Barking Dogs

by R. R. Irvine

  “I let Grady O’Dell sleep in here sometimes,” Larsen explained as he got behind the wheel, “when he’s not navigating well enough to get back home on his own. The fact is, the two of us have used this wagon as our motel a couple of times when we got tired of Ellsworth and drove into Idaho Falls to raise hell.”

  He started the engine. “Where to, gents?”

  “We’ve got a dog to find,” Manwaring told him.

  ******

  Ten minutes later they left the asphalt of Targhee Road behind and turned onto the narrow dirt track leading to Defiance. Black, hubcap-high mud slowed them to a crawl. Larson wrestled with the wheel constantly to keep them on the road.

  Manwaring didn’t realize the rain had stopped until the windshield wipers started squeaking on the glass. He leaned forward and peered up at the clouds. Patches of blue showed on the eastern horizon. He rolled down the passenger window and felt the cold wind blowing off the snow-capped Bitterroots.

  By the time they reached the ruins, Larsen was breathing hard and sweating. “If it starts raining again, we’d better leave. Four-wheel drive or not, I don’t want to get stuck out here.”

  Manwaring knew how he felt. The blackened landscape looked like a scene from hell, peopled by the skeletons of trees.

  “We’ll spread out and do a walk-through all the way to the lake,” he said.

  Larsen shook his head. “There’s no place for a dog to hide.”

  “We heard something out here.”

  Sighing, Larsen zipped up his windbreaker and got out of the car. “You’re paying the bills.”

  By the time Manwaring reached the shore of Lake Brigham, he was caked with black mud all the way to his knees. His shoes were ruined. His feet were numb, his socks gritty. His shivering companions looked as exhausted as he felt.

  “There’s no place else to look,” Larsen said, “except Penance Island.”

  The island, Manwaring estimated, was about fifty yards offshore and maybe twenty-five yards long. It was covered with low foliage, except at one end where a thick stand of tall willows protruded.

  “Why the name Penance?” Holland asked.

  “The town elders used to send sinners out there as punishment in the old days.”

  “How deep is the lake?”

  “They say you can wade out to the island from this side, though I’ve never tried it myself. On the other side, Lake Brigham is supposed to be bottomless. Nobody really believes it, but that’s what they’ve been saying for years.”

  Manwaring stared at the lake. “How far is it across, half a mile?”

  “More like three-quarters.”

  Manwaring bent down and thrust his hand into the water. “Jesus.” The air, as cold as it was, felt warm by comparison.

  “It’s fed by glaciers off the Bitterroots,” Larsen said.

  Manwaring sat down and started taking off his shoes.

  Holland knelt beside him. “We haven’t heard a sound since we got here.”

  By unspoken agreement, all three men were silent, straining to catch any sound. Half a minute went by before Manwaring said, “I can’t walk away, Lew. You know that.”

  “I’ll go,” Holland said.

  “I’m the one with the hang-up. Always on the lookout for my old dog.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  Buttons never aged in Manwaring’s memory. “I’m a better swimmer than you are.”

  “What is it about you people from California?” Larsen said. “The smog must rot your brains.”

  Manwaring tied his shoelaces together, got to his feet, and began rolling up his trouser legs.

  “You might as well take off your pants so they’ll be dry when you get back,” Holland said.

  Nodding, Manwaring slipped them off and handed them to the cameraman. Then he slung his shoes around his neck.

  “I ought to be taping this.”

  “Sure. For the funny reel.”

  “Be careful.”

  Manwaring waded in before he lost his nerve. The icy water was like a blow, causing him to gasp for breath. He was trembling violently before he’d gone more than a few feet. By the time the water reached his knees, he’d lost all feeling in his toes. By the time the water was chest high, his heart felt like it wanted to stop. If the water got much deeper, he’d be in real trouble.

  He squinted at Penance Island. Was he halfway there or not? His vision blurred. He was about to turn back when the water began shallowing. The land under him rose noticeably. A few strides later he was ankle deep. He rubbed his eyes. The shore wasn’t more than five yards away.

