The Americans Are Coming by Herb Curtis Read Free Book Online

chord on.”
    “C chord?”
    “Yep. Dad says if ya know C and G chords ya kin play any song at all.”
    “How far back ya goin’?”
    “Not far.”
    “What if it’s a ghost?”
    “It’s a panther.”
    “How do ya know?”
    “Dad says.”
    “How ya gonna shoot a panther in the dark?”
    “Takin’ Dad’s flashlight, too.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yep. You kin carry the flashlight and I’ll carry the rifle. We’ll jack ’im. You hold the light on his eyes and I’ll down the bugger.”
    Dryfly thought of the rifle, the flashlight and the two of them gunning down a panther. Dryfly wasn’t sure what a panther was, but he reckoned it was a throaty creature, by the sounds that came from it every night. He thought of the C chord and himself being able to play every song ever sung. He thought of the adventure and the stories that they’d tell everyone.
    He thought of being Shadrack Nash’s friend; of being closer to Shad than George Hanley or Max Kaston were.
    “I’ll come over after supper,” said Dryfly. “Wanna come in and have some supper with us?”
    “What’re ya havin’?”
    “Salmon.”
    “No thanks. Never cared much for salmon.”
    Shad left thinking that he wouldn’t take a million dollars for eating Shirley Ramsey’s cooking.
    *
    Sneaking the rifle and the flashlight out was almost too easy for any kind of interesting adventure. Bob Nash had gone fishing and Shadrack’s mother was sewing in the kitchen. The rifle stood behind a chair in the living room. Shad hid the flashlight under his belt. To get the rifle, all Shad had to do was pick it up and go with it.
    Outside, Shad gave Dryfly the flashlight. They reckoned they had an hour before it would be dark enough to use it.
    The trail that led to Todder Brook country was an old, neglected trucking road, originally used for hauling out pulp, logs and boxwood, but it was evident that the road hadn’t been used for years. The tire ruts were still there, but blueberry bushes and even the odd alder bush flourished in the center. Shadrack walked in one rut and Dryfly in the other. Neither boy felt like talking. Both boys were scared. Neither would admit it. Shad cocked the rifle the moment they entered the forest.
    There was the odd bird singing and insect buzzing, the setting sun sat like a golden bonnet on the tops of the taller trees.
    “How much further we goin’?” asked Dryfly after a while. “I don’t know. Maybe a mile. I don’t know.”
    “Seems to me we’ve come a long way already. Do you think it’s that far away?”
    “I don’t know.”
    They continued to walk until they heard the rushing sounds of Todder Brook. Here, they noticed that the ground wasspeckled with numerous hoof prints – some deer and some bigger prints they hoped were those of moose.
    “I don’t smell anythin’,” commented Dryfly, staring at the hoof prints.
    “What odds if ya smell anything?” asked Shad. “I doubt if a human could smell a panther, anyway, unless he had his nose right up against ’im.”
    “Mom told me that the devil’s s’pose to smell like shit.”
    “How’s she know that?”
    “Don’t know. That’s what she told me.”
    “That’s foolish,” said Shadrack, but he sniffed the air anyway.
    Dryfly noticed that the sun had left the treetops and the twilight had replaced it. The anticipation of the approaching night and the inevitable darkness of the forest was not what Dryfly considered to be a good time.
    “I think we should go home, Shad. I have to cross the footbridge tonight. It’s tricky in the dark.”
    “You kin have the flashlight.”
    Dryfly sighed.
    Shadrack and Dryfly found a big pine tree and after eyeing it to make sure there were no cougars in its midst, they sat close together with their backs against its trunk. They could not be attacked from behind.
    Time ticked on and darkness fell.
    There in the night, every sound – the snapping of a twig, the hooting of an owl, a breeze whispering in the boughs above