Dare – Book II – 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.