The Length of the World
Chapter 1
Page 1
We heard a commotion up ahead, near the end of the dock where a truck was backed up to a huge shipping container. A strange animal squeezed through a narrow gap between truck and container and then bolted for freedom. Two men chased after the frightened creature.
“Oxana will scalp our butts for this!” one of the men yelled in Portuguese.
“The Ox,” shouted the second man as he ran, “will have YOUR pelt mounted on her wall, not mine.”
The animal--some sort of antelope, having long curved horns with sharp tips pointing toward the back of his neck--was certainly not a native of South America. He galloped around the front of the truck and dashed out of sight.
“Where is your pistol, Silveira?” the first man yelled. “Shoot that little bandit’s foot before he gets away!”
“Rachel!” my sister Kaitlin shouted as she ran toward her daughter. The six-year-old girl and her dog were several meters ahead of us and determined not to miss the excitement of two ruffians chasing down a wild animal.
I caught up with Kaitlin just as she yanked the running child off her feet by the loop of her backpack. I tried to restrain Hero but he got away and ran barking toward the two men.
The dog went beneath the truck just as a gunshot echoed from the other side.
“Uncle Saxon!” Rachel cried to me as she struggled against her mother‘s ironclad grip, “they shot my doggie.”
Hero came running back from under the truck at top speed and leapt into Rachel’s arms. He was unharmed, but shivering with fright.
“I’m going to put a stop to this nonsense,” I said. “This is no place to fire off a gun.” My sister or the girl could have been hit by a ricocheting bullet.
“Saxon,” Kaitlin said to me as she glanced around the vacant dock, “let’s get out of here.”
I held my hand out flat, waggling it back and forth as I went toward the front of the truck. “There’s only two of them,“ I said.
Sunrise was only moments away from those docks where a jungle
End of Page 1
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