By Dog Alone: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 2

by Charles Wendt

  BY DOG ALONE

  A Kelton Jager Adventure

  BOOK 2

  A novel by

  Charles N. Wendt

  All Rights Reserved, 2016

  CHAPTER—1

  Kelton staggered forward on the side of the rural road, clutching himself with his arms under the damp poncho as his dog heeled at his side. His head was foggy with misery, and muscles ached. He had no energy. Kelton wasn’t a medical guy and didn’t know if it was the start of a cold or flu, or if he was just tired and run down sick. Not go to the emergency room sick, but sick enough to take a break from his wanderings and check into a motel for a few days to sleep it off with some Nyquil. However, neither hospital or motel were to be seen along the Virginia county road this summer evening. Neither was a drug store.

  Azrael looked up at him with black muzzle and concerned eyes. The Belgian Malinois was used to Kelton having long confident strides that moved with purpose. Kelton redoubled his efforts to keep his gait straight, focusing about three feet ahead on the gravel strewn asphalt shoulder to carefully place each footfall. He could feel the sweat running down his temples and the gentle breeze felt overly refreshing and cool, despite the irritation of insects at his temples. He paused for a break to survey the fields and woods.

  “It’s going to storm, Buddy,” declared Kelton as he saw the angry gray clouds darkening the sky to the northwest. Being out in the rain wouldn’t do him any good.

  Some lights came on around a home about a quarter mile distant across some rolling pastures. He hadn’t seen the structure before as it blended into the landscape with the fading light and he’d been staring at his feet when moving, but now the flood lamps beckoned him. Kelton wasn’t sure what he would say or whether they would help him, but he needed shelter and rest. With a swallow protested by a burning throat, he took a deep breath and turned to walk toward it.

  Traversing the drainage ditch and barbed wire fence with the heavy pack sapped his strength as Azrael easily bounded over. Poke berries and brambles grabbed at his trousers, but the heavy fabric resisted the tiny thorns. Small seeds collected on his boot laces as he barreled forward and he felt his pant legs dampen with the dew.

  “Ugh,” he exclaimed to himself as he tried to force his way through the next row of brier brambles and old honey suckle, but it checked his progress. Underneath the twisting vines was another rusting barbed wire fence, almost invisible in the twilight. Too tired and encumbered to hurdle over, he stepped on the first wire as a ladder rung. The strand parted under his weight. Kelton slipped off the pack and lowered it over the far side. Downward pressure from his hands bowed the top wire, and with a raised swing of his leg he was able to straddle it. A moment later, he caught his other leg on a barb and tumbled to the ground to be licked by Azrael’s tongue.

  “I know, Azrael. Just resting,” he said softly while breathing hard. “Give me a minute.”

  A rumble of distant thunder spurred him to his feet. Fortunately, this side of the fence was clearly in-use pasture land and made for much easier going. But the light of day was merely a faint orange glow on the western horizon, and swirling black clouds made it hard for him to find his way. He hefted the pack and soon reached a metal outbuilding as the first rain drops pelted his face and hat, still some hundred yards shy of the house’s floodlights. Kelton reached to grab a corner and steady himself on trembling legs.

  The metal building wasn’t huge, maybe thirty feet by sixty with double sliding doors on each short end, one of which faced the house. Along the long walls were sliding square window shutters, closed against the storm. No light showed, but it didn’t look hard to get inside. Kelton knew the house would be more comfortable but he’d be soaked getting there as the storm swept across. Besides, the people may not react kindly to an unannounced sick stranger banging on their door after dark. He slid the rear barn doors open just enough to squeeze through and Azrael followed after him.

  Pelting rain on the metal panels overhead became deafening, and he pressed the doors shut again. Inside smelled of dust, and his nose ran as soon as he ceased inhaling. Kelton turned on his phone to use the light and saw the bales of hay to his left side, perhaps waist high and about ten-foot square. Climbing up on top by squirming forth on his belly and elbows, he made it to the center. A moment later his pack served as a pillow and his poncho a blanket. Azrael curled up next to him in the darkness.

