Dog Gone (8 page)

I give him a sharp look that says
Shut your mouth!

G.D. clears his throat. “Well, that information makes me happier than a mountain lion at a pig roast, but that dog of ours still isn't home, which makes me wonder if he's gone back to his wandering ways.”

“He hasn't,” I insist. “Dead End is a good dog. He'll be back.”

G.D. pushes away from the table, shaking his head, somehow older, more frail. “Hope you're right, girl, but I've got doubts. Serious doubts.” He stands.

“Where are you going? What about dinner?” I sound desperate, afraid.
You have to eat to keep up your strength,
I don't add.

“Not hungry,” he mutters as his cane taps across the kitchen floor, to the family room.

The second the back door slaps closed behind G.D., Cub squints at me. “There's no other yellow dog, is there?”

I shrug, go to the window.

“Jeez, Dill, you lied again.” Cub's voice cracks. “A big, fat lie to your granddad.”

“Don't go diving headfirst into one of your dad's sermons.”

Cub shakes his head. “My dad says the first lie is the hardest. Then the rest come easy.” He sighs. “Dill, if Dead End is a sheep killer and the farmers find out that your dad has been keepin' him, ten million lies won't put a stop to Lyon losin' his customers.”

“Everything will be great,” is all I can say.

Cub shakes his head. “I don't know, Dill. I got a feeling we're goin' to be real sorry.”

CHAPTER 6

A KILLER

“I still can't believe you lied to G.D., Dill.” Cub's eyebrows mash together. His mouth twists down in a disapproving look.

I kick a stone, and watch it hop over the dirt road potholes before it pops up and into a field of tall grasses and wild daisies. Maybe starting the day by looking for Dead End out here, where Mom used to take him for long walks off his leash, wasn't such a great idea after all, especially since Cub has, apparently, decided to become my conscience. “Sheriff Hawks wanting everyone to register and photograph their dogs is a bigger problem than some stupid lie,” I mutter.

“Don't know about that.”

“We can't register Dead End,” I tell Cub flat out. “If we do, he'll be accused of being one of those sheep killers just because he fits the description of whichever dog did go after that sheep.”

“Dill, there aren't a lot of yellow, husky dogs around here. And most folks recognize your dog.”

“We could dye him.” The idea drops from my mouth. Whenever Mom felt playful, she'd dye her hair some new color. Sometimes, I'd help. “There's a leftover box of Saturday Night Red in the linen closet.” Because coloring stopped being fun when her hair thinned—thanks to the chemicals the doctors put into her.

Cub stops midstep and stares at me without blinking. “You gonna give the dog a perm, too?”

I roll my eyes at him, not mentioning the perms that make his mother poodlelike.

“Keep comin' up with those kinds of ideas, Dill, and your dog won't stick around long if he does come home.”

I'm about to give Cub lip for cutting down my idea when he's come up with diddly in the way of suggestions, but I stop when I catch a glimpse of blond in the field to our right. “Cub…” I push his arm. “Did you see that?”

Halfway across the field, a yellow head with pointed ears, a long snout, and a black nose scraped pink pops up and turns to me. In the next second, the mud-splattered pooch becomes a yellow rocket shooting at us, ripping through the grass.

“Dead End!” Cub announces as if I've gone blind.

When he gets to us, his ears flatten against his head and his tail goes into wag overdrive as he leaps around me and Cub.

“Where've you been, you crazy pooch?” I drop to my knees, ruffle his neck fur, and give him pets, getting licks in return. He whips his powerful tail hard enough to dislocate his rear end, until he sees me pull his leash from my back pocket.

“He lost that collar your mom bought for him.” Cub points at Dead End's neck.

“Great,” I snap. “That makes this stupid leash about useless.”

“Dill,” Cub says in a more serious tone. He tips his head at the dog's shoulder, where the fur is matted and spiked with something thick and greenish-brown. “Manure,” he says. “Sheep, probably.”

“No, it's not!” I turn to Dead End, looking into those gentle eyes. “You haven't got the face of a sheep killer,” I tell him. And then I drop into a squat, to kiss his scraped nose. “You're a good dog.” I push my fingers through his neck fur, ruffling it. He licks my cheek, and gives happy dog grunts.

