Scott still couldn’t believe it three days later. He couldn’t believe that Rusty’s owners would show up, just when he had decided to put him in harness for the big race in Billings. Just when everything depended on Rusty, he was taken away. Even more than that, Scott missed him. Missed that sweet, gentle creature who loved the farm, loved the other dogs, loved each member of the family unconditionally. He even loved Brad.
Scott threw his jacket on early Thursday morning, slipped out of the house, and hurried across the barnyard to feed Kaylah and Chinook. He had to decide what he was going to do about Billings. There was only one week left. Maybe he’d call Amos to see if he could borrow a dog, or maybe … maybe he’d just forget it. What was he trying to prove anyway? What was the point? Why not forget it? Let Chinook and Kaylah get fat and lazy. And he, Scott, would just get … older. Older, without having tried. Was that what he wanted?
The light was on in the barn. “Hello,” Scott called out. “Anyone here?” Mr. Hartfield would have a fit if someone left the light on when it wasn’t needed.
Brad stepped out of Georgia O’Keefe’s stall, a curry brush in one hand. “Did you think your dogs turned the light on?” he asked.
“Maybe. They’re pretty smart,” Scott snapped back. “So what are you doing out here so early?”
“Haven’t paid much attention to Georgia the last couple of days,” he said. “Thought I’d better get her spruced up.”
“Are you planning to take her to Billings?”
“Maybe not right away.” Brad flipped the curry brush over and over in his hands. “Might have to wait until I see where we’ll be living and all.”
“Might want to see if your mom has room for Georgia … or anybody else.”
“She’s got room for me.” Brad’s eyes flared with anger. “Before she left here, she told me to come any time. Any time at all. And bring Bruno, too, she said.”
“But that was a couple of years ago,” Scott reminded him. “What’s she said lately?”
“Everything’s cool.” Brad dropped the brush and kicked it hard. “Besides, it’s none of your business, is it?”
“And I’m not losing any sleep over it either,” Scott said. “But why don’t you tell your dad, huh? It seems to me you owe him that much.”
“I’ll tell my dad when I’m good and ready.” Brad went back inside the stall to Georgia. Scott picked up the curry brush and gave it a toss inside before he opened the gate for the dogs.
Kaylah and Chinook stood up and stretched as he walked into the stall. They waited for their morning hello and pat before they went outside. Then Scott began to fill their pans with kibble.
Brad suddenly appeared in the doorway. “What are you going to do about the race in Billings if you don’t have three dogs? You’re still going, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Scott said. “I could race in the two-dog event, but it’s mostly for beginners and babies. I’m not sure I’d be allowed in it.”
“Because you’re such a super sledder, you mean?” Brad’s voice had a kind of sneer to it.
“Because I’m too old.” Scott suddenly felt ready to explode. “Hey, you want to finish our fight right now? I’m ready, any time you are, and it sounds like you’re spoiling for something.”
“What about you?” Brad said. “Sounds like you got up on the wrong side of bed this morning and you’re trying to blame me for it.”
Scott stared at Brad. Maybe he was right. He’d been wanting to hit something ever since the accident. Ever since that moment when he had lost control of what was happening at the practice race, and then Bruno, and finally Rusty. How could he get control of his life again? Mr. Wagner’s words came back to him. Take charge, he’d said. Take control.
Then Scott had an idea. It was totally far out, but maybe it just might work. He needed one more dog. He knew where one more dog was. Maybe, maybe, that dog was waiting to be asked.
Scott brushed past Brad and hurried inside to make a telephone call. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say, so he’d just blurt it out, and hope it worked. And maybe, just maybe, they would understand.
Scott moved through his classes at school, listening, but not thinking, so that sometimes he answered questions wrong or didn’t answer them at all when the teacher called on him. He heard some of Brad’s friends snickering and twice he caught Michelle staring at him, her eyebrows puckered in a question mark.
It was driving him crazy, having to wait like this. The old man wasn’t home when Scott called this morning. Gone to Havre for a new sump pump, his wife had said. That meant Scott had to wait all day until he got home after school. Wait for a telephone call that might or might not come. Didn’t that old lady know what a hard time he had with waiting?
Finally the day was over. He rode home on the bus with Caroline and Howdy, and they jabbered across him as if he weren’t there.
The bus dropped them off at their stop and Scott walked slowly behind Caroline and Howdy as they followed the path to the house. He wished he’d stayed in town with Brad. It wasn’t because he wanted to be with Brad at the vet’s, although he was concerned about Bruno. Probably he could have goofed around with Michelle until Mr. Hartfield drove in later. No, he suddenly didn’t want to be here at the farm, knowing he should continue to run Kaylah and Chinook but not having the heart to do it.
“Look,” Caroline called out ahead of him. “There’s that strange car again. It was here a few days ago.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Howdy said. “It’s got a bumper sticker about saving the whales. Isn’t that funny? There aren’t any whales in Montana.”
Scott stopped. Saving the whales? That was their car.
He ran ahead, up the circular driveway, around the house to the back door, slammed into the kitchen. “What happened?” he yelled. They wouldn’t come here unless something was wrong.
Mom looked at him, her eyes glistening. Oh, Lord, had she been crying? “They’ll tell you, Scott.”
Slowly, Scott let himself look at the old couple. The man and woman were sitting at the kitchen table, just as they were when they’d come for Rusty on Monday.
“I thought you’d telephone,” Scott began. “Did something happen to Rusty and you came out to break the news? Did he run off again?”
