The Mopwater Files by John R. Erickson Page A

me out of this one.
    I slowed my pace and began studying the land­marks. There was the big cottonwood tree that had been struck by lightning. That was familiar. And yes, there were the bluffs on the south side of the creek. I was getting close.
    I began to feel somewhat better, now that I had . . . huh? I stopped in my tracks. Unless my ears were playing tricks on me, I had just heard . . . something. I lifted my ears to Maximum Gathering Mode and homed in on the sound.
    Voices? Laughter? Impossible. Nobody laughed out here in this wilderness . . . unless . . . gulp. I began to realize to who or whom those voices might belong—a couple of renegade outlaws who were right at home in the wilderness, and the wildernesser it was, the better they liked it.
    I crouched down, peered through the tamarack brush, and listened. And yes, there they were—Rip and Snort, the dreaded cannibal brothers. That in itself was bad enough, me stumbling into their camp in the middle of a trackless wilderness.
    But there was more. I had come to seek advice from Madame Moonshine, right? Well, guess who was sitting in the middle of the cannibals—tied up with a piece of grapevine.
    Madame Moonshine herself, and it appeared that she might need my help even more than I needed hers, because the cannibals were wearing huge grins and licking their chops, as though they were working themselves up for a big feathery feast.
    The thought crossed my mind that I should creep away from here and go flying back to headquarters. They hadn’t seen me yet and seemed pretty absorbed in heckling Madame Moonshine. And didn’t I have enough problems of my own without taking on any of Madame’s? And besides, she was supposed to have magical powers, right? So why didn’t she use them to save herself?
    In the interest of truth and so forth, I’ll admit that I did take two steps backward . . . three steps . . . okay, five or six steps backward, but then I caught myself and felt ashamed. Was I really enough of a cad to run away and leave that poor little owl to her fate?
    Well, I was enough of a cad to think about it, but not enough of one to actually do it. I returned to my listening post and . . . well, listened, of course.
    What else would you do in a listening post?
    I guess you could watch and listen both, and in fact, that’s exactly what I did. I crouched down in the sand, peered through the low branches of a tamarack bush, and observed the proceedings.
    As you will see, that turned out to be a fitful decision.
    Faithful.
    Fateful.
    Phooey.
    You’ll find out soon enough, and it just might scare you out of your wits.
    No kidding.
    See, I know what’s fixing to happen and you don’t. If I were in your shoes, I’d . . . well, look pretty funny, wouldn’t I, because dogs don’t wear shoes.
    A little humor there.
    But I’d also think twice about going on with the story, is the point, because we’re coming to the scary part.
    Maybe you’d better quit and go on to bed.

Chapter Ten: The Singing Ignoramuses

    I knew you wouldn’t take my advice. You think you’re pretty tough, don’t you? Well, maybe you are and maybe you’re not. We’ll see about that.
    But don’t say you weren’t warned.
    Okay, where were we? The cannibal brothers had Madame Moonshine tied up and they were staring and grinning at her. And licking their chops in what you might call a threatening manner.
    See, I knew all their manniserums, because I had been in that same hot seat before, many times. Mannerisms, I should say, not manniserums. When a cannibal looks at you in a certain way, with a glint in his eye and with drooling chops, you begin to suspect that he’s hungry.
    And when two of ’em look at you that way, you know you’ve found Double Trouble.
    Anyways, I tuned into their frequencies and listened. Madame was showing spunk and courage. She held her head up and glared right back at