The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer Read Free Page B

missed the trail entirely. For the rain, instead of washing out a scent, holds it for a while and even makes it stronger.
    Later that day, halfway across a sloping meadow where cows were grazing, he caught the first faint familiar scent of his own kind. It was so very faint in the deep grass that he was unable, in his present ignorance, to guess how long ago it had been made. But it hardly mattered. The otter folk were few in number, and it filled him with a great joy to know that some of them—several members of the same family, it seemed—were somewhere near.
    He sprang forward, his miseries momentarily forgotten in his eagerness to get over the ridge and find the new creek. Then he realized he had been foolish to cross the meadow in daylight. All the cows were staring at him, attracted by the tinkling of his bell. The two nearer ones were actually coming to investigate.
    It was too late to hide, so he put all his effort into reaching the woods ahead. Even when he was safe, with dense thickets behind him, he limped on. The lessons of the dim past were coming back to him. Where there were cows, he remembered, a dog was usually near.
    Several times he was tempted to stop and search for crawfish where small springs oozed from the ground. Caution drove him on. The otters ahead of him hadn’t stopped. Perhaps they hadn’t needed food, but more likely there were dangers near they didn’t care to risk so far from water.
    Darkness caught Swimmer near the top of the ridge. Almost mechanically he kept on for a while. When he finally stopped, it was because he had lost the trail and was too weary to search for it.
    In his misery it seemed he had been climbing forever. Had it been this way in the past? Had his family changed streams and gone great distances and even crossed mountains to find new water?
    But of course they had, as he now remembered. Only, it had been such fun in those days. They had always been playing and exploring, following an endless route around an area that must have been thirty miles across. In spite of the dangers it had been wonderful—until that blatted old snake-eyed trapper came with his net.…
    Swimmer was having a horrid dream about that trapper when he was abruptly awakened by the yapping of a dog.
    As his head jerked up he was shocked to discover that it was now bright daylight. How could he have slept so late? It was disgusting. No wild otter with the brains of a newt would have allowed himself to be caught out like this so far from water.
    The dog yapped again, closer. Swimmer’s impulse was to run, until he remembered his bell and realized the tinkling of it would give him away the moment he moved. From the yapping he decided that it was probably a small dog, one of those troublesome little busybodies of the kind that had belonged to the trapper.
    He didn’t know it was part of a hunting team until he saw the two does drifting past, as silently as shadows. At the sight of him the older doe paused briefly. Between them there was a quick exchange of thought.
    The real danger, Swimmer learned, was not the dog but the human creature somewhere behind it.
    It was time to leave. With the bell caught between his teeth, Swimmer began working his way cautiously downward in the direction of the new creek, whose rushing he could hear in the distance. Having to limp on three legs was bad enough, what with his empty belly and the way he was feeling, but being forced to do it with his head down, so he could hold the dratted bell, was almost too much.
    Every few yards he stopped to test the air and listen. Even before he heard the human over on his left, he was suddenly startled by the feeling of deadly threat in that direction. He had forgotten that danger could be felt before it was seen or heard. Then he glimpsed it moving stealthily between the trees. The human was what Clarence would have called a tough-looking young punk in Levi’s; he carried a gun and he was out to kill