Brother and sister waited for the elaboration promised by this knowing remark. There was no elaboration. Clutch had no idea how to decommission a rooster.
“Two of us have to distract the rooster. The third one grabs a chicken,” Lightfinger said, barging through Clutch’s indecisiveness.
“Then what?” he asked.
“Drag the hen into the woods.”
Clutch felt a weakening in his knees. Perhaps the other raccoons were being unnecessarily grotesque. Carnivore though he was, he had never killed a creature bigger than a clam. Instead, he had eaten Delissio pizza. Why couldn’t it be organic waste pick-up tonight?
“Can’t we just scarf an egg?” he said.
“We’ve come all this way dripping wet just to split an egg?” Clutch heard the note of impatience in Lightfoot’s reproach. He hung his muzzle on the verge of the grass lawn. How was he going to back out of this situation? It was his idea, which he had proposed with some bravado, to raid the chicken coop. The three of them would each need to accomplish their precise task in the killing, otherwise the plan wouldn’t work. Plan? What plan? They’d been lying here for a dangerously long interval figuring out what to do. And it was his indecisiveness, his anxious need to ponder all the angles beforehand, that was delaying the action.
“You and Light can get in the hutch and corner a hen,” Sleekfoot said. “The trick is to get your fangs well into her neck until she submits. I’ll take the rooster.” Sleekfoot sounded like he was prepared to lose an eye.
Silence from Lightfinger. She was waiting for Clutch to agree. He felt like a useless third party. “Agreed,” he said weakly. In fact, every cell in his body disagreed.
“Agreed,” said Lightfinger, brightly.
“It’ll be easy,” Sleekfoot declared confidently. “The hens will be inside the hutch on roosts. Roosts are like tree branches. Some may be hunched up in nesting boxes. They’ll all be sleeping. They’ll be useless when they wake up. They can’t see in the dark.”
The raiding party left the safety of the hedge and moved like spirits: Lightfinger – she was good at locks; then Sleekfoot – he would distract the rooster; then Clutch. The coop was a small yard of scratched-up dirt enclosed by chicken wire. Inside stood the hutch, elevated above the ground on stilts, where the hens were locked up for the night so they could sleep in safety. Through the gate into the coop now. It smelled like there were lots of chickens, and it would be easy in the contained space of the hutch to catch one.
The rooster was wide-awake and ready to die when Lightfinger slipped the latch. Clutch saw it leap in the air and come down on Sleekfoot’s head with its legs clawing and wings beating before it forced him out into the backyard.
“This way,” Lightfinger said. “Don’t worry about Sleek – he’ll be okay.”
They forgot to close the door after they went in.
Chaos inside the warm, pungent darkness of the hutch. Hens shrieking, and he and Lightfinger got their signals crossed among the darting targets, and they chose separate prey. Clutch’s left behind a mouthful of feathers before it shot out the door. Lightfinger boxed her target into a corner. But Clutch wasn’t there beside her to cut off its escape, and the hen leapt over her and outside into the coop. He was funneled outside in a swarm of frantic hens.
Then the wind banked suddenly and brought a downpour.
Back out in the yard, hens raced in circles in the rain. Too many targets, all in motion. Clutch felt paralyzed by indecision. All around him was a panic attack made visible. Sleek had the rooster by the throat but he had lost his belly fur and couldn’t keep his body behind the twisting bird. Should he go and help Sleekfoot? He’d have to force himself on the rooster and take damage.
Now, Lightfinger had trapped a hen in a corner. Help her finish. Clutch ran across the mud. He realized he was limping. A hen had done something to his leg in the whirlwind stampede out of the coop. Check Sleek first? He was in a death-struggle with the rooster. Leave him to sort it out. He had to work with Lightfinger; that was his role in the plan. The lights in the yard came on. And a burglar alarm.
The rooster got him just before he reached Lightfinger. It landed on top of him and began raking his spine. Sleek couldn’t reach him: he had lost part of his mask. He was bleeding from an eye socket and seemed dazed. Clutch rolled onto his back like he did when he wrestled with his brother and sister. Now he had four lethal paws extended. This rooster wanted to die!
Behind him, he heard the war cry of the River Clan. Lightfinger had taken her first chicken. Then two new shapes slipped through the brightly lit rain, and everything changed.
