Kurt kept moving quietly in the direction of the stranger. As he came to a slight opening, he stepped back under cover and stared. An older man—maybe late forties, early fifties—crouched and studied the trees in front of him. He obviously wasn’t here to take a look at nature. Matter of fact, he looked like he was here for nothing but trouble.
Kurt highly doubted the stranger was trying to help Sabine, given the stance he projected. Kurt studied the stranger and waited to see if Sabine would approach. When the stranger pulled a small handgun from his back pocket and raised it, Kurt thrashed around in the undergrowth to chase Sabine away.
The man turned in irritation and looked at him. “What the hell do you want?”
“Well, I didn’t know that I wanted anything,” he said. “I was just walking around the area …” Then he saw the gun in his hand, reacting supposedly in shock. “Hey, man, what are you doing?”
The guy waved the gun at him and said, “Get the hell out of here.”
“Why? What are you doing with a gun in here?” he asked, raising his voice, as if scared.
The guy sneered. “Why do you want to know?” he asked. “I told you to get lost.”
“Or else what?”
The guy stared at him. “Or else I might just use this in your direction.”
“What are you planning to shoot?” Kurt continued to play dumb to get more out of the gunman.
“I can hunt mad dog all I want,” he said with a sneer.
And that confirmed what Kurt had been afraid of. “You’re the one who’s been attacking that dog around here?” he said, letting his supposed fear ease down again.
The guy stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I heard somebody was out here, abusing a lost dog.”
The guy straightened up. “I’m not doing any such thing. That dog is bad news. It needs to be put down.”
“Yeah, I can see right now how the dog is attacking you,” Kurt said with a smirk. “So you just make up shit to kill dogs?” Kurt said, as if too stupid to understand when he was in trouble. In the meantime, he stared at the guy’s stance and realized that the gunman was all bravado, not showing any training.
The guy took several steps toward Kurt, waving the gun at him. “I told you to get the hell away,” he snapped. “It’s not my fault if you can’t learn the lesson.”
And he raised his gun, as if to shoot, and immediately Kurt put up his hands, as if to ward off a bullet. “Hey, man, I don’t mean any harm.”
“Really?” He shook his head. “That’s not what I see from my side,” he said. “Looks to me like you’re up to no good. Now why don’t you get the hell away from here.”
“I’m going,” Kurt said, slowly backing up, “but I can’t stand to see anybody hurt a dog.”
“Stick around much longer, and you’ll see it all right,” he said, “because this dog deserves a bullet.”
“Why? What she did to you?”
“She hurt one of my associates,” he said. “Just a young man who didn’t know any better and thought the dog was harmless.”
“You mean, one of those five young punks who have been terrorizing the neighborhood?”
At that, the guy cocked his gun and raised it higher. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it better not be about my kids.”
And that was enough for Kurt. “Ah, so you’re their mentor, their leader. Are you the one who blackmails them into being assholes?”
“No blackmailing required,” he said casually, studying Kurt, as if not quite sure if he was a threat or not.
“Well, some of them are definitely bad news,” he said, “but not all teenagers are bad.”
“They’re all bad news,” the stranger snapped. “I make sure that they stay that way. No room in this world for wussies.”
“Ya think?” Kurt said with a sneer, as he shifted position, waiting for the other man to make a move. The problem was, the stranger would likely react with that gun. Kurt didn’t have any K9 training himself to gain Sabine’s assistance through standard military orders. But, since finding out what he would be heading into, needing more intel about the dog he was trying to coerce back to a decent life, Kurt wondered if he knew enough to get her to attack or, better yet, to find the enemy, to seek them out, and to take them down. He looked at the old man and said, “What’s the matter, old man? You ain’t got nothing left in you, so you got to use a weapon?”
At that, he swore. “Don’t call me an old man, you piece of shit. You don’t even know what it’s like to fight,” he said. “You’re nothing but an ignorant prick.”
Kurt smiled at him and said, “So do your worst. Come on. Put that gun down, and show me what you’re made of. Everybody seems to think they’re a big man when they have a weapon in their hand,” Kurt said, taunting his opponent, “but take away that weapon, and they’re nothing but a piece of lily-livered fear-struck rubber-necked chicken.”
At that, the old man’s eyes glittered with hate—and that was the right word for it. There was something so deranged about this character that all the stranger could see through his own fury was the man in front of him and his growing need to punch Kurt’s face to the ground.
It was an odd feeling to know that somebody could hate that deeply with so little provocation. Kurt could handle a street fight with this guy, unless the madman got a good shot in, whether with his fists or his gun. Kurt just had to make sure this guy didn’t drop Kurt because he knew that there would be no tomorrow for Sabine if that were the case. This kind of guy killed indiscriminately, just like the dog he was hoping to shoot. As far as this old man was concerned, he was law, and whoever crossed him would pay the price.
He smiled a mouthful of rotten teeth and said, “What I’m not is stupid. You’re younger, maybe stronger. But you don’t have any brains. No way in hell I’m letting go of this gun. I can pop you from here, so you’ll never see tomorrow. Why the hell would I put my gun down?”
“I just thought you might like your hands free,” he said, watching as Sabine came up behind the stranger, crouching slowly, her teeth bared, not a sound coming from her. And, with the appearance of Sabine, Kurt gave the one solid hand motion he had learned to give a War Dog, and that was to attack. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t question the order. She jumped from a standstill, up into a solid six-foot lunge, and grabbed the guy in the shoulder of his gun arm.
He screamed, his jerky trigger finger firing off the gun. One, two, and by the third shot, Sabine had pulled him down and backward. Kurt was on the gunman in a second. He punched him to knock him out, flipped him over, and pulled his hands behind his back. The bigger struggle was to get the dog to release the gunman’s shoulder. But, with the old guy unconscious, Kurt talked Sabine down and finally got her to relax enough to release.
Finally the dog settled down, whining. Kurt dug into his pockets, found some treats, and tossed her one. She immediately gave a thankful woof.
“Feels good to get back a little control, doesn’t it?” he murmured to Sabine. “The whole world isn’t full of assholes, sweetheart, just a large portion of them.”