Bob Hawkins

Daughter gets the goat

CHAPTER ONE

Dawn was reading to herself, resting her back against the trunk of a tree. She'd pulled her skirt up high on her thighs to let the sunlight warm her legs. It took her a moment to realize something was casting a shadow on her. When she looked up, a boy was standing there.

"Hi," she said casually, smiling at the young boy.

He was a kid, dressed in a brand-new cowboy outfit. He was packing a pair of silver-handled pistols, and carrying a long rope. His cowboy hat rested at a cocked angle on his head.

He looked at the girl suspiciously.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice stronger and much more masculine than Dawn would have expected.

"My name's Dawn. I live over there, beyond that other grove of trees. Who are you?"

"Jim," the boy answered with a nod. "We just moved in. Back there." He pointed with his coiled rope toward the house at the bottom of the hill, barely visible through the dense woods.

"Well, Jim, that's quite an outfit you've got there," Dawn said, just to make conversation. She really wasn't up on the latest in talk with little boys.

"You seen my dog?"

"Your dog?"