Chapter 3

The next day they were close to where they’d seen the dog. Girl was carrying two squirrels by then, and Clipper took one from her and they searched for the dog. They finally found her in a hollow under a log with a handful of puppies squirming around and clustering under her for safety. Clipper tossed the dog the squirrel and they left her alone. As they walked away he wondered if the girl saw any similarity between this situation and how he had gotten friendly with her.

On the fourth day, when they fed her, the dog picked up her squirrel and followed them. When it became apparent she was going home with them, Clipper and Girl slowed and the three of them, followed by six or seven tumbling, squealing puppies, made their way through the woods back to the cabin. Girl played with puppies while Clipper chopped a hole in a large wooden packing crate, and made the dogs a house. He placed the doghouse in front of the cabin, so the dog could greet visitors. Greet them, or bite them. Whatever. He was pleased to now have a dog. A whole pack of them. He got them a pan for a water bowl, and filled it. The dog didn’t want to be touched but he figured after a few days she’d get more comfortable around them both. Clipper was pleased with the days work.

That night he sat before the fire with Girl in the recliner. She stared into the fire and he also watched the fire, and her. Mostly her. She met his eye on occasion, finally raising an eyebrow at him. He laughed.

“Girl. What do you wanna name your dog?”

She turned back to the fire. The minutes stretched. She does this every time, he thought. For the hundredth time he wondered if she was a little slow ... or if she was just really thoughtful. Just when he thought she wasn’t going to answer, she said one word. “Fang.”

So. Fang it was. The puppies would be harder to name and keep straight, there were seven of them.

The dog paid for itself within a week. That evening, just minutes before sunset, Clipper and Girl were relaxing in front of the fire, as they always did. As we’ve done for almost two weeks now, Clipper mused. Suddenly, outside, he heard Fang growl loudly and begin to bark. He knew the sounds dogs made and he knew that this was no ordinary bark. He knew that someone or something was out there.

“Girl,” he said, picking the automatic up from the table, where he usually left it on evenings. “Have you ever shot one of these before?”

“No,” she said instantly, gratifying him with her speed. Shit, though. She was defenseless. He stuck the .45 into his belt and ran to the counter-top and handed her back her original butcher knife. He grabbed his bow, with a ten broad-heads in the clips, all the arrows that he had.

“Stay here,” he told her. She looked frightened. He wanted to grab her and hold her, but he went to the door and cracked it open. The dog was standing before it, growling, her hair bristling. The puppies were nowhere to be seen.

Clipper slid out the door, careful of his bow. The dog moved slightly to allow him out. She didn’t even look at him. She was watching something in the woods, something to the north slightly, as she growled. He made out a shape that he thought to be a person. He had already picked an arrow from the clips, and fitted it, and he drew the bow, aiming off to the side, wanting the person to see it, to see that he was ready. He just hoped to hell that they didn’t have a gun.

“You need to move on,” he said loudly, “I can’t control this dog much longer.”

“We got a baby,” a man said, plaintively. “Help us. We ain’t got no food.”

What the hell were they doing this far off the road with a baby? Jesus, he thought. Why me? Why us? Why now?

“We are pretty poor,” he replied. “We don’t really have nothing.”

“You got more than us, you got a place to stay,” said the man. He came out from beneath the trees. A woman in a long dress followed him carrying a bundle up at her chest. Damn, thought Clipper. How can I shoot, now, with a baby in the mix?

The man approached, and stopped maybe fifty feet away. The dog was quivering, growling deep in her throat. Clipper knew he’d just have to say one word, and the dog would charge the man and attack. He just didn’t know what that word was, unfortunately.

The man approached a little closer. Maybe thirty feet away he stopped. Some kind of wailing sound came from the woman or the baby. The dog took a few steps towards the man.

“I don’t wanna get bit,” the man said. “I just want some food for the baby. You got any milk?”

The dog barked, a long screaming bark, unlike anything Clipper had ever heard. The dog charged at the man, and the man drew his arm back like he was going to throw something. Clipper remembered Dan Deemer doing that, right before he put a knife in a man’s throat from twenty feet away. He threw himself violently to the side, and the knife thunked into the door, just inches from his side. The man had another knife out by then, and drew back to throw at Fang, who was at his feet, barking wildly. Clipper shot the man with a broad-head, putting it right into his chest. The man stumbled backwards and fell. Clipper knew he was as good as dead.

