Million-Dollar Bride

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  He never gave her no trouble, either. Just trotted outside to the far end of the clothesline, did his business, then trotted back. Mr. Silk was as good as gold and he never whined to go out unless he had a need to—like now. Squinting at the clock, which said 10:50 p.m., Vangie threw back the covers, thrust her feet into her bedroom slippers and grabbed the skillet out of habit.

  Scuffing her way through the dark kitchen to the back door, she realized halfway there that she’d left her glasses on the bedside table. She couldn’t see real good without them, but she’d lived in this house nigh on forty-eight years and reckoned she could make it to the back door all right without the bifocals.

  When she opened the door and pushed open the screen, Mr. Silk growled deep in his throat, then rushed out in a frenzy of furious yapping. Wishing she hadn’t forgotten to put on her spectacles, Vangie squinted in a vain attempt to see across the yard. She could just make out something light colored moving past the chicken house, and she knew in her heart that old yellah dog was after her layin’ hens again. And her dear Mr. Silk was out there, doin’ his eight-pound best to save ‘em.

  Setting the skillet on the countertop, she reached behind the door for the air rifle she always kept there. Then, without a second’s hesitation, she used her foot to wedge open the screen door, raised the air rifle to her shoulder and aimed it in the direction of the henhouse.

  Chapter 8

  One minute the farmyard was as peaceful as a Rockwell painting. The next minute it erupted in a torrent of noisy activity straight out of the Keystone Cops. Mack barely had time to realize the back door of the house was opening before he was under siege by a squeaking hair ball that flew around his ankles in a frenzied blur of nipping and yapping. Behind him, the chicken coop came alive, as chickens were startled out of their roost and into a crescendoing squawk by the yellow dog, which had found a way under the chicken wire and was now having a whopping good time in the henhouse. The porkers snuffed and snorted at being rudely awakened, and Mack let out a choked “Ow!” as the hair ball got a grip on his toe.

  As he leaned down to rescue his extremity, he heard a whissssttt and felt something streak through the air across his bent, bare back. A pinging sound came from the tin roof of the pigsty, and with the snarling wad of fur clamped in his hand, he straightened and spun around in alarm…as a second whissssttt snapped past him at hip height.

  “Hey!” he yelled, but his protest was no match for the barking yellow dog, the squawking chickens, the snorting pigs and the faint but fearful sound of a rifle being cocked.

  “Get out of my henhouse, you yellow son of Satan!”

  Whisssttt! Ping!

  A BB gun, Mack thought as the pellet zinged past him and struck the tin roof of the chicken coop. Some damn fool was shooting at him with a BB gun. “Hey!” he yelled again, whirling to face the shooter.

  Whisssttt! Ping! “I’m gonna teach you a lesson you ain’t never gonna forgit, you mangy chicken thief!”

  Whisssttt! Ping!

  “Stop! Don’t shoot! I’m holding your dog!” He pitched his voice above the fray and self-protectively lowered the yapping Yorkie into service as a fig leaf and shield. “And I’m not a chicken thief.”

  There was a moment of reckoning, a cease-fire hardly recognizable amid the barnyard frenzy and then the cold, calculating click of the cocking lever.

  “You put Mr. Silk down, stranger, or I swear I’ll shoot your eye out.”

  Mack looked down and met a ferocious, beady-eyed glare. “Mr. Silk?” he said skeptically, and the tiny dog with a topknot bared his teeth, growling like a grizzly bear.

  Whisssttt! This time the pellet zipped past Mack’s ear, but missed hitting either of the outbuildings.

  “I ain’t whistling Dixie, stranger,” the woman called in a voice that meant business. “Now, put my dog down.”

  “I will,” he said quickly. “I’ll do it, but first I need to tell you—”

  “You ain’t in no position to bargain, Mister. Put him down!”

  Mack debated for maybe half a second, while Mr. Silk’s growl grew into an ominous rattle. Then, holding the dog a careful distance from his all-too-vulnerable body, he bent to set down the Yorkie. But the closer they got to the ground, the fiercer the growl became.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, fuzz ball.” He stopped in midbend and tried to soothe the dog, but knew immediately he was wasting his breath on the ill-tempered Mr. Silk. He raised his voice and aimed it at the house. “He doesn’t seem to want down, ma’am.”

