After a few minutes Professor Hamilton strode in, followed by Bonnie, still on crutches and wearing her usual jeans and sweatshirt. The professor sported a new look, a full-fledged safari outfit, complete with khaki shorts and an elephant gun.
Both boys stared at him until Billy finally said, “Africa again, professor?”
“Yes, of course. It’s a very large continent, you know. Much ground to cover.”
Walter laughed. “You never dressed like that at Castlewood.”
The professor stared at Walter, his gray eyebrows twitching. “Of course not. Do you think they would let me carry a gun into school? And shorts, especially on a frigid day such as this? That would be a professional embarrassment of the highest order!”
“And how are you feeling today?” Billy asked Bonnie.
“About the same. The knee feels a little better, but it’s still real sore. I don’t think I’ll have to get an MRI, though.” She glanced over at the open Bible on the table. “Homework? I thought we were studying the New Testament first.”
Professor Hamilton looked over Billy’s shoulder. “Good idea. You cannot understand the new without the old, right William?”
“No, we weren’t studying for the class, we were just—” Billy stopped and stared at the teacher. “What did you just say, Professor?”
“Oh, nothing, just that you cannot understand the New Testament properly without a solid understanding of the Old Testament. We were going to discuss that today, actually. That’s why I brought it up.”
“Can’t understand the new without the old,” Billy repeated softly, his voice trailing away at the end.
Walter picked up the Bible and showed it to the professor and Bonnie. “Adam Lark had this in front of the house early this morning. It’s the same Bible Billy was carrying around up at the crash site, and he’s sure he left it there.”
Bonnie took the Bible and looked it over, flipping through the pages. “Adam had it? Why would he have it?”
“Billy thinks it was already on the porch, and Adam was stealing it.”
Bonnie put the Bible back on the table. “Do you think your dad left it there, Billy? What’s he trying to tell us this time?”
Walter waited for a second for Billy to answer and then shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t know. We were going over every page looking for clues, a mark, a symbol, anything.” He waved his hand in front of Billy’s eyes. “Earth to Billy. Come in, Billy.”
Billy blinked his eyes and smiled. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”
Bonnie’s face lit up, and she held out her hand. “May I see it again? There’s something I want to look for.” She reached for the Bible and opened it to the book of Job, then slowly turned the pages to chapter forty-one. “I’m looking for my mother’s favorite passage. It might be one of his, too. . . . Here it is.”
Billy stood up, and he and Walter looked over Bonnie’s shoulder. “What did you find?”
“No writing; no symbols; only this tiny black smudge in the margin next to verse twenty-one. ‘His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.’”
“What?” Billy said, nearly shouting. “Let me see that.”
Bonnie handed the Bible to him, and Billy pulled it close to his face. “It
is
a smudge, just a dirty black smudge.”
Bonnie put her hand on Billy’s shoulder. “But the verse, Billy. It has to mean something.”
Billy didn’t answer. He just handed the Bible to the professor. “What do you make of it?”
Professor Hamilton eyed the page closely and then pushed the book out to arm’s length. After another second or two, he brought it back up to his face and sniffed it. “It’s coal,” he finally said. “Yes, it is definitely a coal smudge.”
“Coal?” Billy repeated, sitting down. He looked at Walter and Bonnie. They just raised their hands, perplexed. Professor Hamilton kept staring at the page.
All four sat silently for nearly a minute until Billy started mumbling. “New without the old. . . . A coal smudge. . . . His breath kindleth coals.” He was quiet for another minute with his eyes squeezed shut. Finally he opened them wide and said, “A dragon shorn.”
“What?” Bonnie asked.
“A dragon shorn,” he repeated, louder this time. “The prophecy, remember? ‘A dragon shorn will live again, rejecting Eden’s pride.’”
Walter looked at his friend like his head had sprouted horns. “What are you talking about?”
Billy closed his fist and banged the table. “I’ve got it! I know what’s happening!”
“What is it?” Bonnie asked, her voice rising to match Billy’s. “What’s happening?”
Billy gestured for Bonnie to follow. “Come on.” He hurried out of the schoolroom and shouted down the hall as he ran. “Mom!”
“Yes, Billy?” she answered from somewhere in the house. “I’m in the living room.”
