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I been watching them I wish I been a dog. But in a pack there’s always one dog who get bitten and scuffed and only get the worst bits of the kill to eat and I wouldn’t want to be that runty dog unless he turn around one day and grow big and strong and clever and stick it to the other dogs. Then I’m not gonna mind being the runty dog. Cos sometimes the runty dog got a pretty interesting character. Runty dog looking out for mean tricks all the time so he’s gonna be pretty clever too.
    I never try and trap a runty dog, not just cos he probably got dog-bitten fur—that aint the reason even though it’s a good reason. No, I aint gonna try and trap the runty dog cos I reckon he need every chance he can get if he want to jump up big and show the pack what to do one day.
    I say I want a gun so I can get a dog real easy. When Geraint let me and Alice hold his gun I got a big strong feeling that I’m gonna shoot at anything that move if it been mine. I’m gonna be able to shoot all of them if I want. Just like that. Bam. Bam. Bam. Get plenty of dog fur then.
    I ask my dad about that feeling and he laugh pretty loud and tell Patrick what I been saying. Patrick laugh good and proper too so it’s obviously a pretty funny thing I say even though I can’t see it.
    My dad tell me a story then about the old days. He say, Let this be a lesson . But it was quite a good story not like a lesson at all. The story was from the time long before the sea stop working. Back then you’re gonna be able to sail across the sea to America cos the cold aint come then. Now near half America got snow like
us but no one don’t care much about America anymore, Patrick say, everyone just looking east these days.
    Anyway, back in the days before all that, lots of people sail across the sea to America, cos America got lots of beautiful hills and rivers and forests and hardly any people living there. And they got all these grassy plains covered in big animals with thick warm fur, and these animals been called bison. Anyway, the people who live in America before everyone come across the sea—they called the Indians—they gonna be sitting up behind a rock with a spear or bow and arrow, watching the bison. The Indians got funny names like Chief Touch the Clouds and Chief He Dog, so I got pretty interested in that. And those Indians follow the bison cos they got tent houses they can move called teepees. And they follow the bison across the plains and kill one every now and then. And that bison make all the clothes and tents and food their family gonna need, which is pretty lucky for the Indians being surrounded by so many of them.
    But then the people come from across the sea and they got guns. And when the men with the guns see the bison all standing around eating grass in the sun, they got proper excited. They don’t need to sit behind a rock and live in a teepee to catch one. They just shoot them. They shoot and shoot and shoot, and the shooting got to be just a game my dad say.
    And then one day, everyone wake up and the plains just covered in dead bison rotting in the sun. And that been the end of that. No more meat and fur and leather. No more bison.
    Bet the Americans wish they had all those bison now, Patrick say.
    Anyway, that was the story my dad tell me. And my dad tell me, That’s the truth about guns.
    I guess that been the lesson cos lessons are always about things you want to do that been wrong things in the end. But I still want a gun. Just now I know you got to watch out and not go mad if you got one.
    I reckon if that mad dog in my head got a gun he gonna shoot just about anything. Even the snow and the wind, maybe even himself. But I think the mad dog sleeping now.
     
     
    I got to be quite close to the Farngod. I come up on the west side of the mountain and I reckon soon enough I’m gonna find the ring of stones. Magda say the ring of stones look like a crown of thorns. But no one gonna make a crown out of thorns. Girls