Shiloh Season by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Read Free Book Online

stay off my land; I'm teen' him, and I don't want him to think I'm backing down."
    I decide not to say anything just then about playin' spy.
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    Seven
    It is sure quiet around our house. Dad never much held a grudge or carried on a quarrel with a neighbor. It bothers him to do it now.
    What I don't like is not being able to take Shiloh up to the far meadow to romp and run. We're used to not going up there between Thanksgiving and Christmas when deer season is on, because-signs or no signs hunters sometimes get in up there and they've got rifles. Shot from a shotgun and bullets from a rifle are different things entirely.
    Shiloh can't understand why we've stopped going up to the meadow, though. I come home from school and he gets all excited-does his wiggle dance, front end going left and his rear end going right. Runs right off toward the path to the meadow, yipping for me to come, too. Runs back and forth to show me the way, get me to follow.
    "Shiloh! No!" I say.
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    He just slinks down low, tail between his legs, like he don't know what he's done, but it's bad. Then when I reach down to pet him, he can't make sense of it, I can tell.
    He's been running around some with a black Labrador, though, and it's nice to see him have a friend of his own. Those two dogs go off together and sometimes Shiloh's gone all day and half the night. Comes back with burrs and ticks, but eager to be off again the next time his friend comes around.
    At school I find out more from Michael Sholt about Judd fighting at Bens Run. Michael says a cousin told him that a friend's uncle had a brother who said Judd owed him some money, and Judd said he didn't. I suppose that by the time a story's passed along to that many people, there's a little added on or a little left out, so I don't know how true it is. But they say Judd had been drinking and he took the first swing. Would have 'half killed each other if the sheriff hadn't shown up.
    I can imagine that all right. Having seen Judd kill two living things now, I can imagine him half killing something without no second thoughts whatsoever.
    Last week in September Miss Talbot tells us our school is taking part in a project called "Imagine the Future." The idea is to get kids thinking about their lives a little further than what they're going to do over next summer's vacation, she says.
    All fifth and sixth graders in a dozen schools are supposed to choose the job they'd most like to have when they're grown. That's just for starters. Then we've got to write a paper on what it would be like to do that kind of work.
    50
    Sarah Peters chooses swimmer.
    "Swimmer?" I say when she tells me on the bus. "What kind of job is that?"
    "Swimming champion," she says.
    Sarah took swimming lessons last summer at a camp down near Middleboume and now she thinks she can go to the Olympics.
    I ask David Howard what he's going to choose. "Biologist, forest ranger, or football player," he says. "Haven't decided yet."
    Didn't take me long to think up mine: veterinarian. It's all I can think of that would please me.
    When I go to Doc Murphy's that Saturday I tell him what I picked, only I say I'll probably write down "veterinarian technician," 'cause it takes a lot of money to go to veterinary school. He's showing me how to use a soaker hose on his bushes-how to keep moving it every twenty minutes.
    "It does take money, and it's real tough to get into veterinary college, Marty," he says, "but there's no harm in aiming high."
    I finish watering all the bushes before I go home. David doesn't come over 'cause he's gone camping with his folks. He's decided to write a report on being a forest ranger, and his dad is taking him to visit a real ranger station so he can ask questions and write a good report.
    At the supper table, we're talking about Grandma Preston again. Ma called Aunt Hettie over in Clarksburg and, as usual, Grandma Preston was in trouble.
    "What's she done now?" asks Dara Lynn, eyes all shiny, can't wait to hear the