9 I Learn to Think Like a Pig

Chapter 9 IN WHICH I Learn to Think Like a Pig Bando stands over the sun compass squinting, scratching his head, and finally grinning as he compares it with his own compass. "The crazy thing's quite accurate," he says and takes out the quadrangle map of Delhi. Spreading it on the sand, he gets down on his hands and knees and studies it. "Sam, we're going to have to think like Alice to find her. Look here. If you were Alice, where would you go after you got to Peaks Brook?" I get down beside him and imagine I am Alice as I read the map. "If I were her," I say, "when I got to the West Branch of the Delaware, I'd follow it to the most powerful stream coming off the highest mountain and go up it to a waterfall."

"Good. That's what I'd do if I were Alice. We're off!" Walking into the sun, now a hand span over the trees, we follow the slow stream to Peaks Brook. This brook, which starts on the east side of my mountain, is vigorous and so cold it feels as if it were melted snow. I avoid wading in it and stick to its stony edge. Since it's only two miles to the West Branch, and maybe fifteen miles to Alice, we go slowly, stopping to admire a handsome, almost pure white sycamore and an enormous eastern cottonwood as big or bigger than my tree. Bando lingers over a rock outcrop, and we are happy to see a swatch of rare bluebells. It is a hot day and the icy stream cools the air. As we go, the brook plays pranks. Here and there it cuts through rocks, leaving no shores to walk on, and we are forced to jump downstream from boulder to boulder. In high spirits, we whoop as we leap. It's wonderful to be out on the trail. As we zag along, I practice with my sling, missing eighteen times out of twenty. Not good, but not

bad. A wolf pack misses its prey sixteen out of twenty tries. Finally, we go under the highway and railroad bridge and come out on the flats of the West Branch of the Delaware. "Now, we've got another problem," Bando says, looking around. "Did she go downstream or upstream? "She's going east northeast now," I say. "Where does that send her?" "Upstream," he says after taking a sighting with his compass. Bando puts the map away and starts off. "Let's not go yet," I say. "The fishing looks good here. I'll get us some lunch." I catch three pumpkinseed sunfish and a catfish while Bando gathers tender dandelion leaves, chicory greens, and wild carrots for salad. At the same time, he looks for pig tracks. "No tracks," he reports. "I hope we are thinking like Alice." He takes a seat on a rock and watches me make a fire with my flint and steel.

"Maybe," he muses, "there are no tracks because Crystal's a little pig and Alice is carrying her." "I doubt it," I reply. "Alice has been talking to this pig for months, and she wasn't a piglet when they met. Maybe we're just not on their course." I steam the fish and vegetables in violet leaves, and we eat by the river, admiring the kingfishers who dive into the water and come up with fish every time. Then we push on. Farther along we come to the confluence of the Little Delaware and the West Branch, and Bando takes out his compass and map again. "The West Branch will take us right through Delhi. Would you want to go through Delhi with a pig on a leash if you were Alice?" "No." "Look at the map, then," he says. "We have a problem ahead." I see what he means. If we take the Little Delaware and avoid Delhi, we will be way off course. The only other choice, as far as I can see, is to climb Federal Hill and it's nine hundred feet almost straight up.

"That's awfully steep for a pig," I say, "but I'm no expert on pigs." "As a matter of fact," Bando says. "It may not be too steep. I read a well-researched book about three pigs who followed cattle drovers across prairies and over mountains on a trek to Montana." That's Bando for you. He always gets his knowledge from reading. Nevertheless, before making up my mind to climb Federal Hill, I tell Bando to stand still and I spiral out from him in a wider and wider sweep until I have covered almost the entire delta of the Little Delaware and the West Branch. "Bando!" I shout. "What?" "Pig tracks." He joins me at a trot. "Pig tracks?" he asks dubiously as he looks at the cloven prints. "They look like deer to me." "No. Deer prints are much more pointed and tapered. These are quite rounded."

Bando nods and puts his hand beside the prints. "We can certainly say that Crystal is no baby piglet. Those prints are as big as my palm," he observes, and we start off again. The tracks lead us through a shallows in the river to the other side, then east by northeast to the bottom of Federal Hill. Near the far edge of the flood plain I find Alice's footsteps in a stretch of muddy sand. "Hello, little sister," I hoot in excitement. "There you are!" Grinning with satisfaction, I follow her tracks into the woods where they soon disappear on the leafy trail. But Crystal's do not, and Bando and I follow her up the steep mountain. Then, almost at the top, her tracks disappear. "The pig took off like a bird," Bando says, studying the last footprint. I spiral again, moving out from that print as I search for another. When I am almost ready to give up, I come upon a trampled and routed garden of May apples. "I've found her," I call. "She stopped for lunch." "Let's take five," says Bando and sits down. "That's a steep climb and, besides, we're making