Chasing Redbird Read Online Free

dusty. It didn’t take us long to find other maps of the Bybanks– Chocton Trail, and at last we had three separate ones that showed it from start to finish: a twenty-mile trail. We photocopied the maps, and I brought them home and hid them in the back of my closet, underneath my bottle-cap collection. No one ever looked there.
    For the next week, I studied these maps every day, memorizing every inch of them. I found the place where our farm was now, the creek, and the stretch of trail I’d already uncovered. They were primitive maps, rough sketches of the trail’s course with handwritten legends and names of places that sounded both fabulous and strange. I envisioned myself gliding through Maiden’s Walk and Crow Hollow. I’d forge my way along Baby Toe Ridge and recline on Sleepy Bear Ridge. I wasn’t so sure about Spook Hollow and Shady Death Ridge, however.
    Twice, I returned to the museum, where I learned that the route had originally been an Indian trail, later used by trappers, and later still by loggers. A now busted railroad, set up by a logging company to haul timber down from the hills, ran across the trail near the midpoint.
    It was a narrow trail, wide enough for men on horseback, but too narrow for wagons. The lower portions of my trail were laid with stone slabs. The museum guide said this was to make travel easier during the spring, when the ground was muddy and swampy. She also said that settlers had blazed a wider wagon route down near the river, following its meandering course, and that that had evolved into the main road between Bybanks and Chocton.
    In the museum, I also found faded photos of people riding on my trail, and each time I set out to clear a new section of the trail, I wondered about these people. Who were they? What were they thinking? Why were they going to Bybanks or to Chocton?
    On that day that I planted tomatoes in my squirt garden, I made my way along the mile of the trail that I’d already cleared. Down below me was the farm, our house, the long gravel drive leading to the main road, and beyond were pale rolling hills swooping to the Ohio River, soupy brown from the recent April rains which had swept the bare soil into it.
    When I reached the place where I’d last stopped clearing, I found my trowel wedged beneath a bush. The trowel and a hoe were the only tools I had, besides my own two hands, but that’s all I needed. I’d pull and scrape, clearing one stone at a time. This was easiest right after a rain, when the earth was loose around the roots of the weeds, or when, for some mysterious reason, the weeds had skipped over a stone and left it nearly bare. But usually it was not so easy, and I’d have to wrench and tug to pull the weeds loose.
    Sometimes I’d lie back in the grass and watch the clouds and listen to the deep, dark woods that stretched behind me. The trail was curving in the direction of those woods, and part of me was eager to enter them to see where the trail would lead, and part of me was pigeon-hearted, uneasy about what might await me there.
    Clearing the trail was slow work that day. On my way home, when I rounded the bend where I could see the farm below, I noticed Mr. Boone’s truck parked beside the barn. During the time his wife and Jake had been away, lonely Mr. Boone had often come to our house. But we’d not seen him since his wife and Jake had come back, and I was surprised that his truck was there.
    I made my way down the hill, stopping to check the newly planted tomatoes in the squirt garden, and headed for the house. It may have been Mr. Boone’s truck there, but it wasn’t Mr. Boone who was visiting.

CHAPTER 8

B OTTLE C APS
    â€œ G uess who’s on the porch,” Bonnie said.
    â€œMr. Boone,” I said.
    â€œWrong.”
    â€œMrs. Boone, then.”
    â€œWrong.”
    â€œSo who is it?”
    â€œGuess.”
    You can never get a straight answer out of Bonnie.
    The