Kingdom Keepers IV(83)

“On three,” he said.

“Are you sure about this?”

“No,” Finn said.

* * *

Pluto had lived long enough to be the age of an Egyptian mummy in dog years. In that time, he’d learned a few tricks. Not the kind of tricks like roll over or shake hands, but the kind of tricks to play on other animals pursuing you. Over the years these tricks had been refined to the point that they approached actual skills—pie in the face, tongue in the mousetrap, peanut butter in the dog bowl. They’d been well-documented in all the cartoons.

When faced with the Big Bad Wolf—emphasis on Big and Bad—Pluto had the luxury of seeing it play out as a cartoon. Where others would’ve panicked, he saw an opportunity for entertainment and amusement. In a cartoon, no matter how hard the punishment, the dog always got up to play another day.

It never crossed his small mind that the wolf would actually eat him. In Pluto’s world, a dog could fall out of a tree, or get hit by a bus, and come out of it with nothing more than stars floating around his head and his eyes rolling in their sockets. One quick shake and everything was better.

So it wasn’t a question of fear, it was a question of how to make this really funny, and the more inventive the solution the better.

He spotted it easily: one of those plastic grid fences meant to keep people off sidewalks or out of gardens or away from construction. They used them all the time in the Park. It was currently wrapped around an island of flowers with a sign hanging from it saying a bunch of words he couldn’t read but he was pretty sure ended in “Thank You.” Pluto was no Rhodes scholar.

With the wolf’s confident stride picking up pace, Pluto knew the trick was to get him running. That was when he gave the boy the signal.

For a second, the boy and girl just continued walking backward, which put a glitch in his plan. Humans could be so boneheaded. So he barked.

And that got the kids moving. They took off toward Minnie and the dock like he’d fired a starting gun. That prompted el lobo to spring into action. It bared its teeth, squinted its eyes and charged. That was when Pluto realized this might not be so much fun. He’d never seen an animal move so fast. It was as if the creature had been shot from a catapult. Pluto had badly misjudged the time necessary to pull of his stunt. Wolf seconds were different than dog seconds.

With nothing but four-legged teeth coming at him, Pluto found the end of the mesh fence with his own mouth and bit down hard. He wrestled a stake from the soft dirt and then backed up as fast as he could drag it, dislodging one stake after another. The fence stretched across the path—halfway, three quarters.

The wolf’s confidence or hunger had him running much too fast to come to any kind of graceful stop. Instead, as Pluto stretched the fence and wrapped it around a small tree, the wolf’s paws scratched and clawed at the concrete path but found no traction. He lost his footing, tucked, and rolled, colliding with the fence, which aimed him on an angle toward the water across from Pecos Bill Café. The wolf backpedaled but failed to stop his momentum. He tumbled head over heels into the water.

Pluto turned and ran, seeing clearly there was only one thing scarier than the Big Bad Wolf, and that was a big, MAD wolf.

* * *

Minnie waved Finn toward the raft that serviced Tom Sawyer Island. He and Amanda had just heard a violent splash, turning in time to see a violently angry wolf swimming violently for shore. Pluto bounded toward them at full speed, the panicked look in his eyes needing no translation.

The two kids wound through the empty waiting line for the raft ride. Amanda shrieked and slid to an abrupt stop; Finn crashed into her from behind.

An unconscious pirate lay at his feet. He was gnarly looking, with a scrub beard, a pockmarked face, and bent nose. A bandana worn as a skullcap hid most of a particularly nasty bump. Finn looked between the fallen pirate and Minnie, who stood on the edge of the raft, a shore line in one hand, the other tucked behind her back.

“Minnie?” Finn said.

She hung her head and pulled her hand from behind her back, revealing a large wooden pin, part of the raft.

“She did this?” Amanda asked Finn.

“I’d say she charmed him.”

“Thank you, Minnie,” Amanda said.

Minnie blushed, and slowly a smile overtook her. She looked devilish as she waved them onto the raft invitingly.

Finn reached to catch Amanda by the arm. “Wait!”

Amanda turned.

“The question that needs to be asked,” Finn said rushing his words, one eye on the wolf swimming for shore perhaps fifty yards away, “is why is a pirate guarding the raft to Tom Sawyer Island? He’s a long way from home, over in Adventureland, and what’s so important about this raft?”