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Show -25- Peppermint Monday Jake going to do. Jake didn't just catch you doing something wrong, and politely forgive you. Especially when he was the one you wronged. I'd heard the boys in the back of the bus say he shot at Billy Crowley once. Billy had been trapping animals close to Jake's place. He trapped a coon, and instead of checking his traps regularly, he went on vacation for a week. Now I don't see anything wrong with that, but I guess Jake did. The coon didn't die suddenly, but it got a leg hurt pretty bad. It lay there and bled for awhile. Jake found the coon, healed his wounds, and started watching for Billy to come around. When Billy did show up one day, Jake told him to stay out of the woods if he was going to let animals suffer. He told him a good trapper trapped, he didn't murder slowly. Anyway I guess Billy disagreed with him, and set another trap. When he came to check it, Jake was waiting in the bushes, and took a shot at him. Probably just to warn him, but he shot a pocket right off his pants. We'd done more than trap in everybody's woods. We'd broken right in Jake's house. He might think we'd come to steal, or vandalize, or something real bad. He wouldn't understand how we felt about Russ and how our brother had to be protected. "Rested up?" Jason pulled himself up, ready to start off again. "Not really," but I got up too. At least we knew the way from here. Eaton Bridge was just to the south of us, and we'd been there dozens of times. I took a step after him, my feet throbbing with resistance. Jake hiked this way almost every day, a lot of the time carrying Russ. He was an old man, and he was in better shape than I was. I even ran laps at school P.E, and played volleyball on the freshman team. I knew I couldn't out last him if he wanted to catch me, and I doubted I |
