Part 4 — The Dog That Bit Back
Mr. Landry’s house smelled like pine cleaner and old coffee.
Nina Claire Whitaker stood dripping in the entryway, arms wrapped around the shivering dog who had become her shadow. Rainwater puddled at her feet. Brave whimpered softly, head buried beneath her chin.
Mr. Landry rubbed his beard, which was gray and uneven, like the storm cloud over Chenoa that hadn’t quite passed.
“Set him down, honey. Over there on the rug.”
Nina obeyed, gently lowering Brave onto the faded braided mat. His hind leg jutted at an unnatural angle, and he let out a low, guttural whine as he shifted.
Mr. Landry crouched beside them.
“Don’t bite me, boy,” he muttered, eyes narrowed.
Brave didn’t. He just stared back, blinking slow. One good eye. One glazed by old pain.
“I’ll get a towel. And the old lamp from the shed.”
He left the room. Came back with a stained towel, a metal desk lamp, and a box labeled TOOLS / MISC / GOD HELP ME.
For the next twenty minutes, he worked.
He didn’t say much. Just cleaned, wrapped, muttered to himself like the house was listening too. Nina knelt nearby, silent, her hand on Brave’s paw.
“Dislocated,” he said finally. “Not broken. Lucky.”
“C-c-can he walk?” she asked.
“Not tonight. But maybe soon.”
Nina swallowed. Her clothes were still soaked through, but she didn’t care. Brave was alive. Brave was safe. That was all that mattered.
Mr. Landry stood up and looked at her.
“Want to tell me what you’re doing out at midnight in a thunderstorm, carrying a half-dead stray like he’s your brother?”
Nina’s voice caught.
“I—I had to.”
“Why?”
“B-b-because no one else w-w-would.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just watched her with eyes that looked too tired for judgment.
Finally, he said, “You hungry?”
They sat at his kitchen table while the wind rattled the windows.
Mr. Landry heated up a can of soup. Tomato. No crackers.
Brave lay on the rug in the living room, wrapped in the towel, eyes barely open. His breath had evened out. The pain dulled for now.
Nina cupped the warm bowl in her small hands.
“Your mama know where you are?” he asked.
She shook her head.
He grunted. “Figured.”
“She w-w-works late.”
“Still. She’ll worry.”
“She d-doesn’t.”
He didn’t argue. Just sipped his coffee.
“That dog… he’s been hurt bad. Before now.”
“I know.”
“And he hurt others. Maybe. Word is he bit two kids over in Marlow.”
Nina’s jaw tightened.
“They t-threw rocks at him. Lit f-firecrackers. Tied t-tin cans to his tail.”
Mr. Landry raised an eyebrow. “You know that for sure?”
“No. But I know h-h-him.”
Mr. Landry looked down at his cup.
“I used to have a beagle,” he said after a moment. “Name was Sally. She’d bark at lightning like she was cussin’ God. Smart girl.”
Nina smiled faintly.
“She got hit by a truck in ’84. My daughter cried for three days straight.”
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “Me too.”
They fell into quiet again.
The soup was gone. The storm still raged.
“Reckon you can’t walk home tonight,” he said at last. “Spare bedroom’s got a cot.”
Nina blinked. “R-r-really?”
“You’ll need to call your mama in the morning.”
She nodded.
“I’ll sleep near Brave.”
Mr. Landry didn’t argue.
That night, Nina curled up beside the dog on the braided rug
The room glowed gold from the old lamp. Rain tapped against the glass like a lullaby.
Brave’s breath rose and fell slow and steady.
Nina pressed her fingers into the fur just behind his ears.
“You d-don’t have to run anymore,” she whispered.
And in the dark, Brave made a sound like agreement. Or gratitude.
Or maybe both.
At school the next day, word had spread.
“Mouse spent the night with the killer dog,” Mallory sneered in the lunchroom.
Nina didn’t flinch.
Kimmy added, “She’s probably got fleas now.”
Nina looked at them.
Her back straight. Her voice low.
“He s-saved me. When n-n-no one else would.”
Mallory opened her mouth to speak again, but something stopped her.
Maybe it was the way Nina’s voice didn’t tremble.
Or the fact that, for once, she looked tall.
After school, Mr. Landry waited at the gate in his pickup.
Brave lay curled in a nest of old blankets in the back seat.
When Nina slid in, the dog lifted his head.
She smiled. Touched his nose.
“You’re okay,” she whispered. “We’re okay.”
