The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last by Walter Wangerin Jr. Read Free Book Online

Juniper patches too wide to travel around have scratched their tender parts, raising welts. The late summer rains turned fields into a sinking mud. The Hens plotched belly-down and could not move. Least, the Plain Brown Bird, wove reeds into ropes. Pertelote, Boreas and the Otters pulled the hapless Creatures out again, one by clucking one.
    Now it’s Gnats. Clouds of Gnats sip moisture from the Animals’ eyes. And Horseflies buzz in their ears and bite.
    Pertelote’s mood darkens.
    “Oh, John, we have lived too long.”
    And then the Wood Ticks.
    Least, whose bill is a needle, has played rapiers with the lumbering Horseflies. But Wood Ticks are another matter. They attach themselves to the Animals’ skins and swill the Animals’ blood until they grow mushroom-white and as fat as the pits of sunflower seeds. As much as it nauseates her, Least probes the fur, punctures the Ticks’ swollen abdomens, then tweezers out the Ticks’ heads. She must kill them. Fifteen Ticks can suck such quantities of blood that a Creature may sicken and grow anemic. She will develop a raging thirst and yearn for salt.
    Presently John Wesley is drinking from a clear, cold stream. So is the rest of the band left and right of him, lapping water, slurping it. The Hens, ever prissy, dip their beaks into the stream, grab a mouthful, then raise their heads to the sky as if to gargle, but rather to work their throats and swallow. Their feathers are curling at the tip-edges.
    Their nomadic life has been very difficult. De La Coeur’s eyelashes are crusted. Ferric’s are rheumy. The Brothers Mice have lost chatter. Least can do only so much. Things are getting out of hand. Boreas the White Wolf has been able to maintain his quiet nobility, but Pertelote has a look of downright despair.
    “Oh, John, we have lived too long.”
    The Weasel himself is plain angry. As he drinks his eyes focus on the stones on the streambed. He snaps back his head and squints at threadlike things attached to the stones: colonies of dark larvae whose slender bodies wave in the water’s flow. They look like hairs on a bald head combed all in one direction.
    By Gaw, this is the last straw!
    John leaps into the stream. He scratches at the larvae. He squashes them. He picks up a river rock and grinds them.
    “Do and do and do for you !”
    The whole company of Animals forgets thirst and watches the angry Weasel.
    For all his frantic action and the churning of the water, John is unaware of the changes occurring in the larvae. Swiftly they are becoming swimming pupae. Even the pupal stage passes quickly. They seem intent on speed. Come night and they will swarm in thick clouds of Black Flies.
    Petertelote says, “John,” and the Weasel deflates.
    She’s standing on the stream bank. John Wesley crawls ashore. He lies down, and Pertelote drapes a wing over his exhausted body.
    Night finds the two of them sleeping in the same position.
    As were Eurus and Selkirk the Marten, so was Jasper the fat Hen once infested with the maggots that fell from Chauntecleer’s nostrils. These destroyed her moral soul. She laid claim to the meat of a murdered Ewe, but Pertelote meddled and made her run. Run she did. In a violent huff Jasper too left the Hemlock.
    Had Pertelote tried to damage her? Well, Sheep-shit on Pertelote!
    Traveling in her own right, now, Jasper has been able to maintain her girth by expanding her diet beyond mere seeds and the tiny gravel by which she grinds the food in her gizzard.
    Last summer the Cicadas woke from their seventeen-year sleep underground and tunneled up through the soil. These Insects have faces like a grillwork and bodies like dumdums. They climbed tree trunks and fastened themselves to the bark, then performed an extraordinary transformation. Off with the old, on with the new. The Cicadas split open their brown backs like dry shells. Fresh legs fiddled through the crack in the hard carapace of their past. The windows of their old eyes became empty