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into his hand if he called.
    "Sit here, Gunther, and be real still," Veronica instructed him. She lifted him up and set him down on a big rock in the middle of the creek. "You be real quiet and try not to hiccup. Just
watch,
and maybe we can get some frogs to leap."
    Good old Gunther, he always done whatever you told him, and always with a look of pleasure like it never occurred to him that someone might do him wrong. Of course he hadn't ever known nobody but me and Veronica and Sweet-Ho and his mama and daddy. His mama had done him a disappointment
when he was two weeks old and she couldn't pick him up for shaking, but he didn't remember that. And every day since he was two weeks old, people was nice to him, giving him bananas to eat and putting medicine on his ailments and stuff like that. His mama had that problem with emptiness, but he wasn't around her much, and when he was around her he probably enjoyed that smile because he was too young to understand the strangeness of it.
    So Gunther sat up real still on the rock, with his little feet skootched up under him, and looked down at the water, holding back his hiccups and waiting for frogs to jump.
    Veronica waded over to the other side of the creek, and me, I stayed on my side, with Gunther skootched up on his rock in the middle. I commenced to turn over some small rocks, because sometimes that made the frogs leap out all burping and offended at being dislodged. Veronica was doing the same on her side.
    All of a sudden Gunther yelped, like a puppy.
    "Shhhhh!" Veronica shushed him so's he wouldn't scare off the frogs.
    But he whimpered, the way a puppy does after a yelp. When I looked over, I seen his face was bleeding. Not severe or nothing, just a trickle of blood coming down across his cheek. He was still just setting there the way Veronica told him to, not moving or nothing, but he made little whimpering noises and held his hand up to the place where blood was running on his face.
    Then he got hit again, and this time Veronica and
me both seen it. It was a pebble chunked out of a set of thick bushes downstream a ways; it came full speed out of them bushes and zinged old Gunther right on the back of his neck so's he started to cry, and I sure can't fault him none for that.
    I seen who did it, too, because he was looking out of the bushes.
    "It's Norman Cox!" I yelled at Veronica.
    Veronica and me, we both hesitated. Gunther was setting there on his rock, bleeding and blubbering. We could go out there and get Gunther, but then Norman would have all of us for a target and he'd still be in that bush with a whole supply of them pebbles.
    "Let's get him!" Veronica yelled, and she started charging down the creek, wading through that sloggy water as fast as she could. "Stay put, Gunther!"
    Good old Gunther, he always obeyed, even when he was in danger of getting chunked again by a stone. He skootched down smaller on his rock, like a bullfrog hunkered over on a lily pad, and watched. Blood was still running across his face, but he wasn't crying no more. He was too interested in watching what happened.
    I followed after Veronica, heading for the bushes where Norman was hiding. He zinged a stone but it didn't hit nobody, just shot past my shoulder and landed in the creek with a plunk.
    Veronica slipped once just before she got to the bushes, and sprawled in the creek for a minute, so's she was muddy and wet up to the armpits when she got her footing and stood back up. Me, I was wet from
splashing along behind her. The two of us, dripping wet and steamy mad, crashed through into the bushes where Norman was. Ordinarily I wouldn't take on Norman Cox—he's in sixth grade same as me and Veronica, but he's a lot bigger, he wears shoes the size of a full-grown man—but seeing poor old Gunther, who never hurt nobody, whimpering like that. Well, that gave both of us the strength and the nerve to go charging into the bushes with our fists flying.
    Norman, he was laughing at