Chapter 8

"Freeze! Federal officer! Put your weapon down now!" The shot had come from behind me and to my right and now there was a voice as well.

I didn't understand the words exactly and I was prepared to leap anyway, but the man seemed to stagger suddenly and for just a second or two I wondered if he'd been shot. It was merely surprise though, shock perhaps and he was still holding his rifle, still pointing it at me, but looking confused and plainly unwilling to leave himself defenseless in front of some naked and obviously crazed girl.

"Put the rifle down or I will shoot you!" the voice said and I looked to see another man, dressed in brown with a shiny jacket and a smaller gun, a pistol in both of his hands. He was pointing it at the hunter in front of me, crouched slightly and staring intently down the short barrel.

"She's gonna kill me! Shoot her!" the hunter said and he was looking at me mostly, but his eyes were darting to the other man constantly as well.

"This is your last warning!" The man in the jacket either didn't believe the hunter, or didn't care what I was going to do. He just wanted that man's gun on the ground.

"Okay okay ... Fuck!" the hunter yelled, putting his gun down slowly and that's when I finally relaxed.

He couldn't hurt Chance now, not with his rifle on the dirt. My mate was safe and I didn't have to attack the man. I felt my whole body seem to collapse then, as if that realization drained every ounce of strength I had and I just fell to the ground. I was crying, I realized, but it hurt to keep my eyes open. I was tired and my head was pounding and there was a ringing in my ears from the gun shots. I just wanted to sleep. I was so tired and cold, and I curled up.

" ... up now. Hey, wake up." The man was touching me, washing my face with some water from a plastic bottle and wiping at me with some cloth.

I blinked at him and I had a headache. I couldn't have been asleep very long, I didn't think. I reached for my temple and there was a large cut on the side of my head, just under my hair where it started growing. The wound was still open and wet and I looked at my fingers, seeing them red and sticky with blood. Some fifteen or twenty feet away, the hunter was sitting on the ground facing me. He had his hands behind his back and I guessed he'd been handcuffed, because he didn't look very comfortable to me.

"Let me clean that up," the man was saying and I realized I was covered now with his jacket. It was shiny and green with patches sewn on it and inside it was soft and warm with a flannel lining.

"You took a pretty good lump," he frowned and I caught his eyes for a second and they were green, darker than his jacket, and warm with a little gold. He wasn't so old, but strong and confident and his hands were gentle.

"She's crazy! She tried to kill me!" the hunter was saying. "Look at her, she's nuts! You oughta handcuff her, not me!"

"Quiet," the man said over his shoulder then he looked at me. "What's your name?" he asked and when I didn't say anything, he spoke again. "I'm Frank, okay? I'm with the Fish and Wildlife Service. I'm a police officer, nobody's going to hurt you."

"Police," I said weakly and nodded and I was remembering the grey man who had come to the house when my Master had died.

"What's your name? Can you tell me?" he asked me gently and he was pressing his neckerchief against my head.

"Dare," I said, licking my lips and looking into his face. "My name is ... Dare."

"Dare. Okay," he nodded. "That's a nice name. How did you get up here and..." he couldn't help but smile, " ... why are you naked, Dare?"

I just shrugged, giving him a small smile of my own, even though it hurt some to do it. He tried asking me other questions too, where I lived and if I had relatives nearby, but mostly he was asking the same questions in different ways and I really had no answers.

"Okay. I got the bleeding stopped, I think ... But, here, keep some pressure on it. Can you walk?" he asked me finally. "Can you stand up? My truck's back that way..."

"Yes," I said slowly.

I did standup, slowly with my head still pounding as I pressed the damp cloth to the cut, but it wasn't terrible. I'd survive it. I let the man's jacket fall from my shoulders and I started walking away, down the hill the way I'd come following the deer. I looked over my shoulder, down the other way and the deer was dead already, the wolves working to divide the animal's carcass between them

"Hey ... Hey, hold on! I need you stay with me, okay?" The man seemed surprised that I was leaving and I looked over my shoulder at him, but I wasn't going to stay there.

"Shit, she's crazy!" the hunter laughed. "You better get her!"

"Miss ... Uh, Dare! Hold on..." The man wasn't chasing me at least, nor drawing his gun to shoot me and I wanted to go home.

I'd let Joe look at my head and maybe try to tell him what had happened, but mostly I wanted to see White Cloud and especially Red Crow, if I could. This had to be my dream. I'd followed the blood, but I didn't know what it meant or what I was supposed to do now. It had to be the dream though, that was my only real thought, and I wanted to ask someone about it, someone who would know.

"Oh man! What happened?" Mike was there when I got home and he was yelling for his brother, Jay, and they worried over me together.

"Go call dad," Jay said a little impatiently and he was just helping me to my bed mostly.

I was very tired and hungry and I must have looked terrible after three days sleeping outside and then getting in a fight and knocked on the head. My brothers were there, barking excitedly at first, pressing their large bodies against mine and sniffing at me. I wasn't in much of a condition to do anything but sleep though and so that's what I did, getting on our bed and quickly joined by Bush on one side and Bandy on the other. The two dogs pressed their bodies close and licked at me while Barley paced the hardwood floor and he was a little agitated it seemed, probably at the smell of my blood and the two strangers I'd been so close to that day.

The antiseptic smell of the doctor woke me up, as well as the unhappy barking of my brothers who weren't letting him get close to me. Joe was there now and despite his best efforts to get the dogs away from me and the bed, they weren't willing to leave and didn't want that doctor in their room at all. It took me a minute or two before I realized all that as I felt very foggy and finally I let Joe call me to come with him. Reluctantly leaving my brothers, I went into my Master's house, into the front parlor so that the doctor could look at my head in peace.

