More Bad News

Chipper was sleeping soundly the next morning when he suddenly woke up. He raised his head and scanned the room, wondering what had roused him. No one else was in sight, and though he listened carefully, he could hear nothing other than the clock chiming six times. It feels almost like someone is watching me. He sniffed the air and shook his head. Nothing. My mind must be playing tricks.

He was just drifting off to sleep again when he heard soft voices whispering.

"Do you think that's one of them?" one asked.

"I think so," another answered.

"How can you be sure?" a third asked.

"I can't!" the second asked indignantly.

"Sorry," the third said.

Chipper jerked his head up from the floor, but again saw nothing. He warily scanned the kitchen, but could still see nothing. All the stress from traveling is just making me skittish. It's just my imagination. Yeah, that's it. He carefully laid his head so that he could see most of the room and pretended to sleep.

"This is fun," a different voice giggled.

"I dare you to go over there," a fifth said.

"You're just too scared to do it yourself," the second said.

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Well if you're not scared, why don't you go?" the fourth asked indignantly.

"Fine. I will."

This time Chipper barely opened his eyes, but to his surprise, he could see nothing. He raised his head and scanned the room again. Then he spun around and looked behind him. Still nothing. This is getting out of control. He shook his head in resignation and lay down again. If I ignore it, maybe it'll just go away. That's it. Don't encourage whatever it is.

Yet another voice spoke. "I don't know about this."

"Oh, hush up," said the second voice.

"Yeah. If you got your way all the time, we'd never have any fun," the fourth said.

Chipper mentally rolled his eyes. Sounds almost like a bunch of puppies quarreling . . . wait a second! That's it! One, two, three, four, five . . . six voices! Didn't Jenna say there were six puppies? Now everything's beginning to make sense. Time to find out if I'm right.

"What are you waiting for?" the first voice asked.

"I'm going, I'm going!" the second voice said.

Chipper heard the click of tiny canine claws on the tile floor behind him. The paw-steps stopped right behind him and circled to his left side. Suddenly, he felt a thump against his side, and he immediately rolled with the blow and slammed his paws down on a furry mass, pinning it to the floor. In the weak light of the room, he could see that it was indeed a puppy, and a spitting image of Balto at that. This must be the one Balto was talking about.

He quickly looked back at the second doorway and saw five other puppies, mirror images of their mother, standing frozen in the doorway. "All right. You five. Here. Now."

The pups looked at each other indecisively before walking slowly forward, exchanging guilty glances. "Now we're in for it," a pup he recognized as the third voice whispered.

"Told you we shouldn't 've done it," the owner of the fifth voice whispered.

"Oh, shut up, Kala!" one of the other puppies said.

The pups stopped in front of them, yet still at what they considered a safe distance. Chipper turned his attention back to the whimpering pup he'd pinned. "If I let you up, do you promise not to run?" The pup nodded and Chipper removed his paws from her chest. The pup backed up and sat beside her siblings. "Didn't your parents ever tell you that it's impolite to attack someone when they're asleep?"

"We weren't attacking you," one pup, the fourth voice, said sincerely.

Another pup, the fifth voice, nodded vigorously. "We just wanted to play."

"We wanted to find out who you were, too," another pup added.

"Besides, you aren't asleep."

"Not anymore, anyway." Chipper looked incredulously at the pups. "If you wanted to know who I was, why didn't you just ask?"

"Okay, who are you?" the pup he'd just released asked.

Chipper sighed and closed his eyes. Was it his imagination, or was there a trace of sarcasm in her voice? "What's your name?"

"I asked first," the pup protested.

"I'm bigger. Talk."

"Okay, okay. Don't get your tail in a knot. My name's Aleu."

No pretense at hiding the sarcasm there. Chipper momentarily wondered if she talked to everyone like that. "So you're Aleu," he said. "What are the rest of your names?"

"Rush," one puppy mumbled, staring at his paws.

"Jenner," another said, glancing away.

"Kodi," another said, also looking down.

"Dingo," the third said, mirroring his brothers.

"My name's Kala," the other girl in the group said. "And I had nothing to do with this."

"Shut up, Kala!" Jenner barked.

"Don't be such a baby," Aleu agreed.

"Baby! Was I the one whimpering like a newborn pup a few seconds ago?" Kala retorted.

"Cool it," Chipper interjected. "You want to know who I am, right? My name's Chipper."

"Hello," the puppies answered in a somewhat subdued voice.

After a short pause, Rush cleared his throat. "So you don't want to play?"

"I didn't say that," Chipper yawned. "Just give me a few more minutes of sleep, huh?"


"So what brings you to Nome, James?" Rosie's father asked at lunch that afternoon.

"As much as I'd like to tell you, I know very little about it. All I can tell you right now is that I'm here to see a construction project through." Ramsey stopped when Balto, who was lying beside the fireplace, jerked his head up and looked at him. It's almost like he understood what I said. Nah, impossible.

"How are you supposed to supervise a project you know nothing about?"

"I meant that as a polite way of saying, 'I'm not at liberty to say.' I was given a general briefing as to the nature, but I'm not supposed to reveal even that little tidbit until we settle on a site. With any luck, we might just have found what we're looking for."

"Can you tell us where that is?" Rosie's mom asked.

"Sure. We've found a three hundred-acre plot about five miles north northeast of here. I'm checking it out day after tomorrow." James Ramsey looked over his shoulder to gauge Balto's reaction to that, but the wolf-dog was already gone. Very peculiar.

"What?"

Ramsey blushed. I said that aloud, too? I've got to quit doing that. "Nothing. Anyway . . ."