Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest

by John R. Erickson

  She jumped to her feet. “On second thought, I think I can find your Little Alfred.” She threw her head back and closed her eyes and went into deep concentration. “Oh vapors, oh foggy darkness, oh penetrating powers! I see him now, huddled in a shallow cave . . . frightened, alone, wet and cold, crying. And down below . . . a hungry beast is waiting.”

  “Is it a cat? A bobcat?”

  There was a moment of silence. “Is it a cat? Search, powers, and tell me. Yes, it is a cat. And in a tree nearby . . . two buzzards sit huddled on a limb . . . waiting . . . waiting for the terrible deed.” She came out of her trance. “We must hurry. Follow me.”

  I turned to the cannibals. “All right, boys, we’ve got us a cat located, a great big huge enormous fat cat—with a stub tail.”

  “Rip and Snort not give a hoot about tail. Hungry for cat!”

  “Well, this one’s liable to be pretty tough. I hope you can handle him.”

  “Ha! Rip and Snort not scared of cat. Eat cat in two bites, like june bug!”

  “Sounds all right to me, guys. Let’s go!”

  And with that, we followed Madame Moon­shine through the Dark Unchanted Forest. Some­where in the darkness and the rain, Little Alfred was in bad need of some help.

  I only hoped that we weren’t too late.

  Chapter Ten: Rip and Snort Defend Their World Championship Title

  What a gloomy day it was! Rain, drizzle, fog, thunder, lightning, the whole nine yards. And what a gloomy place that forest was!

  I couldn’t wait to wrap this case up and get back to the old prairie country. That forest gave me the creeps, and it didn’t help at all that I had two cannibals behind me. I mean, they had their taste buds set on a cat supper, but I didn’t know how long that would last.

  Never turn your back on a cannibal. That’s one of the basic rules we follow in the security business, and it’s pretty good advice for anyone.

  You might want to jot that down. Never turn your back on a cannibal.

  Anyway, we went plunging through the gloomy forest. Madame Moonshine was in the lead, hopping along and sometimes flying a few feet at a time. That’s the usual traveling pattern for your burrowing owls, don’t you see, only you very seldom see them outside of a prairie dog town.

  All at once Madame Moonshine stopped and held up one wing. I stopped and the brothers plowed into me.

  “Well, excuse me!” I said.

  “Hunk get out of trail before Rip and Snort stomp mudhole in middle of back.”

  “Shhhh!” Madame Moonshine motioned for us to knock off the noise and to come up to the bush where she was standing. Rip and Snort bulled their way past me and stepped on two of my feet in the process, the louts, but because of who they were, I let it slide.

  We all peered through the bush. Down below was a kind of grotto. Is that a word, grotto? A ghetto? A motto? It really burns me up when I can’t think of . . .

  Down below was an outcropping of limestone, shall we say, that formed a ledge, a kind of shallow cave-like what-you-may-call-it on the south bank of Northup Creek. Little Alfred sat huddled at the back of the ghetto-grotto-motto, hugging his elbows for warmth and crying for his mommy.

  His hair was wet and plastered all over his head, and he looked as though he could sure use a friend.

  A couple of feet below the ledge sat Sinister the Bobcat, staring at the boy just the way Pete the Barncat might watch a mouse.

  It’s kind of spooky, the way those cats sit there without moving a hair, staring and staring and staring with their big cat eyes, and you never know what’s going through their minds because they show no feeling or emotion. You know what they’re going to do, but you never know whether it will be fast or slow.

  Have I mentioned that I don’t like cats? I don’t like cats, and that goes for the big mean ones just as much as for the rinky-dink variety we have around headquarters.

  From somewhere to the left, up in a tree it seemed, came a voice. “B-but P-pa, he’s just a l-little b-b-b-boy!”

  “Son, when you grow up, if you ever do, you’ll find that this is a hard old tough world out here, and we take whatever we can git and don’t ask no questions.”

  “Y-yeah, b-but . . .”

  “You cain’t serve two masters, Junior, no you cain’t. You’re either workin’ for your stomach or you ain’t workin’ at all, so just hush up.”

