He hit her again. Molly cowered and whimpered.

    Sierra lost it. She threw herself at the man’s back, launched on him with her arms around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist. “You’re the animal!”

    “What the hell...?”

    “Treating a defenseless animal so cruelly, how do you like it?” she said, tightening her arms around his neck.

    The man shook her violently, but she hung on. He tried prying her arms from around his neck, but there was no give in her. “Beast,” she muttered. “Animal!”

    “Sierra! Let loose of that man!”

    At Sully’s command, Sierra let go and fell clumsily to the ground, landing on her ass. The fall jolted her for a moment, and then she regained her wits and saw that Anne and her daughter stood in the open door of the camper while Sully stood a few feet away, one hand leaning on a baseball bat.

    Petersen huffed a bit to catch his breath. “Good thing you warned her,” he said. “I was close to forgetting she was a girl and give her what for.”

    Sully hefted his bat. “You forget that was a defenseless animal, too?”

    “It’s my animal!”

    “More’s the pity. We got some pretty strict cruelty laws in this county and that was plumb cruel. I called the police.”

    “Well, good for you,” he grumbled.

    “If you don’t want that dog, I got a home for her,” Sully said.

    “Bugger off, old man.”

    “Police chief might take her. He’s got four goldens already but he’s mighty fond of ’em and might fancy another. They sleep with him.”

    “Take her,” Petersen said. “It’ll save me the trouble of drowning her.”

    Sierra got to her feet slowly, brushing off her rear end. The very first thing she noticed was Molly sitting docilely beside her miniature kennel, her head cocked to one side with what looked like a satisfied expression on her face. Sierra quickly went to the dog, took her collar in hand and led her out of the campsite.

    Petersen went into his camper, out of sight.

    “Come along,” Sully said, heading off for his house, not the store, leaving Sierra and Molly to follow. “I bet you were a lot of trouble to raise.”

    “I was hardly noticeable,” Sierra replied.

    “There’s a lot of bullshit if I ever heard any,” he said.

    He didn’t go inside, but rather to the front porch of his house. He took a seat in one of the rocking chairs, resting the bat on the ground beside him.

    “What are we doing?” she asked, standing there.

    “Have a seat,” he said. “Just keep a hand on the dog till she decides it’s okay to lay down and relax.”

    “Where’s Beau?” she asked, because Beau was usually close to Sully.

    “I penned him in the bedroom for now. Molly doesn’t need the distraction.”

    Sierra sat down next to Sully. They rocked in the dark and she kept a hand on Molly, gently stroking her. When she’d stop, Molly put her head on Sierra’s lap. She was docile as a lamb. “Why are we sitting here?” she finally asked.

    “I’m awake,” Sully said. “Might as well sit up awhile longer and see if there’s anything to see.”

    “See? See what?”

    He sighed. “Just give it a few minutes. Patience, Sierra.”

    After a few minutes, she quietly asked, “Do you think the police chief will take the dog?”

    “I doubt it,” he said.

    “But you said—”

    “Girl, I say a lot of things.”

    Sierra just fell silent, Molly’s head in her lap while she scratched behind the pretty girl’s silky ears. She couldn’t imagine what they were doing just sitting there but she took comfort in the fact that Molly wouldn’t be back in Petersen’s care. Then in about fifteen minutes it all began to make sense. Chad Petersen started his big, extended cab truck, backed it up to the fifth wheel, threw the lawn chairs inside the trailer and his family into the truck, disconnected his hookup, reeled in the canopy, attached the trailer to the truck hitch and pulled out.

    “What time is it?” she asked.

    “Round about ten,” Sully said.

    “Hey, you knew he’d do that! Didn’t you?”

    “I had an idea.”

    “You heard the noise when he was hitting her and it woke you?”

    “Sierra, I’m over seventy. I sleep in my drawers. You really think I’m spry enough to get my clothes and my boots on and run on over to the campsite in under five minutes? I knew what was gonna happen and just like you, I waited on it.”

    “Just like me?”

    “Didn’t you take up watch from the hammock?”

    “Well...yes! You knew that?”

    He nodded in the dark. “Didn’t really surprise me.”

    “You think the police will come now?”

    “I didn’t call ’em,” he said. “Didn’t want to waste Stan’s time. I knew once I called Petersen on it he’d just pull out.”

    “What does it mean? Does it mean you won’t get paid?”

    “I wouldn’t care, if it came to that, but as it happens I took a nice deposit from his credit card. What it means, I reckon, is you now got yourself a dog.”