Louie dropped off down the side of the mountain, headed down into Grizzly Holler. There were some rhoddedendron thickets, as well as two steep, rocky outcrops he had to skirt around, but with the underbrush mostly dormant for the season, he was able to take a fairly straight downhill course to reach the branch at the foot of the ridge. He emerged from the woods into the old, abandoned apple orchard at the head of the creek at about the same time as Mjolnir, the mountain feist bitch in hot pursuit, raced around the back corner of the house and scrambled wildly up into one of the trees in the backyard. Louie heard the frantic yelps of the feist, then, in quick succession, the crack of splitting wood, a loud bang that sounded like a screendoor slamming, and Duke's sudden and frantic bellowing.

"What in tarnation is going on down in Cathy's backyard?"   He could no longer hear the flute. It's song had stopped when he had reached the foot of the ridge. By the time he reached the gas well, the yelping had stopped and Duke's voice had also gone silent. Suddenly apprehensive, Louis broke into a trot as he approached the gate in the wire fence that marked the start of the backyard. When he got there he notice two things--Duke locked up with some small bitch in heat, and the busted screendoor.