Western Adventure by Paul Hutchens

Author:Paul Hutchens [Hutchens, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57567-756-9
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 1998-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

Now what do you do at a time like that? What can you do?

Those burning eyes might be the savage eyes of a wildcat—even if there weren’t supposed to be any in this part of the country. There had been a bear, once when there weren’t supposed to be any—a fierce, mad old mother bear, which we’d killed ourselves. But you maybe know all about that if you’ve read the story called Killer Bear.

I kept on standing and cringing and staring and wondering. Almost right away there was the crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch of dry leaves again, as something or other came bounding out of the cave into the shadowy moonlight and began circling with its nose to the ground again all around where I had been moseying in the afternoon.

Now it was where I’d dug the cat-sized grave. I could hear it sniffling the way Circus’s dad’s hounds do when they’re on the trail of a coon or some other animal.

At the place where the two Snatzerpazookas were buried, the animal began to whine and act in a hurry and dig as if it was very excited. Dig … dig … dig … dig … making the dirt fly. Some of the particles struck against the tree I was in, and one actually hit me in the face.

That’s when a bright beam from a flashlight landed on the grave, and in its yellowish circle I saw a reddish-brown dog. The dog quickly turned to look back, and I saw a long drooping head and floppy ears. It was old Redskin, Dragonfly’s bloodhound.

A split second later Dragonfly’s own excited voice shouted, “Get away from there! That’s Snatzerpazooka’s grave. Stop that digging!”

Redskin stopped digging, sniffed the air, and quicker than anything was where I was, standing on his hind feet, his front paws on the trunk of the sycamore, whimpering. Then, as “still” trailers do when they’ve finally treed their quarry, he let out a long-toned, wailing bawl, followed by a half-dozen sharp, quick chops, as much as to say, “I’ve treed him! Here he is! Come and get him!”

And that’s when I let out a yell that scared the daylights out of Dragonfly.

In only a little while I was out. It hadn’t taken Dragonfly more than half a minute to find my knife. Also, he was carrying with him his Scout hatchet, as he did nearly every time he was out in the woods with the Gang, especially when we were hunting at night with Circus.

Dragonfly was a little disappointed because Redskin, who now was a grown-up dog with an even sadder, droopier face than ever, had trailed a boy instead of a wild animal.

But Redskin was happier than Charlotte Ann on Christmas morning. He leaped and played around me, trying to make his master realize what an important thing he had done.

Dragonfly used a surly voice on his dog playmate, saying, “Can’t you ever learn to trail a coon or a possum or a fox? I can’t make any money catching boys! They’re not worth anything!” Imagine that.

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