Member-only story
It was a cool summer morning in Northern Nevada. The man driving the large white pickup truck was finished with his morning’s work and was headed back to the nearest town, over 50 miles away.
He thought he saw an elk off in the distance and wanted a closer look so he took the next dirt road that headed in the right direction. The barely-used dirt road took him through the sagebrush, around a scrub-covered knoll, and over to a muddy cattle pond. Technically he wasn’t supposed to veer that far off-track, and almost decided not to, but he wanted to see the elk.
The man removed his binoculars from their case, stood up on the edge of the truck, and looked off into the distance. He didn’t see anything of interest, so he stepped down off the truck and turned around. He jumped; he wasn’t alone like he thought he was.
A small, mud-covered dog now stood beside him, looking up with curiosity. He assumed this dog belonged to a local rancher, after all, he was in cattle country. There were no houses or vehicles in the immediate area, so the man gave the dog a handful of peppered beef jerky, then decided to see what the dog would do if he drove away.
This small, tired dog ran after that white pickup, barking with all her might. The man stopped, let the dog into the truck where she curled up…
