Another Pink Book!

Chapter 10

Saturday 3:48 pm

It was a truly impressive sight. Yuri's wide, firm shoulders literally stood between a pack of defenseless women and harm. A couple of the women swooned. The rest of us licked our lips and said, "Wow!" as we studied Yuri's flexed muscles from the rear view. It was a very nice view. Yuri crouched; Katie Lee fanned herself. A cacophony approached. Then we all saw it: a large, powerful creature, running directly for us, chased closely by a pack of dogs and followed, in the rear, by a figure that might have been a man waving a pale green baton.

I stood from my crouched position and gaped, open-mouthed at the procession. Dogs barked, women screamed, and men yelled, but the loudest voice of all was from the man with the green baton: "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

I understood what was happening. I ran, impulsively, toward Yuri, who stood at the top of the narrow staircase by the waterfall. I tucked my body low and slammed into the back of his knees. It was like hitting a brick wall. It caused him to stumble, though, and I was aware of a woman's form, leaping over me. It was Katie Lee. She threw both arms around Yuri's neck in the midst of her dive. The combination of our attack pushed Yuri near the edge; I screamed as the pair fell in slow motion over the waterfall and into the rocky riverbed below us.

The procession toward us did not halt. The beast in the lead scrambled toward the stairs in a dead run, followed by the dogs, the man with the green baton and a group of black-clad mercenaries. I got a better look at the baton: it wasn't exactly a baton. It was a bunch of celery.

"Sam!" I shrieked. It was all I had time to say before I fell into the muddy embrace of the 'bear'. I saw Ben throw the celery into the air and swarm up the little staircase amongst the muddy dogs. Sam kissed me lavishly as he slobbered and snuffled and tried to sit in my lap. I managed to pull myself toward the side of the cave, where I half-sat in an upright position and pulled as much of his body as would fit into my lap.

The rest of the dogs had entered the cave. Some of them wished to make the acquaintance of the ladies; their overtures were largely displeasing to the assemblage. I was busy; Sam was very upset and covered my face with wet, warm, blubbering kisses. But he was roughly shoved out of the way and a pair of strong arms pulled me to a manly breast.

"Lou! Lou Darling! Are you OK?"

"Ben! Oh, Ben! You found Sam!"

We exchanged a kiss—a rather passionate kiss. Ben tasted much better than Sam had. All at once, I remembered very clearly why I had married Ben. All around us was chaos but for one brief moment, Ben and I visited a very special place; the place we both belonged—together, in each other's arms.

Sam pushed between us and cried. I emerged from the kiss long enough to climb into Ben's lap. He seemed short of breath but I think only part of it was the physical exertion he had experienced. He smelled like sweat, mud and there was a hint of celery but underneath it all was my favorite scent in the world: the Ben-smell of lime, pine and cocoa butter scented aftershave and a light dose of peppermint toothpaste.

I snuggled appreciatively with Ben and Sam cuddled with us. Ben buried his nose in my neck and sniffed the honeysuckle and gardenia scent that I had worn since I had met him. He reached into a pocket, pulled out a turkey leg and gave it to the mud-coated Sam. As Sam munched on it, Ben cuddled with me and told the story.

He had thought about the missing dogs. All the families who had reported a missing dog had lived less than a mile from the little river. Ben had been on the internet; he found a satellite image of the area. He found the point the river had emerged from underground. He plotted the location of the missing dogs and a pattern emerged: the incidents were all downstream from the mouth of the canyon.