We scrambled to him like a flock of little fluffy chickens making a dive toward a mother hen when she clucks for them to hurry to her and eat a bug or a fat worm or something.
“See here,” Poetry said, “—here’s where our trail branches off in two directions—one to the right and the other to the left.” And sure enough, he was right, for only a few feet apart were two broken twigs, one an oak, and the other a chokecherry, the chokecherry pointing to the right and the oak to the left.
“Which way do we go for the buried treasure?” Poetry asked me, and I didn’t know what to answer.
Then Poetry let out a gasp and said, “Hey, this one pointing to the right looks like it’s fresher than the other. We certainly are getting the breaks.”
We all studied the two broken twigs, and I knew that Poetry was right. The one pointing to the right looked a lot fresher break than the one pointing to the left. Why, it might even have been made today! I thought. And for some reason, not being able to tell for sure just how long it had been since somebody had been right here making the trail, I got a very peculiar and half-scared feeling all up and down my spine.
“I wish Big Jim was here,” my Man Friday said. I wished the same thing, but instead of saying it, I said bravely, “Who wants Big J—” and stopped like I had been shot at and hit, as I heard a sound from somewhere that was like a high-pitched trembling woman’s voice calling for help. It also sounded a little bit like a screech owl’s voice that wails along Sugar Creek at night back home.
“’Tsa loon,” Circus said, and was crazy enough to let out a long, loud wail that trembled and sounded more like a loon than a loon’s wail does.
I looked at my Man Friday and at my fat goat to see what they thought it was. Right away before I could read their thoughts, there was another trembling high-pitched voice which answered Circus. The second I heard it, I thought it didn’t sound like a loon but like an actual person calling and crying and terribly scared.
You can’t hear a thing like that out in the middle of the Chippewa Forest where there are Indians and different kinds of wild animals and not feel like I felt, which was almost half scared to death for a minute, although I knew there weren’t any bears or lions, but maybe only deer and polecats and coons and possums and maybe mink.
“It’s NOT a loon,” I whispered huskily, and felt my knees get weak and I wanted to plop down on the ground and rest. I also wanted to run.