So Dear To My Heart. Arlene James

take the cake! You won’t listen to plain sense!”

      She threw a finger at his pickup truck. “Get off my land!”

      “Of all the hardheaded, idiotic women!”

      “Take your kid and his dog and go!” she shouted. Jamesy lurched to his feet then, catching Danica’s attention. “What are you waiting for?” she demanded of the boy. “Get out of here!”

      Jamesy took off at a run, stomping down the porch steps in his heavy boots. Twig whined, looked at Danica, then went after the boy. Winston was mad enough to spit nails into an iron bar, but before he could say anything else to her, she stepped inside and slammed the door again. He considered pushing his way in and making her see reason, but Jamesy’s presence restrained him.

      Reluctantly, he turned away and followed Jamesy to the truck, his concern for her reckless behavior beginning to push away his anger. Someone needed to have a stern talk with that woman, and he reckoned it would have to be him. He didn’t much like the notion, but she had to see how foolish it would be for her stay out here all on her own without a dog. Didn’t she realize that it was a thirty-five-minute drive to his place, and that he and his family were her closest neighbors? What if something happened to her? Maybe the dog would do her no good, but at least the chance existed if the dog was around.

      Win settled behind the steering wheel and looked over at his son. Twig was sitting in Jamesy’s lap, its nose stuck to the window. This was getting to be a habit, dragging that old collie over here and then dragging it back again. Winston lifted off his hat and plowed a hand through his thick, wavy hair.

      “What’s wrong with her, Dad?” Jamesy asked suddenly. “Is it because of me? Don’t she like kids?”

      Winston sighed. He hadn’t wanted to explain the full situation to his son, but that seemed the best thing now. It was bad enough when a boy’s mother walked away without a backward glance; it was beyond standing for when a rude neighbor made him feel disliked and responsible for problems with which he had nothing to do.

      “It’s not you, son, not at all. Miss Lynch, she’s going through some hard times now. You saw how much she looks like Mrs. Thacker who used to own this place?”

      “A whole bunch,” Jamesy agreed.

      “That’s because Mrs. Thacker and Miss Lynch are twins. Or they were. That’s the problem, son. I don’t like to tell you this, but Miss Lynch’s sister was in an accident a couple months ago, and Miss Lynch is still feeling the loss real bad.”

      The boy’s eyes had grown large as Winston spoke. “You mean that Mrs. Thacker got killed?”

      “I’m afraid so.”

      Jamesy pushed his hat back as he pondered that awful truth. “Man,” he said, “that stinks.”

      Winston’s eyebrows rose slightly at the phrasing. “You’re absolutely right.”

      Jamesy patted the dog’s rump absently. “Maybe Miss Lynch just don’t want to get to like old Twig, you know, in case he goes off or the coyotes get him or something.”

      Winston stared at his son’s small earnest face, a certain pride swelling in him. “You may be right about that, too, son.”

      Jamesy sighed and, with the pragmatism of a child for whom things had pretty much worked out as he’d hoped, said, “If she don’t want him, though, I guess there’s nothing anybody can do, huh?”

      “I guess not,” Winston murmured, reaching for the keys he’d left hanging in the ignition. He wouldn’t have bet, however, that the matter was resolved, and when he woke the next morning to see his son’s worried face hovering over him, he knew it for a fact.

      “Well, at least you’re not a picky eater,” Danica said to the dog slurping down a can of beef and vegetable soup from a bowl on the kitchen floor. The mutt had shown up in the middle of the night, whining and scratching at her door, a stick of some sort in its mouth. She’d tried to send it home, but when she’d opened the screen to shoo it off her porch, it had dashed inside and made a beeline for the rug in front of the old gas stove tucked into the corner of the living room, where it promptly began chewing up the stick. She’d let it stay the night since it had been too late to try to take it back to the boy where it belonged, but she still intended to do that, even if she had found an odd comfort in the animal’s silent companionship.

      With no television, Danica had begun to find the evenings rather long of late. The day before she had discovered a stack of country and western music tapes in a box behind the sofa. That had sent her on a search for something with which to play them and led her to a cache of paperback novels and magazines beneath the bed and an old boom box in the bedroom closet. Danica was delighted, and the evening that followed was the most pleasant she’d experienced in some time. Nevertheless, listening to music and reading had proven more satisfying somehow with that mutt lying there on the rug.

      Still, no matter how determined the Champlains might be to argue, she wouldn’t be responsible for parting a child from his pet. Their behavior frankly puzzled her. She couldn’t imagine a father who wouldn’t be delighted with that determination on her part, but then she had never imagined a man like Winston Champlain.

      The dog licked the plate clean and sat back on its haunches, as if to ask, “Now what?”

      “Now we get you home,” Danica said aloud, rising to her feet and slinging the strap of her hand bag over one shoulder. “Come on.”

      She wasn’t exactly certain in which direction the Champlain ranch lay, but given that the road only ran in two directions with no intersections for miles and miles, it couldn’t be too difficult to find. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty of time to look. They didn’t make it off the porch before Winston Champlain’s old truck slewed into view, however. Danica leaned a shoulder against the support post of the porch roof and waited, arms folded, while he parked, got out and walked around to the bottom of the steps.

      “I figured the dog had come here,” he said.

      Danica looked down at the dog sitting beside her, determined to remain aloof and unaffected, despite the sudden leap of her pulse. “He showed up late last night.”

      “When we found him gone this morning, I told everyone that Twig had just gone home, but Jamesy was worried, so I figured I’d better check it out.” He leaned down and patted the dog’s head, saying, “You know what you’re doing, don’t you, Twig?”

      “Appropriate name,” Danica commented. “He had a stick in his mouth when he showed up last night.”

      “Yeah, nothing he likes better than a piece of wood to chew on,” Winston told her, straightening. “I figure his insides are full of splinters by now. It’s sort of a mystery where he gets them, but he always seems to have one about four inches long around somewhere.”

      Suddenly the dog went up onto all fours and bristled, growling low in its throat. “What is it, boy?” Winston asked.

      Danica followed its line of sight to the horizon, shading her eyes with one hand. “Is that a coyote?”

      “Looks like it. They’re pretty bold when there’s no known opposition.” The dog barked, and the coyote loped away over the rise. Winston pushed back his hat and braced one foot on the bottom step. “That’s one reason a dog like Twig is handy to have around.”

      “So I see. All the more reason you should keep him. I was just bringing him back to you, by the way.”

      Winston shook his head. “Let me tell you about this dog,” he said, parking his hands at his hips. “He’s probably the best working cow dog in the business, but that’s just part of it. He’s trained for any number of things, protection, guarding, barking an alarm. He’ll even go for help if you tell him to. Once, on a cold winter day Ned’s horse fell with him, broke its leg, and Ned couldn’t get free. Ned sent Twig for help. Saved his life, no doubt about it. Another time, Ned, who was getting on up in years, slipped getting out