Frito awoke with a start. It was dusk now, and a sick feeling in his stomach made him scan the Path from between the branches with terror. Through the leaves he saw a dark, shadowy bulk in the distance. It moved slowly and carefully along the rise of the Path, looking like a tall, black rider on some huge and bloated beast. Outlined against the setting sun, Frito held his breath as the ominous figure’s red eyes searched the land. Once, Frito thought, the fiery coals had looked right through him, but they blinked myopically and passed on. The ponderous mount, which appeared to Frito’s startled eyes to be an immense, grossly overfed pig the size of a house, snuffled and snorted in the wet earth to root out some scent of them. The others awoke and froze with terror. As they watched, the evil hunter goaded his mount, emitted one great and sour fart, and passed on. He had not seen them.
The boggies waited until the distant grunting of the beast had long quieted before anyone spoke. Frito turned to his companions, who were well hidden in their foodsacks, and whispered, “It’s all right. It’s gone.”
Doubtfully, Spam emerged. “Bless me if that didn’t fright me plumb out o’ me codpiece,” laughed Spam weakly. “Most queer and disturbin’!”
“Queer and disturbin’!” came a chorus of voices from the other sacks.
“And even more disturbin’ if I keep on a-hearin’ me echo every time I open me chops!” Spam kicked the sacks, each of which yelped, but showed no sign of disgorging its contents.
“Grouchy, he is,” said one.
“Grouchy and mean,” said the other.
“I wonder,” said Frito, “what and who that terrible creature was.”
Spam cast his eyes downward and scratched his chins guiltily. “I’m guessin’ it’s one o’ those folk the Fatlip told me to remember to be a-warnin’ ye about, Master Frito.”
Frito looked at him inquiringly.
“Weeeell,” said Spam, pulling his forelock and licking Frito’s toes in apology, “as I recollect now, the Old Lip was atellin’ me just before we left, And don’t be forgettin’, he says to me, to tell Master Frito that some smelly stranger wi’ red eyes was askin’ after him. Stranger? says I. Aye, says he, and when I keeps mum, the fiend up and hisses at me and twirls ’is black mustache. ‘Curses,’ the foul thing says, ‘foiled again!’ And then he waves ’is billy at me and jumps on ’is pig and hightails it from th’ Bag Eye a-shoutin’ somethin’ very much like ‘Hi-yo Slimey!’ Very strange, I says. I guess I was a bit slow t’ tell ye, Master Frito.”
“Well,” said Frito, “there’s no time to worry now. I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some connection between that stranger and this foul searcher.” Frito knitted his brows, but as usual dropped a stitch. “In any case,” he said, “it’s no longer safe to follow the Turnpath to Whee. We’ll have to take the shortcut through the Evilyn Wood.”
“The Evilyn Wood! ?” chorused the grubsacks.
“But Master Frito,” said Spam, “they say that place is... haunted!”
“That may be true,” said Frito quietly, “but if we stay here, we’re all blue-plate specials for sure.”
Frito and Spam hastily decanted the twins with hearty kicks, and the company policed the remaining fragments of cutlets from the area, spicing the leftovers with a number of sawbugs. When all was ready, they set out, the twins emitting highpitched cheep-cheeps in the not altogether vain hope of passing themselves off in the dark as migrating cockroaches. Due west they tramped, doggedly locating every possible opportunity for falling flat on their muzzles, pressing on so that they might reach the safety of the wood before the next sunrise. Frito had calculated that they traveled over two leagues in as many days, not bad for a boggie but still not fast enough. They had to take the wood in stride to be at Whee by the next day.
Silently they walked, save for a slight whimpering from Pepsi. The silly nit’s bloodied his pug again, thought Frito, and Moxie’s getting cranky. But as the long night passed and the east brightened, the flat ground gave way to hummocks, hillocks, and buttocks of spongy, soft earth the color of calves’ brains. As the company stumbled on, the underbrush changed to saplings and then to huge, irritable-looking trees, blasted and scored by wind, weather, and arthritis. Soon they were swallowed up from the dawn light, and the new night covered them like a rank locker-room towel.
Many years before it had been a happy, pleasant forest of well-pruned puswillows, spruce spruces, and natty pines, the frolicking place of drone-moles and slightly rabid chipmunks. But now the trees had grown old, clotted with sneezemoss and toemold, and the Nattily Wood had become the crotchety old Evilyn.
“We should be in Whee by morning,” said Frito as they paused for a light snack of potato salad. But the malevolent susurrus in the trees over the small company bade them not tarry there long. They quickly moved on, careful to avoid the occasional barrages of droppings that fell from unseen, yet annoyed tenants in the branches above.
After several hours of mucking about, the boggies fell exhausted to the ground. The ground was unfamiliar to Frito, and he had long since muddled his sense of direction. “We should have been out of these woods by now,” he said wornedly. “I think we’re lost.”
Spam looked at his rapier-sharp toenails in dejection, but then brightened. “That may be true, Master Frito,” he said. “But don’t be a-worryin’ about it. Somebody else was here only a few hours ago, by the looks o’ the camp. An’ they was gobblin’ tater salad just like us!”
Frito studied these telltale clues with care. It was true, someone had been here only a few hours before, lunching on boggie grub. “Perhaps we can follow their trail and find the way out of here.” And tired as they were, they pushed on again.
On and on they trod, vainly calling after the folk whose evidence of passage lay after them: a scrap of breaded veal cutlet, a sleazy boggie novel, one of Dildo’s tablespoons (What a coincidence, Frito thought). But no boggies. They did come across a large rabbit with a cheap pocket watch who was pursued by some nut of a girl, another kid being viciously mugged by three furious grizzlies (“We’d better not get involved,” said Frito wisely), and a deserted and flyspecked gingerbread bungalow with a “To Let” sign on the marzipan door. But no clue to a way out.
Limp with fatigue, the four finally dropped in their tracks. It was already late afternoon in the gloomy woods, and they could go no farther without a snooze. As if lulled by a potion, the hairy little beggars curled up in furry balls and, one by one, conked off under the protective boughs of a huge, quivering tree.
Spam did not at first realize he was awake. He had felt something soft and rubbery pull at his clothes, but he thought it a longing dream of those reptilian pleasures he had so recently enjoyed back in the Sty. But now he was certain he had heard a distinct sucking sound and a tearing of cloth. His eyes popped open to see himself stark naked and bound head and paw by the fleshy roots of the tree. Screaming his fool head off, he woke his fellows, likewise hogtied and stripped clean by the writhing plant, which was giving off a distinct cooing noise. The strange tree hummed to itself, ever tightening its hold. As the boggies watched with revulsion, the crooning tossed salad dipped down the orangy, liplike flowers at its tips. The bulbous pods drew nearer, making revolting smacking and smooching noises as they began to fasten themselves to their helpless bodies. Locked in a foul embrace, the boggies would soon be hickeyed to death. Summoning their last strength, they all cried for help.