Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

where the dog, a blue heeler mix—the markings were right, the fur too thick and too long to be pure—struggled to his feet to warn her off.

His growl was feeble, making her doubly glad she'd stopped. "You look a bit on the wobbly side, pooch. How long have you been out here?"

She took a step closer, leaned down and held out a hand to share her scent. His snarl lessened. His bared teeth vanished. He whimpered slightly, and when her next step took her closer, he offered his head to be scratched. She did, checking the tags on his collar, her hand coming away covered in blood.

"Oh, my." She squatted in front of him, let him give her a closer inspection while she carefully examined him, looking for a wound, finding a nasty gash along his lower jaw and a lump the size of half a Ruby Red grapefruit. "I see a visit to Doc Hill in your immediate future, pooch. Maybe he'll know where you belong. Your tags don't even tell me your name."

"FM."

Her head snapped up. Her gaze honed in on the voice, searching the highway's shoulder between the road and the property line. She pushed up to her feet, made her way around the far side of the truck.

A man lay in the scrub brush halfway between the barbed wire fence and her front bumper. His clothes and skin were coated with dust as if he'd been discarded like so much garbage a day or so ago.

No one besides those dumping trash had reason to stop on this long stretch of rural highway between New Mexico and Texas. Trucks pulled stock trailers. Trucks hauled hay bales and feed. Trucks barreled from one one-horse town to another without a single law officer looking their way.

If not for the dog ... If she hadn't stopped . . . She swallowed to clear away the borrowed trouble weighing heavily in her throat and picked her away slowly through the knee-high brush.

"Oh, dear. Oh, my." He couldn't be more than half alive. "Oh, hell."

One arm lay at an angle in which it was never meant to bend. She winced at that, winced at the streaks of blood on his face and his nearly shaved head. His chest barely rose when he pulled in a breath. In fact, he didn't breathe at all for so long she thought he had died while she'd been standing there staring. His clothes were shredded, the cord of his hat tangled around his neck with his sunglasses' strap.

Moving him could be risky. Leaving him here while she went for help more so. He was obviously drifting in and out of consciousness; right now, he appeared dead to the world. If not simply dead. She reached down to loosen the constriction beneath his Adam's apple.

His eyes flew open, and she stopped, her fingers on the very hot skin of his throat. He didn't speak, he didn't move, he didn't blink. He just stared, his gaze intense in a way that unnerved her when she considered his condition. It was as if his entire life was flashing before his eyes . ..

Damn him! He had better not die on her now.

"I'm going to load you and your dog into my truck and get you both to a doctor." She went back to work on the uncomfortable binding that couldn't be making it easy for him to breathe. "I'm not sure how smart it is to move you, but I can't leave you here."

He didn't respond except to close his eyes. She was fairly sure the response wasn't one voluntarily made. He was out of it again, which was probably a good thing since there was no way she'd be able to get him into her truck without a lot of undignified manhandling.

She walked back to where she had parked, let down the tailgate, and considered her options along with the boxes of supplies she'd picked up in Carlsbad stacked in the bed. Twine, beads, filament, stones to be polished, charms, crystals, jewelry hardware, and more of the same.

The only thing she could do with any of that would be to accessorize him. She did, however, have a rope, a blanket, and a come-along behind her second seat, as well as two six-foot, one-by-twelve planks she'd picked up for Candy's new workbench. Neva figured those would go a long way toward getting him where he needed to be.

He was a big man, she'd guess a bit over six feet tall, and at the moment at least two hundred pounds of dead weight. This was not going to be easy. Moving him even a little bit would hurt him like hell were he aware of her lugging him around like a feed sack.

From the cab, she grabbed the rope and the blanket and tossed both out the passenger-side door to the ground. The come-along needed to be positioned where she could get the light leverage to muscle him up the plank ramp.

She hopped from the bumper into the bed and fastened The hook and ratchet end to the stake hole on the driver's side nearest the cab. That done, she released the tension on the strap and reeled it out until there was no strap left to reel, finally tossing it to hang over the open tailgate.

Once she'd jumped to the ground, she slid one of the planks out of the bed, leaned it on the tailgate, and wedged it into the shoulder's hard-packed dirt. Dusting her hands together, she then grabbed up the blanket and rope and returned to the man.

He hadn't moved or regained consciousness, and she hoped she wasn't about to do him more harm than good. She could radio Candy, of course, and have her send out Doc Hill. But he'd have to close the clinic and make the trip, and then basically do what Neva was already set up to do.

Besides, waiting for Ed to get here would drive her totally nuts. She had absolutely