Legend of the Ghost Dog by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel

Author:Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2012-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

A late blizzard came that May, roaring over us with no warning one morning. Silla had gone for a walk with Caspian, though she wasn’t supposed to. She told me she had dreamed of gold again, and she meant to follow the old creek into the woods up to a spot where the water pooled. Silla always said she was sure there was one more nugget of gold in that pool, and that she meant to keep looking until she found it. Sometimes I went with her, and though I didn’t like her to go alone, I never worried about her as long as Caspian was there. I knew he’d protect her with every ounce of strength he had, and he was a powerful dog.

By the afternoon there was more than a foot of snow on the ground, and Silla had not come back. In my heart, I had not begun to worry. Silla knew as well as anyone that the best thing to do was hunker down and take shelter until the snow stopped. There was little by the way of shelter out by the creek, though. Silla would have to dig an ice cave in the snow and sit tight. My father was almost out of his mind with worry, so I told him what I knew, that Silla was with Caspian at the wide pool in Dorothy Creek, and that Caspian would keep her safe — and when the snow let up, he would lead her home. I was so sure Daddy would feel better knowing that.

But he didn’t. He went crazy, shouting at me, his face this terrible, angry red, yelling that the woods were dangerous, that Caspian was dangerous, and that it was my fault for letting Silla go, and his for letting Caspian anywhere near her. There was nothing I could do to convince him that it would be all right. He simply would not listen to me. But even Daddy knew he could not go out looking for a lost child in the middle of a blizzard. We would have to wait for the snow to stop.

It did not stop. The wind blew and the snow came down for three days and three nights. On the fourth morning, I woke up with a sick certainty in my heart. Too much time had passed. Silla had not been strong to begin with, and her lungs were bad. No matter where she might have taken shelter, Silla would not survive the storm this long.

The morning the storm finally broke, my father was downstairs throwing things in a pack, to rush out and search for Silla. In my heart, I knew he would not find her. The little buzz I always felt, the bright bauble of Silla’s presence in my own spirit, was gone. But I did not want my father to go out searching alone, and I was determined to go with him whether he liked it or not. I had to run to keep up with him as he got onto the path into the woods, following the direction of the creek.

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