The old man stood up and came toward Scott. “Nothing like that, son. The dog is just fine. He’s outside. Didn’t you see him?”
“Outside?” Scott felt his breath catch in his throat. “You brought him back?”
Mom took his book bag from him. “He’s probably with Kaylah and Chinook in the barn,” she said. “Or maybe they’ve gone out to the field to find David. They do that nearly every afternoon.”
“You’ll let me borrow Rusty then?” Scott said. “Just for the race, the way I asked? He loves to run with the other dogs.”
“Even more,” the old man said. “Cameron, I mean Rusty, had already decided what he wanted to do. He had told us in his nice, gentle way, that he belonged here now, not in town with a couple of old people. But we weren’t sure you wanted him back until we got your phone call, Scott.”
“Wanted him?” Scott said unbelieving. “If you only knew how much I missed him.”
“And he missed you.” The woman stood up carefully, as if something might break. “He’s been sitting by the gate in our back yard, just looking south toward the farm ever since we brought him home on Monday. He wouldn’t even eat and that’s when we knew. Rusty had been waiting for your telephone call.”
The old man finished, “Rusty belongs to you now.”
“You mean I can keep him?” But Scott knew that’s what he meant, and tears stung his eyes with the realization. He charged out of the back door just as Caroline and Howdy were walking in. They jumped back quickly.
“Some people have rotten manners around here,” Caroline yelled after him.
Scott kept running, calling, until he saw the three dogs loping, one after the other, along the fence line by the north meadow. They looked up, saw him, and began to run, flat out. A moment later they greeted him in a wild frenzy. Down he went, rolling over and over with dogs under him, over, and around him. They pulled on his jacket and pants, licked his face until everything blurred.
“Rusty,” Scott yelled, managing to grab him. “You’re home, you’re home.” He wrestled with the three of them until his hands and face were sticky with fur and dog spit. When they finally lay around him, panting and waiting for more fun, Scott sat up and looked at each one of them in turn. They stared back, watching for a signal.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I called this meeting,” he said. Then he began to laugh, and the dogs jumped all over him again.
He didn’t even see the old couple walk out of the house and get into their car, but he heard the motor belch into life and looked up quickly. Then the car slowly moved toward the long driveway to the hard road.
Scott stood up and ran after them, the dogs trailing behind him. “I want to thank you,” he yelled, waving both arms. “I want to say thank you, forever.”
Finally, he stopped running and stood there waving until they drove down the hard road, out of sight.
Later that afternoon he put the dogs together in harness, and they drove out to the north meadow. They snow had a good crust on it, despite the sunny day, making them cruise right along. Rusty did well, which didn’t surprise Scott. After all, he’d run with the other dogs since Scott had started their conditioning and gone to the last race. The dog knew what was going on.
Some time later Scott and the dogs crested the rise of the hill, and he stopped so they could all rest. At the edge of the horizon, the low-lying range of mountains Brad called the Bear Paws stood out as if cut from cardboard.
How far was it to that pass where Brad had gone with his mom? It would be a good place to run the dogs for more serious training, Scott thought.
He felt like singing all the way back to the barn, except he couldn’t carry a tune even if he changed his name to Bruce Springsteen. “I’ll just have to sing inside myself,” Scott told them when they were inside the barn. “This was a great start, more than I hoped for, but we’ve got to do better. Think we can do it?” He hugged each of them hard before he went in to supper.
Snow surprised Scott during the week. Sometimes it rushed ahead of a stark wind, eager to pile up against fenceposts and telephone poles. Other times it floated lazily into drifts that looked like seven-minute icing covering the pasture.
Scott ran the dogs every day after school and got two long runs in on the weekend. He watched their diet, checked their paws, mended the equipment. When Bruno came home from the vet’s on Thursday, Scott felt as if it were a good-luck omen.
“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Mr. Hartfield said on Friday night at supper. “We’ll have to leave before daybreak, so I think we ought to hit the hay early tonight. No TV, okay?”
“Who’s going to stay home and take care of Bruno?” Howdy asked, helping himself to more tuna casserole.
Everyone looked at Brad. “He’s going with us,” Brad said.
“Why?” Mr. Hartfield asked. “He’s been so sick, he needs to stay home and rest.”
“But I want to go to the meet,” Brad said. “So does everyone else. Since Bruno shouldn’t stay alone, we’ll just take him. Besides, it’s not like he’s going to do anything. He can sleep in the car instead of the barn.”
Brad glanced at Scott, but only for a second. Scott knew why Brad wanted Bruno to go with them. His mom must have written and said it was okay to bring the dog.
“I can take over your job for this one race, Brad,” Mr. Hartfield said.
“Or me,” Howdy broke in. “Let me, Dad.”
“It isn’t the dumb job,” Brad said. “I just want to be there.”
“No.” Mr. Hartfield looked at the slice of tomato he was about to eat. “No, we’ll be too crowded with four dogs in the car.”
“We did it before,” Howdy said. He spilled a slippery noodle on his shirt, picked it off with his fingers, and stuck it in his mouth.
“We can stuff Howdy in the back with the rest of the dogs,” Brad said. “Since he eats like one.”
“I think it’s nice that Brad wants to go along for whatever reason,” Mom said. “We’ll manage, David.” She looked at him, sending some kind of message that seemed to signal the end of it.
Except Scott knew it wasn’t. Scott knew that Brad planned to stay in Billings with Bruno. Coming home, there would be one less dog and one less kid. There’d be lots of room in the car after the race tomorrow.