Clipper turned to the woman, already formulating an apology for shooting her man. Without conscious thought and purely out of habit he had nocked a new arrow and was drawing the bow when he looked the woman in the face. He was shocked to see the woman throw the baby to the ground and draw her arm back to throw. Woman? It was a man too, the cloth over his head had fallen away. It was a goddam man, wearing a blanket to look like a skirt. The man’s knife flew harmlessly off to the side as Clipper’s arrow slammed home in his chest. He stood, breathing in gasps as the dog turned and trotted back to her house to check on her puppies. He walked towards the two bodies, relieved that he wasn’t going to have to take care of a baby. Sure enough, the baby was just a bundle of clothes. Damn. The bastards. The goddam knife-throwing fake-baby bastards. He hated them all the more for making him kill them.

He looked back at the cabin. Girl was peeking out the door, fear plain on her face. He waved at her, and waved her back inside. No telling if these guys have friends, he thought. He retrieved his arrows, pushing them through, unscrewing the points, and then pulling the shafts back out. It was hard work, and gory. Pushing an arrow through skin and gristle and muscle is hard, almost impossible, at times. He had to use the case of his knife to push on the arrows with. Bows are not for the squeamish, he reminded himself. He picked up the knives and searched the bodies for more weapons, finding over a dozen more knives. He gathered up the pack of clothes, and went back inside to Girl, and the safety of the cabin. The woods felt dangerous to him that night.

They were up late just in case the men had friends in the area. Nobody bothered them and Clipper finally locked the place down and they went to bed. Girl climbed the ladder after him and went to the bed at the back end of the loft. He went back down and got her blankets and covered her. She nodded her thanks to him in the dim light and he went to his own bed.

The next morning Clipper spent a few hours digging in the hard soil a few hundred yards behind the cabin. He dragged the two corpses back and dumped them into the hole. He didn’t even bother to put up a cross or anything. Someday he’d dig one of them back up, and retrieve a skull to hang over the door, to ward off troublemakers. Nothing says “keep away” like a skull over the door.

Girl seemed troubled and she had a hard time leaving the safety of the cabin. She finally came out and played with the puppies. Clipper took her into the woods and collected a brace of squirrels from his snares to feed the dog. He felt like he owed the dog, big time. The dog had worked out perfectly, he thought. If they hadn’t had the dog, the men would have been at the door before they knew they had company. Bad company.

“Darlin’.” That night, he felt like he just had to talk to Girl about what had happened. About what she might face, out there. If she went back out there by herself.

She regarded him with a puzzled, almost petulant took on her face. Darling was probably a poor choice of words with her, he thought, after all my promises about leaving her alone and how sexless I am. He told himself to remember that, and call her things that sounded a little less sexually charged.

“Girl. I’m sorry.” He started again. She nodded. “That’s the world, Girl. That’s what’s gonna happen, more often than not, when people show up. I don’t know what experiences you’ve had, what you’re used to, but I’ve seen a lot of that. People are bad, now. Life is rough and hard. Some people can survive like we do, but some people kill to survive. Kill, and take. That’s what those guys were here for. To take.”

She nodded, staring into his face somberly. He gazed into her fabulous brown eyes, and just totally lost focus. He brought himself back with a start.

“I just want you to realize that, and realize you can stay with me as long as you want to. I like having you here. Life is easier with two. The more the merrier, in fact. I don’t want you to get out there, and have something happen to you. Girls have a hard time in this world. They have to make choices, and often the options are not ... good, not friendly ... know what I mean?”

She regarded him for a while, and then solemnly nodded her head again. He wondered if she really did. He wondered for the millionth time how her life had gone up until a few months ago. If her people had been able to protect her from the chaos. Sometimes she adapted so well he thought that maybe she’d had a hard life so far, that she’d had to learn how to adapt to change. Someday, maybe she would tell him. Someday, if he could just hold onto her. If she would just talk, dammit.

That night she followed him into the loft again. Good, he thought to himself, good. He felt better with her behind him. They’ll have to go through me first, he thought.

The next day, he nailed a board to a tree, and began teaching her how to throw knives. It was made difficult by the fact that he didn’t really know how to do it very well himself, but by afternoon he felt that they’d made pretty good progress. She could stick a knife in the board more often than not, and now she just needed to work on her aim. Most of the knives he’d taken from the men were throwing knives, and some of them were well balanced and looked expensive.

Also, there was the pack of clothes the men had involuntarily donated to the cause. Two pairs of jeans were in it, and they fit Girl better than his pair had. The man pretending to be a woman had had a small build. When he had unwrapped the bundle and showed Girl the jeans, she had just instantly slid her pants, well his pants, actually, she’d just slid the pants she’d had on down her legs and stood there bottomless for a moment while she tried them on. He was surprised and shocked at how uninhibited she was, as gun-shy as she’d seemed to be earlier. She just didn’t seem to think anything about it now. He felt that familiar twinge from long ago in his pants when she picked up one leg and then the other to put on the jeans and he glimpsed her cute fuzzy little pussy. Oh, he thought, don’t do this to me, don’t give me hope. He had to turn away and let her try on the other pair.