Billy jogged to the living room and Bonnie tagged along, her crutches clopping on the floor in time with her squeaking tennis shoe. He found his mother sitting on a sofa, a tablet on her lap and a pen in hand. She was talking on the phone, taking notes as she spoke. She held up one finger of her pen hand to signal for Billy to wait a minute.
“What do you mean ‘criminal arson’? All arson is criminal. . . . But Jared didn’t start it; someone else did. . . . Who? I told you who. . . . Didn’t the police report mention the ripped open door jamb? . . . No, of course he didn’t fake it!”
Billy paced frantically while Bonnie watched, and in a few seconds Walter and Professor Hamilton walked in.
“Oh!” the professor started when he saw Billy’s mother on the phone. “Pardon the intrusion, madam.”
She hung up the phone with more than a delicate landing. “The insurance company won’t listen! It’s as if someone is pulling their puppet strings.”
“Mom! I figured it all out. At least I think I did.”
She sat up straight in her chair. “You mean the ring and the Bible?”
“Yes.”
A new fire kindled in her eyes. “Tell me!”
He looked around the room at the others. “I—I can’t. At least not right now. It’s too weird to talk about. Can you just get me back to the mountain, to where they found that cave, the place where Hambone went crazy?”
“I don’t know where it is,” she said, tapping her pen on her knee.
“How about Officer Caruthers? Can you contact him?”
She placed her hands on her knees and let out a slow sigh. “Billy, nobody’s going to help you if you keep this hunch of yours a secret. Please, just tell us!”
“I have an idea. Can you ask him to tell us where Old Hambone lives? Tell him we want to thank him and his master and give them something?”
Her face began turning red, but her voice stayed calm, yet stern. “Billy, I’m not going to lie for you.”
“Well, I really do want to thank him. I like Old Hambone, and I really will bring him something. Then maybe he can lead us back to the cave.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Billy, if you have a serious idea, you need to tell me right this minute, and then we have to tell the police.”
He gestured with his head toward the professor and Walter. “Mom, I can’t!”
Walter grabbed Professor Hamilton’s sleeve. “Professor, come and show me that gun.” He led the teacher out of the room.
“The gun? Why do you want to see . . .” The professor’s voice trailed off down the hall.
Billy waited a few more seconds and walked closer to his mother, signaling for Bonnie to follow. “Mom, if I’m right,” he said softly, “we don’t want the police to know. We can get what we need today for hiking and leave for the mountain first thing in the morning, that is, if your ankle’s okay.”
“My ankle’s doing fine.” She sighed and sat back in her chair. “Okay, let’s hear your idea.”
Mr. Hatfield! Are you there?”
A chorus of barks and howls greeted Billy’s call. He stopped, petrified at the thought of a hundred hound dogs crashing through the trees and jumping all over him.
“Let’s keep going, Billy.” His mother continued down the trail with just a hint of a limp. “The dogs are probably penned up. It doesn’t sound like they’re getting any closer.”
They kept walking the beaten-down path in the woods and finally saw an old shack in the distance. Snow still speckled the flattened leaves, and Billy and his mother hiked through the dappled landscape, bundled in heavy coats, gloves, and ski caps to battle the piercing wind. After the snowstorm, the sun melted whatever layers it could reach through the thinned, autumn canopy, and the cold front brought a bitter sting, battling the sunshine to keep the mountain in its winter grip.
When they arrived at the shack, Billy gave a small box to his mother and knocked on the door. The howling songs rose to a crescendo.
A voice bellowed from inside. “Whoose thar?”
“It’s Billy Bannister and my mother, Marilyn Bannister.”
“The kid what lost his pa?”
Billy couldn’t help smiling. “Yes. My fath—uh, my pa was in the airplane that crashed in the Otter Creek Wilderness.”
There was silence from inside the house for a moment, and Billy and his mother waited, trying to listen through the terrible dirges being sung by the various beagles, blueticks, and mongrels they had seen fenced in at the side of the shack. The dogs had a large, covered kennel area that looked as cozy as the man’s house, but they roamed out in their yard, jumping with their forepaws on the fence, their noses upturned and sniffing the air and their tongues dangling like pink welcome mats.
Then, from within the house, the sound of clumping shoes came closer and closer. The door opened, and Mr. Hatfield appeared, pulling up a strap on his overalls while leaning against a crutch on his left side. “What choo want?”
Billy felt his jaw tremble. “A couple of things.” He took the box from his mother again. “I have a gift for you and Hambone to thank you for helping us look for my pa.”
