“Mine either,” I said. “We need to be on the lookout for some water.”
“Something else we need to be worried about, too.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You remember Mister Autrey said they was panthers and bobcats in these woods? What we gonna do if we run up on one of them critters and us with nothing but our hunting knives?”
What we did was cut down two straight hickory saplings and used our knives to sharpen one end of each to make us spears.
“I do feel some better now,” Poudlum said as he hoisted his. “Between the two of us we could probably fight one of ’em off.”
It was just luck that we found water. How it happened was I stumbled on a root and fell on my face. As I was getting up, I spied a small game trail through the underbrush.
A game trail is faint, but still a trail, and it told me that small critters went that way often, which probably meant it led to water.
The trail took us about a hundred yards deeper into the unknown forest before we found the spring. It was small, but there was plenty of crystal-clear water to quench our thirst and fill our canteens.
We couldn’t believe our luck when, just beyond the spring, we spotted a grove of huckleberry bushes and proceeded to eat our fill.
On our way back to the fence line, with some concern in his voice, Poudlum said, “That honey and them berries was good, but come nightfall, we gonna need us a real meal.”
We walked for another few minutes, and then suddenly I remembered what Poudlum had said about using our senses. It was my sense of smell that made me remember.
I came to a halt and held my hand up for Poudlum to do the same, because I could smell that distinct odor of a goat once again, except this time, it wasn’t a rattlesnake.
Chapter 4
Shackles and Chains
A moment after that smell came wafting through the air, we heard a bleat.
“That sounded like a goat!” Poudlum said quietly out of the corner of his mouth as we both sank to our knees to hide in the tall grass.
“Did you catch which direction it came from?” I asked softly.
“Had to come from the other side of the fence ’cause she lives over there on Mister Autrey’s land.”
“You think we’re close to her house?”
“Got to be. That had to be one of her goats, and the goat pen wouldn’t be far from where she lives. Let’s listen a little bit and see if we can hear any more sounds.
It wasn’t long before we heard the goat again, and then we heard the cackle of a chicken.
“It’s her place all right,” Poudlum said. “And the sounds are coming from over yonder on the other side of the fence.”
“I can’t see a house or anything,” I told Poudlum as I strained my eyes in that direction.
“We got to get closer,” he said. “Come on, let’s crawl through the fence and see if we can see anything on the other side of it.”
“Wait a minute, Poudlum! Don’t you think we ought to think about this a little? Maybe we should wait until after dark.”
“We won’t be able to see after dark, and we don’t want to use a torch.”
“Good point,” I replied. “But let’s move real slow and keep our spears handy.”
We went back through the fence on our bellies like two moles, squirming our way through the tangled vines until we came to the rusted fence itself.
“Looks like we’re going to have to stand up and climb over this old wire fence,” I said.
“Naw, we don’t,” Poudlum said as he reached into his hip pocket and slid out the broken hacksaw blade. “You hold the wire steady, and I’ll saw through it.”
It didn’t take long for the saw to cut through the rusty wire, and after we sawed through four strands we were able to bend it upwards and make a hole big enough for us to crawl through one at a time.
Once we got clear of the fence, we peeked up over the tall grass, but still couldn’t see anything. There was still the goat and chicken sounds though, and they were getting louder.
“Her house must be a little farther through the woods,” Poudlum said. “We gonna just have to keep crawling till we can see something. Maybe she got our dogs tied up and we can just take’ em back.”
“What about our rifles?”
“I would be willing to give up mine if I could just get Rip back.”
I supposed at some point I would be willing to make the same sacrifice, but not yet. “I want my rifle back, too,” I said. “Why don’t we just walk in there and confront her?”
Poudlum stopped crawling, looked over at me, and said, “Oh, Lord, we can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“’Cause there is probably all kinds of voodoo traps all around her house. We got to go in real slow and careful.”
“What kind of traps?”
“Stuff like deep pits full of snakes that are covered over so people will fall in ’em, maybe some sharp sticks with poison on the tips, and who knows what else.”
I shivered at the thought of such things.
Poudlum continued, “What we need to do is get the dogs and get out of here as quick as we can. If we have to confront her we want to get as close as we can before she knows we’re here.”
“How come?”
“Cause that way she’ll think we got the mojo on her, and we can be gone before she gets over the surprise.”
After some more slow crawling we came upon the goat pen. It was constructed all of wood with crooked rails attached to the posts. Inside the rails was a small herd of goats.
“One of them must to had twins,” Poudlum whispered.
“Huh?”
“There’s a billy goat, four nanny goats and five kids,” he said.
“Oh, okay,” I said.
“She been milking them goats, too. See them milk bags?”
I did indeed and the thought of milk reminded me of how hungry I was.
“I ’spect Old Bill and Rip could smell us if we’re close enough to ’em,” I whispered.
“I bet she could, too,” Poudlum whispered back. “Lucky for us they ain’t no wind. Them dogs, if they here, would make a ruckus if they caught our scents. She probably would, too.”
“Maybe she already knows we’re here and is just laying a trap for us.”
“Guess that’s a chance we got to take if we want the dogs back,” Poudlum said.
“We need a plan, Poudlum. We can’t just keep on crawling around like blind folks.”
“If you got anything in mind, let’s hear it.”
I didn’t but I told him we ought to try to think of something. So we set to thinking while we lay there in the weeds next to the goat pen, and what we came up with was about the only sensible thing to do. It was pretty simple. What we planned to do was get close enough so we could see her house, and then wait until it got dark. After that we would wait until we saw some light, and hopefully some movement inside before we went any closer. Beyond that, we still didn’t have a plan.
“Ought to be