  Being on dry land and completely exposed to the wind made him shake worse than ever.

  Holland’s voice echoed across the water. “Keep moving.”

  Manwaring fumbled with the knot in his shoelaces. Without protection, his feet would be cut to pieces in the heavy undergrowth.

  He blew on his fingers and tried again. Finally, the knot gave and he was able to slip on his shoes and start walking. He headed for the willow trees, the best cover on the island. The dog must have done the same, because that’s where Manwaring found him, lying in a hollow at the base of one of the trees. The dog was black and white, a mixture of border collie and something shaggier. Nothing at all like Buttons. The fur on his chest was matted with blood; much of the rest of his fur was singed. The dog didn’t move when Manwaring crouched beside him.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” he said. “I’m in no condition to bury you.”

  He was about to stand up when he saw the movement, a slight heaving of the chest.

  When he touched the dog, his eyes opened.

  “Easy, boy.”

  The dog tried to raise his head but couldn’t.

  Manwaring stroked him and said, “I’ll be back.”

  He hurried to the shore, cupped his hands together, and shouted, “I’ve found him. He’s alive. I’m going to need some help. A raft, something to get him back with. And something to keep him warm.”

  A few minutes later Holland was wading across, pushing an inflatable rubber mattress ahead of him. A sleeping bag and blanket lay on top of the impromptu raft.

  Until that moment, Manwaring hadn’t realized the depth of Holland’s friendship. He wanted to hug the man. Instead, he said, “You crazy son of a bitch,” and waded in to help pull the mattress the last few feet onto dry land.

  By the time they got the dog to shore and loaded into the back of the Subaru, a pickup truck was pulling in behind the station wagon. Two men got out, one of them Jarvis, whose bruised and swollen nose looked to be in worse shape than Manwaring’s hand.

  “Watch out for these two,” Larsen warned under his breath.

  The second man, short and stocky by comparison to the lanky Jarvis, nodded at the newspaperman before introducing himself to Manwaring. “I’m Ellis Bowers. I own the Circle B.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “It borders Defiance on the north. Ken Jarvis here’s my foreman. From what he tells me, you two have already met.”

  Despite his dry trousers and a coat borrowed from Larsen, Manwaring couldn’t stop shaking. The more he tried, the worse it got. In desperation, he clenched his teeth to keep them quiet. The last thing he wanted was to have Jarvis think he was afraid.

  But Jarvis ignored him to peer at the dog, whose head was resting on one of the sleeping bags. “You ought to put that mutt out of its misery.” He spat through a gap in his front teeth. “Where’d you find him?”

  “Penance Island,” Larsen answered.

  “Them and their damn strays,” Jarvis said.

  With a shrug, Bowers removed his baseball cap with a Circle B logo and ran his stubby fingers through his close-cropped gray hair. He looked to be in his early sixties, and strong enough to break Manwaring in half.

  “My foreman’s right,” Bowers said. “He’s probably one of the Defiance mutts. I don’t know how many times I warned them about letting their dogs run wild. There was a while there we had trouble with them killing ou
r range cattle, but Jarvis took care of it.”

  Jarvis fired another shot through the breach in his teeth. The blob landed near Manwaring’s feet.

  “The fact is,” Bowers went on, “you might say you people were trespassing on my land right now.” He glared at Larsen, who looked away and said nothing. “I have an option on this land, one that I intend to exercise now that there’s no one living here.”

  Holland, who looked as cold as Manwaring felt, snapped his fingers. “Sorry, Kevin. I forgot to get shots of the dog for the network news.” Without waiting for a reply, the cameraman removed his camera from the back seat and began videotaping, causing Bowers and Jarvis to move well away from the Subaru.

  When Holland finished, he laid the camera on the front seat and raised an eyebrow at Manwaring to let him know that it was still running, still recording their images and audio.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” Manwaring said, “we’re in a hurry to get this dog to a veterinarian.”

