One of the people started talking. She said her name was Mandy and the other person was her boyfriend Jake. They were on their way to Florida to work in the orchards picking fruit to earn money to live on.

They were only sixteen years old, just kids really, and had run away from their homes in Texas because they wanted to find some adventure and start a life of their own without the nagging of parents. They knew the police were probably looking for them so they had to stay pretty much out of sight and getting lost among the hundreds or maybe even thousands of migrant workers they felt would be pretty safe for them.

Jake's old car had never run very good but it had got them out of Texas and into Arkansas. The problem was, the car had died and they had been camped here a couple of days trying to decide what to do.

Mandy said she had not been asleep all the way when Moonbeam had crept into the camp last night and once she saw it was a dog and not some wild animal after the leftovers from dinner, she had placed the plate out for her in the hopes that she would stick around and become friends.

Having a dog, even a small dog like her along would greatly increase their feeling of security. Moonbeam was thinking, "Fine, whatever, is there anything else to eat"?

They had decided to pack whatever they could carry and hike about a mile to the Southeast where there was a long uphill grade with train tracks and try to hump a freight train east. They would be leaving with the coming night and she was welcome to come along.

They had been hiding in the trees a few feet from the train tracks for hours waiting for a freight train to come along. They were about halfway up the incline figuring the train would be going it's slowest as it topped the rise and they could climb into an open boxcar relatively easily as at this point the train would be barely moving before it started to pick up speed as it started downhill on the other side.

Moonbeam was in Mandy's knapsack with her head sticking out. Mandy had worked with her all afternoon showing her that she had to be carried in the sack because Mandy would need both of her hands free to climb aboard the boxcar as it passed. Moonbeam had been afraid at first, remembering the other sack, but Mandy was gentle although persistent explaining to her that it was the only way she would be able to get on the train with them without getting hurt.

It was a cold night and actually being in the knapsack was fairly warm, and at least she could stick her head out where she could breathe. Just before dawn, the rails started singing and far down in the valley they could see the headlight as a train snaked it's way around a wide curve and started the long ascent uphill. Gathering their belongings, they prepared to jump into the first open boxcar that presented itself.

Mandy and Jake had been working picking winter oranges in a large orchard outside of Tyron, Florida for about a week. It paid twenty cents a bushel and was very hard backbreaking work. There was no automation in these fields; they would spend most of the day high up on a ladder clearing the tops of the trees. That's where all the rookies started.

Between them, they only cleared about twelve dollars a day and this was barely enough to see to their basic needs. Somehow, after three and a half months and a half dozen camps, their idealistic dreams were becoming slightly faded.

Moonbeam always stayed near the tree they were working on, looking up and watching them. As the long day wore on, their hands would start to cramp up and they would lose their grip on the oranges and they would fall to the soft sand mat the trees grew in. These were easy pickings for the ground pickers and they went from tree to tree and filled their baskets with the "drops" of the other pickers, which was a lot easier than climbing ladders.

All except for the tree that Mandy and Jake were working on. When they came around to collect the drops from their tree, Moonbeam would warn them in no uncertain terms that they were to leave well alone and go on about their thievery somewhere else.

When her friends dropped an orange, she would gather it up and place it in a pile so they could claim them at the end of the day to add to their amount. The first time one of her friends had dropped an orange, Moonbeam tried to catch it and learned the hard way how heavy and solid these oranges were. It hit her on top of the head and knocked her cold. When she came to, Mandy was cradling her and crying because she thought the orange had killed her.

From then on, she made sure the orange hit the sand and had come to a complete stop before she picked it up and took it to her pile. Of course, the first orange to fall after she had been cold cocked she attacked with a vengeance of righteous indignation just to show it she was still the boss here on the ground.

They made their camp in a clump of woods close to the orchard where they worked. There was always a small store close by where their daily pay would get them some canned food and sometimes even a treat. They shared their meager fare with Moonbeam and in the cool evenings, Moonbeam usually slept up under Mandy's chin. Mandy would cry in her sleep sometimes, and when she did, Moonbeam would always snuggle up a little closer and give her cheek and neck licks until her sobbing stopped.

When they had to move on, they always jumped a freight train to a new area where harvesting was still in progress. Moonbeam would sit in the open boxcar door and bark joyfully at passing trees, or animals or cars or people. Sometimes Jake would join her and they would both be barking at everything that passed.

After five months of this life, the bright silver dream was tarnished to a deep black despair. Jake wanted to go home but Mandy thought they should stick it out for a while longer-it had to get better. When they argued like this Moonbeam would always stay away from them. Sometimes these arguments got very loud and this distressed her very much.

This was not the adventure they had thought it would be; it was nothing like the movies and the television shows. Reality has an awful way of leaping up and biting a person very hard. The whole argument became academic, however, when Mandy discovered she was pregnant.

Sadly, Mandy dropped a dime and called her parents. She told them where they were, their situation and that she and Jake were ready to come home-would they please help them.

About an hour later, the Sheriff's car pulled up and the field boss pointed Mandy and Jake out to him. The Sheriff approached them and told them that Mandy's father had called and would be there in a couple of days as he would be driving and had requested that they be taken into protective custody until both of their parents could get there.

Resigned to the inevitable, they went to get in the police car, Mandy reached down to pick up Moonbeam to take her along when the Sheriff stopped her saying that she couldn't take the dog and he would call animal control to come and get it.

Mandy then refused to get in the car without her friend and the Sheriff had to physically and forcefully place her in the back seat where Jake was already sitting. Seeing her struggling with the Sheriff, Moonbeam took this as an aggressive action to Mandy and in a blur of motion raced forward and sank her teeth into the Sheriff's leg.

The Sheriff howled, pushed Mandy into the back seat, slammed the door shut and pulled his nightstick to brain this aggressive little dog. He kept swiping his nightstick and Moonbeam kept dodging and running in like a streak of lightning and biting again. The Sheriff finally threw his nightstick at Moonbeam, barely missing and went for his handgun.

Mandy and Jake were both screaming "Run Little Girl, run!" so without hesitation Moonbeam took off for the shelter of the woods as fast as she could. She heard a crack behind her and something went whistling over her head.

Another crack and part of a tree to her right that she was just passing exploded into splinters. She entered the tree line still at a dead sprint and kept going, not looking back. She ran until she was ready to drop, and exhausted finally stopped, panting heavily trying to catch her breath.

Not knowing what else to do, after she caught her breath, she just continued straight on through the underbrush. She would circle back later and try and pick up Jake and Mandy's scent and follow them wherever they had been taken.

As she rounded a large stump she froze. She was staring directly into the yellow and green malevolent eyes of a noisy tail, coiled to strike. She saw the blur of the attack and the extended dripping fangs aimed right at her neck.