Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay, Gordon Carroll [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

One with speed, strength, endurance and intelligence that were off the charts.

The wind changed and Max caught a swirl of scent that was there and gone. His sense of smell was thousands of times stronger than a human’s, and even through the screen of dust, exhaust and obliterated vegetation pulled up in the wake of the vehicle and then battered and tattered before being brought to him in fragments riding the shifting currents of the wind, he could discern the unique scent of the lone occupant.

It was the Alpha.

The dog’s heart hardened, his powerful jaws tightening on the throat of the forty pound raccoon held effortlessly in his mouth. The raccoon shuddered, its fear rippling through its body as it gripped tighter the bright orange tennis ball in its black paws. Max ignored the movement and watched the car as it brought the human closer.

The raccoon had stolen the ball when it was still dark outside. The ball was Pilgrim’s toy, it meant nothing to Max. But the house was now Max’s den, the lair of his pack, and no intruder could be allowed to violate its boundaries, to steal its treasures. Ancient genetic imprinting could not be ignored. To tolerate such an act could mean death for the whole pack.

Max had been out hunting until very late, the sun just a few hours from rising. He caught the raccoon’s scent inside the garage and followed it through the pet door into the house. Pilgrim was fast asleep and didn’t awake at Max’s entrance. Pilgrim was bigger than Max, with a thicker build, larger head, more powerful jaw muscles. But Max had killed dogs twice the size of the shepherd and had no fear of him. Pilgrim was old — weak — of little use to the pack.

The raccoon’s small dusty tracks, so much like human hand and footprints, were clearly visible in the dark. Max’s night vision was excellent, ten times that of a human, although the scent was weak here on the tiles of the kitchen floor, a sign that at least a few hours had lapsed since the visit. The animal had crept right up on Pilgrim. If it had been another dog, or a wolf like the Great Gray Wolf that had slain Max’s first pack, Pilgrim would have been helpless. But it had just been a raccoon and so Pilgrim lived.

Toys littered the immediate area around Pilgrim and his bed. Rubber balls, thick rawhide bones, cow knuckles the size of a man’s fist, a knotted rope that Pilgrim and Gil played tug-of-war with. But one thing was missing.

The orange tennis ball.

Max’s head swiveled toward the garage.

Outside, in the dirt and grass, he picked up the trail and started tracking. It was big for a raccoon, heavy, its claws scraping the dirt and flattening plants. An easy trail for even an average dog to follow.

And Max was no average dog.

The raccoon had continued straight for nearly a hundred yards, mostly on two legs but at times dropping to all fours. Four paws were easier to track, more ground disturbance. The track veered to the west, down a steep hill and up another, riding the ridge awhile before dropping down to a small copse of evergreens.

At the base of the tree line Max lost the scent. He quartered back and forth, like a shark scenting blood in the ocean, his nose brushing the earth as he raced about searching for any trace of the animal or disturbed ground. But there was nothing.

The raccoon was old and smart and experienced. And a good part of the reason it had lived as long as it had was its diligence in covering its tracks and making its trail difficult to follow.

Undaunted, Max swooped closer to the trees, dipping beneath their needled limbs to sniff the trunks and low hanging branches, and there, on the fifth tree, he caught the strong odor of sap from fresh slashes in the bark where the raccoon had climbed. Most dogs can’t, or because of fear, don’t, climb trees. Max was as agile as a cat and could jump a wall eight feet high. He scrabbled up onto a branch — another — another — and another. He was nine feet off the ground and he stretched his nose high — scenting — but there was no raccoon smell. He peered up through the darkness of the spiraling branches, straining to catch the slightest of movements. But there was only the gentle sway of the trees as they danced slowly in the wind. The raccoon had escaped. For now.

Hopping down, Max circled the grove.

In the simple, primitive way that Max’s mind worked he knew the raccoon hadn’t vanished; that his trail was here somewhere. And that he would find it. When in full hunt drive, Max was a machine.

Instinctively all his senses focused into a concentrated cone of awareness, searching out the animal with renewed effort. He began to quarter, weaving in ever widening swaths, his eyes cutting through the blackness of night, his ears straining for the faintest of clues, his nose sorting through thousands of layers of molecular scent floating on and above the cool earth.

He picked up the trail about thirty yards west, heading north.

It was fresh.

The raccoon had climbed over a large group of boulders — crossed a small stream — dug through a hedge of thorny bushes.

Max sniffed out a scratch on one of the boulders — caught the scent of fresh mud in the stream — took a nick from a thorn that drew blood over his left eye.

Ignored it.

A rustle sounded from inside a clump of bushes a few yards down the slope. Max charged forward just as a full grown male badger emerged. The boar was nearly thirty pounds and turned just as Max reached him.

The dog stopped as the animal hissed and snarled and backed away. The badger meant nothing to him. Max wasn’t hungry and it hadn’t invaded his den. He turned to move around