  Upstairs in the house, Abriella Harper hit the snooze button of her alarm with a well-practiced blind swat toward her nightstand. The Fox Ridge School for Young Ladies was in-session year-round. Her parents weren’t rich enough to board her horse and pay for her to live on campus with her friends, so Abriella had applied herself to learning the art of the morning commute. As the chair of the city council, her dad had already left the house in the dark morning hours. Mom was sleeping off her second shift where she worked as a nurse at the Westburg emergency room. After Abriella got her license a few months ago, they’d delegated transportation to their sixteen-year-old daughter.

  To claw back lost time from hitting the snooze button, she brushed her teeth while in the shower. A quick blow-dry and she made a damp pony tail out of her long auburn hair. Mrs. Grant insisted her young ladies wore makeup, but only in the most extremely conservative way. That suited Abriella just fine. A single dash of blush toward each cheek and a stroke of lipstick and she was striding toward her dresser. Eye makeup was too much work.

  Shorts were allowed for the summer session so she went with blue denim and a white cotton blouse. Mrs. Grant didn’t allow open-toed shoes without nail polish, and riding coach Helmet didn’t allow anyone in the school’s barn without boots. Abriella quickly laced up a pair of Ariat Treadsteps, a brand of what amounted to an equestrian leather tennis shoe. Then she grabbed her laptop satchel and trotted down the stairs to the back door.

  Her phone dinged with a text message. It was her best friend Vicky, asking for a bacon egg and cheese from Full Cry Market on her drive in. She replied with a smiley, and stuck the phone in her back pocket. Then it was out the back door by the lidless kitchen trashcan with an empty bourbon bottle on top and down to the barn to feed her horse, Indy. There was no reason to lock the door. They were rural, and any potential thief would just break a window in the door to get at the knob.

  She stuck to the worn pathway in the grass from the tired looking home’s backdoor to the little barn and stepped carefully around stray tuffs to avoid soaking her shoes with the morning dew. The birdbath was full from last night’s rain. She didn’t care about the birds, but sometimes the water trough down at the barn was a long walk for Indy when he was grazing on her father’s backyard landscaping by the house. The birdbath was more of an equine cocktail glass made of concrete. The trough by the barn was full as well though, she noted, as she pushed the barn’s pair of sliding metal doors aside.

  Indy whinnied at her, followed by the goats making their bleats from the opposite stall. The size of the barn was sufficient for three stalls on each side with a central aisle way large enough to double as a grooming area. Her tack was in the first stall on the right, with a series of plastic garage shelves to hold wraps, grooming supplies, first aid items and the like next to the hooks for halters and bridles. To the left was the feed room stall. It was just a place for some rodent proof metal garbage cans containing grain behind a door so the goats and Indy couldn’t knock it over and help themselves. The two middle stalls held her animals, where Indy began to paw at the ground in anticipation. The final two stalls had never been built out, but provided room to stack bales of hay and to park the riding lawn mower out of the weather. A metal farm gate was mounted
across the aisle to keep Indy from getting back to the hay and either hurting himself or making a mess.

  Goats Candi and Laci stood on their hind legs to see over the kickboards as Abriella walked out of the feed room with the metal coffee can.

  “Sorry, Ladies. No grain for you. You should really get after those weeds,” she replied to the goats as Indy gave a snort.

  She dumped it through his feed door, a section of the steel bars above the kick boards which opened up so she could poor the grain into the gelding’s food dish. While she waited for him to finish, Abriella unlocked the stall for the goats who bolted past her and through the open front doors.

  “Love you, too!” she called after them with a shrug. Usually they mobbed about her and begged instead of fleeing immediately out to the yard.

  She returned her coffee can feed scoop to the garbage can and made sure the lid was on tight to keep the mice out. As she closed the feed room stall door, Indy raised his head to let her know he was finished. There was sawdust bedding in his forelock, and green manure stains on the side of his neck where he’d lain down.

