THE TENT
Kealan Patrick Burke
Copyright © 2013 by Kealan Patrick Burke
Cover Design by Elderlemon Design
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THE TENT
Kealan Patrick Burke
Pepper is nervous, and that in turn makes McCabe uneasy. The collie is not given to barking at every sound or she’d long ago have driven him insane. Up here in the mountains, they have long shared real estate with rabbits, cows, deer and sheep, and birds aplenty. Pepper learned this as a pup, learned to recognize the ambient sounds of the mountain’s many residents, and now rarely does she raise her head from her tattered old wicker basket in the corner of the cabin.
Tonight, however, her head and her hackles are raised. Her brown eyes are wide and wet and fixed on the door of his small bungalow as if trouble casts its shadow on the other side.
Sitting before the fire, the air tinged with smoke, the damp logs still crackling and spitting three hours after he set them alight, McCabe watches the dog watching the door, and cocks his own head in an effort to detect whatever might have upset his old friend. Unsurprisingly, he hears nothing but the wind. Twenty years ago, maybe even ten, he’d have stood a slim chance of competing with the dog’s hearing, but not anymore. They are both in the winters of their lives, but Pepper still has the edge on him when it comes to the senses.
Reluctantly he stands, his knees crackling louder than the logs, and puts one rough hand on his lower back, absently massaging away the dull fiery pain that settles in like a cuckoo whenever the weather turns cold. Pepper gives him a brief glance, her worried eyes reflecting the small flames in the hearth, clearly unwilling to break her concentration from whatever has her dander up, and goes back to watching the door.
“What is it, Pep?” he asks in a soothing voice. “What’s got you upset?”
The dog whines but does not look at him.
Visitors are rare during the day, and rarer still at night. When anyone does have occasion to seek his cabin out, it is seldom with good news.
As he shrugs on his peacoat and sighs, Pepper gingerly steps from her basket and plods over to join him. She trembles slightly and McCabe doesn’t like that at all. She may be old, but he has always thought of her as fearless. He reaches down and he is alarmed when the dog lowers her head as if afraid she is about to be struck, something he has never done in all their years together.
He frowns. “This is one of those times I wish you could talk,” he says, something he has wished often in the four years since his wife Susan passed away.
Coat fastened, he fetches his old hand-carved, bleached pine walking stick from the corner by the door and turns his attention back to the dog.
H er head is still bowed in deference to the unknown threat. As he watches her tremble, he briefly considers abandoning the idea of venturing out into the cold and giving Trooper Lyons a call instead. Then he just as quickly dismisses the notion. Lyons is a good and fair man, but he’s also a drunk and as it’s after ten on a Wednesday night, the chances of finding him sober are slim. He’d undoubtedly balk at the idea of the twenty mile drive to the mountain, especially to investigate what will no doubt prove to be little more than the result of a nervous dog’s hypersensitivity. Instead he’ll slur a few reassurances and promise to
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