Clint couldn’t sleep. It was too hot and there wasn’t even a breath of breeze to help cool him off. The curtains in front of his open window just hung there, limp, as evidence of the still night air. He’d already thrown off his blankets and stripped down to his shorts. Outside his window he could hear the bugs buzzing around and occasionally bumping into the window screen as they attempted to get inside.

As he lay there, he heard something else. Footsteps outside.

That was odd. For one thing, his home was surrounded by a literal junkyard, and he had three good dogs who knew to keep anyone and everyone out once he closed the gate in the evening. He hadn’t heard so much as a tip from them.

Not sure what to think, Clint got up, pulled on his pants, and grabbed his shotgun. He only ever loaded it with bean bag shells, and most people around knew that, but that didn’t mean they were any less afraid of getting caught should they ever try to steal from him. If anything, it helped to assure them that Clint would shoot them, and it would hurt.

He walked quietly and left through the back door since it made less noise than the front door. Once outside he could hear the intruders more clearly. There were two of them, walking along the side of the property where he stored the newer car parts and muttering to one another.

“…gonna get caught,” one of them, a young man, was saying.

“Now shut your mouth and just help me look,” a woman snapped and a flashlight flickered into life in the dark.

Now Clint could see them. A young man, maybe in his mid-teens, and an older woman, possibly the boy’s mother from the looks of them. It was an odd pair to be sure, and not at all the usual sort he got in the scrap yard at night. All the same, the silence from his dogs was the most concerning aspect to all of this.

He knew where everything in the yard was, he walked it so often throughout the day, that he was able to tread silently around the other way to check his fence and look for his dogs. The couple were easy enough to keep an eye on now that they were using the flashlight. He went first to the main gate since that was the easiest place to break in. Sure enough, the lock had been broken, cut through by the looks of it. He never spent much on locks. A determined person would find a way in and it was cheaper to replace the lock than it was to patch cut fencing.

Their car was parked just outside the gate. Clint walked over to it, pulled his pocketknife out, and stabbed the front tires. Then he moved to the hood, pried it up with the flat of his blade, and broke the latch that normally held it down. Once done, he detached the serpentine belt from the alternator. Even if they tried to get away, they wouldn’t go far.

That done, he turned back to the yard. The couple was still searching through the cars. In his experience, most people took an hour or two to find what they were looking for so he wasn’t in any rush to catch them. Better to wait until they’d actually pulled the parts they were after so he had more to accuse them of beyond basic trespassing. Besides, he still needed to find his dogs.

He pulled a thin whistle from his other pocket and blew. All he could hear was the faint rush of air but his dogs would hear it just fine. In the distance he heard a few dogs howling in response but none of his dogs replied. He stowed the whistle back in his pocket and got down low to the ground. If they were hurt, they’d be near the gate where they would have come as soon as the car pulled up. He looked along the ground and at his lower vantage point he finally spotted them. They were off to the side, as though they’d been pushed or dragged over there, and set side by side.

“No, no, no,” he whispered as he hurried over to them.

All three dogs were still, lined up together, and very much dead. It was too dark to see if there was any blood but feeling them over he didn’t find any obvious injuries. There were poisons that worked pretty quickly but his dogs didn’t usually go for food offered them by strangers. It didn’t really matter. His dogs were dead and those people were responsible.

After making sure he was out of sight of the pair of dog killing thieves, Clint pulled out his cell phone and called the police.

“Got two people here,” he explained once he gave them his name and address. “They’ve cut the lock, killed my dogs, and are stripping parts from my lot.”

The operator told him to wait for the police, like they always did. Clint just grunted and hung up. With shotgun propped up on his shoulder he made his way over to the woman and young man.

“HEY!” Clint shouted and he smirked as the flashlight jolted this way and that until it landed on him. “YOU’RE TRESPASSING HERE!”

Most people would run for it at this point and Clint was surprised when the woman grabbed hold of her boy and held him in place.

