It’s 5:00 and you need to turn in now…  I always hated that when I was a kid in the summer-  I’d have to go to bed and it was still light out!  But wait… isn’t Rusty a teenager by now?  This is really weird.  But then what isn’t when it comes to the Trail’s home life??  And is that Rusty’s room, that little shed on the right side of the house?

Johnny Lone Elk?  Hmmm, not sure we have made his acquaintance… And who calls just to say they saw a pair of Wolves?

And Mark, you are not impressing her in the least!  They are Coyotes, dum-dum! The kind that howl, not the kind that traffic in human lives… we had a brush with those at the start of the cave “adventure.”

But why, Mark?  Why think about wolves?  You’re not making any sense.  And for the record, a Coyote “howl” is more of a “yip, yip, yip” anyway…

Or is that Doc playing Poet Laureate?  Or reading from Bram Stocker’s Dracula…

Regardless, I am sure Mark is snug and smug in the knowledge that all is calm… Little does he know that Dirty Dyer is coming for him!

To his friends he’s still “Dirty,” but to the authorities he’s “Mr. Smith?” And how’d he come by that fake passport?  Such intrigue!  A regular James Bond!  Although James Bond never felt the need to have an alias…  He was always Bond… James Bond.

And I am a bit confused… doesn’t one clear customs upon arrival and not departure?  Oh, well…  In these days of extreme vetting, I guess anything is possible…

This story does cause me to wonder about the field of opportunity that lies with all the people that Mark has “wronged” in the name of doing “right.”  They do their time in jail, pay their debt, and then what?   What do they have to do?  What have they been stewing about for months other than to get back at the one who took them down!  Interesting!

…will not be stalled or stopped by a pretty face in a safari hat… such is the zeal and the desire (we assume) to “right” certain “wrongs” done to him by The Trail…

But poor Lee… she thinks that it’s another case of her coming on too strong… story of her life, we are to suppose…  And a measure of her loneliness, wanting to take on a guy who calls himself “Dirty…”  But hey, maybe she’s into that kind of thing.

Still, as Chris ponders what could have been, it looks like we are in send-up mode to what could be a clash of… titans? Well, maybe not that big, but certainly words will be exchanged, and dare I hope?? Fists flying?  Recall, that Chris was willing to engage before, even if Mark was not…

And by “George” I mean Faithful Reader and Constant Commenter George Atkins…

I’ll lay a bet Chris is going back to the States and gunning for Mark. But Mark will happen to be called away to Africa by Ms Hunter!  So Chris will go to Lost Forest and find Mark where he just came from.  So he’ll go back, leading to a lot of travel time for Chris and a bad case of jet lag.  Adventure will ensue.

And we can tell that Dirty has been in Africa for “a few years” by how little starch is left in his epaulets… I’m sure it’s difficult to find a decent laundry on skid row…  let’s hope he figured out a way to get a weekly bath in, otherwise I don’t envy his fellow passengers…

But is this the end of the “lion” adventure?  Did we go all the way to Africa just to “bump” into Chris Dyer so that we can now follow his exploits?  Reminds me of that brief interlude at Lost Forest with the hunky archer just so Cherry could later pick up a bow and save the day in the Great Dismal Swamp…  Boy, I have been at this for a while… and will soon answer the question of whether a man can prosper by retaining a somewhat encyclopaedic knowledge of Mark Trail and his exploits…

How on earth can you turn down an invitation (by a stunning lady, no less) for a trip back into the wild?  What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, right??

The look on Ol’ Dirty’s face in panel three would suggest that the wounds and scars from the rhino-horn incident will be long-to-heal… a bit of post-traumatic stress, I’d wager. I am still trying to nail what the scar outline reminds me of… the state of Indiana is all I’m coming up with…

Rather bold of you, Ms. Hunter… to invite a man, who only days (minutes?) before you considered “rude,” on your little safari…

…Chris “Dirty” Dyer can put together clues- like when  a lady is going hunting because she is wearing a safari get-up…  and even though Dirty probably hasn’t been out in the bush since he was pulled from the flaming wreckage of his crashed jeep, he only has these silly “great white hunter” clothes to wear, having blown his last farthing on making himself look bonafide…

Ms. Hunter doesn’t mind sharing what she’s up to, either!  Normally people out on the hunt/fish are a bit more circumspect about where they are going and what they are up to.  But people in the Trailverse signal their moves boldly, so there it is… Welcome back, Chris!

Oh my… last we set eyes on Chris “Dirty” Dyer he was being foiled by Mark Trail as a poacher and smuggler of Rhinoceros Horns!  And the fact the he was pronounced dead… and DEAD… clearly a ruse to get him out of trouble, since he was about to face charges!

But what’s with the massive burn mark and eye patch… in his last close-up he looked fairly ravaged, seemed to have both his eyes intact…

And how, I wonder, has he managed to keep what’s left of his body and soul together after being pronounced dead?  What schemes has he been concocting, what scams has he been running?  And wouldn’t he have assumed a new identity?  Or at least a new handle??  Oh, this ought to be good…

Oh and the irony remains thick on the dental front… recall that Dirty’s erstwhile lover Lori was a dentist in good standing trying to “fix” her man, and the killer of Cecil the Lion was also a dentist…

Like shooting fish in a Barrel?  This idiom is so puzzling…  imagine someone learning the English language, what could this possibly mean?  Easy as Pie?  Like taking candy from a baby?  all very curious…  And of course we all assume that there is water in the barrel and the fish are alive and swimming around.  But I agree with the video blogger… what is the point?

Quite the defensive reaction in panel two… Guessing Ms. Hunter has heard just about enough of this nonsense… why, her gun is oiled, her rounds are packed, and her trigger finger has the most pleasing itch… can’t we just get to the killing fields already?  Where’s that armor-plated Range Rover?  Let’s go!