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Ranya was sitting cross legged a yard from her dog, staring across the field to the smoldering wreckage and ashes of her house and the silent pine woods beyond. Lieutenant Mosby crouched by her and put the silver cross into her hand. He had had to clip the chain to remove it from her father's burnt body.
“Ranya, this fellow volunteered to help you bury your dog.” She said nothing, and after a few moments Mosby left them to return to his business. Brad stood off a little to the side with his shovel and Mosby’s gray army blanket. After an uncomfortable minute she asked “who are you?”
“I’m just the guy who had the shovel. My name is Brad Fallon.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I knew your dad, as a customer I mean. He was working on a rifle for me.”
“Looks like your rifle got burned up.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What a great dog. I raised him from a puppy, he was nine years old, there was never a better dog. We named him Armalite like the rifles, because he was skinny and black and fast. He was the best Dobie there ever was, and he died trying to defend my father. I guess you can’t ask for more in a dog.” She began to weep again.
“I’m sorry. I’m real sorry about all this.”
Another pause, another deep breath, and she said “…Yeah.”
“Looks like he was shot right through. It would have been quick anyway.”
She said “That’s what they do. They shoot the dogs first.”
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Here's the whole chapter and the link to the Enemies Foreign And Domestic website.