Weary beyond words she pulled beneath the shelter and parked. By the time she’d opened the car door her canine companion was snuffling at her and wagging his stubby tail.
She scratched behind his ears and patted his broad head. When she asked, “Hi, Brutus. Did you miss me?” she imagined an affirmation in his soft “Wuff.”
“Yeah, I love you, too, you old coot,” she said, smiling and getting out of the car as best she could while he crowded against her, begging for more attention. “Move it, dog. Mama’s tired.”
Brutus might as well have been on a short leash because he walked the whole way to the back door with his side rubbing against Samantha’s legs, then sat politely at her feet and looked up at her while she unlocked the door.
“Yes, you can come in,” she cooed, giving his ears another ruffle. “We’ll both have a bedtime snack. How does that sound?”
Still beside her, the dog suddenly turned his head and began to growl. The rumble in his throat was accompanied by a lip-quivering snarl that exposed canine teeth nearly an inch long.
Samantha froze. Listened. Waited for her watchdog to signal what to do next. Her hand lay atop his head and she could feel his whole body trembling.
“What is it, boy? What do you see?”
The dog inched his way around so he was facing the yard and had his broad rump to the door.
As far as Samantha was concerned that made this situation a no-brainer. She quickly stepped into the kitchen and reached for the switch on the wall, then stopped herself. If she flipped those lights on she’d be silhouetted in the open doorway.
“Brutus, come,” she ordered. “Come. Now.”
Instead of taking his eyes off the yard he literally backed into the house, his nails clicking on the vinyl floor. The minute he was in the clear, she slammed and locked the door.
Although the dog still had his hackles up he seemed to be calming down. Samantha crouched next to him and put one arm around his neck. “I sure wish you could talk. What did you sense, huh? Was it a skunk or an armadillo?”
Rabbits, though plentiful, seldom interested him but he hated skunks and ’dillos. Still, it took quite a bit of incentive to get the old dog going these days. For him to show such concentration and defensiveness meant he was positive something was amiss.
“Okay, Brutus. You win. You can spend the night inside with me,” Samantha said with affection. “I don’t want to have to wash you in tomato juice because you got skunked. I don’t need anything else to make the last twenty-four hours more memorable than they already are.”
Suddenly, the dog ducked out of her hold and started to trot toward the front of the house. He barked, but only once. That reaction wouldn’t have caused her undue concern if she hadn’t just been through the growling spell with him.
He pressed his nose to the crack between the jamb and the heavy, wooden door, snuffling up and down where the door fit the frame the way he did whenever she had a pizza delivered. Only nobody delivered food at this hour of the morning, not to mention the fact that she hadn’t ordered anything.
Grasping Brutus’s collar she held tight, leaned close to the door and called, “Who’s there?”
When John Waltham answered, “It’s me,” Samantha didn’t know whether to be glad or tell him to scram. Judging by her dog’s amiable reaction, at least one of them was happy to encounter him again.
“What are you doing out there? Do you know how much you scared me?”
“If you were scared, it wasn’t my fault,” John insisted. “Open the door. We need to talk.”
Samantha’s sense of humor surfaced. Okay. If he wanted to come in she’d let him. But she wasn’t going to restrain Brutus. If John got knocked down and licked to death, it would serve him right.
She turned on the closest table lamp then reached to unlock the door.
Brutus had reacted with unbridled joy the moment John had spoken and he was still beside himself. He wedged his head into the gap as she started to open the door and shoved with his shoulders, his whole rear half wiggling like his tail.
Anyone other than John might have had trouble getting past a dog so bent on bestowing slobbering affection. Instead of giving ground, however, he simply started forward and Brutus made room.
“I think he remembers me,” John said as he shut the door behind him and bent to pet the old dog. “At least somebody is glad to see me.”
“He’s a dumb dog,” Samantha countered, struggling to keep from laughing aloud at the interaction between man and animal. “What does he know?”