Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls Page A

sitting in her old cane-bottom rocker, knitting.
        She looked up. I saw all the worry and grief leave her eyes. Her head bowed down. The knitting in her hands came up to cover her face. I stepped inside the room. I wanted to run to her and comfort her and tell her how sorry I was for all the worry and grief I had caused her.
        The booming voice of my father shook me from my trance.
        He said, "Well, what have you got there?"
        Laughing, he got up from his chair and came over to me. He reached and took the sack from my shoulder.
        "When we started looking for you," he said, "I went to the store and your grandpa told me all about it. It wasn't too hard to figure out what you had done, but you should have told us."
        I ran to my mother and, dropping to my knees, I buried my face in her lap.
        As Mama patted my head, I heard her say in a quavering voice, "Oh, why didn't you tell us? Why?"
        I couldn't answer.
        Between sobs, I heard the squeals of delight from my sisters as they fondled my pups.
        I heard my father say, "What's this other stuff you've got?"
        Without raising my head from my mother's lap, in a choking voice I said, "One is for you, one is for Mama, and the other is for the girls."
        I heard the snapping of string and the rattle of paper. The oh's and ah's from my sisters were wonderful to hear.
        Papa came over to Mama. Laying the cloth on the arm of her chair, he said, "Well, you've been wanting a new dress. Here is enough cloth to make half a dozen dresses."
        Realizing that everything was forgiven, I stood up and dried my eyes. Papa was pleased with his new overalls. My sisters forgot the pups for the candy. The light that was shining from my mother's eyes, as she fingered the cheap cotton cloth, was something I will never forget.
        Mama warmed some milk for the pups. They drank until their little tummies were tight and round.
        As I ate, Papa sat down at the table and started talking man-talk to me. He asked, "How are things in town?"
        I told him it was boiling with people. The wagon yard was full of wagons and teams.
        He asked if I had seen anyone I knew.
        I told him I hadn't, but the stationmaster had asked about him.
        He asked me where I had spent the night.
        I told him about the cave in the Sparrow Hawk Mountains.
        He said that must have been the one called "Robber's Cave."
        My youngest sister piped up, "Did you stay all night with some robbers?"
        My oldest sister said, "Silly, that was a long time ago. There aren't any robbers there now."
        The other one put her nickel's worth in, "Weren't you scared?"
        "No," I said, "I wasn't scared of staying in the cave, but I heard a mountain lion scream and it scared me half to death."
        "Aw, they won't bother you," Papa said. "You had a fire, didn't you?"
        I said, "Yes."
        He said, "They'll never bother you unless they are wounded or cornered, but if they are, you had better look out."
        Papa asked me how I liked town.
        I said I didn't like it at all, and wouldn't live there even if they gave it to me.
        With a querying look on his face, he said, "I'm afraid I don't understand. I thought you always wanted to go to town."
        "I did," I said, "but I don't any more. I don't like the people there and couldn't understand them."
        "What was wrong with them?" he asked.
        I told him how they had stared at me, and had even laughed and made fun of me.
        He said, "Aw, I don't think they were making fun of you, were they?"
        "Yes, they were," I said, "and to beat it all, the boys jumped on me and knocked me down in the dirt. If it hadn't been for the marshal, I would have taken a beating."
        Papa said, "So you met the marshal. What did you think of him?"
        I told him he was a nice man. He had bought