  Whisssttt! A sharp sting on his thigh followed the whine of the BB. “Yeowwww!” Mack’s muscles clenched and he lost his balance and toppled backward onto the ground, striking his tailbone. He rubbed his smarting thigh with one hand as he held the snarling Yorkie at arm’s length with the other. “Are you crazy, lady?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out, now, ain’t it?”

  He didn’t need to find out. He needed to get out of firing range. To that end, he released his hold on the cantankerous Mr. Silk and rolled over, scrambling onto his hands and knees and crawling as fast as he could toward the pigsty and shelter. The little Yorkie came after him, yapping incessantly and darting in and out, nipping at his ankle.

  With a playful bark, the yellow dog deserted the henhouse to take part in this new and intriguing game. He crawled under the chicken wire, bounded across the yard like a puppy chasing a stick and skidded to a halt directly in Mack’s path.

  “Get out of the way, you idiot!” Mack waved, and the yellow dog jumped from side to side, barking continuously, clearly delighted that Mack wanted to play.

  Mr. Silk, on the other hand—or rather, on the other ankle—was clearly frustrated that his quarry would not roll over and die. Apparently he was none too happy with the appearance of the yellow dog, either, for he emitted a series of warning yaps and stiff-legged jumps before renewing his attack on Mack’s foot. Mack reached back and grabbed the Yorkie by the scruff of the neck, transforming the little fur ball into a frenzy of gnashing teeth and vicious barking.

  The yellow dog came closer, sticking out his nose and getting it nipped for his trouble. He drew back, startled, then growled menacingly. Mr. Silk returned the threat threefold.

  “Well, hell!” Much as he wanted to, Mack couldn’t just drop the little spitfire. The Yorkie didn’t deserve to end up as an after-chicken-dinner mint for the stupid yellow dog. Mack assessed the urgency of his situation, glancing over his shoulder at the shadowed farmhouse, then ahead at the proximity of the pigpen, then at one snarling dog and then the other.

  Old Yeller moved a threatening inch closer, and Mack scuttled to the side to keep the two dogs from making contact. The growling intensified, both behind him and at the end of his arm, and suddenly he wondered what he thought he was doing, standing-crouching, actually—between the bite of reality and the tough-guy illusions of Mr. Silk.

  “I told you to put down my dog.” The woman’s voice whipped into the backyard arena like a blast from a referee’s whistle. “If I hav’ta call the sheriff, you’re gonna be real sorry.”

  “Please!” he yelled back as he wrestled to keep the Yorkie’s teeth from sinking into his hand. “Call the damned sheriff!”

  Whissssttt!

  He jumped as the pellet zipped past his ear.

  “You watch your language, Mister!”

  That did it. He was going to stand up and walk out of this nightmare. And if she shot him again, he would damn well sue her. “Lady, if you don’t put that blasted BB gun away, I’m going to call the sheriff! Do you understand?”

  Apparently she did, because he heard the now-familiar click of the cocking lever. Like a rat running for an alley, Mack scurried toward the pigpen, deciding he’d continue negotiations from behind a building. Any building.

  Whisssttt! Ping!

  “Yap—yap—yap—yap—yap!” Mr. Silk yipped in staccato accompaniment to Mack’s jogging steps.

  Whisssttt! Ping!

 
; At the side of the pigpen, Mack slipped on a muddy patch, but caught the wall with one hand and kept going until he rounded the corner. Behind the pigsty, he sank to the ground, held up a startled and suddenly silent Mr. Silk by the scruff of the neck and stared him down. “You’re free to go, Champ, but if you make one move toward my ankle, you’re history. Got it?”

  Tough guy to the end, the Yorkie growled back, spoiling for a fight. When the yellow dog trotted around the corner of the building, Mr. Silk’s threat became a challenging yip, yip, yip, and he squirmed, ready to brawl. Deciding it wasn’t his night to protect hair balls from extinction, Mack let him go. In seconds, the two dogs were circling each other like boxers in a ring, waiting to see which one would throw the first punch.