  “You ready to go out, Indy?” she said with her head bobbing up and down. Indy imitated her movements, raising his head up and down with his powerful neck. The Irish Sport Horse was big boned and athletic, and displayed quite the personality which was why she loved him.

  As she slid his stall door aside, Indy walked after the goats with a steady confident stride, nose already reaching downward in search of a fresh clover patch. She left his door open, knowing that as the flies became more active later in the morning everyone would return to the barn. She opened the two outside windows, one each for Indy and the goats opposite, for cross ventilation. Some dusty fans in the rafters would come on when the temperature rose. Her last check was to turn around and make sure the aisle back gate was secure when she saw the black face with erect ears silently staring at her.

  Abriella froze, and the dog opened his mouth and panted without making a move to get up. Abriella stepped forward a couple of steps to the gate, craning her head about the corner of Indy’s stall for a better look. She didn’t dare cross the gate. It’s tube-metal construction wouldn’t stop a dog, but the barrier seemed to define the border between their respective spaces. The dog turned his head to keep a close eye on her, but still didn’t give any indication that it would rise from the bales. She began to back away and then saw the figure the dog was lying next to.

  Abriella had almost missed him, fixated as she was on the large dog with the unnerving alertness. The back of the barn was dark, because with everyone going out to graze there was no reason to go get hay so she hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights. The dark military poncho being used as a blanket just seemed to make him fade into the shadow. In her head, Mom’s voice spoke two phrases simultaneously, “beware of strangers” and “help those in need”. She blinked hard, and unable to resolve the conflicting instructions turned and strode in a hasty panic from the barn so she didn’t wake him up.

  Her routine took over in a fluster and she made for the worn Ford Crown Vic parked on the side of the house next to her rusty horse trailer. It was where she always went after letting Indy out. Habit was taking over while her mind struggled with the stress of the unexpected, balanced against the requirement to be at school on time. Nothing was stolen. None of her animals were hurt. The dog didn’t show any interest in chasing her goats although they were anxious to flee the smell of a dog. Her Mom was home and was an adult. She could deal with it when she bothered to wake up. And maybe he would be gone by then. Abriella’s teenage mind didn’t know for sure how that swirl of facts making her heart race and mind cloud with confusion would work out. But she knew for sure she didn’t want to see Mrs. Grant to explain why she was late for class.

  The retired police car started obediently and she put it into gear to race away from the problem, the spinning rear tires pelting the mailbox post with gravel as she made the turn from the drive on to the asphalt of Hounds Tooth Road to head north toward town. She hated the car, but she was very grateful to have a car. Her father had been aggressive with suggested repairs and maintenance, even with items of modest urgency. But despite its mechanical soundness, the large protective cocoon of steel was bulky for the quaint streets of Westburg and a real pain to parallel park. And while her friends were just joking about the smell of coffee and donuts forever being absorbed into the vinyl, Abriella felt it did have a faint stale sweat odor to it that could only be covered up with the rearview air freshener in the shape of a green pine tree. Finally, despite the removal of the decals, the damage to the white finish made the emergency number and “Police” clearly legible on the doors and panels.

  Fox Ridge School was northeast of Westburg, and their small farm a couple of miles directly south of town. About Westburg, to take traffic from State Route 715 which ran East to West straight through the middle of town, was a sort of bypass called Full Cry Road. Originally it had run from the east side of Westburg on 715 to the north to her school and a little beyond that to the nature preserve that everyone called “The Fixture”. But some time ago, ancient history to her, the city extended Full Cry Road around the south side of town. It was a two lane road, wide enough for speed with gentle curves and good visibility. Abriella raced along, but with both hands on the wheel. She ignored her phone’s ding of an incoming text message.

  A car in front of her, seeing the familiar silhouette of a law enforcement car in its rearview mirror, rapidly slowed until five miles per hour under the speed limit.

