The haunted hound; (12 page)

In a moment he stopped. Mister Blue wasn't with him.

Jonathan turned around very slowly and looked back. ''Come on, Blue,'' he said quietly.

But the dog just stood there at the edge of the sand bar. His forehead was wTinkled and his ears pricked up a little so that his face looked sad. But he didn't move.

Jonathan made his voice sound cheerful. "Hie away, Blue. Come on, boy!''

Slowly, looking back at him. Mister Blue turned and trotted away through the woods, going back to the house.

It seemed a lot lonelier there without him. Jonathan whistled once and called, but he knew it wasn't going to do any good.

He started to hurry then. In most places the river was narrow and deep, well over his head, but below the bends it would widen out. Jonathan soon found that Mr. Worth

and Judy tried to keep out of the thick bushes along the banks as much as they could. When their tracks disappeared, Jonathan found that if he waded across the river he would find them again on the other bank.

Every now and then he would stop and yell, but nothing ever answered except some woodpeckers as big as pigeons with bright red heads and black-and-white feathers. They would screech and holler and fly along, keeping up with him and making a lot of noise.

After a while Jonathan realized that he was enjoying himself. The sky had a few high white clouds in it, the sun was bright and hot, so that wading, sometimes up to his chest, cooled him off. He kept watching for snakes but saw none, and among the many diflferent tracks in the sand beside the river he didn't see any that looked big enough to have been made by a bear or anything like that. Some of the big bird tracks, he guessed, were made by wild turkeys. And there were all sorts of four-footed animal tracks which he could tell apart but couldn't tell what they belonged to.

Every time he came around a bend all the turtles sunning themselves on half-submerged logs would slide off into the water. He often saw herons, mostly standing in shallow water on one foot. When he scared them, they would fly off, seeming to be too lazy to tuck their long legs up. They made a harsh squawking noise.

Fish broke, making big swirls and circles on the water and, when he waded into the shallows, the schools of little fish would scatter in all directions. But if he stood still they

would come and bite his bare toes. They bit kind of hard and, until he found out that it was only little fish, he wouldn't stop once he started wading.

And al\\ays, wandering down the banks of the river, were the two sets of human tracks. Mr. Wortli had big feet and his big toes spread way apart. Judy had little feet, with close-together toes. Jonathan guessed that, like him, they had their shoes tied by the laces and slung around their necks.

For a while he was very hungry but, since there wasn't anything to eat, he kept on going. Slowly the hungry feeling went away as he went on, hour after hour, the day fading, the shadows gro\\'ing longer and deeper.

At one place the river was too deep to wade and the banks were high and straight up and down on both sides. Being careful about snakes, Jonathan climbed up one bank, going on hands and knees sometimes to get under the thick bushes. Up on top there was a faint trail which he followed until he could see the river widening out again, the banks sloping down.

Jonathan was crawling along, not making much noise, when, down at the river's edge, he saw something move.

Bushes were in the way so, making no noise at all, he crawled a little closer.

There was a furry animal down there. It was grayish brown with black ears and nose. Although he had never seen one alive, Jonathan was prettv sure it was a coon.

He kept crawling closer and closer, until he could see what the coon was doing.

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It had caught a fish somehow and seemed to be playing with it.

Jonathan was surprised by the way the coon used its front feet, which had long, hairless black fingers. It looked to Jonathan as though they were a lot more like hands than feet. And, as he kept watching, he found out that the coon wasn't playing with the fish at all. It was getting the scales off.

Jonathan had never seen anything like that before. The coon, always looking around with little jerks of its head, would dip the fish down into the water and then, scooping up sand, would rub it hard between its two long-fingered black hands. The coon never seemed to look at what its hands were doing or even seem to know or care. It was as though the two fast-moving black little hands belonged to something else.

It had a big, bushy, brown-and-gray striped tail which it used to keep its balance while it scaled the fish. When the coon finished scaling, it stuck one sharp fingernail into the belly of the fish, then—still not paying any attention—it slit the fish open and scooped it out. Then it began eating. It would take a bite, lay the fish down, wash its hands in the river, then pick up the fish, wash it, and take another bite.

Jonathan began to wonder if there was any way he could catch the coon. It would be pretty good, he thought, if, when he caught up with Judy, he already had a good-sized coon.

Maybe, he thought, he could chase it into the river, and,

by keeping it in the middle, he could get it so tired he could grab it. Then, because he had forgotten to bring a sack, he could wrap it up in his shirt.

But when Jonathan moved again the coon looked once in his direction and began to run, holding the rest of the fish in its mouth.

Jonathan jumped up and ran after it. The coon didn't seem to be going very fast, nor even trying very hard, but it was going a lot faster than Jonathan could go. Soon it ducked up into the bushes. For a little while longer Jonathan could hear it moving.

W^atching the coon eat had made Jonathan hungry again, but he still didn't have anything to eat so kept on going. Now he really wanted to catch up wath Judy. He could tell by the sun that it was late and by the way his stomach felt that it was close to suppertime. They must have stopped, he figured, to eat, so that he was now gaining on them.

