Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls Page B

you think of it?" he asked.
        "If it had a face," I said, "you couldn't tell it from a real man."
        "We can fix that," Grandpa chuckled.
        He took a stick and dug some black grease from one of the hub caps on the buggy. I stood and watched while he applied his artistic touch. In the stocking-cap head he made two mean-looking eyes, a crooked nose, and the ugliest mouth I had ever seen.
        "Well, what do you think of that?" he asked. "Looks pretty good, huh?"
        Laughing fit to kill, and talking all at the same time, I told him that I wouldn't blame the coon if he stayed in the tree until Gabriel blew his horn.
        "He won't stay that long," Grandpa chuckled, "but he'll stay long enough for you to cut that tree down."
        "That's all I want," I said.
        "We'd better be going," Grandpa said. "It's getting late and we don't want to miss that supper."
        I was so stiff and sore he had to help me to the buggy seat.
        I called to my dogs. Little Ann came, but not willingly. Old Dan refused to leave the tree.
        "Come on, boy," I coaxed. "Let's go home and get something to eat. We'll come back tomorrow."
        He bowed his head and looked the other way.
        "Come on," I scolded, "we can't sit here all night."
        This hurt his feelings. He walked around behind the big sycamore and hid.
        "Well, I'll be darned," Grandpa said as he jumped down from the buggy. "He knows that coon's there and he doesn't want to leave it. You've got a coon hound there and I mean a good one."
        He picked Old Dan up in his arms and set him in the buggy.
        All the way home I had to hold on to his collar to keep him from jumping out and going back to the tree.
        As our buggy wound its way up through the bottoms, Grandpa started talking. "You know, Billy," he said, "about this tree-chopping of yours, I think it's all right. In fact, I think it would be a good thing if all young boys had to cut down a big tree like that once in their life. It does something for them. It gives them determination and will power. That's a good thing for a man to have. It goes a long way in his life. The American people have a lot of it. They have proved that, all down through history, but they could do with a lot more of it."
        I couldn't see this determination and will power that Grandpa was talking about very clearly. All I could see was a big sycamore tree, a lot of chopping, and the hide of a ringtail coon that I was determined to have.
        As we reached the house, Mama came out. Right away she started checking me over. "Are you all right?" she asked.
        "Sure, Mama," I said. "What makes you think something's wrong with me?"
        "Well, I didn't know," she said. "The way you acted when you got down from the buggy, I thought maybe you were hurt."
        "Aw, he's just a little sore and stiff from all that chopping," Grandpa said, "but he'll be all right. That'll soon go away."
        After Mama saw that there were no broken bones, or legs chopped off, she smiled and said, "I never know any more. I guess I'll just have to get used to it."
        Papa hollered from the porch, "Come on in. We've been waiting supper on you."
        "We're having chicken and dumplings," Mama beamed, "and I cooked them especially for you."
        During the meal I told Grandpa I didn't think that the coon in the big tree was the same one my dogs had been trailing at first.
        "What makes you think that?" he asked.
        I told how the coon had fooled us and how Little Ann had seen or heard this other coon. I figured he had just walked up on my dogs before he realized it.
        A senile spread all over Grandpa's face. Chuckling, he said, "It does look that way, but it wasn't. No, Billy, it was the same coon. They're much too smart to ever walk up on a hound like that. He pulled a trick and it was a good one. In fact, it'll fool nine out of ten