  Jarvis walked back to the truck, opened the door, and removed a lever-action .30-.30 Winchester from the gun rack. At the sight of it, Larsen scurried around the Subaru and climbed in behind the wheel.

  “My foreman’s right,” Bowers said. “No sense wasting good money on a half-dead dog who doesn’t belong to anybody now.”

  “I’m adopting him,” Manwaring said.

  “For the record”—Bowers pointed his baseball hat at Larsen—“I represent the Cattlemen’s Association on this. We intend to buy not only Defiance but all the open range surrounding it. From now on we can graze our stock without having to worry about fences or trespassers.”

  “What about water rights?” Larsen asked.

  “Ellsworth can have those.”

  Grinning, Jarvis levered a round into the breach of his .30-.30.

  Manwaring said, “You’ve made your point. We’re on our way. Defiance is old news as far as we’re concerned.”

  “Are you sure about the dog? It would be no trouble. One bullet. He wouldn’t know what hit him.”

  “I’ve already named him. Buttons Junior.”

  Ignoring Jarvis, who was now pointing the rifle at the back of the Subaru, Manwaring helped Holland stow the camera in its carrying case. Once that was done, they both climbed into the back seat.

  Larsen had the car moving before the doors closed, gunning the engine and spinning the tires in the mud. He slid around the pickup and headed back the way they’d come, toward Targhee Road.

  As soon as they reached blacktop, Larsen visibly relaxed. “That man Bowers scares me. He once took a shot at Orson Potter, one of the town elders in Defiance. At the time, Bowers claimed Potter was trespassing, but there’s not much fencing to separate the two properties. The word was that old man Bowers did it on purpose, as a warning, though the case never did come to trial. Some said Bowers paid off Potter. Others said he scared him off.”

  “What do you say?” Holland asked.

  “That you’re going to have to buy me some new sleeping bags.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Manwaring said. “Just get us to the vet’s as quick as you can.”

  23

  SEEING THE dog on Stacie Wagstaff’s examination table, its frightened eyes so strangely trusting, Manwaring thought of Buttons. Her eyes had been just as expressive, sad at times, so loving at others. He closed his eyes and saw her again, her tail wagging furiously when she came to meet him after school. How long had Buttons lived, he wondered, after his mother gave her away? Had her life been a good one?

  “Damn,” Stacie murmured. “It makes me sick to see an animal like this.”

  Manwaring prayed that Buttons had escaped such a fate, that she’d lived to a fine old age and died in her sleep.

  “I know this dog,” she said. “I used to make house calls out in Defiance every once in a while, to make sure their animals were up on their distemper and rabies shots. He was one of a litter they had last year. Are you sure there were no other survivors?

  Manwaring opened his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t remember his name,” she said. “Maybe I never knew it.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” He’d come into the examination room alone, leaving Holland and Larsen behind in the waiting room.

  “Hold him. Let him feel your touch while I go to work cleaning him up so I can see what we’re up against.”

  It could have been his imagination, but the dog seemed to relax when Manwaring touched him. “It’s all right,” he whispered softly. “It’s all right, Buttons.”

  Stacie glanced at him curiously, then went back to work without saying a word.

  He averted his eyes from the blood. “We ran into a rancher when we were out there. A man named Bowers and his foreman, Jarvis.”

  “The way I hear it, Ken Jarvis is the one your hand ran into.”

  “They were both damned hostile considering the circumstances. Bowers acts like he owns Defiance, which makes him a prime suspect if it turns out to be arson.”

  “Do you think it was arson?” she asked without looking up from the dog.

  “It would make a great story.”

  “Ellis Bowers isn’t a likable man, I admit that. He’s been fighting with Defiance for years, claiming they fed themselves at his expense by butchering his range cattle. Everyone figured it was probably true, even though Bowers couldn’t prove it. They also figured he was probably grazing his cattle on Defiance land and could well afford to feed the less fortunate. He might shoot a stray dog, but I don’t think he’s the kind of man to burn down a town and everyone in it.”

