Free Horns & Wrinkles by Joseph Helgerson Page B

suggested. He'd always been a firm believer in them, so long as he didn't have to pay them back.
    "Bo doesn't take IOUs," Jim Dandy chided.
    "Oh," Duke muttered, deflating fast.
    "Duke's cousin?" Jim Dandy moved on to me without having bothered to learn my name. "What would you give her?"
    "Something else?" I had no idea what he was fishing for.
    "That's it!" Jim Dandy whooped.
    "But what?" Stump said.
    "What else do we know that she likes?" Jim Dandy prodded.
    "Eats?" Stump guessed, inspired.
    "She
is
a rock troll," Biz reluctantly agreed. "She'd be hungry."
    "So there's your answer." Jim Dandy bowed. "If we come up short on shooting stars, we offer her a feast she can't resist. And that's where our old friend Duke comes into the picture."
    "I do?" Duke revived.
    "He does?" Stump seconded, so surprised that his nostrils bubbled out some extra green froth.
    "Indeed he does," Jim Dandy assured them, slapping Duke on the back in that especially friendly way he had. "We need someone to help us carry the eats."
    "What kind of eats?" Duke sounded eager to please as a puppy.
    "Oh, legs of mutton, wheels of goat cheese, a barrel or two of pigs' feet." Jim Dandy laid this out with a generous wave of his hand. "Some ox tails would go over big. The usual stuff that rock trolls gobble."
    "Where are you going to get all that?" I asked. "You don't even have a dollar to buy a screen."
    "Don't be so ignorant," Duke scoffed. "Trolls have their ways."
    "Indeed we do," Jim Dandy agreed wholeheartedly. "And fine ways they are."
    "She's going to want her stars," Biz stubbornly squeaked.
    "But if she doesn't," Jim Dandy insisted, winking at me and Duke, "we've got a plan, right? So let's not worry our pretty little heads about shooting stars. Agreed?"
    As Jim Dandy explained all this, Biz and Stump gazed toward the river, giving me the uncomfortable feeling that they couldn't bear to look Duke or me in the eye.

Twenty-four
Sniffing for Stars

    Grandpa B always claimed that shooting stars were craters falling off the moon, though he had a twinkle in his eye whenever he said it. How many of them hit the ground? I don't imagine anyone knows for sure, but to find some of those that do touch down, you've got to look in the right places. It turned out that any place that was covered with trees and bushes and grass was the wrong place. When it came to shooting stars, plants hide things. That was why the trolls headed for the center of the sandbar, which was nothing but a huge sandbox, hardly a plant anywhere.
    "Nose funnels are the only way to go," Jim Dandy lectured. Digging out a pair of small brass funnels from his alligator bag, he stuck them into his nostrils.
    "Lot you know about it," Biz squeaked. "All you really have to do is clear your sniffer out good and clean so there's nothing between it and the aroma."
    To prove his point, Biz pulled a small gold box out of his alligator bag. The box was filled with a moldy bluish powder, a tiny pinch of which he packed up his nostrils, one at a time. The sneezes that followed were like cannon blasts and bounced him backwards two hops.
    "Rookies," Stump muttered, shaking his head to show how pathetic Jim Dandy and Biz's approaches were. From inside his alligator bag, he lifted out a wire cage and from inside the cage he coaxed out a teacup poodle, all done up in ribbons and frills and hardly bigger than a pocket-size teddy bear. After patting the toy-size dog gently on the head and whispering softly in its ear, he set it on the sand and called out, "Fetch!"
    The poodle darted off into the night, with Stump grabbing a burning stick from the fire to chase after him. Jim Dandy and Biz grabbed torches and took off running too, snouts working hard. I tried a sniff or two myself, with no results other than to make Duke laugh.
    "You haven't got the nose for it," he told me, and then, to prove he had, he stuck his nose straight up in the air and took one long, hard sniff. "Yup," he gloated. "They're out