Read Online Saving Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor - Free Book Online

could’ve been on the witness stand, Marty!” he says. “Maybe we could have solved the case!”
    â€œJust be quiet about it,” I say. I’m feeling low enough as it is.
    David don’t tell the other kids what I did, but he is sure disgusted.
    At school, Miss Talbot’s wearin’ something new she got for Christmas, too. It’s a diamond ring, and all the girls gotto gather round her desk and make her turn her hand this way and that, see the diamond sparkle. She’s engaged to a high school teacher over in Middlebourne.
    Soon as the kids start talking about Judd Travers being guilty, though, she puts a stop to it. “This class is not a courtroom,” she says, and we know that—ring or no ring—she means business.
    At home, Dad won’t let us talk about Judd being the murderer, either.
    â€œThat Ed Sholt!” he says. “Shootin’ off his mouth . . . !” Dad kicks off his shoes and sinks down on the sofa. “Saw him at lunch today in Sistersville, and he’s worked out the whole thing in his head—all the different ways the man could have been killed, and he’s got Judd doing the killing in every one of ’em. ‘Pipe down, Ed,’ I tell him. ‘A man’s innocent till proven guilty, you know. He’s a right to his day in court, it ever gets to that.’ But he says, ‘You’re the one who should worry, Ray. You live closer to Judd than the rest of us. If it were me, I’d get a good strong lock for my door and keep a gun handy.’ ”
    I swallow. “You talk to the sheriff yet?”
    â€œYes, and he’s guessing Judd’s not the one. They can’t tell when the man was killed exactly, not when a body’s been dead this long, but they figure he probably died sometime after Judd’s accident; somebody thinks he may have seen him later than that, anyway.”
    I’m wondering what it’s like to have everybody suspecting you of a crime you didn’t do—just when you’re tryin’ to be better. Maybe you think, what’s the use? If everybody figures you’re bad, might as well go ahead and be bad. But if Judd gives up now, those dogs of his, when he gets ’em back, are going to have a worse time of it than before.Judd’ll hate everything and everybody, includin’ his dogs. On the other hand, what if he did do it? What if he really is a killer?
    I try not to let myself think on that. The only thing I can see to do—for Judd’s dogs, anyway—is to get Judd Travers a fence. Once I do something for all Judd’s dogs, I can stop feelin’ so guilty about saving only the one. So I say to Dad, “You know anybody got some old chicken wire stuck away that we could use to fence in Judd’s yard for his dogs?”
    Dad turns the TV down and looks at me. “Chicken wire? You got to have somethin’ stronger than that, Marty! You need regular fencing wire and metal posts, and nobody I know has a whole fence just sittin’ around, I can tell you.”
    Seem like everything I think of to do has got a hitch to it.
    All week the weather stays mild, and the snow’s disappearin’ fast. “January thaw,” Ma says. Tells us that for a few days most Januarys, it seems, there’s a mild spell to give us a promise of spring before the next big snowfall.
    The sun shines on into the weekend, and Saturday afternoon, after I get back from the vet, I decide that I’m going about this fence idea all wrong. If nobody’s going to keep an old fence around after they take it down, then I got to find somebody with the fence still up that he’d just as soon wasn’t there.
    I walk over to Doc Murphy’s, Shiloh frisking alongside me, tryin’ to get me to run. I’m thinking how last September, when I was helpin’ Doc in his yard, he’d said now that his wife wasn’t there to garden