“TREE, HALF SHELL!” Bubba yelled.

“No way,” Smudge said, trying to catch his breath and sweating.

“Look for yourself.”

Bubba shone the light on the bright yellow eyes high up in the black branches of the tree.

“If there’s a coon up there, then how come Tree Buster’s just sitting here and isn’t trying to tree it, too,” Smudge declared as Tree Buster panted and stared.

“That’s your problem, good buddy,” Bubba said. “And you can’t tell me you don’t see it.”

“I see it,” Smudge had to admit. “Damn thing sure is crouched up there at a funny angle. Looks like he’s sideways.”

Bubba got out his score card.

“A hundred points for the strike and another hundred and twenty-five for the tree,” he said, jotting the numbers in the Tree column.

Smudge was sullen. They put the dogs back on the leashes and walked through the woods for five minutes. Smudge started the timer and again they let the dogs loose. Tree Buster bolted off as if he knew something. Half Shell disappeared no more than a hundred feet into the woods before she hit a creek and barked three times.

“STRIKE, HALF SHELL!” Bubba let loose his battle cry.

Tree Buster barked three times much farther away.

“STRIKE, TREE BUSTER!” Smudge yelled.

The two men went after their dogs. Bubba almost tripped over a root and stepped into a hole as he tried not to think about snakes. It was on his mind that if Smudge caught on to what Bubba was doing, Smudge might just leave Bubba out here. Hunters would find Bubba’s skeleton years later.

Half Shell continued barking at the shallow creek and Bubba picked her up and carried her across it, setting her under another thick, winter-bare oak tree.

“Bark at that,” Bubba told her.

Half Shell wasn’t interested.

“Come on, girl,” Bubba begged.

Half Shell sat, tongue hanging out. Bubba sighed. He reached inside a pocket and pulled out another pair of marbles and a Cheez Whiz sandwich on white bread. Half Shell started barking and drooling as Bubba waved the sandwich in front of her nose. The dog went crazy. Bubba reached up and stuffed the sandwich in a knothole. Half Shell started jumping up at it, barking and baying as Bubba flung another set of eyes high up in the branches of another slick tree.

This went on until there were only twenty minutes left of the two-hour competition. Bubba had amassed nine hundred points. Smudge had nothing. He had stopped talking forty-five minutes ago. He no longer petted his dog.

“We may as well call it a day,” Bubba proposed. “There’s no way you can catch up, Smudge.”

“It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” Smudge let him know.

The last chance was for Bubba to default, to quit before the competition was over. Smudge knew he had no choice as they walked deeper into the woods during their five-minute break between segments.

Smudge quietly reached inside his knapsack and grabbed hold of the rubber snake, closing his hand around the rattle to silence it as he withdrew the rattler and uncoiled the monofilament attached to it. Smudge cast the snake over Bubba’s head. It landed about six yards in front of Bubba’s feet.