The Junkyard by Patricia J. Birtwistle

Keep Out
Chapter 1
There it was again - that dog. Kim stopped. She wanted to run, but her legs would not let her.
“Why?” she was thinking. “Why did I come here? Why didn’t I ask the kids to come with me? They would have come if I had asked them.”
She wanted to yell for help, but she could not. If she did yell, the dog would find her. Then the dog ran past her and she could see how big and dirty it was. It did not look up at Kim. Again Kim kept still. She did not want the dog  to find her in its yard.
“I will just stay here and see if the kids will come looking for me. The dog may go and lie down. The man may come back and take the dog into the shop. Then I could make a run for it.”
As Kim sat on the top of the hill of junk, her blood was running fast. The wind was cool, but she was so upset that she felt weak.
She was mad at herself for coming here without the rest of the kids. Her folks would be upset, and she did not want that. She was just asking for trouble by coming here.
The dog ran up and down. It had not seen Kim. It had the run of the yard. You could tell that it felt that someone was in the yard, but it could not find that someone. It had run past Kim, but had not seen her yet. It just kept running by the pile of junk where Kim sat. If it looked up, it would see her.
“Why is it out?” Kim asked herself. “That dog is not out in the day. We have come here a lot. The man keeps the dog with him in the shop all day. So why is it out now?”
Kim had not seen the gate with ‘KEEP OUT’. The gate was not open. The man who ran that junk yard kept, ‘KEEP OUT’, on the gate when he was not there. He would let the dog out, too. That was why the dog had the run of the yard on this day. Kim had come into the yard the back way. She had not come by the gate and that is how she got herself into this mess.
Kim spotted a stool in the junk. She could not see the dog, so she got it and sat down on it. That was when the dog spotted her and came running over. It came running at her, up the hill of junk to where she was sitting. Kim grabbed junk to pitch at it. That did not stop this dog. It still came at her.
Kim kicked stuff down at the dog. It kept coming at her. She pitched, pushed and kicked a lot of stuff down at the dog. At last the dog stopped. Then, looking up at Kim, it began coming up the hill again - one step at a time.
“Stop! Go! Get out of here,” she yelled at it.
As she was yelling, she was crying. One bit of junk hit the dog. Then a tool that Kim kicked hit the dog and it stopped. The dog made a little cry but it did not back off. It stayed where it was. Now it was mad! The skin was split where the tool hit. Blood began running down the dog’s leg.
When Kim saw that the dog stopped, she stopped pitching stuff. The dog looked up at her and softly said, “Grrrr!”
Then the dog lay down but kept looking up at Kim. She could see blood on the dog’s leg where the tool had hit it. Kim felt sad that she had hurt the dog. Kim liked dogs and she would not want to hurt them. But this dog was after her. She did not want to think of what the dog would do to her if she did not stop it. She had seen the dog before, but now it looked bigger. Kim was thinking that this was the biggest dog she had seen.
As Kim looked down at the dog, she was sobbing, “I did not want to hit you. You are just doing a job. I should not be here. I am the one making the trouble. I should not be here. I just want to get down and get out of here. Will you let me do that? Will you let me get out of here?”
Then she yelled at the dog, “Go! Get out of here! Back off!”
The dog got up. He kept looking up at Kim as the blood ran down its leg. It took one step up to Kim. Then it took one more step. It kept looking at Kim. Kim was sobbing as she got up. She kicked stuff at the dog and kept yelling.  “Get back! Get out of here!”
“Grrrr,” said the dog as he took one more step.