“Cor, stripe me pink, ’arry, a coupla peasants for the bag!”
“Haha, them’s pheasants, Reg, we’re peasants. Still, they’ll do nicely, thank yew. Wait’ll I get a bead on ’em!”
At this point, Gordon M. would step majestically from cover, shotgun at the ready. “Stand perfectly still, you two louts! I am a licensed gamekeeper for Greenacres P.L.C., and I’ll stand no jiggery pokery from either of you felons. Drop those pistols, hand over that sack marked swag. Now, quick march to the police station. This gun has hair triggers, y’know!”
“Blimey, don’t shoot, Guv, we’ve both got families!”
“We wasn’t doin’ nuffink, sir, just gavverin’ wild-flowers!”
“Tell it to the marines, laddie, the game’s up for you two.”
Gordon M. chuckled to himself. He was the very fellow for the job. Greenacres Investments P.L.C. would soon realise that they had hired a professional gamekeeper. Unlike that other oaf, Patterson, who had let himself get bitten by a couple of kids on the day shift. Huh, he’d let them escape, too!
A rustling from the ferns interrupted his meander ings. Gordon M. Liggett’s hands began shaking—he realised that he was scared. Well, sitting out alone in these woods at night, there could be a whole gang of poachers stealing up on him. His confidence was restored when he saw the shotgun lying nearby. He reached for it. Suddenly a lot of things happened all at once.
As he touched the gun, something barged roughly into him, knocking him sideways. Falling from his folding campstool, he sat down squarely on his vacuum flask. It splintered, injuring his bottom with hot tea and tiny glass shards. Gordon M. gave an odd squeak of dismay, which mingled with the cackling of pheasants as they were seized by someone, or something. His gun missing, he struggled upright, treading upon his unwrapped sandwiches.
He saw a little girl standing in a patch of moonlight over by the lake. She was swinging his shotgun by the barrels. Before he could stop her, she flung it into the water. It vanished with a single splash. Gordon M. felt his fear replaced by wrath and indignation.
So that was their game. Bringing a little kid to steal his gun and distract his attention! He ran in the direction of the bushes where the child had gone.
“Halt! Stand still this instant, you’re in very deep trouble, young lady!”
Despite the fact that he was running pell-mell, Gordon M. Liggett froze in his tracks at the sight which confronted him. It was a wolf!
A great, grey, long-legged, fiery-eyed, sharp-fanged wolf!
The little girl stood with one hand buried in the bristling collar fur of the brute’s neck. Both the child and the beast snarled viciously, advancing stiff-legged toward him. Their snarls turned into a long, savage hunting cry.
“Aaaaaaawwwwwoooooooh!”
Gordon M. Liggett’s nerve deserted him miserably. A panicked gurgle escaped his lips. He turned and fled for his life. Cucumber sandwiches sticking to his feet and a damaged posterior did not hinder him. Truth to tell, they seemed to lend speed to his desperate dash. Away from the life of a gamekeeper, far from wild wolves, mad little girls and nightdark woods. Away to traffic fumes, noise, light and paved streets filled with the presence of people.
The moon had receded behind a cloudbank. Back in the woods, Rosie Glegg sat beside her wolf, whom she knew was her friend Charlie Lupus. His tongue lolled out as she removed pheasant feathers from his stiff grey whiskers. Rosie took his face in her hands.
“Can I be a wolf, too, Charlie? I’d make a good wolf. Please!”
They sat facing one another, blue eyes gazing into amber-streaked brown ones. The moon emerged from the cloud. Rosie saw it reflected twice in Charlie’s wolf eyes, which watched her unblinkingly. Eyes within moons, moons within eyes. Running, baying, sniffing, knowing every secret path through the realms of night by their feel, by their smell, by their mysterious call. In a flash, Rosie was seeing more clearly than ever before, though everything was bathed in a pale, brownish-yellow light. She rubbed her eyes with her hand . . . or was it her paw?
Rosie Glegg gave a growling laugh. Charlie Lupus gave a laughing growl.
They drank their fill at the lake and roamed the woods all night, side by side.
Pink-cheeked, happy Mrs. Glegg hummed as she prepared dinner for her husband. These days he came home early so that he could see his little daughter, Rosie. Mrs. Glegg smiled joyfully. What a change in Rosie, even though she preferred her hamburgers and sausages raw. Things were vastly different since she had brought her new friend to the house. Charles Lupus, what a nice boy, so quiet, too. He could sleep in Dennis’s old room for as long as he pleased. Rosie was a different character now, no more wanton acts of terrorism upon other little girls, no more fighting with boys. She had given up her Swiss Army knife and abandoned the fearsome skipping-rope lariat. Long, quiet walks with Charlie were the order of the day for Rosie now, especially since the woodlands were once more open to the public. So sensible of Greenacres Investments P.L.C. to pull out of their proposed development. It said in the Nether Cum Hopping Daily Euphonium that the company had moved to Scotland. Nine hundred acres of moorland in Auchterfloogle. Greenacres could keep a full stock of gamebirds unscathed there, ready to be blown into oblivion by foreign tourists and overstressed executives.
Skipping blithely upstairs, Mrs. Glegg cooed softly, “Rosie, Charles, dinner’s almost ready now!”
She hummed her way downstairs, not bothering either of them by entering their rooms. Children needed somewhere private to call their own. Even the notices on bedroom doors were not what they used to be. Evidently, crocodiles had fallen out of favour. The writing on both doors now probably owed much to the scaremongering of the local press. Mrs. Glegg surmised that they owed a lot to the printing errors of the papers, too.
KEEYP OWT. DAINJER! WHAIRWULFS LIV
HEER. ROWZEE GEE AN CHARLEE EL.
Epilogue
Gordon M. Liggett became antisocial after the cost of a double-barrelled shotgun was deducted from his severance pay by his former employers, Greenacres Investments P.L.C. He was arrested by the police following a complaint from the Noise Abatement Society that he had been causing annoyance to customers in the bar parlour of the Railway Arms public house by continually howling like a wolf. A further charge of kicking a German shepherd dog outside of No 1 Woodside Lane was dismissed by the police. However, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (R.S.P.C.A.) will be taking out a private summons for legal action against the said Gordon M. Liggett the moment he gets out of psychiatric counselling.
Brian Jacques, The Ribbajack: And Other Haunting Tales
(Series: # )
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