  Mack rubbed his forehead, realizing too late that he had smeared the stinky mud from his hand onto his face. He wiped it off as best he could with the back of his hand and then ran his palm down the side of the pigsty to get rid of the worst of the dirt…and winced as a nail head gouged his thumb. “Damn.” He stuck his thumb in his mouth, tasted a nasty mixture of mud and blood, and then tried to scrape the taste from his tongue and spit it out. Was there anything else that could possibly go wrong in one night?

  “Yoo-hoo!” The call came from the direction of the pasture, and his heart leapt with sudden, glad recognition…just before it sank with dread at the recollection that every time Eliza was near something painful happened to him. And he was in enough pain already.

  “Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?”

  He strained to see her in the darkness, but she was on the other side of the fence and…The pasture. She was in the pasture with the snuffling cows. “Eliza,” he called. “Go back! Get out of the pasture!”

  “Mack?” She sounded pleased, even at a distance. “Is that you, Mack?”

  “Eliza, get out of there!”

  “What?” she yelled back. “What did you say?”

  “Go back! There’s a crazy woman with a BB gun over here and there are cows in the—”

  “I knew you was up to no good,” the sharpshooter’s voice interrupted.

  Mack turned his head and blinked in the sudden, blinding beam of a flashlight. “I beg your pardon?”

  Dropping his hands to the ground, he started to push himself to his feet.

  “Don’t make a move, Mister, unlessen’ I tell you to.”

  The woman’s command stopped him an inch off the ground and he hesitated, bracing his weight on his hands and feet as he squinted in the glare of the flashlight. At this range, she probably could shoot his eye out, and he wasn’t taking any chances. “Please,” he began. “Let me explain.”

  “Mack?” Eliza called, sounding concerned and cautious, even across a half acre of cow pasture. “What’s going on down there? Did you get in the house?”

  “Run, Eliza!” he yelled back. “Get out of-”

  “Aha!” the woman said. “Just like I thought. You and your partner was plannin” to break into my house, weren’t ya? I read the newspapers. I know the sick things goin’ on in the world. I’ll bet the two of you make Bonnie and Clyde look like the Lennon Sisters.”

  He stared at the blinding light in stunned protest. “You’re got this all—”

  And then one of the cows bellowed a long, agitated, “Moooo.”

  “Aaaaah!” Eliza screamed. “Aaaaah! Aaaaah!”

  Barking like a maniac, the yellow dog raced around the corner of the pigpen and jumped Mack in his wild dash toward the pasture. Like a pint-size sidekick, Mr. Silk skimmed under Mack’s upraised knees and sprinted after the other dog.

  “Mr. Silk!” the woman shouted, following the Yorkie with the flashlight beam. “Come back, Mr. Silk!”

  As the flashlight beam did a double-take and moved back across the ground toward him, Mack stayed where he was, caught between the urge to laugh hysterically and the profound desire to vanish off the face of the earth. He stared up at the tiny, but fierce-looking gray-haired woman who stood over him.

  Her myopic eyes followed the beam as it traveled past his toes and up his legs to fasten on his prominently displayed masculinity. She leaned over closer to him and he quickly sat, drawing his knees to his chest and trying his best to look casual.

  The woman gasped. “Gawd Amighty,” she whispered. “You must be some kind of pervert.”

  He barely had time to think that this had been one hell of a night before he saw the shine on a Teflon-coated frying pan as it caught a glimmer of moonlight above his head.

  And then everything went black.

  “MACK? Mack? Please, wake up, Mack.” Eliza’s voice floated through the drumbeat inside his head and he struggled toward it.

  “He’s coming around,” someone said, and in Mack’s foggy brain, a stream of unrelated words spun around and around and around.

  “She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes,” he said in a strange, singsongy voice that trailed off to a feeble, “Toot, toot.”

  “Mack, wake up.” It was Eliza again.

  “He’s hallucinatin’,” the other voice said.

  “You’d hallucinate, too, if you’d gotten hit over the head with a frying pan.” Eliza sounded upset, and Mack fought to open his eyelids.

  “Well, little lady, you can just count your lucky stars Miz Vangie didn’t hit him any harder or he might have somethin’ worse than a possible concussion.”

  Mack felt Eliza’s hand on his forehead and heard her ask, “How much longer before the doctor gets here?”

  “Oh, maybe five, ten minutes. What time did you call the doc, Tim?”

  “Me? I thought you called him.”

  “Doggone it, Tim, I told you to call the doc.”