Mr. Landry grunted from the driver’s seat. “He’s still healing. But he’s strong.”
“I know,” Nina said. “I named him Brave.”
Mr. Landry glanced in the mirror. “Good name.”
They drove in silence past cornfields and empty lots, toward the edge of town.
Where healing things hide.
Where brave things rest.
Where broken things begin again.
Part 5 — The Dog That Bit Back
Spring stretched slowly across Chenoa, Illinois, but healing didn’t come on a calendar.
It came in inches.
It came in a dog who stopped flinching when a door slammed.
In a girl who raised her chin a little higher in the hallways.
And in a quiet man who never said, I care—but bought a bag of dog food bigger than his boots and tucked it behind the passenger seat like it had always been there.
Brave had made it through the storm. His leg, though still stiff, held his weight. Mr. Landry built him a soft pen in the shed out back, full of straw and faded quilts. At night, Nina curled beside him with a book and a flashlight, her voice growing steadier as the stories unfolded.
“He l-l-left the p-p-porch l-light on,” she read from a wrinkled copy of Where the Red Fern Grows. “B-because… because he still h-h-hoped.”
Brave listened with eyes half-closed, his breathing slow and even.
And sometimes, Mr. Landry stood in the doorway, arms crossed, listening too.
But nothing in Chenoa stayed quiet for long.
By the second week of May, the rumors started again.
“He’s still around,” someone whispered outside the general store.
“That dog’s dangerous.”
“They say she’s hiding him.”
The boys who’d been bitten in Marlow—turns out, one of them was the mayor’s nephew. Word was, the family had filed a complaint. Animal control was being pressured to act.
“You should take him to the shelter,” Mr. Landry said one morning, voice low, eyes tired. “If they catch him with you, they might not ask questions.”
“No,” Nina said.
“They’ll paint him as violent, Nina. A stray with a record.”
“He’s n-not a record,” she snapped. “He’s Brave.”
Mr. Landry didn’t argue.
But that night, he hammered an extra bolt onto the shed door.
At school, Mallory and Kimmy started circling again.
They didn’t shove.
They didn’t yell.
They just watched.
Like they were waiting for something to break.
In art class, Nina painted Brave—his crooked ear, his thick chest, his gaze like fire through smoke.
She didn’t title it dog.
She titled it Protector.
Mrs. Kimball hung it in the hallway.
And for the first time, other kids paused when they passed her.
Some stared.
Some whispered.
But none of them laughed.
One afternoon, a knock came at Mr. Landry’s door.
It wasn’t a friend.
It wasn’t the mailman.
It was a woman with a badge and a clipboard.
“Ma’am from Marlow made a report,” she said, polite but firm. “Says the dog her nephew was attacked by is still in town. Got reason to believe he’s being harbored.”
Mr. Landry didn’t blink. “Don’t know anything about that.”
“You’re close to the girl, aren’t you? Nina Whitaker?”
“She’s a student. I’m a janitor.”
“Some folks say she’s got a mutt with one eye and a twisted leg.”
“Lot of mutts like that around.”
The officer narrowed her eyes.
“Mind if I take a look around?”
Mr. Landry paused.
Then opened the door wide.
She walked through the living room, glanced at the couch, the fireplace, the dog bowl tucked beside the fridge.
Then out back to the shed.
But Brave wasn’t there.
Because Nina had already taken him.
They hid in the tree line behind the train yard.
The sun was low. Shadows long.
Nina held Brave’s leash—an old belt, knotted twice—and whispered softly as he limped through the brush beside her.
“I’ll keep you safe. I p-p-promise.”
He didn’t pull.
Didn’t bark.
He trusted her.
And that trust lit a fire in her chest that no storm could douse.
She had $14.52 in her backpack. A plastic flashlight. A can of beans.
They could make it a day. Maybe two.
Long enough to think.
Long enough to figure out something.
She just needed time.
But time, like truth, didn’t wait forever.
By dusk, they reached the old ranger station by the creek—abandoned, but still dry.
Nina laid out a blanket. Opened the beans with a rock.
Brave ate first.
She watched the trees.
Watched the stars.
Listened for sirens.
And when Brave curled up beside her, his breathing heavy, she pressed her hand to his chest and whispered:
“If they c-c-come, we r-run.”
And deep in the woods, where broken things had finally found peace—
A twig snapped.
Then another.
Voices.
Flashlights sweeping.
“Over here!”
“DOG’S BEEN SPOTTED!”
Nina’s heart kicked like a hammer.
