The Case of the Fiddle Playing Fox Read Online Free PDF Page B

guess, and guessing about such matters seldom leads to happiness. In the end, I preferred ignorance over bliss, or whatever the old saying is.
    I made my way through the gloom of the machine shed and called to Drover in a soft voice. “Drover, the moment has come. We are called to meet our fate in the night.”
    Didn’t faze him, so I gave him a boot and yelled, “Get up, Half-Stepper, it’s time to go to work!” That did the trick.
    He staggered around in circles for a minute or two. And then we marched out into night’s last day . . . day’s last light, I should say, and began our lonely virgil.

Chapter Six: Loneliness on the Front Lines

    C rouched in some weeds across from the chicken house, we waited in the darkness and silence.
    Did I say silence? Not exactly. A guy never realizes how much non-silence there is on a quiet autumn night until he’s forced to sit and listen.
    Crickets, for example. You ever stop and wonder how many crickets there are in this world? Neither had I, but there are bound to be bunches and bunches of crickets.
    And did you ever stop and wonder how one cricket can make so much noise? I mean, we’re talking about a little bitty feller who makes something more than a little bitty racket.
    Don’t crickets ever get tired? You’d think so, but they go on and on, making their chirp or whatever it is, and they don’t ever seem to sleep.
    Well, after studying crickets for a lot longer than I ever wanted to, I came to the conclusion that whoever builds ’em is pretty handy with his tools.
    And there were other sounds in the night. The hooting of an owl. The “voom” of bull-bats. The howling of coyotes. Bullfrogs saying, “ Rrrump, rrump !” down on the creek.
    And then there was the whisper of the wind. Did you know that the wind has a different voice for every season of the year? It does, and when you live outside, the way I do, you become something of an expert on the subject.
    I listen to the wind every day and every night, and I can tell you that in the fall of the year, that old wind sings a lonesome song. It makes you wonder what happened to spring, and where the summertime went.
    And that’s the kind of song I was hearing, as I listened to the wind blowing through the trees. It went kind of like this.
    Wind Song
    She came here in the springtime
    With flowers in her hair,
    Inquiring for a place to stay
    Until the trees grew bare.
    I saw her in the cottonwoods,
    Beneath their pools of shade.
    She caught a puff of cotton
    And blew it on its way.
    Oh sing songs of sunshine,
    Sing songs of rain,
    Sing songs of springtime gone,
    Sing them all again.
    She stayed through the summer months,
    I saw her having fun.
    She took a gold strand of hair
    And wrapped it ’round the sun.
    She warmed the earth and kissed its face
    With lips of sparkling dew.
    I thought she’d stay forever,
    Her name I never knew.
    Oh sing songs of sunshine,
    Sing songs of rain,
    Sing songs of springtime gone,
    Sing them all again.
    The autumn came, I heard the wind
    And saw the swirls of red,
    And cottonwoods with gnarled limbs
    Against a sky of lead.
    I called for her to warm herself
    And said that she must stay.
    But all at once her eyes turned sad
    And then she went away.
    Oh sing songs of sunshine,
    Sing songs of rain,
    Sing songs of springtime gone,
    Sing them all again.
    Kind of mournful, huh? That old autumn wind can sure send a chill or two down your backbone, especially if you happen to be on a dangerous assignment in the dead of night.
    And there were other sounds I couldn’t identify: whispers and rustles and clatters and snaps, swishes and sighs and moans and slithers. Those were the ones that made me uneasy because . . . Well, a guy never knows what manner of beast might produce that kind of noise.
    And after a few hours, it begins to work on his mind. I mean, when you’re trying to maintain a state of readiness and alertness, you