The Rains (Untitled #1)(71)

He drew back the branch, and still I didn’t fire.

Cassius jumped up and bit his arm, dragging the branch down. Chet turned and kicked him. Cassius flew across the clearing and lay panting.

My sweat-slick hands bobbled the revolver. Before I could firm my grip, Chet swatted it out of my hands. It glinted as it flew off into a pile of dead leaves.

Chet backhanded me, knocking me down. Then he turned, picked up the sharpened branch, and went after Cassius. He drew the branch back like a spear, the jagged end aimed at Cassius’s ribs.

I dove for the gun, groping for it in the dead leaves. I would’ve done anything to protect Cassius.

As Chet drove the branch down to kill my dog, the trees behind Cassius seemed to explode. Zeus charged through the leaves as if shot from a cannon, the other ridgebacks behind him.

Zeus hammered into the makeshift spear, the point driving through his shoulder, Chet falling back under the force of 110 pounds of rage. Chet slammed onto his back on the ground, the end of the branch embedding in the dirt by his ear. Zeus was impaled on the spear.

But he didn’t stop.

Snarling, Zeus drove himself farther onto the spear to get to Chet’s face. The tip of the branch poked out of Zeus’s side, emerging between his ribs. Still his powerful legs churned the dirt, the branch sliding into him inch by inch, his snapping teeth ever nearer to his target.

Chet raised a hand, and Zeus tore into it, blood spurting, fingers severing. Zeus got to Chet’s forearm next and shredded it until it looked as though it had been stuck in a blender.

Chet wiggled back, and Zeus kept on, impaling himself further, grabbing Chet’s other hand and mangling it as well. The other dogs had circled up, barking. I had a firm grip on the revolver at last, but no clear shot.

Chet managed to roll free. Tanner and Princess snapped at him as he ran into the woods, pumping his arms, blood drops flying from what remained of his hands. Atticus, Grace, and Deja tore off after them.

Zeus keeled over onto his side.

I ran to him. Breath leaked from his punctured lung, fluttering the fur where the branch stuck out of his ribs. I was crying, stroking his russet head. His face bore the marks of coyote battles past. Even as a puppy, he’d been my biggest, best boy.

He lay still, breathing. Not a whimper.

My tears fell on him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it.”

He turned his head ever so slightly and licked my palm.

The other dogs returned from the chase and surrounded us. Then I felt a wet muzzle in my ear.

Cassius.

I leaned aside to let him see his father.

Cassius gave a low whimper and ducked his head to Zeus’s. They touched noses.

Zeus’s eyes glazed, and air stopped wheezing through his side.

Cassius looked at me, then back at his father. He nuzzled Zeus’s head a few times, trying to nudge him back to life. Zeus lay there.

Finally Cassius backed up a step and sat.

The other dogs ringed us. Their coats were streaked with mud, their ears tattered from fights. They were wild now.

And yet they looked healthy and well fed.

I bent down and hugged Zeus, burying my face in a fold of fur at his neck. And then I stood, plucked the cowboy hat from the dirt, and put it back on my head.

There were still valleys to cross and mountains to scale and Alex on the other side. Patrick waited back at the school, breathing down his air supply.

I went around to the others and let them swarm me as I scratched behind their ears and patted their wagging rear ends. Then I started for the stretch of woods off the highway where we’d left the Silverado.

I tapped my thigh once as I reached the edge of the clearing. “C’mon, boy,” I said.

But I heard no rustling behind me.

I turned, and Cassius was sitting among the others, imploring me with his yellow eyes and wrinkled brow. He whined once, faintly.

Understanding came, and my heart fell away, a stone dropped into a bottomless pit.

I walked back to him.

“Okay, boy,” I said, crouching before him. “Good boy. Good, good boy.”

He licked my salty face, and I let him.

I looked as the pack of ridgebacks circled around me, proud and free. Then back at Cassius. I said, “Release.”

But he stayed there a moment, blinking at me.

I was finding it hard to swallow. “Go on, then,” I said, waving the dogs off.

They bounded majestically away through the trunks. Cassius paused at the edge of the clearing and looked back at me, eyes bright and alive above that black muzzle. Then he turned and was gone, too.

I stood there wiping my face until I could no longer hear the dogs forging through the brush. Then I stood a while more.

As long as they were here, the woods would be a safer place for me. But that didn’t make me feel any better right now.

Trudging heavily into the woods, I remembered Patrick’s reply to me before I left, after I’d told him I couldn’t do it without him.

You can. You always could.

Maybe Zeus’s death had cleared the way for Cassius to grow up.

Maybe it was time for me to grow up, too.

Remembering our run-in with the migrant workers, I gave Jack Kaner’s farm a wide berth, slicing north across a wooded ridge. The trees drifted by, an endless scroll. My legs ached. The night air grew thick, streamers of fog floating by. Visibility got so low that I nearly collided with the wrought-iron bars.