The streets bustled with commotion. Horse-drawn carriages wheeled down the brick roads between rows of buildings, some teeming with customers, some filled with eating humans. In the park, clusters of families ate, laughed, or played together with pets. All was peaceful and happy. Speaking of the park, in the bushes not far from the main human hang out spots, a big black and brown dog with small, wicked looking eyes lay watching something. What Buster was watching was a small black and white Siberian husky mix, a pup, wearing a milky blue bandanna that matched his blue eyes. The pup was concentrating hard on a family sitting at one of the popular picnic tables enjoying food. The pup was inching forward on his white stomach, trying to stop his mouth watering at the sight of the turkey they were about to enjoy. Easy, Stray, easy, it’s just food, get it right this time, just a turkey…just a succulent, perfectly cooked, mouth-wateringly delicious… The pup, Stray, could not keep his thoughts from trailing into the La-la land of meat. Shaking his head hard, Stray tried to keep his eyes on the people, or the vegetables surrounding the warm, juicy, tender— “Kid!” growled a low voice from the bushes about three yards behind him. Stray chanced a look over his shoulder. Buster narrowed his beady eyes and sighed. The husky nodded as if his role model had said some instruction, then turned and tried even harder to focus. Bracing his legs, he shot out from behind the tree. Springing lightly, he scrabbled, not very gracefully, onto the table. The humans gave cries of dismay and one adventurous child tried clumsily to grab him. Startled and bewildered, Stray dodged hands and also loud sounds, such as the hollering of one kid, the bellowing of fury from the man, and the laughs and giggles from the toddler who was still trying to get at him. “Get the chicken! Kid! Liberate the chicken!” called Buster, woofing and grabbing a turkey bone from the family in question’s old Golden Retriever pet. Chuckling, he trotted back to the bushes, lay down with his back to Stray and the chaotic family, and gnawed contentedly at his bone. Minutes later, Stray came pounding up, panting for breath around the small leg he had managed to grab. Dropping it, he panted. “Oh, man, I screwed up again.” He grumbled, pointed ears flopping in disappointment. Despite this, the husky glanced hopefully at Buster, wondering whether he’d be praised, rebuked, or ignored. “D-Did I pass the test, Buster?” Buster lifted his head. “Nah. Y’ain ‘t got the right stuff yet, kid.” Standing, he shoved the bone he’d stolen to the back of his mouth and picked up Stray’s too. The big mix began walking coolly away, tossing up one of the bones and smoothly catching it in his mouth again as he went. Stray followed, still panting and his curly, fluffy tail drooping. “Aw, man.” He muttered again. The two ownerless street dogs plodded down the dusty road, Buster’s long legs giving him an equally long stride so that Stray had to scramble to keep up. He was used to Buster’s not slowing down and didn’t question it. There were a lot of things he’d grown used to and no longer noticed about Buster since he freed the mutt from a pile of junk in the very same junkyard they were headed for now. Stray remembered the chaotic night on the Fourth of July when he had lived in the pound. Of course, you couldn’t really call 9 weeks a life, but for a pup his age, in a big wide world, it was a long time. Unfortunately, how big can the world be when you never leave your cage in the pound? Stray nearly bumped into Buster’s hind legs. He had trouble paying attention. But it was hard to take in everything when the biggest commotion he’d had was the night he’d been freed. A Pomeranian and Stray’s hero, or one of them, Tramp, had busted into the pound to ‘liberate’ as Buster said, a pup named Scamp. What a night! Then the very next morning, while he was following the legend and Scamp and the Pomeranian who had freed him, he had seen another of his hero’s, and a legend in itself; The Junkyard! True, it was hard to choose between heroes when one buries the other in a heap of garbage, but Stray was proud of himself for not following the Tramp, a house pet and sticking behind to dig out Buster. Now he was a legend in training, as the husky pup liked to think of himself. Stray stuck his nose in the air and puffed out his narrow chest, closing his eyes and feeling full of himself for a minute. They were nearly to the Junkyard, as evening bore down on them, and they were stepping off of a brick road to cross the railroad tracks when Stray saw her. The fast little pup had been trailing Buster as they passed the old water tower, and his eye caught a dog. A female, with gold, bronze and cream fur. She had pretty gray-blue eyes, too. At first she had caught his eye just because she looked a bit like the Pomeranian that had freed him, but when Stray looked again, his jaw dropped. He stopped cold, one foreleg still raised in mid-walk in the middle of the train tracks. “Wwoooww…” he breathed, unable to take his eyes off of the beautiful female. She was trotting towards the water tower, a ratty scarf dangling from her neck and bouncing against her fluffy chest as she went. Stray watched her, star-struck. Suddenly a loud horn blared in his ear. Stray turned his head and snapped out of it. Buster was already across the tracks and headed for the pipe that went into the Junkyard, but the husky pup wasn’t looking at that. He was looking at the train driving right towards him!

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