Legend of Bigfoot

I ran across this story while packing up some of our books. And I thought I would share it with you, my faithful readers. My Mother wrote this story while living in the Pacific Northwest prior to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

The Legend of Bigfoot 

by 

Donna Turnbull

     Etherton waved goodbye to the guides who were to set up camp here and let him proceed alone.  This was Bigfoot Country, a few miles from Vancouver on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens in the Cascades.  Here the sightings of Bigfoot had been many.  Not every man had nerve enough to climb the slopes in search of one.    

     But Etherton was a brave man.     He was there to attempt the rescue of one Alina Smith.  She had disappeared less than a month ago after the filming of her last picture was completed.  She had come here for a vacation and to join a group who were viewing the splendor of the cone shaped mountain.  The rest of the party had returned.  Alina had not.  One of them had testified that he had seen her, at a distance, picked up and carried off screaming by an eight foot man-like creature - a Bigfoot.  A party had searched for her for several days to no avail.  Everyone agreed that she would not now be found alive.
     Everyone except Etherton.
     He struggled on through the deep snow of the mountain slope.  In addition to his heavy clothing and mountain climbing equipment, he carried a high-powered rifle.  Snow swirled around him as he neared the cloud line.  Suddenly he caught a glimpse of a large hairy creature with humanoid features.  He raised his gun and fired.  The figure fell - it had been on a ledge with hundreds of feet of nothingness below.
     At the moment of the shot, thick hairy arms had closed around Etherton from behind.  One huge hand took the rifle from his nerveless hands and bent it into a figure eight shape, then tossed it away.
A soft voice spoke from two feet above his head, "Be quiet, you will not be harmed".  A squeak was the only sound that Etherton made in reply.  He was being held so tightly that he could not look upward and backward to see what held him.

     "Let me explain," said the voice. "We, whom you call Bigfoot, are human, but transmuted.  A great many years ago we chanced to discover a drug that let us change physically.  Letting us adapt physically to survive on the snowy slopes of this mountain where others cannot survive.  We now live in other areas of the globe.  Do you understand?"

     Etherton, beginning to feel a return of hope of his survival, answered with a 'yes'.

     "I shall explain further.  Our numbers are small and we are lessening.  When necessary we occasionally capture a human who ventures on the mountain slopes.  We give the transmuting drug then the person undergoes a change and becomes one of us.  By that means we keep up our number".

     Etherton explained that he was looking for Alina, "Is she now eight feet tall and hairy?"

     "She was.  You just shot her.  One of our number had taken her for his mate.  Now you must take her place".

     "I, I am a man!"

     "No matter", said the voice above him.  He was turned around and his face was buried against huge hairy breasts.  "I am a Bigfoot Woman".  Etherton was picked up and carried away by his mate.