Soon she was being hauled over the boat’s railing, then dumped on the deck, gasping for air. Her coarse dark brown fur showed faint red streaks of blood where ropes had torn her hide during her struggle for freedom. Huge black eyes stared angrily at everyone on the boat, and her head, shaved close in Pogwagger style, circled endlessly back and forth, looking for a path of escape. The young Grizzly Pogwagger, yelling loudly at her captors as she was hustled over to the gunwale and tied, fell into sullen silence after she had been lashed beside Helga. As soon as she was tied to the gunwale, the Pogwagger resumed her struggle for freedom. But pulling against her bonds only succeeded in bringing a furious clanking from the cruel irons she now wore.
Helga eyed the Pogwagger with interest. Observing the rippling muscles of her new neighbor, she mused at how the team of powerful Sn’akers had been subdued against their wills, just as she and Christer had been. Curiosity gnawed at her. It was not lack of strength or capacity to elude capture that had made them all Wrackshee captives—there had been no real threat to the Sn’akers up on the trail. The Aviafias were not attacking the Sn’akers and there was no Wrackshee attack force. The reason they were captives was solely that, for some reason, the Pogwagger and her teammates had cooperated with the plan that now had landed them all in irons. Why had they helped the Wrackshees? And why were they also now captives? It made no sense.
Helga looked at the Pogwagger beside her. “Why did you do it?” she asked quietly.
There was no answer. Leaning her head back on the gunwale, the big Grizzly simply closed her eyes as if to go to sleep. Soon the Wrackshees had loaded and secured all their prisoners and stowed the bales of snakeskins aboard their boat.
As the Wrackshee boat and kayaks got underway and moved downstream, the flurry of action temporarily distracted Helga. Her fierce curiosity about the strange occurrences involving herself and the Pogwaggers, however, did not subside. Soon she laid her head, relaxed like, back against the gunwale, and remarked to the Pogwagger beside her, “Well, well, now didn’t we both find out a bit more about the world—for now we do, and later we don’t. And, even when we do as we expected to do, sometimes it turns out we were a little too far to the left, or a little too close on the right. Yes, sir, even when we lay out good plans, life is pretty uncertain and, often, we end up nowhere close to where we set out to be.”
The Pogwagger gave Helga a brief, fierce glance, then folded her arms and gazed straight ahead, saying nothing. Although thoroughly silent, the Pogwagger fidgeted restlessly, seemingly bursting with energy she was consciously seeking to control. The Pogwagger’s manner suggested that Helga’s earlier comment had unsettled her.
Helga’s fascination with the strange circumstances she shared with the Pogwagger, and her curiosity about the Pogwagger’s own story, made her pursue her earlier comment.
“What a heap of trouble, danger, and disappointment we’d miss in life if everything went according to plan,” Helga chuckled, not exactly to the Pogwagger, but to no one else either. “Yes, there’s plenty of times I was lucky that the plan I’d made didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped—oh yes, sometimes it would’ve been better if I’d just stopped a bit short of what I’d planned, or thought it over a bit more before I started. Yes, indeed-deed, sometimes there’s a demon in the details of the fine plans we make.”
“POGS—YOU VARMIT-FACED WOOD COW! YOU’D THINK A ROUNDIE LIKE YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND! POGS!” Roaring out the statement loud enough to wake beasts sleeping miles away, the Grizzly strained so hard against her bonds that Helga thought she’d tear a limb off trying to free herself.
“Whoa, now, there friend,” Helga chuckled, “I didn’t mean to make you ill in your mind! I was just trying to see if you’d talk to me about what just happened to us.”
“TALK TO YOU!” the Pogwagger exploded. “TALK TO A ROUNDIE—A DIRTY, LOW-DOWN POG-BOG FARMER? NO, I WILL NOT TALK TO YOU—I DISPISE YOU UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY. I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO YOU!”
A period of silence followed this, which Helga, taken somewhat aback by the unexpected outburst, made no effort to break immediately. After a few minutes, the Pogwagger’s agitation gradually decreased. When Helga judged that the Grizzly’s breathing was normal once more, she ventured another comment. “I ought to apologize for causing you anger,” Helga said, “yet, somehow I feel that I’m about to learn something from you, which I need to know.”
Pausing to judge the effect of what she had said, and observing no indication that she was arousing the Pogwagger again, Helga continued. “I was unaware that you harbored ill feelings toward me when I spoke a while ago—but you have shown me that I have somehow harmed you. I would very much like to learn how that is.”