“He’ll kill Brutus!” she screamed, refusing to take her eyes off the wild dog.
“Get out of the way and I’ll shoot him!”
She instantly leaped to the side and rolled away from the animal, glancing up as the rifle belched flames. The wild dog cried out sharply once and dropped. The other wild dogs vanished.
“You fool!” Josh yelled at her as he approached Brutus. “He’s only a dog. He can be replaced - you can’t.”
“They wouldn’t have attacked me. They only wanted Brutus and the goats.” It was something that had been at the back of her mind all the time, but it wasn’t true. She had stood between the pack of wild dogs and what they wanted.
Josh grabbed the sack and pulled Brutus along. “It looked like they weren’t going to attack you, didn’t it?”
“Together they managed to get Brutus safely into the barn. He was in need of a veterinarian if he was going to live, and the closest one was nearly twenty miles away. Unless . . . did Alex spend the night with Katie? She started for the door.
“I’m going to call and see if Alex is at Katie’s.”
Josh stared at her.
“First you’d better call a veterinarian.”
She paused with one hand on the door.
“Alex is a veterinarian, and Katie lives less than five miles away. If he’s not there, I’ll call someone else.”
Without waiting for a response, she raced to the house and dialed Katie’s number with shaking hands. The ordeal over, she was going to pieces.
The phone rang four times before a sleepy male voice answered.
“Hello, Bill? Is Alex there?”
A pause. “This is Alex . . . Carmen?” The voice had lost its sleepy sound. He was wide-awake now.
“Yes, do you have your medical equipment with you?”
“Some. What’s wrong? Is one of the goats sick?”
Hearing his voice did something to hers. She struggled through a hiccup.
“Wild dogs. They attacked the herd. Brutus is torn up real bad. Could you come over here?”
“Wild dogs? Are you sure? Are you alright? Stay in the house and I’ll be right over. Don’t go out there.”