"This girl doesn't belong by herself," the doctor was saying, wiping at my head with something stinging. "How long has it been since you ate anything?"

I just shrugged and looked at Joe and his two sons who were standing there looking uncomfortable, as if they might be in trouble now because of me.

"You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you," the doctor told me. "This cut isn't so bad, but you're lucky you don't need stitches. Hit your head on a rock or something?"

I wasn't talking and the man knew me well enough by then anyway not to expect any answers. He spent his time chiding me about eating and taking my vitamins, about checking myself for ticks because they could make me very sick if I wasn't careful. He was speaking to me, but most of his words were meant for Joe and the big Indian was nodding and agreeing, and the doctor wasn't terribly happy about any of it.

"You should think about getting the girl some real help," the doctor said finally. "She can't take care of herself and whatever you people might think, she isn't an animal. I'm going to check on her in a few days and see how she's doing. If the girl's like this..." he shrugged, " ... I've got a responsibility to report it. You understand?"

Joe nodded and he didn't look too happy either and whatever it was the doctor meant by that, I suspected it wasn't anything too good for me. I'd never liked him anyway though and I just stared back at the man as he looked at me for a long moment and when he left finally, I felt much better.

"You need to stay around here for awhile, okay?" Joe was bathing me in my Master's bathtub and I'd protested at first, but the Indian hadn't let me refuse. "You have to eat more. That doctor was right. You're too skinny now and you're a mess."

I just shrugged, resting my chin on my knees as I hugged them to my breasts. I was sitting in the warm water while Joe just gave me some time to soak in it before he washed me properly. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd had a hot bath in a real bathtub. I had some memories of it maybe, but they seemed to belong to someone else. I tried not to enjoy it, or to give Joe any direct answers, pretending like I didn't care or understand what he was saying.

"This isn't what your Master would want, Dare," Joe told me softly and that cut through me like a knife, the truth of it, and I wept quietly while the man bathed me.

By the end of my bath I was clean for the first time in a long time. Joe had washed me several times in fact, letting the dirty water out and refilling the tub three times. His hands touched me everywhere, his big fingers were surprisingly gentle and there was nothing sexual about it, even as he washed my sex and anus, soaped my breasts and everywhere else. I felt very much as if he were a father to me just then and I felt ashamed of my behavior. My Master would not have wanted me running off the way I had, neglecting my brothers, and even a dog has responsibilities, I realized. I had to take care of myself better and keep my spirits up somehow, but it was hard and my resolution was fleeting as the last of my bath water swirled down the drain.

Joe dried me thoroughly and I felt better and I must have looked much better as well. He'd washed my hair as well and forced me to sit on the closed toilet while he brushed it. I still had a few burrs and hopeless tangles that he struggled with and I growled softly as my scalp burned under the ceaseless tugging, despite his caution with my wound. His sons were preparing dinner for us and I was hungry suddenly, impatient as the Indian dragged the brush through my long black hair. He wondered aloud if he shouldn't cut some of it, just to even it up some and I narrowed my eyes slightly, not sure if I wanted my hair cut or not. It was awfully long by then and the ends were split and frayed, but I did love the way it covered my body when I slept. I liked to imagine I had real fur and it would help keep me warm during the winter.

"Maybe just this much, what do you think?" Joe was pinching just an inch or so of hair between his first two fingers, holding it up for me to see and then we heard my brother's barking, warning us that a stranger was coming.

"Who's that now?" Joe asked himself mostly and he glanced towards the open bathroom door.

The dogs didn't like strangers and they never had. Our Master hadn't raised them to be overly friendly with people they didn't know and so when strangers would come to the house they were always there, outside to challenge whoever it might be and tell the stranger that he wasn't welcome. That's what they were doing now and we could hear their frantic barks, loud and sharp and not dangerous, not yet, but if the stranger wasn't careful the tone would change as the dogs became nervous and angry.

Their voices did change as I followed Joe towards the front door and the porch beyond, but my brothers were calming and that seemed unusual. There were very few people who could settle my three brothers down that way, Joe being one of them and his sons of course, White Cloud was another, but if it were the Indian medicine man the dogs wouldn't have challenged him at all. Each truck and car and machine made by men has its own sound and we knew all of them well. This wasn't White Cloud, or anyone else we knew, and we stepped into the dying light as evening settled on the reservation to find a big green truck parked behind Joe's.

"Yeah, yeah ... Sit ... Go on, sit down," a man was saying and my brothers were still barking, but they weren't angry. They were cheerful, I realized. "You're a big boy, huh ... What's your name? Come here ... You like that?"

"Bandy," I said and I was walking towards the man, down the short steps while Joe remained behind me.

"What's that?" He smiled at me and even though I was naked and still damp from my bath, most of his attention was on my three brothers as they capered for the beef jerky he was feeding them out of his pocket.

"His name..." I pointed at the dog, " ... Bandy."

"Bandy, huh?" He chuckled. "Okay."

"Bush ... and ... Barley," I nodded, pointing at the others and Barley ran over to me at the sound of his name, his head against my belly briefly and taking a sniff of me.

"And you're Dare," he nodded as well. "Sorry, boys. That's all I got." He was patting Bush on the side, slapping his hand against the dog's ribs with a heavy, pleasant thudding sound. "Sorry about that."