Trapped! (7 page)

“I’ve gotten really fond of Piccolo,” Mary said, “even though she’s only been here one day. She’s such a friendly pig. It’s almost as if she knows we rescued her.”

Pete, who had leaped over Alex’s foot when Alex tried to keep him inside, shook his head in disbelief. Well, of course she knows, he thought. The pig might not be as smart as a cat, but she wasn’t stupid. Humans didn’t give animals enough credit.

“Maybe Hogman won’t be put off by publicity,” Alex said. “If he thinks he has a right to take the pig, maybe he won’t care who sees him do it.”

“He might want to be on television,” Rocky said. “Have you noticed how people react when they see someone with a big video camera? They wave and jump up and down and hold signs; they act ridiculous, trying to call attention to themselves so they’ll be on TV.”

It was true, Alex thought. Maybe his idea of calling the reporter hadn’t been so great, after all.

“Gramma called the police department’s nonemergency line and told them the situation,” Mary said. “If that man comes back for Piccolo, we’re not supposed to try to stop him.”

“What?” Alex said. “We’re supposed to let him take the pig?”

“We’re supposed to call 911, and let the police handle it.”

“What if they don’t get here in time?” Rocky said.

The three friends sat on the grass, and Pete sat under a bush, listening for the noisy truck. Piccolo heard it first, then Pete, and finally the humans. Mary ran inside to alert Mrs. Sunburg.

The truck rattled down the driveway, backed up to the pigpen, and stopped. The man got out, leaving the door open, as usual. Another man got out of the passenger side of the truck.

Pete immediately ran from the bush to the truck, but instead of going to the open door, he went underneath the truck and stayed behind a tire. He wanted to be certain neither of the men saw him before he jumped inside the truck.

He peered around the tire. Nobody was looking in his direction. Hogman was talking loudly and waving his hands around. The other man stood by the gate with a ring of keys. He was trying them on the lock, one at a time.

Pete crept along under the truck until he was beside the open door. He glanced out once more to be sure nobody was watching, then jumped onto the seat of the truck.

The box of pelts sat on the floor. Pete tentatively pawed at the one on top, moving it enough so that he could see underneath it. The next pelt was identical to the top one—sleek brown fur, soft and thick. A beaver? A mink? Pete wasn’t sure what kind of animal the pelts were from.

Pete noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor beside the
box. It said INVOICE across the top, followed by the name Bick Badgerton. Below that, scrawled in untidy handwriting, it said, “Nine beaver. Two rabbit. One fisher. Total due on delivery: $120.00.”

I was right, Pete thought. Hogman is the trapper. He’s killed and skinned all these animals, and now he’s going to sell the pelts. Pete quickly did the division in his head, feeling sad. It came to only ten dollars per pelt. He thought the life of a wild creature with such beautiful fur should be worth more than ten dollars.

Pete’s plan had been to sit in the truck and caterwaul until Alex came to get him, and then he would show Alex the pelts. Now he worried that Hogman might get back to the truck first, and then Alex would never see what was inside.

Pete had a better idea. He would take this invoice and one of the pelts and SHOW them to Alex. The humans always misunderstood what he told them, but they wouldn’t be able to misunderstand this kind of evidence.

Pete sank his teeth into the top pelt and tried to drag it out of the box. It was heavier than he had anticipated. He braced his hind legs on the seat and tried again, but the pelt barely moved. He let go and pawed the first two pelts aside until he could see beneath them. He recognized the next pelt as a rabbit. He’d seen rabbits exactly like this one nibbling the grass in Alex’s backyard, and it made him cringe to think of them caught in a cruel trap. Pete shuddered.

He looked at the pelt’s four appendages, which had been the rabbit’s narrow legs. Pete bit the pelt in the thinnest place, right above one of the rabbit’s front feet. He bit as hard as he could, chewing and tugging until the whole rabbit’s foot came off in his mouth.

He tried to spit it out, but he had clamped down so hard that the pelt above the foot was stuck on his teeth. As Pete pawed at the side of his mouth, he heard another vehicle pull up beside the truck. Curious, Pete peeked out the window.

A van had parked beside Hogman’s truck. A woman holding a microphone and a man balancing a big camera on one shoulder got out of the van and walked toward the group by the pigpen.

