“Don’t you see who’s behind the wheel?”
Oscar narrowed his eyes and peered at the truck.
Uh-oh.
It was being driven by a weaselboar.
Chapter 40
For a second, Molly thought about pointing at Oscar and screaming, “He’s the one! He’s the dogg who made your cousin jump off the cliff.”
But if she did, she knew the weaselboar behind the wheel of the truck would shred her to pieces ten seconds after it shredded Oscar. Besides, they were in this together now.
“Tuck and roll!” she shouted.
“Huh?”
Molly’s father always said you couldn’t teach an old dogg new tricks. Seemed the same thing was true for young doggs, too.
“Like this!” she said, tucking herself into a tight ball and tumbling into the ditch alongside the road.
Oscar imitated her moves as best he could. He also yelped, “Ooo!,” “Eee!,” and “Ouch!” while he did it. Molly figured rolling around with a chest wound had to hurt.
“Do you think he saw us?” Oscar whispered.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Molly whispered back.
The dusty pickup truck ground its gears and kept creeping up the steep gravel road.
“He didn’t see us!” whispered Molly after the truck passed.
“I have an idea,” whispered Oscar. “Did you see any weaselboars riding in the rear cargo bed?”
“No. But I was sort of too busy tucking and rolling to see anything.”
Oscar thumped his tail, swishing it through the dirt and gravel. Molly could tell: the dogg was excited.
“If we hopped into the back of that truck, we could ride it up the mountain.”
“No way, Oscar. It’s too risky.”
“No risk, no reward.”
“But you’re injured.”
“Which is why I want to hitch a ride. I have one good sprint left in me, Molly. I want to use it creatively. Come on. Let’s do this thing.”
“You’re crazy,” said Molly, reluctantly climbing onto the dogg’s back. “You know that, right?”
“Maybe,” said Oscar. “But that means you’re even crazier. Because you just climbed on my crazy back!”
Molly gripped Oscar’s shirt collar. The dogg grunted, clambered out of the ditch, and raced up the road behind the truck. The tailgate of the pickup was hanging open, bouncing and banging and denting itself every time the weaselboar hit a bump.
“If that thing checks its rearview mirror, we’re toast!” said Molly, hanging on for dear life as Oscar kept dashing up the rocky road. Even with his injury and his tree-branch crutch, he was fast!
“He’s a weaselboar—just like that one who ran into the ravine. Weaselboars never look back. They just charge forward. Hang on! Here we go! Time to take another leap of faith!”
Oscar sprang up off the road and into the back of the pickup truck.
The cargo bed was lined with a thin, moldy carpet.
Molly rolled off Oscar’s back, tumbled to the left, and hugged the side of the truck. Oscar rolled right and hid along the right sidewall.
Molly couldn’t believe it.
They’d actually done it. They’d hitched a ride up Crooked Nose Mountain with a weaselboar. The dogg’s dumb idea was actually working. They were on their way home! They just had to sit back, relax, and leave the driving to the weaselboar who, hopefully, was on his way to Great Western Park campsite to steal food scraps out of garbage cans or something.
They rambled along for ten full minutes.
Which was when the dumb dogg did something even dumber.
He sat up and scooched his butt along the carpet-lined cargo bed.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I had to.”
A roar erupted from the cab of the truck. “Why you little—!”
Apparently, Oscar’s butt-scooching had caused the weaselboar to check its rearview mirror.
Chapter 41
The snarling weaselboar slammed the truck to a stop.
Molly and Oscar tumbled forward and squashed against the window of the weaselboar’s cab.
The weaselboar whipped around and used its tusks like a battering ram to bash at the glass. The window splintered into rippled veins. Another bash and chunks and shards went flying.
“My bad!” shouted Oscar. “Had an itch. Had to scratch it!”
“You had to get us killed, too!” shouted Molly.
The truck rocked every time the weaselboar smashed into the shattering glass.
Terrified, Oscar and Molly scampered around in circles in the back of the truck, not knowing where to flee next.
“Tuck and roll?” suggested Oscar.
“He can see us, dummy!” said Molly. “If we tuck and roll, he’ll just pounce on us!”
Oscar looked up. There were birds of prey circling overhead. He figured they were biding their time, waiting to clean up any carcass scraps the weaselboar left behind after it demolished Oscar and Molly.
There was a loud crash, the tinkle of glass, and an angry snort.
The weaselboar was in the truck bed.
It lowered its head and charged at Oscar.
Oscar dodged the blow. The weaselboar banged into the wooden wall behind him. Hard.
“Good move!” shouted Molly, who was watching Oscar play dodgeball with the weaselboar’s tusks from the relative safety of the truck’s roof. “Do it again!”
Oscar howled and gave a thumbs-up.
Stumbling slightly from the mild concussion it had given itself, the weaselboar turned around and charged at Oscar again.
This time Oscar leapt up, a split second before the monster could head-butt him. Once again, the weaselboar slammed into the wooden wall of the cargo bed. It staggered and swayed and lurched and tottered.
It made itself the perfect target.
