Sour Puss by Rita Mae Brown, Michael Gellatly Read Free Book Online

walnut, hickories, locusts, and pin oak. Scattered throughout the tract were Virginia pines.
    “We should thin the pines. The old Virginia pine doesn’t live much longer than twenty-five or thirty years, and then it just falls down and rots.” Susan, though not a timber person, had been reading like mad on the subject of timber management.
    “One bolt of lightning will take care of the pines,”
Pewter remarked as she tagged along, feeling the cold air’s sharpness.
    “Nature’s clear-cutting,”
Tucker agreed.
    “Hasn’t happened for a long time around here. We’ve had so much rain these last years,”
remarked Owen, who, like all the animals, registered the weather’s every nuance.
    “Hey.”
Tucker stopped, putting her nose to the ground.
    The other three walked over to her and also put their noses to the earth.
    “Bear,”
Owen simply said.
“Maybe an hour ago.”
    “All kinds of big fuzzies up here.”
Pewter fluffed out her fur.
    “We may be little fuzzies, but we can take care of ourselves.”
Mrs. Murphy puffed out her tail.
    “How many times have I bailed you out?”
Pewter remarked.
    “You? I pry you out of jams more than you do me.”
Mrs. Murphy couldn’t believe Pewter’s ego.
    “Ha!”
Pewter dashed in front of the humans, energized by her own opinion of her powers.
    Susan noticed. “I don’t recall ever seeing Pewter this lively.”
    Harry watched as Pewter followed up her burst of speed with a two-foot climb up a tree trunk, then a drop down. “She has her moods.” She returned to the subject at hand. “Finding a timber company that will take on a job this small won’t be easy. You’re talking about sixty acres, which is nothing to the big boys. And we want someone who is responsible. Right now, prices for pulp timber, which is what this pine is, are low.”
    “If we wait it will just fall down.”
    “Maybe yes and maybe no. We’ve got a year or two.” Harry climbed in and gladly closed the door to the lime-green Wrangler. Tucker sat on her lap and Owen, Tucker’s brother, sat on Susan’s lap. She picked him up, placing him in the back with Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, who were already curled up in Owen’s little sheepskin bed.
    “I’ve got all G-Uncle Thomas’s notes.” She called him G-Uncle for great-uncle. “Those pines were planted in 1981. A long period of rain, some high winds, and they’re crashing down.”
    “It’s those bitty root systems. You wouldn’t think such tall trees would have such small roots.” Harry turned on the heater. “Okay?”
    “Yeah, I’m chilled to the bone. Let’s go into town for a big hot chocolate. I need to pick up mail anyway.”
    “Okay.”
    They bounced through the old rutted roads. Harry got out at the gate to her back pasture and opened it. Susan drove through and then Harry locked the gate, hopped back in. They cruised past the barn, down the long lane out to the paved state road.
    “Any more thoughts?” Susan asked.
    “Yes, actually. If we sign a contract with a good timbering company—not a management contract, mind you, just a timbering contract—for say, five years, we’ll be able to attract a better grade of operator. The last thing we want is someone to go up there, take out the timber, leave slash all over the place.”
    “You want them to dig pits and burn it?”
    “No. I want the leftovers pushed along into long piles of debris maybe five or six feet high. Let it decay. It will provide homes for lots of critters. I know why people burn the stuff, but it’s wasteful. Slash provides habitat, and the cycle of renewal begins again for animals and plants.”
    “How much do you think we can make from the pine?”
    “Well, I’d love to think we could pull out at least a thousand dollars an acre, but the market is so erratic. The black walnut’s market has been really good. High prices.”
    “We’ve got two acres of black walnut up there.”
    “That’s another thing that worries me. Let the wrong people in