Cub melts some at this, drops beside me, and scratches behind Dead End's ears. But instead of rewarding Cub with licks, Dead End stiffens. He stops smiling. His ears go up as he looks off, down the road behind us.

Cub jumps to his feet, and puts a hand up as a visor over his eyes. “Truck! Coming fast!”

Dust billows up from the road. A loud engine rumble is moving right at us. Cub tears into the thigh-high grass. I stumble after him. “Come on, Dead End. Come on, boy,” I coax him. “That's my loyal pup,” I add, smiling, as he comes leaping after me.

“Get down!” Cub drops flatter than one of Lyon's pancakes.

As my knees hit the earth, my hands pat the ground, Mom's signal to get Dead End to lie down. “Sit! Stay! PLEASE!”

The engine roar seems on top of us. When Dead End doesn't drop, Cub arches up and wrestles him to the ground—seconds before a fire-engine–red pickup truck swerves around the bend, chrome gleaming. I hit the field dirt, too, getting a noseful of it.

Stroking Dead End's head, trying to calm him, Cub peers between the grass tips. “Thornburn's truck,” he spits. “Thorns-in-my-butt!”

As Dead End whines and squirms, I lift my head. Skeeter's mother, an older Skeeter in red lipstick and chunky jewelry, jerks the truck all over the road, dodging potholes at what has to be ninety miles an hour. But then the truck's wheels lock. It skids to a dusty stop smack in front of us.

“Now what, Dameon?” His mother's screech echoes over the engine rumble.

Her pinched face goes hot-temper red, the way it does whenever she yells at Skeeter. Sometimes I actually come close to feeling sorry for the Mosquito.

“Dameon?” Her face tightens and twitches. “I have a luncheon to get to. You'd better not make me late!”

Cub snickers. Dead End lets loose an explosion of a sneeze. I hold my breath.

The truck door pops open. Skeeter, who's made ignoring his mother a hobby, jumps out of the truck and scowls at the field where we're hiding, his small eyes squinting and searching. As usual, he grips his stupid silver-handled crop. “I swear I saw yellow ears and a tail out there. Could be a dog.”

“Don't you swear at me,” his mother snaps.

“The sheriff asked me to watch out for loose dogs,” the Mosquito whines. “And I think that Dylan MacGregor has a yellow mutt.”

“The sheriff asked
him
?” Cub growls. “A butt-kissing insect?”

Dead End whines, squirms. I stroke his face to calm him, the way G.D. does, the way Mom always did. “Please be a good dog,” I beg, whispering in his ear. “Please be quiet. Please.”

Skeeter waves his crop in our direction. “There's a dog in that field.”

My heart races. Cub snarls “thorn-in-my-butt” again through clenched teeth.

“Dameon, get back in this truck,” his mother screeches. “I don't have time for you or your nonsense.” The engine revs.

A long moment passes before Skeeter does what she says. He barely slams the truck door shut behind him when gravel spatters and the truck becomes a red bullet in a cloud of dust.

I breathe only after the engine rumble fades and the dirt settles.

“Too close.” Cub rolls off Dead End. The dog jumps up, sneezes again, and shakes from nose to tail, twice. “Especially after Skeeter heard us talkin' about those killed sheep.”

“And like everyone else around here for five miles, he knows Dead End is a yellow dog,” I add. “Exactly why coloring him Saturday Night Red is a good idea.”

Mumbling something about it being more of a stupid idea, Cub heads back to the road. Dead End takes after him, leaping and nudging at his hand, looking to play. “Cub, get this leash around him somehow,” I call, holding up the nylon strap.

But before I can get it to him, Dead End freezes. His ears go up. And then he bolts, becoming a yellow blur.

“Cub!”

He runs after the pooch, pointing at something small tearing through the field grass, in front of Dead End. “That dog's after a rabbit … or a skunk … or …
something
running for its life!”

Whatever is running from him carves a U in the grasses and throws itself onto the dirt road. There, the small, brown lump—a groundhog—scrambles as fast as its stubby legs will go. But not fast enough.

“BAD DOG! NO!” My shriek rips through the air, seeming to put everything in the world on
pause
. Everything except Dead End.