  It was Wallace and Junior, as you might have already figgered out, and as usual they had arrived on the scene to serve as omens of misfortune. Sinister the Bobcat heard them arguing and gave them a cunning smile.

  “Go on, Kitty,” said Wallace, leaning out on his branch. “Me and my boy here don’t approve of what you’re fixing to do, no we don’t, but still and yet . . .”

  He must have leaned too far out. He lost his balance and went crashing out of the tree. When he hit the ground, Sinister wheeled around and attacked him!

  “Hyah, git away from me, you dadgum cat. Junior, you git yourself down here, son, this cat ain’t fooling, he’s fixing to . . . !”

  Fellers, that cat was something to see! Even as big as he was, he could move as quick as a . . . well, as quick as a cat, you might say. He was a very efficient killing machine, and old man Wallace was lucky that he didn’t become an omen of misfortune at his own funeral.

  He went squawking and flapping in a circle, while Sinister threw up dirt with his paws and closed the gap between them.

  Up in the tree, Junior hopped up and down and covered his eyes with his wings. “H-h-help, m-m-murder!”

  At the last second, Wallace jumped into the air and caught an updraft and started flapping for altitude. Sinister coiled his legs under him and made a tremendous leap, snapped his jaws and came down with a mouthful of buzzard feathers.

  Wallace made it back to his perch. “I ought to go back down there and thrash you good, you smart-alecky cat, you’re just lucky, Junior, it’s shameful the way you neglect your poor old daddy who’s worked and slaved and scrimped and saved, that frazzling cat could have ate me alive, I never seen such an ungrateful, I ought to have throwed up on that cat, you just come back over here, Kitty, and I’ll show you how much damage a buzzard can do!”

  Sinister glared up at the buzzards, flicked his ears, and spit out the feathers. Then he turned back to the ledge, blinked his big cruel cat eyes one time, hunched down into a crouch, and began stalking Little Alfred.

  It was time for action. I turned to my cannibal pals. “Guys, there’s your cat. If you think you can handle . . .”

  They did, because they gave a whoop and ran right over the top of me; didn’t say, “Out of the way, dog” or “Excuse us please” or nothing, just by George knocked me down, plowed me under, and walked all over my face.

  And the wreck was on, holy smokes, you should have seen it!

  Old Sinister had pretty muchly decided that he was hot stuff, don’t you see, he being your typical sneering, arrogant, self-centered, self-important cat, only four times as bad because he was four times as big.

  Yes sir, he was pretty good at killing chickens and beating up buzzards and terrorizing pitiful little children, but let me tell you, fellers, he’d never seen the kind of tough that was heading his direction.

  Rip and Snort just happened to be the best wrecking crew on the ranch, and Sinister knew it the minute he saw them coming. He sprang up into the air, pinned his ears back, hissed, made teeth at them, and said, “REEEEEEERRR!”

  And then he sold out.

  I stood up and cheered them on:

  Kick him on the knee!

  Slug him in the gut!

  Punch him in the nose, boys.

  And kick him in the . . . on the other knee!

  Sinister tore a hole through that forest and ran for his life. Rip and Snort tore an even bigger hole through the forest, and the last we saw of my coyote pals, they w
ere about to shorten that bobcat’s tail another two or three inches.

  I turned to Madame Moonshine. “Madame, you pulled it off. You’re wonderful.”

  “Oh bosh! I almost ruined it all by saying bat instead of cat. You were wonderful, Hank, not me.”

  “Me, wonderful? Nah, it was you, Madame.”

  She raised a wing and primped at the feathers on her head. “Oh well, let’s not argue. If you insist that I’m a wonderful witchy little owl,” she turned to me with a smile, “then so be it.”

  Just then, I heard Little Alfred call my name.

  “Madame,” I said, “come on over to the ledge with me and let me introduce you to my pal Alfred.”

  “No, I must be going. I left Timothy alone in my cave.”

  “Who’s Timothy?”

  “Timothy, my companion and bodyguard. He’s a rattlesnake. Surely you haven’t forgotten Timothy.”

