The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers Read Free Book Online Page B

to rest.
    * * *
    The next morning found Aidan crouched among the leafy branches of a fallen tree that slanted down into the river. Below him, the dark water of the Tam swirled in slow eddies around the limbs that dipped and bobbed in the gentle current. By midmorning, it was already unbearably hot.
    A great brown cottonmouth snake, as thick as a man’s forearm, wound itself over the tree’s upthrust roots and slithered down the slanting trunk toward Aidan, apparently unaware that he was there. Aidan broke off a branch with his left hand and prodded the big snake off the tree. “Sorry, friend,” he said, as the snake plished into the water, “I was here first.”
    Aidan’s right hand gripped a long wooden pole, twice the length of his shepherd’s staff, with a noose of heavy hempen rope attached to the end. The other end of the rope was tied to a cypress tree near the river’s edge. He was a few feet from the great alligator’s sandbar.
    Here Aidan had sat since sunup, waiting for his prey to approach. In the growing heat, the excitement of the hunt had slowly dissipated into numb boredom and disappointment. He expected the alligator two hours ago; soon it would be too hot for anyone—even a cold-blooded reptile—to sunbathe. He saw little point in staying much longer.
    But just before Aidan gave up, the great alligator came gliding down the current and lumbered onto the gently sloped bank. It made straight for its sandy wallow and dropped down onto its belly with a snort, like a dog’s. Aidan was no more than ten feet away, but he was hidden, and the big alligator hadn’t noticed him.
    Aidan had never been this close to such a magnificent alligator. Earlier, he had estimated it to be sixteen feet long, but he saw now that he had not given the creature enough credit. It was at least seventeen, maybe eighteen, feet from its broad, knotty head to its tree-thick tail. The great belly was as round as that of a full-grown horse.
    The scars and indentions on the alligator’s scaly hide told a history of many epic struggles with other bull alligators. But now it smiled the toothy, complacent smile of an animal that feared no enemy.
    Aidan braced himself against a stout tree limb. He felt for his hunting horn. If he got in trouble, he could always blow it. His brothers were in nearby fields, and all of the Errolsons knew to come running anytime they heard the distress call on a hunting horn. “Let’s see if you have one more battle left in you,” he whispered as he lowered the noose end of the pole toward the alligator’s snout.
    The alligator noticed the loop descending, but it did not move. It mistook the brown rope for a cottonmouth and had no intention of surrendering this sandbar to a mere snake. When the noose touched down on the sand in front of it, the alligator hissed warningly and raised up in an aggressive posture.
    This was exactly what Aidan had hoped for. With a quick flip of the pole end, he looped the noose over thealligator’s snout. Only now realizing that it may be in trouble, the alligator made an explosive lunge toward the river. The lurching force tightened the noose around the big reptile’s chest, just above the forelegs.
    Aidan had planned to drop the pole as soon as he felt the noose tighten. But he had miscalculated the suddenness—not to mention the force—with which the alligator could move when it felt the need to. When the gigantic reptile hit the water, Aidan was still gripping the pole with both hands. The limb that supported Aidan splintered like a twig, and he catapulted out of the tree toward the snapping jaws of an angry alligator.



Chapter Seven
Home with Samson
    Barely clearing the alligator’s gaping mouth, Aidan landed on its back, like a trick rider at a carnival. Though it didn’t seem so at the moment, this was a remarkable stroke of providence. Aidan’s first instinct was to jump from the beast’s back and swim to safety. But it took him only a split second to