Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest by John R. Erickson Page A

barn.
    We stopped in front of the door and I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Drover, my hunch tells me that our friend the coon is in the feed barn. Chances are that he has busted into a sack of horse feed and he’s eating the corn and molasses out of it. I’ll go in first.”
    â€œI hear that.”
    â€œWe’ll hold you in reserve just outside the door. If things get bad, I may have to call you in. Come on, let’s move out.”
    I slipped up to the door. This is the one that’s warped at the bottom, you might recall, which allowed me to wiggle the top half of my body inside without committing the bottom half. Once in that position, I did a scan and . . . 
    I wiggled outside again, leaned my back against the side of the shed, and laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was just too good to be true.
    Drover watched me with a puzzled expression. “What’s so funny?”
    â€œYou won’t believe this. We have just been handed the best ornery prank of the year. You know who that is in there? Not a coon, Drover, but Pete the Barncat!”
    â€œPete? Are you sure?”
    â€œHe must be looking for mice, see. He’s got his front-end on the ground and his hind-end up in the air and his head between two bales of hay. He thinks he’s all alone in the world, and when I go crashing in there and jump right in the middle of him, he’ll think he’s been attacked by a big boar coon!”
    â€œSounds pretty good . . . if it is Pete.”
    â€œOf course it’s Pete. Don’t you think I know the scent of a cat?”
    â€œYeah, but . . .”
    â€œThe place reeks of cat. Why, he couldn’t smell any cattier if he’d been living in the wild for the last six months.”
    â€œHank?”
    â€œHush. The time has come. Stand by for a barrel of laughs, because I’m fixing to let the cat out of the bag.”
    â€œYeah, but which cat?”
    I slipped through the door again, all the way this time. A few arrows of moonlight were coming through the cracks in the roof, just enough so that I could make a visual confirmation of my original nosatory data. Everything checked out. We had us a cat cornered, fellers, and the fun was about to begin.
    I took a big gulp of air, leaped through the air, and yelled, “Watch out for the boar coon, Pete!”
    I had reached the apex of my dive and had begun my downward arc when I noticed . . . hmmm, Pete’s tail had been shortened. And come to think of it, his coat had changed colors—white with dark spots—and . . . by George, he looked bigger than I . . . real big, almost the size of a . . . HUH?
    Holy smokes, do you realize how big and tough bobcats are? They’re terrible! I wouldn’t jump on a bobcat for all the bones in Texas, and yet . . . 
    I tried to make some mid-course corrections, began moving my front feet in a dog paddle mode, but it was too late. I straddled him, fellers, landed right in the middle of his back.
    You think a bobcat can’t buck? Think again. He throwed an arch in his back and blew me right out of my rigging. I went straight up in the air, hit my head on a ceiling joist, and started back down. But before I hit the ground, this giant maniac of a cat slapped me across the mouth with a paw that was about the size of a T-bone steak.

    That sent me flying in a different direction, south this time, until I came to the south wall, and at that point I came to a sudden stop and dropped in a heap on the floor.
    I was seeing stars and checkers and little pink elephants with umbrellas, but that didn’t keep me from getting a real good look at the monster cat: big, mean, ugly, ferocious. Your ordinary bobcat is about two or three times the size of your ordinary barncat. This guy was two or three times the size of your ordinary bobcat .
    I’d seen him before, at a distance. His