“Police are already on their way, and I’ve seen what you’ve done to my dogs,” Clint told her. “So you’re best off just sitting down and—

“Oh just shut up,” the woman’s voice was dismissive and bored. “Honestly, you’ll get new dogs, a new lock, and we aren’t even taking anything that expensive so go on back to your little shack or wherever you came from.”

Clint couldn’t believe this woman. She was even going back to looking for whatever part she and her boy had come for, leaving Clint standing there in the dark. The boy looked about as nervous as a boy his age in that situation ought to look, but the woman…the woman looked like she didn’t have a care in the world.

The lights for the yard were connected to a smart switch and with a few swipes on his phone he brought them all on. The woman and the boy blinked in the sudden light for a moment and Clint used the time to his advantage. He took aim with his shotgun and steadied himself.

“GET DOWN, NOW!” He shouted.

The boy dropped at once but again the woman just waved him away as if he were an annoying fly.

Clint fired.

The woman shrieked as a windshield to her side shattered from the bean bag’s impact. Clint ejected the shell and loaded another.

“I said, GET DOWN!”

This time the woman, rather than looking indifferent, looked incensed.

“How dare you!” She cried, “Do you realize I could have been injured?”

“Lady,” Clint replied, “You’re on my land, killed my dogs, and thanks to the lovely laws in this area I can shoot you where you stand and the police won’t bat an eye.”

This time the woman hesitated. She looked from her boy on the ground to Clint and then over towards the gate. He figured she was wondering how fast she could make it to her car and whether or not Clint would be able to track her. She obviously wasn’t too concerned about leaving her boy behind.

“Last time, lady, now get down!”

In a flash she dug her hand into her pocket and was halfway up with something shining when Clint pulled the trigger once more, this time aiming straight at her chest.

The thump and muted gasp were followed by the woman staggering backyard, hands to her chest, and falling to the ground. She’d be fine, though she may have a few bruised or broken ribs. On the ground by where she used to be standing was a small pistol. She’d dropped it when he shot her.

“You were looking at trespassing, breaking and entering, theft, and killing my three dogs as far as charges were concerned,” Clint said calmly as he strode over to where she lay on the ground. “Now you’re going to have attempted murder on that list.”

The woman’s eyes were wide and tears were streaking down her face. Her hands still clasped at her chest and she gaped wordlessly. Clint looked over to where the young man still lay on the ground. He wasn’t moving, which wasn’t that unusual for the situation. However, there was a pea sized hole in the back of his head and blood was slowly pouring out of it.

Clint’s eyes grew wide and he rushed to the boy. He didn’t know the first thing about treating a gunshot wound. As best he could guess, the woman’s gun had gone off and struck her boy. The luckiest of unlucky shots.

He pulled his phone back out and hit redial.

“It’s Clint again,” he said at once, “at Clint’s scrapyard. The trespassers were a woman and her boy, she pulled a gun on me, but her shot went wide and she shot her boy instead. He’s been hit in the back of the head and isn’t responsive and I don’t feel any pulse. I plugged her with a bean bag shot from my shotgun as she was pulling her gun. She’s down but alive.”

The operator acknowledged the information and let him know an ambulance was on its way along with the police.

Clint glared over at the woman. She was still struggling to recover from the bean bag shot.

“You’ve gone and killed your boy!” Clint growled. “Wasn’t enough to come here and kill my dogs and try and steal my stuff. You had to go and try and kill me too, and for what? You needing parts all that badly? So hard up for cash?”

She didn’t respond.

A few minutes later the police and paramedics were there. The woman was carted away, her injuries being relatively minor. Her boy was pronounced dead at the scene.

Clint couldn’t believe it, even after all the police and paramedics had left. They’d taken his statement and he’d given them copies of the footage from his security cameras. They even took his dogs as evidence, probably to see if they were shot by the woman’s gun as well.

With everything that had happened, he expected it to be much later in the morning but as he walked back into his home and checked the clock, it was barely two o’clock. He slung his shotgun back onto its rest on the wall and flopped into bed.

It was still too hot. The curtains in front of his open window were still as limp as they had been before. Outside his window the bugs continued buzzing, continued bumping into the window screen, and he missed hearing the sounds of his dogs padding along outside, howling to the distant trains.