And it wasn’t the dog’s fault last time; Caleb still didn’t know what had happened. When he got to the side of the gas station, he picked a shady spot off one corner and sat down, his hands gently smoothing the dog’s head, trying to calm him down. He had his hackles up, as he stared at the people moving around him.
“Not everybody is like that,” he murmured to the dog. The dog leaned against his hand, pushing his body weight against him. Emboldened by that, Caleb gently ran his hands over the dog, giving him orders to lift his paws, so that he could check them. Some of the pads were bleeding from the rough run. “You’ve been out of training, haven’t you?”
The dog looked at him, then rubbed his head against Caleb’s chin. Taking just a few minutes to relax and to bond, he ran his hands over the dog, until he got to the dog’s back end, where the dog immediately growled.
“I hear you,” he said, “but we’ll have to get that checked out.” He then ordered the dog to stand still, and the dog immediately complied, and he ran his hands gently over him to see what was going on. The leg wasn’t broken, but, if he wasn’t mistaken, it looked like a huge bullet burn ran along the dog’s back. It was deep and angry looking, if not infected. He sighed. “Did he already try to shoot you, buddy? That’s one asshole who needs some of his own medicine, if that’s how he thinks to treat a dog.”
After checking all four feet, making sure there were no other injuries, Caleb came back to give that wound a closer look. It needed stitching, if it were even possible to stitch at this point. It looked like the bullet had torn some muscle and done a fair bit of damage. Caleb came back around, gently stroking the dog on the head and the nose. “It’s okay,” he said. “You will heal. You might not be as pretty as you were before, but it’s okay because you’ll make it now.”
Beowulf leaned into him. There was no sign of a big aggressive dog at this point. But there shouldn’t be at any time with a military dog, unless he was on command for attack. In this case, the dog was just looking for a chance to get back to a normal life. To some human interaction. Whatever that would mean for him. He had to be shocked and scared by all that had changed.
Now rested, Caleb assessed several other people coming in and out of the gas station. An older man walked a small dachshund over to the trees. Stashing the weapon in the bushes and keeping Beowulf close to his side, knowing he didn’t have a leash but holding him on orders to stay, Caleb approached the older man.
The man looked at him in surprise and looked at the dog. “Wow, that’s a good-size animal,” he said. “Old pudgy here, he would not be anything but a tiny morsel for him.”
“Well, the good news is,” Caleb said, “Beowulf doesn’t eat morsels like that.”
The old man nodded, and a little bit of relief passed over his face. “I’m sure he needs to lift the leg just as much as mine does.”
“That he does,” he said. “We’re a little bit lost too.”
“Oh, well, you’re only about ten miles out of El Paso,” he said. “The city limits are probably only about eight miles from here.” He pointed at the highway. “Just drive on down there, and you can’t miss it, biggest damn city around,” he muttered. “My wife, she insisted on coming here and living close to her relatives, whereas I’d rather be a long way off,” he said, shaking his head.
From the far corner, somebody, a woman, yelled, “Henry!”
He rolled his eyes and said, “Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t be a long way away from her too.” But tugging his little dog, he moved in the direction of his wife.
With that information, Caleb quickly sent a message to Laysha, telling her where he was. He barely sent off those text messages when Badger called him. “Are you at the gas station just outside El Paso?” he asked. “We’ve got your phone at that location.”
“Yes, I’m sitting in the parking lot now,” he said. “I just sent Laysha a message to come my way.”
“How’s the dog?”
“He’s holding. Needs to see a vet. It looks like he’s been shot along the back, starting at his haunch. It’s a deep gouge, and it’s ugly. I don’t know if it’s too late for stitches or not,” he said, “but I’ll get him to a vet here pretty quick. Under the circumstances …” Caleb filled in Badger with the ugly details. “I’m pretty damn sure they murdered the guy and then fed him to the dogs.”
“Oh, God,” Badger said. “I wonder how often that happens on that property.”
“Probably often. The dogs are all so badly treated,” he said, “but not as bad as anybody who works for this asshole.”
“So we’ll have to take a look at that too,” he said. “We can’t just rescue the one dog and leave the rest.”
“I’m not sure if they’ll be salvageable or not,” he warned.
“No, I hear you,” he said. “It’s one of the things that we’ll have to figure out. But I’ve got calls into the cops now,” he said. “I’ll follow-up right now with that information.”
“Good enough.” As he hung up, Caleb heard a honk, and he looked over to see Laysha driving toward him in the rental. He lifted a hand, realizing he’d never seen anything quite so nice as the smile on her face when she caught sight of him.
Life was damn good. He could only hope now that maybe there was some hope of a future for them both. Because he didn’t want to lose any of what