She looked at Brave.
His ears perked. His body tensed.
“No,” she whispered. “N-n-not again.”
But the lights were already closing in.
And the past—the one Brave had tried to outrun—was finding them both.
Part 6 — The Dog That Bit Back
The woods weren’t quiet anymore.
Flashlight beams crisscrossed through the trees like searchlights in an old war movie. Voices barked orders. Radios crackled. Footsteps crunched over dead leaves and broken branches.
Nina Claire Whitaker flattened herself against the damp floor of the abandoned ranger station, heart pounding in her ears. Brave lay beside her, tense but silent. One paw twitched. His ribs rose and fell like he was trying to stay calm for her.
But she could feel it—he was ready to run.
“No,” she whispered. “Y-you’ll g-get hurt.”
Brave glanced at her. Just one look. But it said everything.
I don’t care.
Because for dogs like him—and girls like her—running wasn’t cowardice. It was survival.
“Unit three, do you copy? Movement near the east creek line.”
“Roger that. Moving in.”
They were close.
Nina grabbed her backpack, trembling fingers fumbling with the zipper. She pulled out the flashlight. The can of beans. A notebook she’d scribbled in during lunch breaks. Then, tucked in the bottom, her father’s old bandana. Faded blue. Smelled like sawdust and peppermint.
She tied it gently around Brave’s neck.
“For luck,” she whispered.
He licked her hand once.
Then the voices drew nearer.
“Flashlight beam, over here!”
A sharp beam sliced across the ranger station wall.
Brave growled low.
Nina held her breath.
Then—CRACK.
A boot landed hard on the threshold.
“Hey! I see them!”
Brave surged up.
“No!” Nina shouted, lunging to hold him back.
Too late.
Brave exploded from the shadows, teeth bared, every muscle alive.
“STOP! DON’T SHOOT!” Nina screamed.
But already—
The pop of a taser.
The sharp cry of a dog.
The heavy thud of a body hitting the earth.
Then silence.
She ran to him.
He lay curled on his side, twitching. His body spasmed once, twice. Foam flecked the corners of his mouth.
“No, no, no—” Nina dropped to her knees. “Brave! Brave, p-p-please!”
The officer stood above them, hand still gripping the taser handle. He looked shaken.
“I didn’t mean to—he rushed—”
Nina didn’t hear the rest.
She pressed both hands to Brave’s ribs, felt the erratic drumbeat of his heart beneath his fur.
He was alive.
Barely.
A man knelt beside her. Not in uniform.
Mr. Landry.
How he’d gotten there, she didn’t know.
But when she looked up, tears streaking through the dirt on her cheeks, he was already opening his jacket.
“Wrap him in this,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”
The next thirty minutes were a blur.
A pickup truck roaring down a gravel road.
A woman in a hoodie arguing with the officers. “No, you don’t get to take him. You don’t get to bury what you broke.”
Mr. Landry barking back at someone. “This dog saved a child. You want to talk about danger? Let’s talk about the kids who made him dangerous.”
And then—
A vet’s office.
Lights too bright.
A metal table too cold.
Nina’s hands still clutched in Brave’s fur, even as they pulled him gently away.
“He’s seizing. Get the sedative.”
“IV line—here!”
A door closed.
She was alone.
Hours passed.
Or maybe minutes.
The clock didn’t matter.
Only the door.
Only the stillness on the other side.
Finally, the vet emerged. Older man. Soft eyes. Smelled like iodine and leather.
“He’s resting,” he said.
Nina blinked. “He’s…?”
“Alive. And lucky.”
She crumpled forward, hands over her face, breath shuddering from her lungs.
The vet crouched.
“I don’t know what this dog’s been through, but it wasn’t kindness,” he said quietly. “Still, he didn’t bite. Not tonight. That means something.”
“It means everything,” she whispered.
Later, when Brave was stable and sleeping under warm blankets, Nina sat beside him in the recovery room, hand resting on his side.
Mr. Landry stood near the door, arms folded.
“I made some calls,” he said. “Told the Marlow folks they could talk to me next time. Not a child.”
“Are they going to t-take him?”
He shook his head.
“I’ve got a friend. Runs a rescue upstate. Private. No kill. Specializes in dogs with history. They’ll take him. For now.”
Nina looked down at Brave.
And then something inside her snapped open.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“I’m not l-l-letting him go.”
Mr. Landry stared at her.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “But I n-need your help.”
He didn’t smile.
But he nodded.
Just once.
And that was enough.