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It's Dolly's Birthday
Chapter 4.
Something's badly wrong...
Drummond was seated at his computer, headphones on, listening to Queen's first album at high volume. He treated it as white noise to eliminate distractions from the outside world. In that moment he was living in inner world and attempting to describe that world for an imaginary group of readers. The words poured from his mind out through his dancing fingers on the keyboard and onto the computer's monitor screen.
In the pause between tracks, Drummond thought he heard something. Something that didn't sound quite right. He stood suddenly, whipping the headset from his ears, and froze... listening.
The sound that had driven him under the headphones -- Callisto's amplified guitar emanating from the basement music room -- had fallen silent. The whole house was like a giant void in the atmosphere where silence reined supreme. What was it that he had heard? He willed the sound to repeat.
It did. A scream, full-throated and meant to sound an alarm. There was no fear in the note it struck, only rage and frustration. Drummond recognized the voice and grinned with savage pride at his beloved's courage.
Dolly was both brave and foolhardy at times. She was inordinately proud of her ability to take care of herself. Drummond knew what self-sufficiency meant to her stubborn pride. In her own mind, she saw herself as "The Tough" in the old saw, "When The Going gets tough, The Tough get going." She would see a scream as an admission of failure and feel ashamed for having uttered it, no matter how justified.
Galvanized into sudden action by the realization of what might be happening downstairs, and who it was who was in danger -- his inamorata and life-partner -- he strode to the door to the upstairs hall and took up the .30 '30 Winchester lever action saddle gun that was kept ready and leaning in the corner behind it. Then he heard the muffled sounds of blows struck without rhythm, some of them sounding as though they were the impact of flesh on the artificial flagstones of the house's entry hall. As he stalked along the passageway, he worked the rifle's action to feed a round into the breech.
He rounded the corner just in time to see Dolly dragged out the front door, kicking and screaming. Or at any rate trying to scream -- or bite -- through the hand clamped over her mouth. There were four or five other figures in the foyer. From their various helpful attitudes, he surmised that they were in a league with the one half-carrying, half-dragging Dolly out the door. Acting with quick decision, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and snapped off a shot, killing one of the intruders with a bullet through the head.
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