Xavier didn’t miss the flinch, he ground his teeth. He couldn’t win, he mentally let it slid. He wasn’t going to throw all his mama taught him because a woman couldn’t be honored enough to be respected. He felt the world was going to hell in a hand basket at least with social pleasantries this was just another example. He didn’t know her history, he amended, there may be a deep reason for not wanting to be called that. He tucked that information in the back of his mind as he did when he met anyone new.

The cowboy replaced his hat and marched off to grab the dog crate and followed the clerk to the mentioned store. The dog kept shifting her weight making it difficult to keep a solid hold on the bulky object. It would be much easier to just carry the dog, there was no chance of that. He didn’t want his face ripped off. He had to stop several times and shift his hold on the plastic handle that wanted to dig into his hands painfully. His steps were quicken until he caught up with her once again. 

“Thanks,” he whispered stepping inside and dropped the crate to the side of the doorway, the dog barked and growled for a few moments before clawing at the bars again. The place was strangely quiet, it smelt of pet food and newspaper –at least to him. He started browsing while he waited for her to find her boss. Her sudden stop mid-sentence rose the hair on the back of his neck. He put down the rubber chicken and turned to the clerk. 

His eyebrow rose when she grabbed the bat, he studied the surroundings a little more carefully. There was an eerie sense about the place, it would be dead quiet if not for the dog’s continual noise. His heeled boots clicked against the floor as he moved slowly down the aisle trying to find what had alerted the clerk. He stepped near a caged canary, the three tiny bodies hit the side of the cage pecking and clawing in his direction. He fell a step away from the odd behavior, he glanced back at the dog then the birds. Both were acting super aggressive and really wanted a piece of him. He hurried by the wall of cages, the rest of the birds were eating seed or preening. 

“Hey,” he said finding the clerk hovering outside the office. He shivered reaching out for her shoulder then froze upon seeing part of a body and a pool of blood. He swallowed hard. “Let’s get out of here,” his voice came out in a whisper he hadn’t met it to sound so creepy. This whole thing was beyond that, first the fire, irate canaries and now a dead guy. He would have touched her but that death grip on the bat persuaded him to keep his hands to himself. His eyes latched on the snake and he shivered once more. He grabbed the knob and pulled the door shut, hopefully keeping the snake contained. “That’s a really big snake.”

He swallowed hard and stepped away from the clerk not wanting to spook either of them farther. “I am going to call the police,” he started pulling the phone from his breast pocket. “From outside.”

He started down a row without animals flanking it and pushed his way outside, he took several deep breaths. He had seen death before in different ways. A guy had been kicked in the head by a horse, he just didn’t remember seeing that much blood that time. He dialed the police and explained the situation. He was not going to get into trouble for not reporting a dead guy, he had seen movies where people didn’t and they always wound up in more trouble. He wasn’t sure if that was real or just the way it was written, either way he wasn’t going to take a chance. 

He disconnected the call, it would be a while the deputy was on another call on the outskirts of town. He was told to hang tight. He wiped a hand over his mouth. Where the two things connected or random things happened around the same time? “What in Sam’s Hill is going on?”