“Nothing makes you safer than a shotgun, except maybe a dog,” Conn said.
“You want a dog?” Purcell said.
18
“Maybe,” Conn said. Truth be told, he’d feel a lot better leaving Mary if she had a watchdog.
“You want a dog, I’ll give you a dog,” Purcell said. “I got too many. Four of them. You wait a minute, they’ll set to barking out back. One’s the mama. The other three are her pups. Only, they ain’t pups no more. They’re eating me out of house and home, and now that they got their size, the males scrap a lot. Makes a terrible racket.”
“What kind of dogs are they?” Conn asked.
“Mountain cur,” Purcell said.
“That’ll do the trick,” Conn said. “You up for a companion, Mary?”
“I love dogs,” Mary said. “Cole and I had planned on getting some eventually. But I doubt the hotel will want me keeping one.”
“How long you gonna be shacked up at the hotel, ma’am?” Purcell asked.
“Hopefully just a week.”
“Shoot,” Purcell said. “Leave him here, then, till you’re ready. Ain’t nobody else gonna want him.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.”
“Oh, my pleasure, trust me,” Purcell said. “If I pull one of those dogs out of the pack, I might actually get some sleep at night. You feed him once in a while, he’ll watch you like a hawk. Won’t nobody sneak up without you knowing, I’ll tell you that.”
“Those mountain curs are rugged,” Conn said. “Good all-purpose dogs. They got no quit in them.”
“You ain’t telling me nothing I don’t already know for gospel,” Purcell said. “I’m from Tennessee. You want the guns, then?”
“Yes, sir. And plenty of ammo for both. Also, we’ll be wanting to stock up on ammo for a couple of revolvers.”
They took care of business and paid Purcell and thanked him again and left the shop, each of them carrying one of the new purchases.
They heard some barking coming from around back of the shop and went down the alley between stores, and there were the dogs, four of them penned behind a well-chewed wooden fence. They were big hounds, fifty or sixty pounds of muscle with blocky heads. Three were mostly tan. The fourth had some tan in him too but was heavily brindled in chocolate-colored fur and a patch of black here and there.
They barked at Conn and Mary, but they didn’t seem to mean anything by it, and when Mary talked to them, they quit hollering and tilted their heads at her.
“One of you is coming home with me soon,” she said. “One of you boys want to be my watchdog?”
As if understanding her words, the brindle trotted over and jumped up and panted at her, his pink tongue lolling from between powerful jaws set with milk-white teeth that looked whiter still against his black muzzle. His head came to the top of the fence.
Mary reached over and patted him on the skull.
The dog seemed to like it.
“He’s got a big old bump on his head,” she said.
“Supposed to be the sign of a good dog,” Conn said. “Either that, or he bumped his head.”
“You sure are a funny-looking fellow,” Mary said, still petting the hound.
The dog grinned up at her.
“You want to come with me?” she said.
The dog licked her hand.