Not for Oscar, but for the big eagles swooping around overhead. A pair dive-bombed the truck, snagged the weaselboar by the scruff of its neck with their sharp talons, and together hauled it up, up and away!
“Woo-hoo!” cried Oscar. “We’re still not dead!”
“It’s like my father always says,” remarked Molly. “Every predator is some other predator’s prey.”
“But I didn’t do it on purpose like you did with the bear and the mountain lion,” said Oscar. “I just got lucky.”
“So did I!” said Molly. “The day I met you!”
They slapped their paws together and did a quick little dance to celebrate their latest victory.
“So,” said Molly. “Do you know how to drive a pickup truck?”
“Nope. But my father has one. I’ve seen how he does it. You just have to shift gears, goose the gas, turn the steering wheel, and yell at the other drivers on the road because they’re all idiots. Easy-fleasy.”
“There are no other drivers on this road,” said Molly. “It’s deserted.”
“Fine. We’ll skip that part. Come on. We’re only halfway up the mountain. And it looks like it’s snowing like crazy up there! We better hurry before it turns into a blizzard!”
Chapter 42
Oscar hopped into the pickup truck’s driver seat. Molly climbed into the passenger seat.
And then they sat there.
“Um, what exactly are you waiting for?” asked Molly.
“For the motor to start.”
“Don’t you have to do that?”
“Nope. My father usually does.”
“Turn the key,” said Molly, rolling her eyes.
Oscar did. The engine whirred and whined and made all sorts of nasty grinding noises.
“You need to take it out of gear first!” shouted Molly.
“I don’t know what that means!” Oscar tried sliding the gear shifter knob.
Into Reverse.
The truck rocketed backward.
“Noooo!” shouted Oscar. “We’re going the wrong way!”
“Make it go forward!” said Molly.
“How?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know!”
They argued all the way down the hill.
Until the truck hit a boulder, rolled sideways, and landed, upside down, in a ditch. The same ditch they had hidden in when they’d first seen the weaselboar’s truck.
Oscar and Molly crawled out of the wreckage.
“Owwww, that made my cut feel even worse,” said Oscar. He looked at the crushed truck. “Guess we’re walking again?”
“Yep,” said Molly. “Unless, of course, another truck comes along so you can crash it, too!”
“Are you forgetting that I saved your life?”
“When? Just now when you almost killed me?”
“I meant earlier. When I took care of that weaselboar.”
“That wasn’t you. That was all eagle.”
“So, katt: does your mouth have an Off switch?”
“Nope. But, from what I’ve seen today, your brain sure does.”
After about an hour, they finally stopped arguing. Not because they ran out of katt and dogg insults, but because they were too tired to speak. For the next hour, they grumbled and growled and hissed at each other. Soon, they were too exhausted to do even that.
And they were both cold and hungry.
Very, very hungry.
In fact, by the sixth hour of their grueling hike up the mountain road, they were hungry and confused enough to eat the bark off the trees.
“Dumb dogg,” chirped a chipmunk in a nearby clump of shrubs. “Crazy katt. You two will never make it over this mountain alive.”
“Chipmunk!” Oscar lunged for the striped rodent, but he was so exhausted he tripped over his own crutch and ended up snout-down in the mud.
The chipmunk cheeped and chipped. “Idiot.” Then it scurried away, flicking its tail.
“You two need some serious help,” peeped a beautiful silver-gray bird.
Molly’s whiskers twitched. “I think I’ll help myself… to you!”
She tried to pounce. But her legs felt like they were made out of bricks. She’d lost all her slyness, all her stealth, all her springiness.
When she landed with a wet splat! on the spot where the bird used to be, all that was left was a squishy bed of purple berries.
“Gross,” she muttered as the berry patch oozed purple juice all over her white fur. Some of the sweet nectar seeped into her mouth.
And it tasted good.
“Woo-hoo!” she shouted joyfully. “Get over here, dogg. We’re not dead yet!”
Chapter 43
Oscar limped over to where Molly was sitting in a sea of purple and blue mush.
“It’s a whole berry patch!” said Molly. “That bird was trying to help us.”
Oscar buried his muzzle in the mess of smooshed berries and lapped up as much purple slop as he could. After he’d gobbled down about a thousand squished berries and his brain started functioning again, he wondered, Did the bird really do this on purpose? Do birds and animals actually help one another in the Park?
Maybe that’s why he and the katt had been able to get along (for the most part, anyway) out here in the wilderness. The Great Western Frontier Park really was magical, just like everybody said. Even katts and doggs, sworn enemies for life, could get along out here if they tried.
Either that, or this was all one giant coincidence with an order of purple berry mush on the side.
“That bird was so sweet,” said Molly, licking some of the purple stains off her paws. “He showed me exactly where to find food! And you said birds hate katts. Ha!”
“They do,” said Oscar. “But they love doggs. That bird did it for me.”
“Wait a second,” said Molly. “Aren’t some doggs what they call bird doggs? Don’t they specifically hunt birds?”
Oscar shrugged. “Not any of my relatives. We’re squirrel doggs. And chipmunk doggs. And bacon doggs…”
Molly laughed. Oscar did, too. Having a full belly made it easy to laugh again.
