“And what about Darmo?” I asked in a silly voice, pretending to make fun of the story—but secretly curious to hear the end.

“Well, that’s the thing. Darmo didn’t believe he was dead.

Ghosts can’t see their own bodies. He just thought those boys pushed him down and stole the gold. So, he went looking for them.

Only he didn’t have a map anymore so he couldn’t find his way back to camp. And now he haunts this place, looking for those kids. He wants revenge and he wants his gold back. They say that at night you can sometimes see his shadow moving through the forest and down to the streams in the valley. People say they have heard him all the way down at the Big Hole River. The legend is that he tries to cause accidents out of revenge for the kids who got away. When he sees kids from the camp, he tries to make terrible things happen to them.”

“So, he’s the ghost of Skinner Meadows, eh?” I said sarcastically.

“Basically,” she said with a straight face. I really couldn’t tell if she believed this story or not. By this time, we had finally finished crossing the meadow. It had taken an hour and my pants and boots were drenched. Of course, I didn’t believe her story about Darmo haunting kids. But I thought she might be right about there being gold in the streams. I mean, I knew people panned for gold in California, so why not Montana? Anyway, it got me thinking.

But then I had to stop thinking. Mike was shouting at everyone, telling us to regroup as we went up the last part. It was getting late in the afternoon. He wanted everyone hiking together.

The last part of the hike from the meadow up to Darkhorse Lake was really steep. We could follow the main “road” again but it was pretty cold since we were in the shadow of the mountain. My pants started to freeze. We all put our snow parkas on. It took a while to get up the trail, but it was actually easier walking than the meadow, because the snow wasn’t mushy and muddy. Layla walked nearby, but we didn’t talk anymore.