***
Clutch, halfway up the closest poplar tree, licking his wounds to stop his heart from racing, tried to put it all together afterwards. Two Clan Fathers from Creek Town. They’d been crouched all this time out of the wind at the eastern edge of the back lot, preparing their attack. When they saw three juvenile raccoons go in first, they held back until everyone was engaged. Then they came in low to the ground and picked up the pieces. First, they dispatched the rooster. Clutch was astonished at how efficiently they killed – they operated so indifferently that they barely gave him a glance afterwards as he lay in the mud. After that, they took the exhausted hen from Lightfinger. They took the bird in their mouths and fled just as the back door of the house opened.
The last thing he saw before the dog got him was Lightfinger leading her brother away, his face covered with blood. They wouldn’t get far before the alpha males finished their meal and came back for them.
Clutch had no training in fighting dogs. His instincts were to raise his hackles, pull his haunches in, and go through the ritual preparatory to a fight, which was mostly issuing well-known taunts, curses, and dares that went back to antiquity. But droolers didn’t fight by the rules: they were like roosters; they simply charged at their adversary without thinking, and before he knew it the dog’s jaws had closed on his hind leg, his left leg, around the moveable joint. The growling mass was shaking him, trying to overpower him with might and terror. But Clutch fought back. For the first time in his life, he fought and he knew as he buried his jaw in the drooler’s throat that he would have many more fights in his life but no fight would be as glorious as this one. His blood raced. For once, his mind became clear and simple. It held only one idea – Triumph. Then the drooler released his leg to get a better advantage, and Clutch gave him none. Its growls turned to frightened yelps – the cries of the defeated. The door of the house opened. Clutch spat the blood out of his mouth and limped away in the rain, dragging his leg behind him.
20
“Follow my tail,” Sensibella said.
She was leading him up the tiny stream, quickly becoming a torrent in the downpour. The water would carry away their scents. His cousin had suddenly changed from a sacrificial victim to a determined survivor. He had to hand it to her. She really knew how to disappear.
The terrain ascended suddenly and he was in a cool, dark forest with cold stream water racing around his legs. He felt the exhilaration of escape, and he was alone for the first time with Sensibel, and they were having an adventure. What could this lead to? Never mind. It was fun just being around her with her elegant hind feet kicking spray in his eyes. The night was creepy, the weather had gone crazy, and they were the only raccoons at the party who were having fun. Behind them, the Betrothal Ceremony lay in ruins.
They emerged from the woods onto an open lawn. The stream now became an ornamental feature in a setting for a large modern house and a garage with three doors. Bandit paused to analyse the scents. Fresh-cut grass, a pebbled driveway, a sandbox for children, fresh baked bread, a big family of Primates. It occurred to him that this property was the counterpart to the security Aunt Pawsense wanted, and it was fitting that she’d made her home nearby. There were no obvious dangers. “No pets, no threats” – to quote one of his mother’s sayings. The rain stung his ears. Where was Sensibel taking him? Please, somewhere warm and dry.
“We are going to our sisters’ hideout where we gossip and tell silly stories,” she said, as if reading his mind.
A secret den kept by cubs! He’d never heard of such a thing. “Won’t they tell your Ma we’re there?”
“Goody Two Paws won’t, because she hasn’t a clue where it is and doesn’t want to know. Nim won’t, if she values her ears and her tail. I’m not sure about Frisk. No one is ever sure about Frisk. She’ll probably find us – she loves intrigues.”
Intrigues, she calls it. This isn’t an intrigue. It’s a family mutiny. What’s the punishment for disobeying one’s parents? For surely they would be caught once the bodyguard was organized into hunting parties. The searchers would pick up their trails where they left the stream.
Overhead, a half Moon broke through scudding clouds. The lawn danced with half-crazed shadows.
But they weren’t leaving the stream. Sensibel was tiptoeing through the water to where the stream widened near the house to form a decorative pool. She lifted her nose in the air, looked left and right, then lolloped across a stone patio that formed the outside of the pool. She headed towards an eavestrough downspout gurgling on the side of the house. Brilliant! The downpour would wash away their scents.
Bandit began to regard his first cousin with awe.
Up the spout then. And onto the roof. Was she really going to leap into that chestnut tree? She glanced back, grinned wickedly, and flung herself into space. The tree caught her, and she disappeared at once into its foliage.
That looks easy. But his cousins were such athletes. He’d never made a jump like this before.
Bandit felt the leafy branch rock under him as he landed with his eyes closed. Soon he was curled up beside Bella in a hole in the tree. Outside, the sky was preparing another squall; inside, it was snug. He’d never been this close to her, not since they’d wrestled together as cubs.