Before the groundhog gets halfway across the road, the dog leaps, lands, and sinks his face into the animal's neck. I gasp. Sickening horror and disbelief fill me up. When Dead End shakes that groundhog hard and fast until it goes as limp, I nearly throw up.

Cub waves his arms in an insane frenzy. “Bad dog! BAD DOG!” His voice wavers and cracks as if he's about to cry.

I hope with all I have that the groundhog's fur has protected him, that he's only playing dead. “Cub! Get Dead End away from that animal!”

“DROP IT!” Cub flings a rigid finger at Dead End's nose. The groundhog hits the dirt with a dull thump. Dead End, his tail plastered between his legs now, licks his bloody lips and shrinks back from his crime. He looks off to the side, avoiding Cub's glare.

“Ahh, gross.” Scrunching up his face, Cub slaps a hand over his mouth and nose. He leans toward the groundhog, but quickly hops back. He fidgets, and then steps close to the animal again. He does this bizarre dance two times before he finally pushes gently at the brown lump with the toe of his boot.

The animal lays as lifeless as a log. My hand goes to my stomach where thick and putrid disgust churns and crawls up my throat. “Is it…?” I can't say the word that finishes my question.

“Dead as a dinosaur,” Cub says from under his hand, his face pastelike all of a sudden.

I start to shake from the inside out. A sob with roots that reach deep down wells up inside me. It takes all I have to swallow this, stuff it back into the jar, and secure the lid closed again.

Dead End's head sinks below his shoulders. Even though he refuses to look at us, guilt smolders beneath his golden eyelashes. He knows he's been real bad.

“How could you?” My voice trembles, cracking some because I understand the pain in the dog's eyes. The pain of missing what has been taken away. The pain of confusion.

And then, as if my question sends him over the edge, the pooch bolts, tearing down the road. “Cub! Dead End!” I run after him.

Cub takes off, too. “STAY! SIT! HEEL!”

Suddenly deaf to all the commands that Mom had taught him, Dead End cuts left back into the field and rips through the tall grass and wildflowers, galloping toward a wall of trees.

Breathing harder than when he'd outrun Jeb Miller, the fastest kid in the seventh grade, Cub gives up the chase at the edge of the field. “Son of a pup,” he spits after sucking in a few crucial breaths. He kicks at the road, spattering stones and dirt. “We'll never catch that dog.”

I stop, too stunned to move. “I let him get away again,” I choke out, wishing I could erase what just happened.

Cub whips around, and grabs his stubble hair with both hands. “Jeez, Dill! You know what his killing that groundhog means?”

“
Don't
say it!” I blink back hot, heavy tears. The question that Cub has been asking all along scratches like the point of a rusted nail: Could Dead End be a sheep killer?

Cub stomps past me, his fists clenched. “That groundhog needs a proper burial.”

I pull at the end of my ponytail. “There's no time. We've got to find Dead End. Before people see blood on his muzzle!”

Stems snap as Cub yanks daisies from the roadside. Then he bows his head over the groundhog, and drops the flowers onto the brown body. Now I know what G.D. means when he says apples don't fall far from their trees. In this moment, Cub is the spitting image of his minister father. His face is serious and thoughtful, focused. It's as if, as a preacher's son, Cub understands loss better than most and knows he needs to pay respects to it before he can accept it.

The moment becomes contagious. What Cub is doing feels right and necessary. I tip my head down. The poor groundhog. One minute here, the next minute gone. “The groundhog is in a better place,” I mutter because I have to believe this. But my voice cracks. My eyes burn as drops the size of rain leak from the inner corners.

*   *   *

Even though it has taken us a good fifteen minutes to get back to the ranch, Cub's untied boots hit the driveway hard, full of his anger. My feet, on the other hand, stumble, full of my disbelief. My head throbs. I feel as dazed as if I'd run full out into a brick wall.

“That poor groundhog,” Cub says again.

“Don't tell G.D.”

Cub stops, spins around to face me, planting his hands on his hips. “Dill, the way Dead End went after that groundhog shows he's a killer. You can't keep saying he's not. You got to tell your granddad. And Lyon.”

I swallow hard. What happened to our good dog? “Lyon shot a squirrel once,” I say, my voice watery and unconvincing. “No one called him a killer.”

Cub raises his eyebrows at me. “Dead End killin' that groundhog is nothin' like your dad huntin'.”