Dead for the Money by Peg Herring

Author:Peg Herring
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: LL-Publications
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IT WAS FUN FINDING the different kinds of spiders. Scarlet claimed there were hundreds of species in any wooded area, and Brodie was soon convinced that she was right. After a while she stopped taking the spiders to Scarlet. She could get more done if she simply documented them on the pad of paper and went back to looking.

After a few minutes, the sun became hot on the back of her neck. Waving to Scarlet and pointing toward the woods on the opposite side of the meadow, Brodie signaled that she would hunt in the shade for a while. Scarlet waved acknowledgement.

The coolness felt good, and she slipped the hat off and stuck the brim of it into the back waistband of her pants. She spotted a big brown spider right away, but it darted under a fallen log, and she lost it as it blended in with its cover. A few steps farther on she found another, this one with stripes on its legs that made it look unreal, as if someone had decorated it with the world’s tiniest paintbrush.

As she documented Spider #12, Brodie heard a faint noise up ahead. Cautiously, she moved toward the sound. It retreated, or it seemed to. Deer? Her experience with deer was that when you got too close, they panicked, raised their white tails like an alarm signal, and took off as fast as they could. The sound she heard was not headlong flight. It was scrabbling such as a creature might make if it was unaware of her presence. She liked seeing animals in the wild. Once she had come upon some coyote pups playing and watched them for some time before they noticed her presence. That was cool.

When she was a good distance into the woods, whatever it was began a plaintive cry. It reminded her of a time when she’d come upon a porcupine stuck in a tree. The creature had whimpered pitifully as it paced the length of a branch, trying to get up the courage to climb down. This sound was like that, repetitive and distressed.

Brodie moved quietly onward, hoping this experience would not be like the time she’d tracked down a rustling in the woods and come face to face with a skunk. She looked back to where Bud and Scarlet were waiting. She couldn’t see them, but she wouldn’t be gone long.

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