Mountain Lion Red Fern Essay - 1,900 words

"I was walking along whistling when I heard the dogfight", Billy starts the story. He rescued an redbone hound dog and took it home. This brought memories back to his mind. It all happened This is a story about friendship between two coon hounds and a boy named Billy Colman. Billy is ten years old and lives in the Ozark Mountains. He had long straw-colored hair that was He wore patched and faded coveralls.


Billy did not wear shoes during the summer. He was a boy and worked hard to help his mother and father. His family lived in a farm on a Cherokee land because his mother was part Cherokee Indian. Billy's mother taught Billy reading, writing and arithmetic's. They lived in a log house near the Illinois river. Billy loved the nature and roamed hill and river bottoms.


He knew every game trail and every animal track. He was most fascinated by the tracks of a river coon. "I was a hunter from the time I could walk", he tells. He hunted lizards, rats, frogs and other animals. He wanted to have dogs but his mom and dad did not have the money. A pair of coon hound would cost $ 75. Billy's father bought him three small steel Billy started to trap the next morning and caught their cat Same.


Very soon the cat was limping all four legs. After he caught his mom's chicken he had to set the traps in the forest. He caught opossums, skunks, rabbits and squirrels, but he wanted to have a coonskin. One day he went to Shannon Ford where the fishermen camped. He found things the fishermen behind. He had found a knife and a fishing pole and other stuff.


Now he found the magazine. In Billy remembered a passage from the bible that said: "God helps those who help themselves " and slowly saw the plan began to form. He could sell stuff to fishermen and save money. Billy had 23 cents which he put in an old can and started to work. He caught crawfish and and trapped opossum, squirrels and skunks. He picked up blackberries.


A good hide would sell 25 cents and a bucket of berries for 10 cents. It took him one year to save twenty-seven dollars forty-six cents. Billy worked another year and had his fifty dollars. He took the money to his grandfather who had a store and asked him to buy the coonhounds. grandpa loved Billy very much. He was very fair and hardworking.


Billy waited for days. Then got the message that the dogs were in depot in a near by town. Billy did not want to wait for a when a neighbor went to town. He packed a bag and started walking. The town was 20 miles and it took Billy all night to get there. He got the pups and walked back.


On his way back he a night in a cave and was scared by a mountain lion. He stopped at the camping ground he had the magazine. He saw two names carved on a tree: Dan and Ann and decided to name his dogs Billy wanted to train his pups to hunt coons but he needed to have a coonskin to train them. His grandpa taught him a trick to catch a coon. It took him a week to get the coon. He taught his dogs every trick he knew.


Billy got most of his ideas from the stories the coon hunters would tell at his grandpa's store. Billy tied his first coon hide to a string and drag it around the forest. He would it through the water, and walk up and down the river bank. He would pull the skin up a tree and swing it twenty or more feet away from the tree as the coons would try to trick the dogs. He them all summer and waited the hunting season to open.


He was almost fourteen. Little Ann is the brain of the team. A smart old coon would climb a tree jump far away from the This move would trick many dogs, but Little Ann would find the trail once again. She was small. head was delicate and her legs and body short. Old Dan is the muscles of the team, once Billy got down the coon Old Dan would kill the ring-tail.


He was eager to fight. Billy ground his ax and cleaned his lantern. He greased his booths with hog lard. He told his dogs that "this will be the real thing, so remember everything I taught you and I'm depending on you. Just put one up a tree and I'll do the rest." The first night the dogs treed a coon on the biggest sycamore tree around called the Big Tree.


The coon tried every trick but Little Ann did loose him. Billy was ready to give up but his dogs did not. Billy decided to cut down the tree if it "takes a whole year." He chopped the tree all night. In the morning his father came to see Billy told his father he had to cut the tree down for his dogs. His father understood and said: "If a man's word isn't any good, he's no good himself." He kept on chopping the tree all day.


In the evening his grandfather came and showed him a trick that would keep the coon in the tree so could sleep the next night. They build a scarecrow. The next day Billy chopped as long as he His hands were full of blisters and he was ready to give up. He prayed God to give him strength to finish the job.


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Essay Tags: coon, red fern, billy, first night, mountain lion

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