Meg knelt near the black-and-white dog.
It was alive. She could see it breathing. Its eyes were open, but they seemed almost vacant. Was it sick?
Meg looked up, figuring she was probably about three or four miles from Camp Sherman, too far for someone’s dog to have wandered off.
She didn’t see a campsite. No hikers, no one calling their dog. It was a pet, she could tell that much. A wild one would be long gone at the sight of her. Not this one.
Molly stretched forward to see.
The dog peeked up but didn’t raise its head.
“What are you doing way out here?” Meg said.
Its eyes shifted to hers.
Meg reached out to offer her scent. A small swirl of flies circled the dog’s eyes, making it wink.
Meg turned toward the sun. She should start heading home. Her mom would worry if she came in too late. But she couldn’t just leave the dog. “You want to come home with me?”
There was a long shallow cut on its hip. She could see that it had bled but wasn’t bleeding now. Maybe it got hit by a car on the highway and dragged itself way out here to heal, or die. But the highway was miles away.
She pulled her hand back. What if it had rabies? Or something else?
Meg glimpsed a piece of what looked like a collar and reached in and felt a metal tag. “Well, at least now we know how to find who you belong to.”
No address and no phone number.
Just a name.
“Banjo,” she said.