“What’s going on?” Hogman asked. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jenna Martinez, from channel four,” the woman said. “I’m covering the pig story for the five o’clock news.”

Hogman put his hands in front of his face. “No pictures,” he said. “No comment. I don’t want to be on TV.”

Jenna turned to Alex. “Tell me what’s happening,” she said.

“This man was driving the truck when the pig fell off,” Alex said. “Now he wants to take her back, even though the police gave custody to Foothills Animal Rescue, and they gave her to us.”

Jenna stuck the microphone in Hogman’s face. “Is that true?” she asked. “The pig fell off your truck?”

He backed away from her, keeping his face covered and shaking his head. “No comment,” he said. “And no photos of me!”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“That’s none of your business, and if you put pictures of me on the air, I’ll sue the station.”

Pete quit watching while he tried to get the rabbit’s foot unstuck from his teeth. Suddenly he realized the voices were getting louder. Hogman was coming toward the truck. If I’m going to take evidence, Pete thought, I need to take it now. With the rabbit’s foot still hanging from the side of his mouth, he grabbed the invoice in his teeth, then jumped off the seat just as Hogman and the other man reached the two doors.

Pete dashed between Hogman’s legs, his tail streaming out behind him. He hoped the cameraman was filming his daring escape
.

“What was that?” the brother said. “An animal jumped out of your truck!”

“That fool cat was here again,” Hogman said. Both men got in and slammed the doors. “He must belong to one of the kids or the old lady.”

Keeping one hand in front of his face in case the camera pointed his way, Hogman yelled out the window: “I’ll be back!” he shouted. To his brother, he added, “And next time I’ll be armed!”

Pete ran into the woods behind Alex’s house, then put the invoice in a thick clump of ferns where the wind couldn’t blow it away. He didn’t watch Hogman drive off; he didn’t watch the TV people leave, either. He was too busy pawing at the rabbit’s foot that was stuck in his mouth.

He pushed at it with his pink tongue. Yuck! He didn’t like the taste, and he didn’t want to cough up a hair ball made of rabbit fur. When the rabbit’s foot finally came loose, he laid it on top of the invoice.

Then he took a complete cat bath, licking his shoulders and washing his face. Grooming himself calmed him. When he finished, he crept back to Mary’s yard. The pig was asleep in her pen; Alex and the others had left.

Pete didn’t want to put the rabbit’s foot in his mouth again in order to carry it home. Too many pieces of fur had stuck to his tongue the first time.

He decided to leave the evidence where it was, and try to get Alex to follow him. If he howled loudly enough and acted distressed, Alex should get the hint and go see what Pete wanted to show him.

I’ll sit on the steps and caterwaul, Pete decided, and when Alex opens the door, I’ll run toward the clump of ferns.

•  •  •

Bick Badgerton drove his brother, Ram, to the gas station where Ram worked.

“I’ll be off work at seven,” Ram said. “If you want me to go back up there with you to get the pig, I can do it then.”

“I’ll have the pig long before seven,” Bick said. “The slaughterhouse closes at six. As soon as I take this box of pelts to Ned, I’ll go back and get the pig. By then that TV crew will be gone. I can’t believe those kids got a reporter to drive all the way out there to take pictures of my pig.”

“Maybe you ought to keep that pig,” Ram said. “If she gets famous enough, you can sell pictures of her.”

Bick looked at his brother as if he’d suddenly started speaking Chinese. “You’re crazy,” he said. “Who’d buy pictures of my pig?”

“She was already on the news once,” Ram said, “and maybe she’ll be on again today. I wouldn’t want you to miss a chance for some easy money. A guy I heard about got two hundred dollars from one of the networks for a home video he took.”

“Of a pig?”

“No, of Mount Saint Helens blowing its top.”

“A volcano erupting is not the same as my pig lying in the dirt.”

Ram shrugged. “You never know what’s going to catch the public’s attention,” he said. “There are a lot of animal lovers out there. Maybe the pig will be a celebrity. You can make a pig Web page and sell hoofprints.” He got out, then as Bick drove off, he called, “W-w-w dot p-i-g dot com!”

Don’t listen to him, Bick told himself. Ram always had some get-rich-quick scheme, and not one of them had ever panned out. I shouldn’t have involved him in the first
place. I have a ramp for the truck and sturdy rope. I can lead the pig up the ramp by myself, the same as I did when I loaded her the first time.