  “Oh yeah, Big Tim, the diamondback. Boy, do I remember him!”

  “I left him unattended, and he has a very bad habit of getting into mischief. So . . . adieu.”

  I looked up at the gloomy sky. “No, I’d call it a rain.”

  I noticed that she rolled her eyes. “No, no, no! Not a dew. Adieu.”

  “Oh.”

  “Which means good-bye.”

  “Oh.”

  “So without further adieu, good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, Madame. Thanks for all you did, and I hope to see you somewhere down the road.”

  “You will, I know you will.”

  She hopped several times, then spread her wings and flew away into the forest.

  The rain was coming down hard now, and I headed for the cave to see my little pal.

  Chapter Eleven: Notch Up Another One for Hank

  I sprinted across the clearing, jumped across the creek, and dived under the limestone ledge.

  Seeing the expression on Little Alfred’s face gave me all the reward I needed for performing amazing feats of amazing things—with a little help from Madame Moonshine, of course. I mean, the boy was just tickled to death to see me.

  When I reached the ledge I was dripping wet, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He came running over to me, throwed his arms around my neck, and liked to have strangled me with love.

  “Hankie, you came back! I’m so gwad!”

  “Well, of course I came back. Did you think I was going to leave you to the buzzards and the bobcats?”

  He released me and stepped back. His eyes had grown as big as plates. “Did you see that big old tigoo?”

  “It was a bob . . . no, maybe it was a tiger. Yes, I’m sure it was, probably the biggest tiger ever seen in Ochiltree County.”

  “The big old tigoo was going to eat me, but then two wolfs came and wan him away!”

  “Yeah, well, I hope you understand who brought the wolves, son. They were pals of mine and I asked them to do a little favor for me, see, and, well, you know the rest of the story. I hope you’ll remember this the next time your ma starts chunking rocks at me.”

  The smile on his face faded. His lower lip began to tremble and a tear slipped out of the corner of his eye. “I want to go home. I miss my mommy.”

  I lifted my head to a stern angle and gave him a severe looking-over. “I thought she was mean. I thought you were going to run away from home. I thought you didn’t like your new baby sister. What’s the deal?”

  “I don’t wike tigoos and I’m cold and I’m hungwee and I want my mommy!”

  “All wight . . . all right, that is, don’t cwy anymore, cry anymore. I’ll take you home as soon as this rain lets up, but you’ve got to promise to quit pulling my tail and being a little brat. Can you do that?” He nodded. “All right, raise your right hand and repeat the Pledge: I promise to quit being a little brat.”

  “I pwomise to quit being a wittle bwat.”

  “Forever and ever and always.”

  “Forevoh and evoh and always.”

  “So help me . . .”

  Suddenly I heard a fluttering noise behind me. Thinking that we were about to be attacked by Sinister the Bobcat or by my cannibal friends, I bristled, bared my fangs, whirled around, and cut loose with a deep ferocious bark.

  Oh. Buzzards. Two of them. Wallace and Junior.

  “Hi there, neighbor,” said Wallace, “it’s kindly damp out there on the limb, don’t reckon y’all would mind sharing this nice dry cave with—move over, Junior, you’re a-crowdin’ me, son—and if y’all don’t mind, we’ll just sit in here ’til this shower passes over, is what we had in mind.”

  I swaggered over to the old man. “Are you the same guy who was up in that tree, waiting for my little pal to get attacked by a bobcat?”

  His beak dropped open. “No sir, I did not, in fact I said to Junior, and these here are my very words, I said, ‘Junior, you git yourself down there and help that boy!’”

  “I heard what you said, buzzard, and it would serve you right if I throwed you out into the rain.”

  “Now, I never, you must have misunderstood; Junior, are you gonna just sit there and let this dog . . .”

  “Y-y-yeah, c-cause you d-d-did s-say that and I h-h-heard you.”

  Wallace glared at him. “Tattletale!”

  “I m-may b-be a t-t-t-t-t-tattletale, but y-you t-t-told a b-b-big fat l-l-l-lie, big fat lie.”