  “Well, Jim, you’re the sheriff. You’re ‘sposed to make the calls.”

  “And you’re the deputy. You’re ‘sposed to do what I tell ya. Now, go on and call the doc.”

  “I don’t see why I have to be the one to do it. If I was the sheriff, you’d say I was the one supposed to make the calls.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not your turn to be sheriff, and I get to say who does what, so go on and call the doc.”

  “It’s nearly midnight, and you know how Doc hates gettin’ called out after eleven. That’s why you want me to do it.”

  “Is not.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Eliza’s hand stopped stroking Mack’s forehead, and he missed her soothing touch. “I’ll call. Where’s the phone?”

  “In the kitchen. Miz Vangie’ll tell you the number.”

  “All right.” Eliza moved away. “If anything happens to him while I’m in the other room, I’m holding you both responsible. Understand?”

  “Oh, he’ll be fine, ma’am. Don’t you worry. Me and Jim’ll watch him like hawks.”

  Mack opened one eye and saw two—three—four faces swimming through the space over his head. Two pairs of frowns and two unfamiliar sets of eyes blurred together and apart, together and apart, in a dizzy spin of distorted, but identical images. He closed his eye and gathered the fortitude to take a second look.

  “Maybe we should pour some water on him. See if that’ll wake him up.”

  Mack tried again, forcing up one eyelid and then the other, slowly bringing into focus the faces that hovered over his head like reflections in a fun-house mirror. After skewing his eyes into varying degrees of a squint, he still couldn’t clear up his double vision.

  “Hello.” One of the faces suddenly loomed closer. “See, Jim, I told ya he was comin’ around.”

  Mack’s vision blurred again, then came into focus on two identical faces. “Twins?” he muttered. “Is there…two of you?”

  “You’re as sharp as a steak knife, stranger,” one of the men said. “I’m Sheriff Jim Cooper and this here’s my twin brother, Deputy Tim Cooper.”

  “But at twelve a.m., I’ll be Sheriff Cooper,” Deputy Tim said importantly. “Me and Jim alternate between bein’ the sheriff and the deputy like that ‘cause the vote was evenly divided, and so we
just split the job right down the middle. Twenty-four hours as sheriff, twenty-four hours as deputy. You must be feelin’ better.”

  Mack ran his tongue over his dry lips. “Better than what?”

  A gruff smile showed up on one face and was quickly echoed on the other. “You look like you’ve had a mighty rough night, doesn’t he, Jim?”

  “He does for sure, Tim. Course, I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of Miz Vangie’s air rifle when she commenced to firin’, would you?”

  “Nope, not me, Jim. She could shoot a man’s eye out with that gun of hers. You know, you’re real lucky, Mr.—?”

  Mack didn’t think he ought to supply his full name to anyone just yet, least of all to two county officials who were so doggone proud of Miz Vangie’s rifle skills. His vision was getting better, and he focused on the hint of sparkle in the ceiling plaster overhead. “Where am I?” he asked. “And where did Eliza go?”

  “She went to call the doc. And you’re on Miz Vangie’s sofa in Miz Vangie’s livin’ room. She caught you trying to break into her house, and she hit you with a fryin’ pan. Then she called the law.”

  “The law. That’s me and Jim.”

  “I wasn’t trying to break in,” Mack said.

  “Yeah, that’s what Eliza told us,” Deputy Jim—or Tim—said. “She explained everything.”

  Mack’s headache took on a whole new level of discomfort. “She.. explained?”

  “Yeah. Hell of a way to spend your weddin’ night.”

  “Yeah. Bummer of a honeymoon.” The twin sheriffs chuckled. “It’s a good thing Eliza was able to talk Miz Vangie out of pressin’ charges, though. She was pretty durn upset when we got here.”

  “Eliza?”

  “Miz Vangie. You dang near scared her to death.”

  “I scared her?” Mack was as incredulous as his pounding headache would allow. “She shot me! Did she tell you that? Here, I can show you the bruise.” He pushed at the light blanket covering his body, but it just tangled around his thighs. Exasperated, he lifted his head, looked down and realized with a sinking heart that there was no blanket covering him. He was wearing a lady’s nightgown. A bibbed-and-tucked, rosebud-print, lace-trimmed, flannel lady’s nightgown.