Mr. Hatfield reached out and took the box, opened it greedily, and looked inside, sticking his nose through the top. His eyes brightened, and he took out a foil bag.
“Chawin’ toback-ee!” he chortled. “And it’s my favorite kind!” He reached in the box and took out another foil bag and inspected it with his eyes half-closed, first sniffing it and then trying to decipher the label, his lips moving as he read.
“It’s doggy treats,” Billy explained. “Old Hambone will love ’em.”
“Hambone ain’t never had nuthin’ like them before, but we’ll try ’em out.” He stuffed the two bags back in the box and rubbed his free hand on his opposite arm. “Well git on with it. What else you want? It’s colder’n a metal seat in an outhouse.”
Billy looked at his mother and then back at Mr. Hatfield. “We want to borrow Hambone and look for my pa again.”
The leathery creases on the man’s thin, wrinkled face turned downward, and he drew his head back an inch or two. “You want to borry Hambone?”
“Yes, sir. We’ll just take him back to the crash site and let him lead us to the cave.” Billy glanced down at Arlo’s bandaged left foot. “I’m sure I can lead him. You don’t have to go.”
“It ain’t me to worry about. It’s Hambone that don’t like the cold! And I already been to that there cave. There ain’t nothin’ in it.”
“But Mr. Hatfield, my pa is out there somewhere, and Hambone is my last hope. Please let him come with us.”
Mr. Hatfield’s mouth opened a notch, and he stared at Billy. With each passing second his expression softened, and a glistening sparkle appeared in one eye. “I’d lead ’im out there agin, but I busted up my foot huntin’ for your pa.”
Billy lowered his head. “Yeah, I heard about that.” He scraped his shoe on the porch floor and then looked Arlo in the eye. “I really appreciate what you did.”
Arlo shivered again and started to close the door. “Iffin Hambone wants to go, take ’im. His leash is there on the pawrch.” With that, the door slammed shut.
Billy didn’t waste a second; he didn’t want to give Mr. Hatfield a chance to change his mind. He grabbed the leash and ran toward the side of the house, his mother following close behind. When they got to the gate, Billy glanced over the entire yard, searching for the old bluetick.
“He wouldn’t be in the yard, Billy,” his mother reminded. “He’d be in the shelter. He hates the cold, remember?”
“Right. Close the gate behind me, okay?” Billy took a deep breath, opened the gate, and proceeded cautiously into the yard. Three dogs jumped playfully up on him, trying to lick anywhere their long tongues could reach, and at least four others sniffed wherever Billy’s shoes landed. He bent over to go through the kennel’s low door and peeked inside. There he was, Old Hambone, lying on a tattered blanket near a space heater that looked to Billy like a kennel fire waiting to happen.
Hambone raised his eyelids, then his head, but only to let out a big, stretching yawn before plopping his head back down again. Billy removed a glove, reached into the kennel as far as he could, and let Hambone sniff his hand. The hound immediately perked up, and his tail started wagging. “Hambone, old buddy. Please come and help me find my dad. I know it’s cold outside, but it’s real important.”
Hambone laid his head down again and whined mournfully, his tail slowing to barely a wiggle.
Billy couldn’t quite reach him to drag him out, and, besides, he didn’t want to force him; that would be against Mr. Hatfield’s wishes. Billy had another idea. “Hambone, if you go with me, when we’re done, I’ll give you a nice, warm bath and a thick, warm doggy sweater for keeps.”
Hambone whined again, and his tail stopped wagging.
Billy sighed and reached into his pocket for a pouch of doggy treats. He had hoped to save them for the hunt, but he knew they wouldn’t do any good if he couldn’t coax the dog out. He tore open the foil and held out a nugget for Hambone to sniff. With a wet, pink tongue the hound licked it out of Billy’s hand and crunched it contentedly. Billy scratched behind his long left ear. “Hambone, there’s more where that came from. If you’ll go with me, I’ll give you the whole bag. I promise.”
Hambone’s tail started up again, and he rose slowly to his feet.
“Atta boy!” When Hambone got to the door, Billy hooked the leash in place and led him out into the yard.
Billy’s mother stood at the gate, her hand on the latch. “So he decided to go?”
Billy smiled as he led Hambone out of the yard. “He’s a tough negotiator, but we struck a deal.”