  “Come on,” she swore out loud, taking one hand off the wheel just long enough to make an open handed slap at the spot she’d just let go of. With the two-way traffic there was no way to get around them.

  Fortunately, Full Cry Market on the corner at route 715 was just ahead and a couple of minutes later the driver who thought she was a cop didn’t matter. She didn’t need gas, so parked near the door and pushed her way inside past the morning commuters seeking coffee and newspapers to a food ordering kiosk before checking her phone. Vicky had sent another text that Kate wanted a pastry. Minutes later she had paid for the bag of food and was continuing on Full Cry Road to the north.

  Up on a hill with majestic oak trees, Fox Ridge School was built in the style of a Georgian mansion, with three floors of burnt bricks and slate roof adorned with white framed windows and dormers facing a circular drive large enough to accommodate the most stretched of limousines. The flowers were freshly mulched, and shrubs and greenery meticulously manicured. Abriella didn’t take the circle to the elegant front door for receiving men of established wealth and power looking to relieve themselves of raising their daughters, but rather the turnoff for the perimeter road looping behind the school. The old cruiser rocked over the speedbumps.

  Directly behind the school was a large grass lawn for field hockey. Three homes on either side, all with large covered porches facing the field, served as dormitories for some girls in tenth to twelfth grade. Younger girls, thirteen being the youngest allowed by admission policy, lived upstairs in the main school building under the close eye of Mrs. Grant. The perimeter road was only one way so Abriella had to go by the row of southern houses, by the barn and indoor riding ring opposite the school building to park in the back of the second house on the northern side.

  There was just enough room between Vicky’s new red Cooper Mini and Elizabeth’s three-year-old hand-me-down black Mercedes. Abriella bothered neither to lock her car’s door or knock before going inside past the pair of bicycles leaning against a weathered sign reading “Tansy Cottage”. Setting her satchel down on the common room table she plopped into a beanbag chair. A little blond girl reviewing something on her computer tablet glanced briefly at her and then looked away.

  Abriella greeted her dutifully, “Good morning, Holly.”

  The girl’s shoulders came forward under the stress of the greeting and then froze.

  “Hi,” Holly managed to stammer out before picking up her t
ablet and walking out the back where Abriella had just parked.

  After the backdoor closed behind Holly, Abriella yelled out toward the ceiling, “Hey, I’m downstairs!”

  She couldn’t decide if she could hear a hairdryer or not, but it was a couple more minutes before Vicky, Kate, and Elizabeth all came down.

  “You get me my sandwich?” asked Vicky wide-eyed. They were icy blue and Abriella loved them compared to her own green.

  “Of course. It’s on the table,” answered Abriella. She didn’t worry about the money. Vicky always made good on that.

  “Where’s mine? Come on, I need to go to the barn before class,” pleaded Kate.

  “It’s in there,” promised Abriella. “What do you have to go to the barn for?”

  Elizabeth explained, “Mrs. Grant will only allow you to have a dessert at lunch if you show her your step counter with more than 10,000. She resets it and then you can have one.”

  “Just at lunch? What’s that got to do with the barn?” asked Abriella.

  Vicky joined in, “At dinner everyone can have one dessert, but if you want one at lunch you need to show the steps. As Mrs. Grant preaches to us ‘a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.’ She says it so much; we’ve come to think of it as the meal’s blessing.”

  Kate fessed up with a huge smile, “So I took my step thing and braided it into Chumpy’s mane after our rides last night. With the horses on nighttime turnout because of the flies, I thought she’d get some steps in for me out in the pasture while I was sleeping!”

  Vicky and Elizabeth shook their heads at Kate’s master plan, but stayed quiet since they’d already heard it before.

  Abriella stared at Kate blankly, looked at her other friends and returned to Kate.

  “Kate, I hate to tell you this but there were storms. I just drove by the barn and all the horses were inside for the night. I saw Jose leading them out so he could clean the stalls.”