He expected to see them every time he came around a bend in the ri\'er. And \\'henever he stopped and yelled he expected to hear an answer.

But each bend of the river was empty, and the only answer he ever got was from the pileated \\'Oodpeckers.

Then the tracks disappeared. Jonathan followed them along a narrow strip of sand and then waded the river. But there w^ere no tracks on the other bank. He went down river all the way to a bend, but the tracks didn't reappear, so he went back.

Putting his feet down exactly in Judy's tracks, he walked

step by step to the edge of the water. Then there were no more tracks.

Maybe, he thought, they had waded down the middle of the river. So he did, too. But soon the water was up to his chin and getting deeper. Maybe it wasn't over Mr. Worth's head, but Judy would have to swim. There was no reason to make her do that, Jonathan decided, so they must have come out in the thick bushes on the same side.

But there the ground was too hard to make tracks in.

For a long time Jonathan searched for a sign of the way they had gone but found none.

He came back at last to the sand bar and sat down to think.

If he kept on going down the river, he might get ahead of them. If, for instance, they had gone off to the side chas-

ing a coon or something and he went straight, he would end up ahead of them. That way he could walk for the rest of his life and never find them.

If he stayed right here, waiting for them to come back to the river, they might come back a different way. If they came out below him, they'd go on down river and not even know he was looking for them. If they came back here, or upriver, they'd find him.

After a while Jonathan narrowed it down. He could either stay right where he was and wait, or he could give up and go to the Farm.

Slowly and sadly Jonathan gave up. Judy and Mr. Worth must have left the river close to where he was, but there was no reason to be sure they would come back the same way they had left. They could make a wide circle and hit the river either way up or way down it. The best thing for him to do was to go back to the Farm.

He got up slowly and turned upriver.

Then he saw the sun. For a long time he hadn't paid much attention to time. The day was just bright and sunny and would last forever. But now the sun was down on the tree-tops, already there was night in the shadows. It wouldn't be long before dark.

For a second Jonathan felt like just running as hard as he could, racing across the sand bars and splashing his way up the river, tr)ing to beat darkness and reach the Farm while he could still see his way.

That feeling passed as he began to realize that he was

a long, long way from the Farm. Figuring back, he decided that he must have started down river a little after ten. Now it must be after five. That would be seven hours. Except for watching the coon, he had been hurrying all that time. So, no matter how fast he tried to go back, he had only a little more daylight—not enough to get back.

Jonathan sat down again.

For a little while he couldn't think at all. The sun seemed to be falling down behind the trees, letting darkness down on him as it went. There he was, all by himself, with nothing in the world but a fishing pole. He was hungry, getting scared, lonesome, and most unhappy.

What should he do? he wondered.

Should he go back up the river as far as he could before it got too dark?

He decided against that. Darkness might catch him along a stretch of river where there were no sand bars—just thick, dark woods. If he was going to have to spend the whole night by himself, Jonathan wanted to spend it on a sand bar where he could at least have room enough to run if anything came.

Should he go up or down river, looking for a bigger sand bar? No. This one was about as big as the rest of them.

Suddenly Jonathan felt tired. He could hardly lift his hand up off the warm sand. And he was hollow with hunger. In another minute or so, he thought, he'd be crying.

He gritted his teeth against that.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

[onathan had never felt so trapped and helpless. As he sat there on the sand bar, he wondered how long the night would last and how dark it would be. He couldn't let himself go to sleep, for, if he did, something big might come—like a bear —and he wouldn't hear it in time. So he would have to sit there all night long in the dark.

He had never stayed awake for an entire night and wondered if he could. But he had to; that's all there was to it.

Then for some reason, Jonathan remembered the day of the final examination. It seemed a long time ago—not just three days. He remembered how, when he first turned over the paper and looked at the problems, he had felt just as he did now—trapped and helpless. He'd felt small, almost tiny^ and puny. But he also remembered that when he started turning acres into dollars the feeling had gone away. He remembered now the good, clean feeling he'd had when he'd started really to thinJc.

Suddenly Jonathan asked himself: Why don't I think some right now? Why don't I stop sitting here like a

dummy, so scared a small rabbit would look like an elephant to me? What's the matter with me?

What was the worst part of spending the night there? he asked himself. The answer wasn't long in coming—darkness. If the sun would just keep on shining all night, he'd enjoy staying on the sand bar.

But the sun was going down now, so how could he make some light?

Jonathan took everything out of his pockets. In a little tin box were the fishing lures his father had bought for him. He had a handkerchief and $6.35. There was a bolt he thought belonged to his bike, and the stub of a pencil. Folded up was an advertisement about dogs for sale he had clipped out of a magazine. His key to the apartment was on a little gold chain with a gold knife on the end of it. This had been a birthday present. Also on the chain was a miniature telescope which, if you looked through it, you saw a cowboy on a horse—all in color. There was a rubber band to go around his reel spool to keep the line from spilling off. And he had the rod case holding the rod and reel.