“Ready to hike up the hill?” asked Oscar.
“Totally,” said Molly. “We should pack up some of these berries.”
Oscar nodded eagerly. “Definitely. They taste much better than tree bark.”
The dogg and katt continued climbing toward the peak of Crooked Nose Mountain. When they reached an elevation where the only trees were evergreens, a light flurry of snow started to swirl around them. As they hiked higher, the snowfall became heavier.
Chapter 44
When night fell, Oscar and Molly decided to stop hiking.
“It’s kind of hard to see where we’re going in the dark with all this snow,” said Oscar. “I can’t smell much, either. The cold and ice have covered up all the scents.”
“Well, let’s make camp under that big tree,” said Molly. “There’s a nice bed of soft needles around the trunk. And the evergreen branches are like a canopy to keep out the snow.”
Oscar was able to bang together some rock shards he’d found in the roadway and spark a campfire. Molly was in charge of fluffing the pine needles and thawing the berries.
They huddled around the crackling blaze and shivered together against the still swirling wind and snow.
“Tomorrow,” said Oscar, “once we pass over the peak, it’ll all be downhill so we’ll move faster.”
“Good,” said Molly. “I can’t wait to get home. I’ve missed so many acting classes.”
“How come you want to be an actress?”
“I like pretending to be characters who aren’t really me. Then I can act like someone who isn’t my mother and father’s daughter. When I’m playing a part in a play, I don’t have to do things exactly the way my parents want me to. I can be my own katt.”
“By pretending to be someone else?”
“Exactly! Besides, ever since I was a kitten, everybody’s told me I could be a movie star. I’ve got the looks for it. And the eyes.”
She batted her sparkling baby blues at Oscar.
“They’re like the sky,” he said. “Only bluer.”
“I know,” said Molly. “It’s a gift. How about you? What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?”
“Well, first I’ll eat a big, delicious dinner. Something besides berries.”
“Yeah. Tuna fish wrapped in mackerel!”
“Nope. A double bacon cheeseburger, extra cheese, hold the bun! Then, I’ll go back into training. Not to brag…”
“Go ahead. Brag.”
“Okay. Coach says I’m the best young athlete in all of Doggsylvania!”
“Well, I know for a fact you’re an excellent runner.”
“Yeah. It’s my top sport. Running and fetching. I’m on the fetching team, too.”
Molly sighed. “I miss my mom.”
“I’m glad she’s a nurse,” said Oscar. “My mom’s a nurse, too.”
“No way.”
“Way. Next time, I’ll pay more attention when she tells me about medicinal herbs and where to find them.”
As the night wore on, they swapped all sorts of stories.
About their schools. And their favorite places to hang out back home. And food. When you’re hungry, with nothing but purple berries in your belly, food is always a very hot topic. But mostly they talked about how much they missed and loved their families, even their fathers, who could both be kind of grumpy and grouchy.
“It’s just his way,” said Oscar.
“I know what you mean,” said Molly. “I’ve got the same deal with my dad.”
Oscar stared at Molly. “You’re still a katt, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“And I’m still a dogg?”
“Definitely.”
“Then how come we have so much in common?”
Molly shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Yeah,” said Oscar. “Me, neither. I guess that’s something else we have in common.”
Chapter 45
Molly and Oscar rose with the sun.
They’d taken turns staying awake throughout the nigh
t to guard each other. But even when it was one of their turns to sleep, they didn’t do much of it. The night was too cold. They were both too terrified of all the dangers lurking in the darkness.
“You ready to climb to the summit?” asked Molly as Oscar slowly creaked up from the bed of pine needles and leaned against his crutch.
“You betcha,” he said cheerily, even though his tail was drooping between his legs.
Molly could tell: The dogg was in a great deal of pain. But, he limped on.
The higher they climbed, the deeper the snow.
“We’re topping out!” exclaimed Molly when she could see blue sky through the stand of trees. “We made it! It’s all downhill from here.”
Molly ran and Oscar hobbled across the peak of Crooked Nose Mountain to a switchback trail on the other side. The air was crisp and crystal clear. You could see for miles in every direction.
“Look!” said Molly. “Way off in the distance. That’s the entrance to the Western Frontier Park!”
“Where?”
“That smudge down there. On the far side of the wide, winding river.”
“I see it, I see it!” said Oscar, wagging his tail and panting eagerly. “That’s the road we took. The highway.”
They were so high up they could even see the hazy outlines of Kattsburgh and Doggsylvania, far off in the distance.
“Last one down the mountain is a rotten can of sardines!” said Molly, ready to run.
“Hey!” said Oscar with a laugh, hobbling after her. “No fair. I’m still on the injured reserve list, here!”
“Fine. We should sled down!”
“Great idea,” said Oscar. “We could lash together a bunch of tree limbs and branches. Or we could make two pairs of snowshoes and—”
“Aiieeeeee!” screamed Molly.
An eagle had just swooped down and plucked her off of the bluff!
“Help!” screamed Molly as she struggled in midair.
Oscar dashed down the trail, following the bird and his friend. “Hang on!” he shouted.
Katt vs. Dogg Page 8
