Flawed Dogs (10 page)

“Yes,”
said Cassius, slowly, evenly.
“I am.”

Sam locked terrified eyes at Cassius, his lips curling high in anger for the first time in his brief life. He spat forth a vicious snarl, punctuated by barks and the snapping of his teeth that echoed through the small valley.

And it was here, in a distant icy meadow below a black sky at the dawn of a terrible day, that Sam would demonstrate the other thing besides kisses that dogs uniquely offer people willingly:

Their lives.

But the people watching from the ridge above that day didn’t see this. All they saw was a crazed, probably very ill dachshund intent on killing an infant and threatening anyone that would stop him.

Cassius stepped toward Sam, who made a lunge at the big dog before spinning around to move back toward baby Bruno, where he would make his last stand.

This is when Uncle Hamish raised his rifle and fired.

Sam lay on his side in the snow and was even more unsure about what was happening than he’d been just seconds before. He knew there was a searing pain across the top of his head but didn’t know that it was from a bullet that had grazed his skull, leaving an ugly gash oozing the scent of blood: a first for the dachshund.

He couldn’t move, but his vision cleared and he could see Heidy clawing through the snow trying to get to him.

He watched Uncle Hamish still in pajamas drop the gun and tackle her just as she reached him, Heidy’s hair tangled and her mouth open. Sam’s ears were ringing too loud to hear that she was screaming.

To Sam’s relief, Miss Violett picked up her baby and frantically tore off the blanket that still wrapped him. She and Hamish scanned the naked child and seemed reassured by what they saw. Little Bruno smiled up at his mother as if it was a game.

Sam could see Heidy, crouched on her knees and crying, staring at him but not moving closer.

“Don’t worry, Heidy,”
said Sam quietly
. “Everything is okay. The baby’s safe
.
Why aren’t you coming to me?”

Then he saw Cassius move close to Miss Violett, now on her knees as well, holding baby Bruno close. Cassius stared at Sam carefully while he pushed his mouth in close to the bundled baby.

Closer.

“No!”
exploded Sam.
“Stop him! STOP HIM! DON’T YOU ALL SEE? CASSIUS WILL KILL HIM!”

Sam didn’t realize that he was snapping his jaws again, lips curled into a frenzied rage. Instincts—cold and unsparing—ruled his actions now, and his feet clawed the snow wildly in a desperate attempt to get between Cassius and Bruno once more.

The others backed away from the writhing, snarling little dog lying in the snow, now red with his blood. Uncle Hamish pushed away a sobbing Heidy with an arm across the girl’s chest. Then Sam watched in a shocked daze of incomprehension as Hamish raised his rifle again. He pointed it directly at him.

Sam closed his eyes and said simply, quietly:

But Heidy had leapt at her uncle and knocked the muzzle toward the ground. Sam’s hearing had returned enough to hear her scream, “NO, UNCLE!” Sam watched the man crouch before Heidy on her knees and hold her shoulders. He looked into the girl’s horrified eyes and spoke something slowly, carefully. Sam could only hear a few words: “Can’t touch him,” “very sick” and “must be destroyed.”

The girl collapsed into her uncle’s arms, shaking with sobs. He held her. Maybe for the first time. Violett reached out and laid a hand on the girl’s back while she held Bruno close.

Sam’s mind swam in confusion, the pain from the bullet pushed to the background. He tried to stand, to reach Heidy, to tell her that everything was okay, to lick the underpart of her nose, to kiss her.

But he couldn’t.

Instead he felt himself being wrapped in a cloth, maybe a bathrobe. Uncle Hamish carried him, but not in the direction of the house with the others. They were going over the stone wall, toward the aspen forest. Sam caught a final fleeting glimpse of Heidy being pulled up the hill toward the house by Miss Violett. The girl kept turning back to look at Sam. Cassius moved next to her, leaning in. Protectively. Possessively. Sam looked farther up the ridge and saw Mrs. Beaglehole standing serenely, watching it all without emotion.

As Hamish carried a limp and increasingly faint Sam into the forest, Sam heard the last of Heidy’s voice—halting and desperate—calling to him, blending with the growing howl of the wind.

“Forgive me,” she was yelling.

Then blackness descended on Sam’s world.

Sam opened his eyes to see Hamish looking down at him with a tortured look. He lay in snow between two large roots extending from a huge fig tree. His head hurt less now, but he still couldn’t stand up.

Hamish held his rifle to his chest, his fingers tightening on the stock, turning white from the cold. He swung the barrel toward the dachshund and held it there, his hands shaking. With the other hand he wiped the falling snow from his eyes awkwardly.

“I don’t understand what has happened,”
said Sam weakly.
“Why is everyone afraid of me?”

Hamish listened to the faint sounds coming from the animal he fully expected would one day be the most famous and celebrated show dog in the world . . . but who now lay before him as a wounded, fatally sick creature from whom he needed to protect his family.

His robe was still around Sam, and Hamish began shaking from cold. He dropped the rifle muzzle and put a palm to his eyes, drying the moisture, angry. Then he pulled a large piece of tamarack bark over to Sam and laid it across the two roots, making a sort of roof over the dog. He tucked the folds of material around him, being careful not to get near Sam’s mouth, which he still believed carried a dangerous disease that had made the small dachshund go mad.

Hamish had instinctively grabbed his phone before running from the house. He pulled it from the pocket of the robe tucked around Sam and made a call.

“Sheriff. It’s Hamish McCloud. Yes, I know what time it is. Just listen: call animal control and tell them that there’s a dog that needs picking up on my property. He’s sick, crazy—tried to harm one of my own, George. I winged him, but he’s still alive. No . . . I can’t finish it. You need to fetch him and . . . do whatever needs doing. He’s under the big fig tree next to my eastern gate. They can’t miss him. He’s . . . uh, wrapped in my bathrobe. Yes, you heard me.”

Hamish closed the phone and looked down at the unmoving dog, breathing hard, looking back at him. He swung the rifle up toward the sky and fired it once, the blast echoing through the hills and making Sam flinch. “She’ll need to hear that,” Hamish said. “She’ll need to know it’s over and . . .” He trailed off.

He pulled his pajama collar high around his neck and leaned over Sam, looking into his eyes for the last time. He whispered, “You’ll be warm, Sam.” Hamish looked up into the sky and then back down, pain written on his face. “Thank you . . . for bringing me back to Heidy.”

He turned and disappeared into the curtain of snow. Sam rested, panting. He licked some snow, moistening his dry mouth, and then ate some ice. The robe’s warmth was soothing and he closed his eyes, trying hard not to think more about this day of horror and madness. He was more tired than he’d ever been in his short life and was only dimly aware when other men arrived and he felt himself being lifted and carried through the trees. He was even less aware of being placed into a metal box in a truck and the door closing with darkness, once again, falling upon him.