The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer Read Online Free PDF Page A

won’t go near anyone but me. But being smart doesn’t make him a mind reader. If he was, he’d know exactly what I’ve got in this bag.”
    â€œBut of course he knows! So do I!”
    â€œTell me!”
    â€œString, knife, pliers, and—and four trout.”
    Penny blinked her good eye and suddenly laughed. “Aw, but I’d already told you part of what I was going to bring. And you smelled the trout.”
    â€œPshaw, I can’t smell in numbers. And you didn’t say anything about bringing pliers.” The tantalizing smell of the fish was becoming almost more than Swimmer could bear. “Please,” he begged. “Won’t you give me a trout before I have a fainting spell? I can’t catch ’em with a bum leg and I’m starved to a frazzle.”
    â€œOh, you poor thing!” Instantly she drew a fat trout from the bag and placed it on the rock before him. A second trout went to Scruff. “I had a feeling you’d be back,” she said to the dog, “so I stole an extra fish for you. I’m saving the two little ones for Willow and Ripple—not that they’re hungry, but they do love to be remembered.”
    â€œYou stole them?” Swimmer burbled between bites.
    â€œI sure did. Mr. Sykes runs a trout farm.” Her mouth tightened defiantly. “Maybe I am a thief, but I don’t care. I work hard enough to pay for ten times a few fish. The minute I’m back from school it’s, Penny, do this; Penny, do that; Penny, do something else. Wash the dishes, make the beds, iron the shirts, fix the supper—and, in between, it’s always the trout. I’ve just finished cleaning and packing a hundred and fifty trout for that rush order that came in this afternoon.”
    While she spoke, she had been examining a clump of poplar saplings that grew near the bottom of the slope. Now she drew a knife from the bag and made two cuts around a smooth section of one of the slender trunks. Carefully she peeled away the bark between the cuts, then knelt beside Swimmer and began trimming the bark to fit the broken leg.
    Her small, quick hands were as gentle as could be, and in less than a minute she had the leg firmly and comfortably encased in a tube of bark. Not once did she really hurt him, even while straightening the leg in the splint or tying it securely afterward. But Swimmer could not resist an occasional agonized groan just to get her sympathy.
    â€œYou’re a living doll,” he murmured, conscious of Scruff’s jealousy as she fussed over him and more than ever aware of what a skinny little mistreated thing she was. Miss Primm back at the lab would have been shocked at the sight of her bruised face, and thoroughly scandalized by the ragtag dress and the woebegone scrap of ribbon that held back her red hair. Swimmer’s heart went out to her.
    After catching the thought from Scruff, he said, “Scruff wants you to know that if he ever finds Weaver out in the woods, he’ll chew him apart.”
    â€œNo!” Penny cried instantly. “Don’t you dare! Scruff, that would be the end of everything. If Weaver didn’t shoot at you, somebody else would. You know how they feel about wild dogs around here.” She paused and began shaking her finger at both of them for emphasis. “Don’t either of you ever, ever, go near the place up there. If you’re seen, they’ll shoot you on sight. And, Swimmer, they hate otters like poison. So stay away from the trout ponds, and don’t even go wading in that little branch that drains them.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with it?”
    â€œIt’s full of traps.”
    â€œTraps!”
    â€œYes. Those horrible steel things with jaws. Most of the branch is on this side of the fence, on government land, but that doesn’t make any difference. Not to an old meanie like Grady Sykes. You’d think he owned everything in the forest