The Savage(29)

As he lay flat on his belly, ache ran up from his ankle, through his hip, over his ribs, and to arms outstretched over the opening. The dog raised its head as Van Dorn lowered the homemade gin toward its snout. Beneath the dog lay the piled and unmoving. Scents rose as Van Dorn inhaled their fuming discharges.

In the canine’s eyes sat a pity, deep and cavernous as though bedded in a wilderness that had once been civil and overnight turned lunatic and barbaric. The dog did not snarl. It only bored into Van Dorn’s vision. Letting him fling the noose over its monstrous bloodhound head. He took this as a sign. And told the feral dog, “Know that I’m offering you life, not death, can only hope you’re just as generous.”

Working from his elbows to his knees, Van Dorn stood and slowly tugged the belt. The dog went with the pull. Van Dorn maneuvered with its weight, going hand over hand. The knots of the leather tightened, the dog reared back on its neck, as if to keep tension from its throat, then the heft of its weight came all at once and the hound hung in the air, dangled within the pit like a monstrous drop of mucus being dragged up the side of the dirt wall, gurgling and hacking through its nose. Van Dorn above, rearing his weight backward.

Shaking and tremoring, Van Dorn’s legs and arms burned acidic. His ankle a chemical reaction of pain as though vinegar and baking soda were being combined. Kneeling, he continued placing hand over hand till he could see the hound’s penuche-colored skull. Leaned and lowered himself over the edge. Held tight with one hand to the leather belt. Red fired his complexion, his other hand reached and wrapped around the dog’s chest. Grunting, Dorn felt the pop of his own shoulder and back muscles, giving one final heave, almost falling forward. Then taking the weight of the dog and dropping backward like a wrestling suplex.

On his back he lay, looking up into the limbs of tree overhead that roofed his vision, the sky peeked through in hints of C4 putty and cotton whites. Blood rushed to his head. A relay of inhales and gasps. His heart fluttered and his lungs scorched. The odor of retch spread over his chest. Like that of a rotted carcass or sun-baked coon found along the rutted surface of country passages where vultures fed.

The slow thump of a muscle, not his own but that of the unruly beast, vibrated against his body. Slowly he bent his neck, raised his hands to the leather that collared around the hound’s nape. Removed it. Rolled the dog from atop of him. Spent and unconscious, it lay spread out on its side. Dorn sat on his knees, studied the dog. It looked to be an oversize pup, maybe nine to twelve months old. Part bloodhound, part Rottweiler. Its paws were the diameter of a large tuna can. Thick and stealthy, connected to lean-muscled fores and rears. Not starved as he’d thought.

Nails slick as rubies, rounded off. The coat smudged and crusted with soil and whatever it’d killed and ate. Reaching a hand at its riblets that rose and fell, Van Dorn rested his digits. Then slowly began to stroke them back and forth. Taking in the pulse and warmth of what he’d offered. Life.

Untying his makeshift noose, he placed brass back into the leather holdings, slid it over his torso. Looped his belt back around his waist, reattached his skinner, when from behind came the clatter of weight over leaves.

Feeling for his pistol, Van Dorn gripped the .45. Turned with the gun raised. Eyes searching about the wilderness with the oncoming snaps of twig and branch. Over his shoulder, the mongrel stirred and began to growl when Van Dorn took in an enormous shape’s curled husks and dime-sized nares.

*

Rumors had spewed from hunters’ mouths to the Widow’s ears during deer and turkey season. Thin or sawed-off stumps of men came camouflaged into the mart, divulging the small pockets of breeding. Speaking of swine being nourished on the eggs of ground vertebrae and deer fawns. Some said they’d been taken from Louisiana, brought here some twenty years before by one mangy male on a hunting trip, released into the wilds of southern Indiana. Done over and over, letting them spore and spread.

Before now it had been just that, a rumor. But here was this appearance of blackened-rind hide and hair thorned all over with tips the shade of dead field brush, ears in rounded points, hooves digging into the dirt as the snorts scuffed sound. Van Dorn had never laid eyes upon such a creature. As he kneeled, the hound growled behind him, its exhalation of breath nearly gagging him. Smelling of something far beyond rot. Fearing this dog he’d saved would take a jag to the rear of his neck, Dorn began to turn when the hound jetted past him. Belling and kicking up leaf and soil with the pat and dig of pawed claws. Steading fast like a purebred racing greyhound.

Van Dorn trained the .45 on the wild boar; because he’d helped butcher and process many a hog with his father and the Widow, he knew that, unlike a deer, its lungs were more forward, above the shoulder area. Aiming too low, he’d shoot beneath the boar. Watching it snort and charge into a collision with the mutt that did not back down, he wanted to shoot but couldn’t. Fearing he’d clip and kill the hound as it charged like a spearhead. Dug into the boar’s ribs. Squeals lit up the wilderness. The boar twisted. Lowered its head, tried to root its tusks into the dog. Clawing and swaying; lock-jawed barks followed with the pierce of brutality.

The hound climbed till it looked as though it were mounting and hunching the boar as it swiveled and bucked. Took the hound for a bull ride till the dog released its clamp. Hit the ground. Yelped. Was knocked senseless. The hound tried to regain its footing. Blood oozed from the boar, dotted and smeared about its hide as it came with its second wind. The hound staggered. Dazed. The boar charged.