  She looked up from the dog. “He’s badly dehydrated. He’d have been dead in another day if you hadn’t found him. Even now, there’s a good chance he won’t survive the operation.”

  “I’ll pay for it, if that’s a problem.”

  “I don’t want your money, Mr. Manwaring. But I sure as hell want to know the name of the son of a bitch who shot this animal.”

  His mouth dropped open.

  “That’s right,” she said. “There’s a bullet in him. It entered here in the chest”—she pointed to the spot—“and is still in there.”

  ******

  Manwaring walked through the veterinarian’s waiting room and out the door without saying a word. By the time Holland and Blaine Larsen caught up with him, he was sitting on the hood of the Subaru.

  “Did you ever have a dog when you were a kid?” he asked without looking at them.

  “I had one but he got run over,” Larsen said.

  Manwaring stared at Holland, who shook his head. They’d had this conversation before, so there was no need for explanation.

  “Did you get another dog?” Manwaring asked the editor.

  “I was in high school by then and wanted a car.”

  “Someone shot Buttons,” Manwaring said.

  “You start naming strays,” Holland said, “and pretty soon they’re yours for keeps.”

  “He might not make it through the operation.” Manwaring slid off the hood and got into the front seat on the passenger’s side.

  Once they were on their way to town, he turned to Larsen. “Have there been any other shootings lately?”

  “I know what’s on your mind, but I don’t think old man Bowers would do such a thing, not unless the dog was killing his stock.”

  “Jarvis, then,” Manwaring said. “He looked like he wanted to shoot Buttons.”

  “He’s too good a shot to leave a wounded animal lying around.”

  Holland said, “The question is, was the dog shot before or after the fire started?”

  “Maybe someone came along, saw he’d been burned, and decided to put him out of his misery.”

  “Most people won’t go out to Penance island,” Larsen said. “They think it’s haunted.”

  Manwaring was about to speculate further when the Subaru hit a pothole hard enough to make him bite his tongue. He was still tasting blood a couple of minutes later when they tur
ned off Beaver Creek Road onto the main drag, Highway 20, half a mile before it changed its name to Main Street.

  “Stop the car!” Manwaring said. “By that sign up ahead.”

  Larsen did as he was told. The sign, about a quarter the size of a highway billboard, must have been obscured by smoke the first time Manwaring drove into town. It read FUTURE HOME OF BONNEVILLE INDUSTRIES and stood next to a narrow dirt track that disappeared into a stand of unburned cottonwood trees.

  “Let’s take a look,” Manwaring said.

  “There’s nothing to see,” Larsen said. “They haven’t started construction. They may never now.”

  “You might as well do it,” Holland said from the back seat. “Otherwise, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Larsen slapped the steering wheel. “Driving these dirt roads, I ought to charge wear and tear on this old bus.”

  A hundred yards later, they came out of the cottonwoods and entered a small clearing. A dome-shaped aluminum trailer stood in the center of the open land. A sagging electric wire had been strung through the trees and was attached to the trailer’s roof. Foot-high letters on the aluminum siding read SOON HIRING.

  “Would Bonneville have any reason to burn out Defiance?” Manwaring asked.

  Larsen parked near the trailer and switched off the engine. “Die-hards have been predicting catastrophe ever since Bonneville arrived in town. You know the kind of thing I mean. „Outsiders will ruin our way of life. We’ll have big-city crime like L.A.’ The fact is, Bonneville’s the only hope we’ve got of putting life back into this town. Their assembly plant will mean two hundred jobs and no more unemployment in Ellsworth.”

  “What are they going to build?”

  “Computer components, if you must know.”

  “Your tone of voice tells me your paper’s backing the project.

  “The Herald has to stay in business like everybody else.”

  “When does all this happen?”

  “As soon as the town fathers work out the kinks.”

  “The place looks deserted,” Holland said.

  Larsen shook his head. “Jay Nichols, the sheriffs younger brother, is caretaking the place. He ought to be around here somewhere.”