He fumed while he drove the fifteen miles to Ned’s shop. He had successfully avoided newspeople for seven years; he shouldn’t have to confront them now in order to get his own pig back. He shouldn’t have to put up with that snoopy cat prowling around in his truck, either. He shouldn’t have to go through any of this hassle.

Drat those kids, anyway! This whole mess was their fault. If they had minded their own business and left his pig alone, none of this would have happened. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. By the time he parked his truck in Ned’s parking lot, he was steaming.

He picked up the box of pelts, then looked for the invoice. Where was it? He was positive he had laid it on the floor beside the box. Bick set the box on the roof of the truck while he looked under the seat. All he saw was an empty beer can, two old scratch-off lottery tickets with losing numbers, and the wrapper from yesterday’s breakfast sandwich.

He went around to the driver’s side and looked under that seat, too, in case the invoice had somehow slid over there, but the invoice wasn’t under there, either.

Bick stomped into Ned’s store and plopped the box down on the counter.

“I had an invoice ready for you,” he said, “but it’s gone. I gave my brother a ride to work; it must have fallen out of the truck when he got out. I have nine beaver, two rabbits, and a fisher. Total comes to one hundred twenty bucks.”

“I can’t pay you without an invoice,” Ned said. “You know that.” As he talked he picked up two pelts and looked at them. “What happened to this one?” he asked as he turned the fur over in his hands. “Looks like your dog took a bite out of it.”

“I don’t have a dog.” Bick leaned closer. “Where?”

“Right there. One of the rabbit’s front feet has been chewed off. That’ll cut in half the amount I can pay you for it.”

Bick grabbed the pelt in question and examined it. “That rabbit had all four feet when I put it in the box,” he said. “You know I’m more careful than that. I wouldn’t try to sell you a damaged pelt.”

Ned shrugged. “You just did.” He lifted each of the other pelts out of the box and looked them over carefully, as if expecting the others might also have missing parts.

Suddenly Bick slammed his fist on the counter, making Ned jump. “It was that cat!” he said.

“What cat?”

“Some kids stole my pig, and when I went to get her back, their cat got in my truck. He must have chewed on that rabbit pelt and ripped a foot off it.”

Ned looked doubtful. “I suppose the cat took the invoice, too?”

“Maybe. Maybe he kicked it out accidentally, or maybe it stuck to his foot. How should I know? All I know is that me and my brother and that cat are the only ones who’ve been in my truck since I put the pelts and the invoice in there. Ram didn’t chew off that rabbit’s foot, and I sure didn’t touch it, so that leaves the cat.”

“Maybe you should go find that cat,” Ned said. He started to laugh. “Ask him to return your invoice and your rabbit’s foot.”

“It isn’t funny.”

Ned struggled to quit smiling but lost the battle. “If the cat doesn’t have your invoice, you can write up another one and send it to me. I’ll mail you a check.”

Bick shook his head. “I gotta have cash,” he said. “Give me some paper and I’ll make a new invoice now.”

Ned took a lined yellow tablet from a drawer and handed it to Bick. “Just remember to only bill half for the rabbit that’s missing a foot.” He laughed some more. “Maybe the cat wanted a good-luck charm,” he said.

“Ha. Ha.” Bick wrote out the new invoice, collected his money, and left the shop. He’d find that cat, all right, and when he did, no good-luck charm on Earth would save the little thief.

A
s soon as
the reporter and cameraman left, Mary unlocked the pigpen gate. She went in the pen, followed by Alex and Rocky.

Piccolo seemed glad to have company. She leaned against Alex’s leg while the kids scratched behind her ears.

“I did some more Internet research about pigs this morning,” Rocky said. “There’s one really cool Web site that compares pigs to people. It said pigs are more like humans than any other animal is. Pig hearts, arteries, livers, and immune systems are like ours. So are their teeth!”

Alex squatted beside Piccolo, trying to see her teeth. Piccolo kept her mouth closed but pushed her snout toward Alex’s face.

“Pigs get cancer and arthritis,” Rocky continued, “and they respond to drugs much the same way people do.”

“Gramma told me that when my great-uncle Fred had open heart surgery he got a pig’s heart valve put in his
heart,” Mary said. “She said the mitral heart valves of pigs are grafted into human patients all the time. They last longer than man-made valves.”