Robert Calder - The Dogs

Orph's hackles rose and fell with the surge of his apprehension. He growled at the woods.

He cast for scents with deep breaths. The black and the spotted circled with his unease.

The bitch started up the slope with Loki in her mouth. Orph went beside her, their shoulders brushing. The black and the spotted followed.

They climbed for the better part of an hour. Loki was unhappy carried thus.

It was uncomfortable and affronted his dignity. He struggled. The bitch growled around him and hurt him enough to make him stop. She'd never done that before. He was frightened and took it seriously. He remained worried and subdued when she finally set him down and dug out a small burrow in the spongy earth in the center of a tangle of dead, rotted trees.

Orph stalked about while the bitch finished the burrow and pushed the pup into it. She punished the pup, to keep it there. They went back down and the bitch ferried another pup.

On the low ground, as they made their third trip down, they ran up against a wall of human scent, thick with blood hunger. They stopped abruptly and filled their lungs with it. The bitch whined. They were seized by a powerful urge to flee, but that was not possible.

Orph led them forward, into the terrible storm of that scent, crushing his unwillingness.

They approached with excruciating slowness, placing their paws with careful delicacy, bellying the last few yards until they could look over a brushy bluff, through the leaves, down into the clearing.

The men and guns were there, close to the den.

The bitch whimpered.

They waited, tongues hanging out and drops of saliva falling from them to the ground, muscles spasming.

It was hardly bearable.

The bitch moaned. She slipped away. Orph went tensely to his feet.

The black and the spotted sprang up. They watched the bitch work her way down closer to the clearing. She stood a long time behind a brush growth, sides heaving. Then she lunged, was in the open for an instant, and behind cover again.

Crr-ack! Crr-ack!

Orph jerked with the shots.

He watched the bitch wait. She scented and listened for pursuit. But the men remained in the clearing. She worked her way further around, exposed herself again, and again was fired upon. Once more she waited for the men to come after her.

She went down on her stomach and lay watching in torment. She twitched. A man approached the den. She jumped to her feet. Her hair lifted. Her tail stiffened.

The pups began to wail. The bitch stepped forward. The men had a pup.

The pup screamed.

The bitch pulled her lips back from her teeth and crashed out of the bushes toward the clearing.

"There!" Laughlin slammed the rifle butt to his shoulder:

C'rr-ack!

Tyndall dropped the pup and brought up his own rifle. The bitch was charging down an incline.

The other troopers had their guns up.

Crr-ackl Crr-ack! Ka-powl Crr-ack! Ka-powl Crr-ackl Slugs tore up dirt around her. She came headlong into them.

A slug burned her side.

A slug hit her in the chest and hurled her around. She wobbled, and came on.

Ka-powl Ka-pow! Crr-ackl Her shoulder exploded and she cartwheeled.

Ka-powl Ka-powl She was hit in the hip. A slug went through her body and punched out a splinter of rib when it exited.

Crr-ack! Crr-ack!

She struggled up and staggered forward.

She was hammered down.

Gunfire rattled, empty brass cartridge cases clinked against stone.

Slugs thudded into her, gouged the dirt and pinnnnged off stone.

She writhed. She choked on her own blood. She bit into the dirt.

Ka-powl Ka-powl One cop dropped his empty rifle, grabbed his service revolver, and cut loose with it.

The bitch's muscles tightened, she humped up, belly lifting from the ground, back toes curling under, teeth in the dirt, then toppled over on her side and didn't move again.

Several more shots sounded. The firing stopped. The reports rolled echoing up the mountains, dissipating slowly.

Tyndall walked up the incline and stood looking down at the dead, mutilated bitch. The policemen pressed in around him. They were excited and jittery.

"You boys are real good," Tyndall said.

"Goddamn. We sure rolled her."

"You better keep a watch," Tyndall said. "There's three more and they might be in the air comin' for your back right now."

The cops tightened.

Tyndall lowered himself stiffly to a squat. He reached out a veiny, liver spotted hand and rested it on the bitch's head. He patted her head gently.

The officers were reloading. Tyndall didn't have to. He hadn't fired.

Far off to the side, came a long wavering howl.

The officers spun. Two fired at nothing.

Moments later, there was a thin snapping of a branch.

"They're gone," Tyndall said.

"How do you know?"

"Because an animal understands. Not like a thought, and he couldn't put it into words even if he could talk, but he understands all the same. There isn't any reason for them to stay now."

"What about the pups?"

"They were hers. And there's nothing they can do for them now.

Nothing," he challenged. "Right?"

They went back to the clearing. Laughlin dragged the bitch by her tail. One of the other officers took out his flashlight and revolver and crawled into the den so that only his buttocks and legs were visible. The shots were dull and smothered.

When he tossed out the first small, ruptured carcass Tyndall turned and walked into the woods.

"Hey!" Laughlin called. "Where are you going?"

Tyndall didn't respond. The foliage closed behind him.

"It's gonna get dark soon," Laughlin shouted. "We need help getting out of here."

Tyndall didn't bother answering.

The heavy bike required strength. It collapsed a log he was going over and jammed itself in the pulp and he had to haul it out with brute force.

Balance demanded muscle strain. Sometimes the angle was too steep and he had to walk alongside the bike, engine throttled low, the bike half-pulling him up, he half-wrestling it to keep it from toppling over backward.

Thickets were broader and denser than they first appeared and he had to stop and bull back the way he'd come. The rugged ground jolted the butt of his spine, put sudden, painful strains on the muscles of his back and shoulders; his kidneys began to ache. Draws narrowed into crevices too steep to climb and had to be backtracked. Sheer cliff faces caused long circling. Leaf-filled holes dropped his front wheel without warning. Once he was pitched over the bars and landed hard on his back, the air rushing from his lungs. A pile of stones skittered from beneath the tires and threw the bike sideways on him, pinning his leg. Nothing broke, but his thigh was badly bruised and the leg stiffened in the next hour and was painful to move. He reached the summit as the sun came to rest on the peak of a mountain to the west.

He was sweaty, grimed, and tired.

Shadows seemed to leap across the ground. The sun disappeared. He had an hour of deepening twilight before night was full. Out of the warmth of the sun, and no longer expending energy, the sweat began to dry chillingly on his skin. He changed his damp shirt for a dry one. He took the.270 from its scabbard, made sure the safety was on, and propped the rifle against the fork of a tree branch. He swung out the cylinder of the revolver to check that the chamber beneath the hammer was empty. Hurrying in the thickening darkness, he cut spruce branches to lay beneath his sleeping bag and gathered firewood.

He fixed food when the fire burned down to cooking embers, then boiled water for coffee.

The partial moon was unremarkable. Intermittent clouds obscured the moon and stars. The blackness was dense. He built the fire up, creating a small capsule of light in which he sheltered from the black void that surrounded him, that lay over the earth and mountains as far as he could see, deeper than the sky, a smothering blanket pierced with uncertain temerity by occasional house and cabin lights in the thin valleys that spread like spokes far below him.