  “That’s exactly right, buzzard,” I said. “You told a big fat lie.”

  Wallace’s eyes darted back and forth between me and Junior. “Well, what did you expect? It’s hard to be a Christian and a buzzard at the same time.”

  “That’s no excuse, and unless you agree to take some punishment for being such a creep, you can just stand outside in the rain.”

  Wallace narrowed his eyes to slits. “I ain’t ever took NO punishment from NO dog, and I ain’t fixin’ to start now, and I’ll go stand by myself in the rain and I’ll enjoy ever’ minute of it because I’d rather be around ME than be around a bunch of ninnies! So there!”

  And with that, he waddled out on the ledge and stood in the pouring rain. Junior turned to me and gave me a shy smile.

  “H-hi, D-d-doggie. P-pa t-t-told a l-lie and y-you d-d-did r-right to m-m-make him l-l-leave.”

  Just then, Wallace stuck his face back inside the cave and said, “And furthermore, I hope all y’all’s babies are born naked!” Then he went back out.

  “Junior,” I said, “I’d like for you to meet a friend of mine. This here’s Little Alfred. Alfred, this here’s Junior the Buzzard.”

  Little Alfred stared at us in amazement. “A weel buzzood?”

  “That’s right, son. In a year or two, you won’t be able to talk back and forth with us like this, but you can now and we might as well give you the full treatment. When you get home, you can tell your ma that you met a real genuine buzzard.”

  “H-hi, A-a-a-a-alfred.”

  The boy couldn’t speak. He just stared at us with shining eyes and a big smile. Just then Wallace yelled at us again.

  “It’s great out here, I love it, never enjoyed a rain more in my life!”

  Junior grinned. “W-w-what was the p-p-punishment g-g-gonna b-be?”

  “Well, I was going to make your old man join us in singing a nice happy song about all the wonderful things we enjoy about this life. He’s such a grouch, I figgered that would hurt him as bad as anything.”

  “Y-y-y-yeah, h-he’d h-hate that!”

  I went to the edge of the cave. Old Wallace was out there all humped over and dripping water and grumbling to himself.

  “How’s the weather out there, Wallace?”

  “Wonderful! I still love it!”

  “You sure you don’t want to come back inside and take your punishment?”

  “Puppy, I ain’t never took no . . .”

  At that v
ery moment a bolt of lightning came crashing down and struck a big cottonwood tree right in front of us. Leaves and tree bark went flying in all directions and there was a terrible BOOM!

  Wallace squawked and jumped so high that he landed back inside the cave. “On second thought, a little punishment is good for the soul. What is it you have in mind, dog?”

  “We’re all going to sing a little song.”

  “I hate songs!”

  “About the things we love most in this life.”

  “I hate love!”

  “And you’re going to do a verse, the same as the rest of us.”

  “I hate music and I can’t sing!”

  “Then get back out there in the rain.”

  “On the other hand, a guy can always try.”

  “That’s better.”

  “But that don’t mean I’ll like it.”

  “That’s fine, you don’t have to like it.”

  “Good, because I won’t.”

  I went through the song and showed them how it was done. Then I did the first verse, and when I finished we went around the circle and each of us did a verse. Even Little Alfred did one. The song was called “I Love All Kinds of Stuff,” and here’s how it went.

  Hank:

  I love the septic tank’s

  Emerald waters bank to bank,

  Oh, I love the septic tank,

  It makes my life worthwhile.

  Junior:

  I love pretty girls,

  They make my feathers want to curl,

  Oh! I love pretty girls,

  They make my life worthwhile.

  Alfred:

  I wuv pwaying twucks,

  I wuv my mommy vewy much,

  I wuv her tender touch,

  It makes my wife worffwhile.

  Well, it was Wallace’s turn. We all looked at him and waited for him to come up with a verse. He had his wings folded across his chest and a huge scowl on his face.

  “Your turn, Wallace, jump right in there.”

  “What’s a ‘twuck’? I never heard of a twuck; and Junior, you wouldn’t know what to do with a pretty girl if you found one!”