he was in the habit of carrying his knife and Lost Kit during all Scouting activities, even those which took place in the middle of civilization, their presence in his pockets shed no light on the unresolved question of whether or not he was on a day hike or overnight camping trip prior to his memory loss. The bandages in his Lost Kit reminded him that most cases of memory loss were caused by injury, or some other serious trauma. So, mentally criticizing himself for not thinking of it sooner, he stopped walking long enough to give himself as thorough a physical examination as his situation allowed. It didn't take long. His head seemed free of lumps, cuts, or tender spots. He suffered no headache or dizziness. Moving down his body, he discovered no broken bones, or serious cuts. In fact he couldn't even find superficial cuts, scrapes, or the kind of minor scratches and insect bites anyone picks up after spending a reasonable amount of time in the woods. "So the evidence suggests," he said, "wherever I am, I haven't been here long. "If I was on a hike and became separated from my Troop, there's a pretty good chance some of them might be nearby, looking for me." Standing still and quiet in the great woods, he listened for human sounds. Any search party would be blowing on loud whistles or actively calling out his name, not only to find him, but also to aid themselves in not becoming separated from each other. Losing additional members of the search party was always the greatest danger in any rescue operation. He decided to put off calling out himself. For now, he reasoned, it was more important to listen. He could hear all manner of birdsong, but failed to recognize any. Identifying individual birdcalls was never his strong po not like his patrol mate Danny Underbrink, who could tell a hundred different birds by their song alone. Max did better with plants. Unfortunately the many varieties of tree and shrub he could immediately identify were common to all western forests. After a few minutes of more thorough investigation, he found some mushrooms nestled in the shady roots of a large spruce tree. He recognized them as a type called Bulbous Cort, which were common to the mountainous forests of the Pacific Northwest, though not entirely exclusive to them. It was enough though to add support to his original theory that he wasn't far from the woodlands regularly explored by his Troop. As bad off as he was, at least it was unlikely he'd been spirited away to some remote corner of the world. In the adventure he called the Mystery of the Cautious Kidnappers, he and Taffy Clark had been taken as far as Canada's remote Northern Territories before he could effect their escape. Because the Bulbous Cort mushroom ripened only between September and October, Max was able to deduce what time of year it was, which suddenly struck him as the strangest aspect of the mystery so far. No matter how much he'd forgotten of recent events, he should still be able to remember the month, or at least the general time of year. "You can't blank out entire seasons, can you?" Try as he may, he couldn't even pin down what his last specific memory was. Though he could recall just about every detail of each one of his adventures, and even fit them in the right chronological order, there seemed to be a big blank between the end of his last adventure and the moment he realized he was walking through these woods. At this point the panicky feeling threatened to well up inside him again, and it was only by a great effort of will he was able to force it back into submission. It was time, he thought, to quit worrying and go back to solving specific problems. "Figure out enough of the small details, and the big mystery will solve itself." That was another of his famous first five rules of detection. Even though the sun was still high in the sky, promising that there were still several hours of reliable daylight left, Max decided to make some plans, in case it turned out he truly was on his own, and he'd be spending the night in the woods. He turned slowly in place, in two complete circles, looking up and down, from the forest floor to the branches high above him. He could detect no break in the trees and underbrush that might indicate a possible cl

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