police chief had been listening.
“ Only spoke the truth,” Rick said.
“ Well, I appreciate it,” Harpine said.
“ Here we go,” Rick said, then he was shooting down the runway, then into his takeoff roll. This time he was the pilot in command. There was one to help him if he screwed up. When he’d owned the plane all those years ago, he’d spent countless hours in the pattern, practicing all kinds of landings, but he’d very rarely gone anywhere. He’d fooled Mitchel and Harpine with that power off landing. He set the frequency into the VHF radio, hoping the weather held. The last thing he needed was any surprises.
And he didn’t get any till daybreak. Harpine was waking up with the sun. It promised to be a gorgeous day. The wind was rushing away from the mountains on the right, toward the sea, when all of a sudden they were caught in turbulence and Rick lost control of the airplane.
Chapter Twenty
When J.P. left the car he knew exactly where he was, the end of Old Luke’s Road. Where the road ended, the hiking trail started, winding through the pines for several minutes till it met Bear Clearing, a man-made meadow where two or three times a year the boy scouts came to set up their tents and camp. The younger kids sometimes played there during the day and the high school kids sometimes lit campfires and drank beer during the early evening. Tampico was a small town and the young people had to make their own entertainment.
The path picked up on the far side of Bear Clearing and continued on for ten minutes at a brisk walk, snaking into Lover’s Hideaway, a small natural clearing, where the high schoolers went to make out and sometimes do a little more. From Lover’s Hideaway the path twisted its way to Prospector’s Donkey Road and a five minute walk down the dirt road would find him on Mountain Sea Road and only ten minutes from home.
He walked fast, away from the burning car, wanting to put as much distance from it as possible. When the Ragged Man came back he wanted to be long gone. He wanted to run, but his feet hurt and they were swelling up, forcing him to hobble along like an old man. He wanted to stop and rest, but he forced himself to go on.
“ Ow!” He stubbed his toe on a baseball sized rock. He looked down to inspect the damage. His right big toe was pouring blood and the toenail was broken. The front half of the nail stuck up ninety degrees, hinged on only by a flap of skin. It bobbed and flapped as he moved his foot, reminding him of a raw piece of meat, and it hurt like all get out.
His old man’s hobble was slowed to an older man’s limping stumble. He wanted to quit, to rest, but he remembered something his dad used to say. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” He didn’t want to be a quitter. And besides, when the Ragged Man came and found out what he’d done to his car, he was going to be really, really mad. So J.P. stumbled on toward Bear Clearing.
Then the forest went quiet, like it did that day the Ghost Dog chased his mom and tried to get his birds. J.P. stopped and listened.
Nothing. No sound.
This is bad, he thought. He turned his slow stumble back into a faster hobble, then into a slow run. His feet no longer hurt and he picked up his pace, bursting into Bear Clearing at a fast run.
He stopped in the middle of the clearing, dead out of breath.
The sun was going down in a sea of orange haze. The shadows were getting darker.
He looked around the clearing.
“ I’m not a quitter,” he said, panting, “I just need a minute to rest.” His bloody foot was throbbing and his sides ached where he had scraped against the rough metal, getting out of the trunk. Gingerly, he felt a bruised side and was shocked to find his hand covered in blood. He checked and found that both sides of his chest, under his arm pits and the insides of both arms were bruised, scraped and bleeding. His feet, battered against the rocky path, fared no better. He needed to rest.
He walked over to one of the two fire pits. The charcoal remains were surrounded by tree stump stools, empty beer cans and junk food wrappers. He bent over and picked up a Ding Dong wrapper. It’s Ding Dongs that got me into this, he thought, and if I ever get home, I’ll never eat another one as long as I live.
He sat on one of the tree stumps and tried to imagine what it would be like in front of the campfire, safe, with lots of friends. He closed his eyes, his head fell forward. He jerked it back. A quitter would fall asleep. He just wanted a few minutes rest.
He roamed his eyes around the clearing. The ground was covered with leaves and pine needles. The circling trees offered a wall against the outside world and the open sky allowed the setting sun to work its shadow magic on the trees, giving the clearing a ghostly, vampire feeling.
He wished he was home with his mother, but wishing wouldn’t make it so. He had to get there himself, without help, without wishes, so only marginally rested, he got up from his stool and limped through the clearing to the path on the other side. He was tired, hurt, bruised and scared, but he wasn’t a quitter. He was going home, no matter how rough the going was.
He heard a noise at the edge of the clearing, a movement through the brush, or the wind through the trees. He stopped, afraid to turn. A low rumbling growl froze him in place. The growl turned into the sound of deep breathing, then into the purr of a big cat, like the tigers in the San Diego Zoo. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. He had to see. No matter how dumb it was, and he knew it was dumb, he had to see.
He turned his head and followed it with his body, swinging around, pivoting in place like a slow motion kung fu fighter. His skin was on fire and he felt his hair trying to stand. His mouth, dry from several hours of no liquid, got dryer and his hungry stomach churned. His feet, sides and arms screamed with pain and his mind said run, but he had to see.
And he saw.
Across the clearing, standing on the opposite side of the path, where he had entered it only a short while ago, stood the Ghost Dog. Only it was no dog. The red eyes bore into him and he met its cat-like stare head on, as curious as he was afraid. He knew what he was seeing, and it was no dog. No dingo dog like Rick told about in his story. No wolf. No bear. It was big, black and it was a saber-toothed tiger.
Its long white tusks gleamed in the setting sunlight and its glaring claws dug into the hard earth like it was Jell-O. Its smooth black fur glistened with sweat and its powerful looking legs resembled slick, black-oiled, muscle covered tree stumps. It was tiger-big, tiger-dangerous and it growled a tiger-growl. It didn’t take a genius to know that it was tiger-mean. It snorted misty smoke from its nostrils and J.P. hoped that it wasn’t hungry.
For a full minute that felt like a full day, they stared at each other, eyes locked in a deep soul grip and J.P. knew what had happened to his cousin Janis. Like the whale that swallowed Jonah, this thing had swallowed Janis, only she wasn’t coming back. The saber-toothed Ghost Dog had eaten her, ripped her flesh apart and eaten her, then it drank her blood and all she was now was saber-tooth, Ghost Dog, tiger shit somewhere in the woods. And if he wasn’t very, very careful and very, very lucky, that’s what was going to happen to him, too.
Slowly he started to back up, neck hairs curled as he inched away. Any second he expected the black demon to pounce, and it looked powerful enough to clear the clearing like Superman, in a single bound.
Maybe the thing could jump like Superman, J.P. thought. But he was fast as the Flash. If only he could get a head start, maybe he could get away.
He backed up another inch and the satisfying purr of a cat that had the mouse turned to an irritated growl. The animal perked up its ears and J.P. stopped his retreat.
He waited but the black demon animal didn’t move. J.P. moved back another slow inch. Then another, then another. The Ghost Dog lowered its ears flat against its head and J.P. thought it was going to jump. He had to do something. So he did the first thing that came to his mind.
“ Stay!” he commanded.
The animal stopped its growl, perking its ears back up.
“ Oh God, make it stay,” he pleaded as he inched further into the woods. He moved cautiously, carefully, inch by inch, then foot by foot, never taking his eyes from the beast. As soon as the path angled and the animal was out of sight, he turned and ran, paying no attention to his bleeding feet, starving thirst or the heart pumping pain that pierced his lungs.
