Free Shiloh Season by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page B

says, "If those dogs snatched up a cat, they could snatch up a baby."
    "What baby?" I say.
    David shrugs. "Any baby! I'm just saying they could. What if someone put a baby out in a carriage and when they came back it was gone? If we hear of any baby missing, I'll bet Judd's dogs took it."
    By the time that bus rolls into the driveway at school, we have cats missing, babies missing, girls with their arms torn clear off their bodies, and a whole pack of men from Bens Run all out lookin' for Judd Travers.
    I'm still thinking about Judd's dogs, though. Wonder if once they start running in a pack like that and get a taste of blood, you can really change 'em. I'd like to put that in my report if I could, so when I get home from school I call John Collins.
    I have to wait for him to come to the phone, his assistant tells me, 'cause he's working on a dog with a snake bite. But when he answers, I ask him about pack dogs, and can even a dog as mean as that be changed? How would a vet go about doing that?
    "It's harder," says the vet, "but I've seen it done. What
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    you have to do, once you separate the dogs, is work with them one at a time. Sometimes when a dog is really mean and hiding out somewhere, you start by leaving food where he can reach it. He may not take it right away, but by and by he'll get hungry. Once he starts accepting your food, he'll listen for the sound of your voice and get to know you. And after he learns to trust you, he'll let you pet him. Just takes time. You have to be patient."
    I thank John Collins and put it all in my report.
    Since the whole class is still talking about Judd at school the next day, Miss Talbot asks us the difference between truth and gossip.
    Truth, she says, is what you see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears. Gossip you get secondhand. Gossip may or may not be true, because it's coming to you from another person. It could even be half true, with parts left out now and then, and little extras tacked on to give it flavor.
    I think about that a while, and then I figure there's another difference: truth's more important, but gossip's more interesting.
    David Howard and me both get good grades on our reports because we actually talked to a forest ranger and a veterinarian.
    When the bell rings for recess, though, Miss Talbot says, "Marty, I wonder if I could see you for a few minutes?" What can you say but yes, so after everyone else goes
    out to play kickball, I got to sit over at the reference table where Miss Talbot's waiting for me.
    After I sit down I see that she has my report in front of her, and there are big red circles all over it. She don't look mad, though.
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    "Marty," she says, "you and I come from the same kind of families, where the talk is slow and quiet and as soft and beautiful as a summer day. But it's not the way most people talk. If you spell the way you speak, people might have trouble reading what you write."
    Then she shows me all the words she's circled in red-all the places where "don't" should be "doesn't," and "nothin"' should be "nothing" and "ain't" should be "aren't" or "isn't" and I don't know what all.
    "It's okay to talk like that at home," she says. "That's personal talk; family talk. When I go back to my grandma's down in Mississippi, and we're all sitting around relaxed and happy, my tongue just slips into that easy way
    li of talking, and everyone there knows exactly what I
    mean."
    She smiles at me and I smile back.
    "The problem," Miss Talbot says, "is that when you talk one way at home and another way at school, you've just got to be more careful, that's all. If you want to go to college and become a veterinarian, then you have to learn to speak and write and spell correctly."
    Any other time a teacher told me to stay behind at recess, I would be thinking I was in big trouble. But when I leave the room and go out to get in that kickball game, I feel like Miss Talbot really wants to see me make something of myself.
    "What'd you do, Marty,