So Dear To My Heart

Chapter Two

“It’s okay, boy,” Jamesy told the dog, patting the sleek black head between the ears. “I’ll come see you real soon, I promise.”

Win sighed mentally. He’d had no luck getting off without the boy this morning, but once he’d explained that Dorinda’s sister had taken up residence at the Thacker place, Jamesy had known that the dog must go home. When he had bravely offered to tell “Miss Lynch” what the old dog “liked best to keep happy,” Winston had known that he couldn’t leave the child behind. It would have been easier to do this alone, but he felt that he had to honor his son’s generosity and courage by taking him along. After all, since Jamesy could walk and talk, Win had tried to teach the boy the importance of doing the right thing. Now he had to let him actually go through with it. He only hoped that Danica appreciated the boy’s effort.

They rounded the final bend in the narrow dirt road and pulled up in the same spot where Win had previously parked. Jamesy looked up, tilting his head far back in order to see past the wide, curled brim of his stained hat. Once off-white but now a mottled gray/tan, the hat was and always had been too big for the boy. The tall, round, felt crown had been spotted by an unexpected rain a few years earlier. Such heavy rainfall was so much a rarity in these dry plains that Jamesy had since worn the stains as a kind of badge of honor. Blowing dust, honest perspiration, falling snow and the occasional beverage gone awry had done the rest, but Jamesy had rejected all replacements. Win always thought the stained, too-big hat gave the boy a pathetic air. His sadness over the dog only added to it.

“Don’t worry, son. Everything will be fine.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Jamesy promised, determination not quite covering the waver in his voice. “Twig and me’ve talked it over, and way we see it, nothing much is changing. We can still be special friends even if we ain’t at the same place no more.”

“Aren’t,” Winston corrected automatically. Then he smiled and clamped a hand onto the boy’s thin shoulder, saying, “Have I told you lately how proud I am of you?”

Jamesy just gave him a watery smile and shook his head, glancing down at the dog again. Knowing that he could say nothing to make it better, Win opened the door and got out. Jamesy followed his lead, getting out on the other side of the truck. The dog dropped down onto the ground beside him, and together they waited until Win came around and joined them. They walked single file alongside Dorinda’s, rather, Danica’s truck and up onto the porch, where Winston wagged a finger at the dog.

“No more of that barking, now.”

With that Jamesy dropped down onto his haunches and wrapped both arms around the dog, obviously intending to quell any outburst. Winston knocked and waited for the door to open. When she didn’t immediately answer, he wondered if they’d come too early. It was going on half past eight, but Danica might be a late sleeper. He’d have called and set up a convenient time if the phone was working. As it was, he just had to take his chances. Finally, the inner door swung back.

“Oh,” she said through the screen. “I guess you want to talk about the restitution order. I did read it last night.”

“Actually, I, that is, my boy Jamesy and I brought your dog back.”

“Dog?” she echoed, frowning. “What dog?”

“This dog,” Winston explained, pointing downward. Finally she opened the screen and stepped out onto the porch. She was wearing sweats and socks, and from the way she went to smoothing her frazzled hair, he suspected that she’d slept in them.

“I don’t know this dog,” she said.

“This here’s Twig,” Jamesy told her, ruffling the dog’s black-and-white fur. “He’s a real good ’un.” As he spoke, the dog laved his face with its pale pink tongue.

“Okay,” Danica said uncertainly, “but he’s not my dog.”

“He belongs to the place,” Winston explained. “Old Ned, Bud’s uncle, used to train the best working dogs in this whole area. He raised Twig from a pup and trained him special. When your sister left here, she asked us to take care of him.”

“Well, then take care of him,” Danica said, watching the dog flop over so Jamesy could vigorously rub his belly. “It has nothing to do with me.”

“But he belongs to the place,” Winston pointed out again. “That means he’s yours.”

“I don’t want him,” she retorted. “You keep him.”

“Oh, boy!” Jamesy exclaimed. “Did you hear that, Twig?”

Winston frowned, wondering how this had gotten so complicated. “Listen,” he said to her, “you don’t understand. The dog belongs to you.”

“But I don’t want him, and the boy obviously does,” she pointed out.

“Can I keep him then, Dad?”

Winston sighed, exasperated. “No, you can’t keep him, son. Miss Lynch doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“The hell I don’t! Why would I want to be bothered with some mutt?”

“I told you,” Winston said through his teeth, patience wearing awfully thin. “He’s a highly trained, valuable, working dog, and he comes with the place to you.”

She folded her arms. “Well, I’m not keeping him, so just take him back where you brought him from.”

Win threw up his hands. “I can’t do that. You don’t even have the telephone working yet.”

“And I don’t intend to,” she told him smartly. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“For Pete’s sake, woman, will you just listen to reason for a minute?” he erupted hotly.

“Oh, so now I’m unreasonable, am I?” She parked her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Well, if that’s the way you’re going to behave, I’ll thank you to take your stupid dog and get off my land.”

“He’s not my dog!” Winston roared.

“And he’s not stupid,” Jamesy added defensively. Winston looked down, ashamed and embarrassed that he’d shouted at a grieving woman in front of his son. Even the dog was staring at the two of them, its head tilted to one side.

Danica had the grace to look chagrined. “I’m sure he’s not,” she told Jamesy in a kinder, if stern tone, “but I don’t want to take care of a dog.”

“He don’t take much caring for, miss,” Jamesy told her.

“I don’t even know how long I’ll be here,” Danica protested impatiently. “He’ll be better off with you.”

“But you need a dog,” Winston reasoned.

Her pointed little chin came up at an obstinate angle. “Don’t try to tell me what I need! How would you know what I need?”

His temper slipped free. “Lady, you absolutely 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 of the tub and knocked himself unconscious. Don’t guess we’ll ever know how Twig got out of the house. Ned was up and nursing a goose egg by the time we got here, but it could’ve gone the other way. When Ned passed—went real peaceful in his sleep—Twig came, then, too.”

“Wow,” Danica said, looking down at the dog with new respect. “You’re a regular Lassie, aren’t you, fella? And I guess the boy is your Timmy.”

“Actually,” Winston said, “that would be you. The dog belongs here.”

She looked him in the eye and said flatly, “It belongs with the boy.”

Cool gray eyes assessed then pulled back from hers. “Looks to me like Twig has something to say about that. Voted with his feet, apparently, and it seems you’re elected.”

She frowned. “But I saw how fond your son is of him.”

“His name’s Jamesy.”

“Jamesy,” she repeated impatiently, “fine. You tell Jamesy that Twig belongs with him now.”

Winston Champlain shook his head again, wagging it decisively from side to side. “I’d say Twig has other ideas.”

She looked down at the dog, sighed and bit her lip. “I couldn’t live with myself, knowing how the, er, Jamesy would miss him.”

“Is that why you threw us off the place yesterday?” he asked softly.

She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his gaze. “You wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Now if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”

He had a way of being right, blast him. “I just didn’t want to fight about it, okay?”

“You didn’t have to be rude.”

“I wasn’t—” She broke off, knowing that he was right again and confessed, “You made me mad.”

“Yeah, well, that was no reason to talk to the boy the way you did.”

Her surprised gaze popped up to his face before she could prevent it. “I wasn’t angry with him! Anything, ah, heated that I might have said was aimed at you.”

“I know that,” he admitted, “but Jamesy’s kind of sensitive.”