CAN West 04 - When Hope Springs New Read Online Free PDF Page A

seemed to know exactly where we were going and led me directly toward my cooking pot with its berries. He reached it first—or would have reached it had he not suddenly stopped dead still, his hackles bristling and his throat rumbling.
    His eyes were fastened on the spot where I had left my berries, and my eyes lifted from Kip to search out the pot as well.
    There, feasting undeservedly from my hard-earned berries, was a skunk. I held my breath, not daring to stir.
    The skunk seemed undisturbed. I wanted him to stay that way. I had no desire at all to tangle with him. I put a hand down to restrain Kip, but I wasn’t fast enough.
    Kip knew the berries were mine. He also knew that the skunk was an imposter. With his throat sending out warnings, he sprang forward to chase the skunk from the berry container.
    It all happened so quickly I hardly had time to think. There was a flash as Kip left my side, the instant flag of the skunk’s tail, a brief skirmish, and then Kip was screaming in rage and pain and rolling his head around in the debris on the forest floor as a sickening and powerful smell rolled over us.
    I looked up from Kip just in time to see the last of the skunk disappearing through the underbrush.
    I hurried Kip back to the stream. I didn’t even need to throw in the stick for him to seek out the water. He plunged his whole head into its depths, burying himself in the coolness. His eyes stinging and his nose smarting, again and again he thrust his head into the stream.
    It did nothing for the odor. It seemed to just grow worse and worse. I looked down at my skirt, then sniffed of my hands. Though I had not been sprayed directly by the skunk, I seemed to smell almost as bad as Kip. What in the world would I ever do now?
    After Kip had received all the help he could get from the flowing stream, we went back to the berry patch to reclaim our pot.
    I was tempted to leave it just where it sat. I knew from the concentration of the smell in the area that just to walk through the bushes and over the ground would cover my shoes and skirts with more of the offensive odor. Yet I couldn’t afford to leave the cooking pot behind. I had only one other with which to cook.
    I found a long stick and stretched as far as I could to hook the pot and lift it to me. It slipped from the pole mid-air and clattered to the ground. Try as I might I could not get the handle hooked again. I finally gave up and, hoisting my skirt the best I could, waded through the short bushes and reclaimed my pot. As I had anticipated, it reeked!
    I emptied out the rest of the berries, nearly crying as I watched them fall into a small pile on the ground, and headed once again for the stream. I used sand to scrub and scour my pot, but even so some of the smell seemed to cling to it. Whatever would I do? I needed that cooking pot.
    At last we started for home.
    “Kip, you stink!” I informed him as I slipped his leash back on, and then smiled in spite of myself—the pot calling the kettle black. I was sure I was just as offensive as the dog. And my cooking pot wasn’t much better.
    I wondered just how in the world I would be able to get back into the village without causing chaos.
    “Well, at least they won’t be able to ignore me,” I said to Kip with a grin. But I really wasn’t that amused by it all. We were in a terrible fix, and well I knew it. How in the world, and when in the world, would we ever be free of the odor?

SIX

    Blueberry Pie

    The odor preceded us into the village. I heard children shouting the Indian word for skunk and then saw them run toward their cabins even before I came into the settlement. The women, too, left what they were doing and went indoors.
    With a red face and a hurried step, I hastened toward my own cabin with the smelly Kip tightly in tow.
    When we reached the cabin I tethered Kip outside and put my pot beside the door. Then I leaned down and removed my shoes, stepped just inside the door and removed my heavy