“Good, huh?” Will grinned.
The dog turned his head at the sound of Will’s voice and their eyes met. Perhaps, at least in a sense, they spoke to one another, because both understood the message conveyed by the animal’s eyes: You saved me. I’ll stay with you.
The dog left the sinkhole, stood next to Will, and shook himself vigorously, shedding water, dirt, and speckles of blood in a wide area—which included Will. The animal looked more like a drowned rat than a drowned rat would. It would have been easy enough to count his ribs, they were so prominent, and his gut curved upward almost to his spine. His tail, rodentlike, flicked from side to side a few inches each way as he looked up at Will.
His head, Will saw, wasn’t half bad for a range mongrel. His snout was straight, his eyes set nicely, neither too close together nor too far apart, and his pricked ears—like those of a collie—stood alert, at attention.
“Well hell,” Will said, and scratched the spot between the dripping-wet dog’s ears. The dog grunted and then licked Will’s hand.
“Well, hell,” Will said again.
He counted the number of cartridges left in his gun belt. There were four, and he had the two he’d loaded before shooting the jackrabbit. Will needed food and so did the dog. He opened the cylinder of his .45, loaded his last rounds, and snapped the cylinder shut.
The only game available was rattlesnake, prairie dogs, and rabbit. A prairie dog wasn’t large enough to waste a shot on, and snake, unless it was long and fat, didn’t yield enough meat. That left rabbit.
The water drew creatures to it; it made no sense to trek about in the killing sun. Instead, Will went back to where he’d slept, clay cracking and dropping from his face and arms as he walked. If nothing else, the layer of clay had eased and cooled Will’s pain, and for whatever reason, it seemed to ease the weeping of the blisters.
He situated himself in the shade, leaned back against the thin trunk of a desert pine, and rested his pistol in his right hand in his lap. The dog sat next to him on his left, and almost unconsciously, Will’s hand began to stroke the animal’s neck.
It was easy enough to doze off: Will’s fever was still rampant and the burns he had suffered sapped any energy he may have had. The deaths of his two friends—his two brothers—had the same effect on his mind as the battle had on his body. He slept uneasily, mumbling, his gun hand flinching every so often. When he awakened, the dog was gone.
What’d I expect? The damned dog is probably wild as an eagle. The outlaws must have trapped or snared him somehow. An’ what am I gonna do with a dog, for God’s sake? I can barely feed myself. Be nothin’ but a pain in the ass. Still . . . it was kinda nice havin’ him around . . .
The pinto was hanging close by, tugging at the grass around the water. Will managed a grin. A day or so, I’ll be able to ride an’ I’ll fetch me a saddle, a rifle, a ton of ammunition, a couple good meals, an’ some whiskey—an’ then I’ll be ready to take up where I left off, ’cause I’m not even close to finished yet.
The pinto’s head snapped up from his grazing, his ears forward, his muscles ready, tightening to run if whatever he’d heard presented danger. Will shifted his position a bit and raised his pistol to a shooting position. It was a few moments before he heard what had spooked the horse: the sound of an animal’s—or a human’s—feet crushing dead grass, dislodging pebbles. Will thumbed back the hammer of his .45, painfully aware that the last rounds he had were loaded into the pistol. He waited silently and very still, moving no more than the rocks or sandy soil around him.
The dog came up from behind Will at a lope and swung in front of him. He stood, tail fanning the air, a very nice-sized jackrabbit clamped between his jaws. The blood was still running from the punctures in the rabbit; it had been a very recent kill. The dog dropped his catch on Will’s legs.
“Well ain’t you jus’ somethin’.” Will laughed. “Ain’t you jus’ somethin’.” He hugged the dog’s head for a moment, scratching his body. The dog’s tail waved with enough power to swing his hips and rear body back and forth, and he whined deep in his throat and lapped Will’s face. They both ate well that evening.
During that night Will had been vaguely aware of the dog stretched out next to him. He wasn’t aware, though, that the dog got up several times and padded silently off into the darkness.
It was still predawn when Will was jerked from his sleep by hands at his throat, choking him. He drew and fired automatically, his pistol close enough to his chest so that the blowback peppered his already seared and tender face. The dead rabbit he shot was launched upward a yard by the bullet and came down, bloody and torn like a child’s ripped doll, and landed on his face, a length of intestine next to his head like a slimy gray braid.
The dog sat at Will’s side, tail raising a cloud of dust as it swung, his face looking like he’d just conquered the world, his jaws still dripping fresh blood.
The very edge of the sun cleared the horizon as Will sat up, pushing the jack off his face. The dog stood, patting the ground excitedly, proudly: the conquering hero.
“Ya damn fool.” Will laughed, reaching out to the animal, rubbing his head, his sides, telling him he’d done real good.
The jackrabbit was a fine one, a female of good size with at least a little fat to her to sweeten the meat. Will scooped the guts out and spread them on the ground for the dog. He sat for a long moment, looking at the rabbit in his lap. Then he said to himself and to the dog, “I’m damned if I’m gonna eat this jack raw. I’m gonna make me a little fire an’ cook her up an’ to hell with the smoke. Them outlaws got no reason to come back here. They’re probably still in town drunk an’ raisin’ hell.”
Will gathered twigs and sticks for tinder from under the trees and broke up a few storm-severed branches.
His hands and wrists were aching and he’d used every cussword he knew, but eventually a slim wisp of pale smoke rose from the piece of limb he was augering into. He nursed the tiny flame, feeding but not smothering it, tending it as a mother tends a weak infant. Before long he had an actual fire.
“You’ll for sure get your share, dog,” Will said. “Hell, you coulda ate the whole critter if you wanted to—but you didn’t. You brought it back here.”
Calling the new friend “dog” sounded strange—wrong—to Will. He tried to bring a name to mind as he turned the stick skewering the rabbit over the flames. The fire sizzled and spat as the fat dripped into it, and the smoke rose rifle-barrel straight in the still air. The sun was well risen; already the temperature was climbing.
“How ’bout Spot?” Will said. “Or Bowser or Laddie or . . . ahhh, shit. None of them fit.”
He looked at the dog and the dog looked at him. “Damn,” Will said. “You got a grin on you jus’ like a human. How ’bout Smiley? Does that fit?” He considered a bit. “Nah. But look, how about Shark? You got the ivory of one of them critters—I seen pictures of them. Yeah. Shark, that sounds real good. That works. Fact, it works real good.”
The dog understood none of the words, but he picked up on Will’s enthusiasm and moved closer, licking Will’s face, his feet patting the ground, his tail awag almost frantically.
In scratching and rubbing Shark, Will wasn’t too surprised to see legions of fleas leaping about the dog’s coat. The raw skin of mange bothered him, as well. He pointed to the water. “Let’s go, Shark.”