Old Yeller: Chapters 9-12

by Fred Gipson
When their father goes off on a cattle drive, a family survives with a little help from a beloved pet dog. Learn these words from the classic novel by Fred Gipson.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1-4, Chapters 5-8, Chapters 9-12, Chapters 13-16
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. drought
    a shortage of rainfall
    Starvation, during some bad drought or extra cold winter, had forced them to eat anything they could get hold of.
  2. carcass
    the dead body of an animal
    Papa said they generally started out by feeding on the carcass of some deer or cow that had died, then going from there to catching and killing live meat.
  3. gleaming
    bright with a steady but subdued shining
    All of them will turn on you at one time and here they’ll come, roaring and popping their teeth, cutting high and fast with gleaming white tushes that they keep whetted to the sharpness of knife points.
  4. vicious
    able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering
    The bar’ hogs weren’t any more vicious than the boars, but they’d hang with the sows and help them protect the pigs and shoats, when generally the boars pulled off to range alone.
  5. foolproof
    not liable to failure
    I guess the main reason I felt this way was because Papa and I had figured out a quick and nearly foolproof way of doing it.
  6. stampede
    cause to run in panic
    I’d put in all my time trying to train my mind not to let fear stampede me.
  7. suspicious
    openly distrustful and unwilling to confide
    And even after I got him to leave, the hogs were so mad and so suspicious that I had to squat there in the tree for nearly an hour longer before they finally drifted away into the brush, making it safe for me to come down.
  8. range
    feed as in a meadow or pasture
    With hogs ranging in the woods like that, it was hard to know for certain when you’d found them all.
  9. smear
    smudge or soil by smudging
    Red juice stain was smeared all over their snouts.
  10. balk
    refuse to proceed or comply
    A deep cut-bank draw ran through the pear flats between me and the huge mesquite tree I was heading for, and it was down in the bottom of this draw that the hogs balked.
  11. smother
    form an impenetrable cover over
    I remember bumping into the back of one old bar’ hog, then leaping to my feet in a smothering fog of dry dust.
  12. snarl
    make an angry, sharp, or abrupt noise
    I waited, my nerves on edge, while Old Yeller and the big wolf fought there in the firelight, whirling and leaping and snarling and slashing, their bared fangs gleaming white, their eyes burning green in the half light.
  13. shabby
    mean and unworthy and despicable
    “Old Yeller saved my life and I can’t go off and leave him. He’s bound to be dead, but it would look mighty shabby to go home without finding out for sure. I have to go back, even if my hurt leg gives out on me before I can get home.”
  14. refuge
    a shelter from danger or hardship
    He was holed up under a broad slab of red sandstone rock that had slipped off a high bank and now lay propped up against a round boulder in such a way as to form a sort of cave. He’d taken refuge there from the hogs.
  15. coax
    influence or persuade by gentle and persistent urging
    I knelt beside him and coaxed him out from under the rocks.
  16. whimper
    a complaint uttered in a plaintive whining way
    All the time I worked with him, Old Yeller didn’t let out a whimper.
  17. mournful
    expressing sorrow
    Then I lit out for home in a limping run. His howl followed me. It was the most mournful howl I ever heard.
  18. neglect
    fail to attend to
    I’ve seen hog cuts before. Neglect them, and they can be as dangerous as snakebite.
  19. flustered
    thrown into a state of agitated confusion
    She looked a little flustered, like she didn’t know what to do with me, but all she said was, “How’ll we bring him back?”
  20. hurtle
    move with or as if with a rushing sound
    One we saw didn’t waste time to circle. He came hurtling down at a long-slanted dive, his ugly head outstretched, his wings all but shut against his body.
  21. flinch
    draw back, as with fear or pain
    And the way his flesh would flinch and quiver when Mama poked the needle through, it must have hurt.
  22. squeamish
    easily disturbed or disgusted by unpleasant things
    Mama had always been squeamish about lizards and snakes and bugs and things, and you could tell that it just made her flesh crawl to have to touch this one.
  23. bridle
    headgear for a horse
    But Mama yanked down on his bridle and said, “Jumper, you wretch!”
  24. jolt
    move or cause to move with a sudden jerky motion
    But this was a rough country, and try as hard as she could, Mama couldn’t always dodge the rocky places. The hide slid over the rocks, the same as over the grass and sand, but it couldn’t do it without jolting the riders pretty much.
  25. litter
    the group of offspring born to an animal at one time
    I thought: If that puny-looking thing is the best one, Miss Prissy must have had a sorry litter of pups. But I didn’t say so. I said: “He sure looks like a dandy.”
  26. slack
    not tense or taut
    I’d heard that one all my life—that if a pup didn’t holler when you held him up by the slack hide of his neck, he was sure to turn out to be a gritty one.
  27. gritty
    determined and willing to face danger
    I’d heard that one all my life—that if a pup didn’t holler when you held him up by the slack hide of his neck, he was sure to turn out to be a gritty one.
  28. puny
    of inferior size
    Here I was laid up with a bad hog cut, hurting so bad I could hardly get my breath, and her expecting me to make a big to-do over a little old puny speckled pup.
  29. fretful
    nervous and unable to relax
    I lay there in bed, mad and fretful all day, thinking how silly it was for Lisbeth to expect me to want a pup when I already had me a full-grown dog.
  30. stout
    having rugged physical strength
    “She’s little,” Bud Searcy said, “but she’s stout and willing. She’s like me; when folks are in trouble, she’ll pitch right in and do her part. You just keep her here now. You’ll see what a big help she’ll be.”
Created on Tue Aug 15 18:14:42 EDT 2017 (updated Wed Aug 23 10:19:30 EDT 2017)

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