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

the animal and continue the hunt. But the badger, mistaking the dog’s indifference for fear, pressed its supposed advantage and lunged aggressively.

Nearly without thought, and hardly more effort, Max evaded the strike with a turning of his head — darted in — caught the badger at the base of the skull — whip-snapped it back and forth once breaking its neck — and dropped the carcass on the grass.

Max turned back to the track.

The sun was cresting the eastern plain as the dog rounded the bottom edge of a large hill. Birds chirped and whistled and cawed as dark gave way to light. The temperature grew warmer as the sun steadily marched above the horizon. Max arced in big looping swaths, honing in on his prey’s scent, knowing that he was getting closer but stymied by the tricky raccoon’s twisting, winding path that switched from rocks, to trees, to bushes, to streams.

The raccoon was amply proving that it was an old hand in the art of retreat and escape and had used all its wiles to evade any possible pursuer. It constantly changed terrain and kept continuously on the move, tricks that in the past had always overcome its foe’s superior speed and strength.

Other predators would have given up, but there was no quit in Max.

The game continued on for another three hours. Max lapped water from the trickling brooks and small pools left from recent rains.

The sun was high in the sky now, burning a hole through the mile high atmosphere to beat down hard on the thick coat of Max’s fur. Its light blondish red color helped a little, as did the long lean musculature of his frame. But tracking was hard work and he was feeling the heat. Like all canines, he preferred to hunt at night.

The trail had started to the west, moved north, traversed hills and valleys, crossed boulders and scrub, turned back to the east and then south and finally back to the west, until Max was nearly back where he had started, the house less than a thousand yards to the east and perhaps a hundred yards higher in elevation.

The raccoon ambled out from a scramble of bushes fifteen yards upwind from Max. He walked on his back legs, like a hunchbacked old man shuffling slowly along his way. The bright orange tennis ball was clutched tightly against his chest between two hairy little paws.

It turned, examining its back trail and stopped still when it saw Max. The raccoon slowly moved its eyes down to the ball, hunched over it protectively, then looked to a stand of trees a few hundred feet to the south, measuring the odds of escape.

Max blurred into motion, striking with such speed and power the smaller animal had no chance. The blunt trauma of the impact stunned the creature into a coma-like state of shock. Max stood with it hanging limply between his jaws, as he spotted the car driving up toward the house.

Max could snap the raccoon’s neck with barely a thought, the thick muscles of his jaws capable of rendering the spinal column a pulpy mass of splintered shards.

The raccoon, now fully awake, swiveled its eyes to the dog’s, sensing its fate. It looked back at the ball in its tight little fists, weighing the worth of the stolen prize against that of its own life. It looked back at Max and then the big, round eyes lowered and it released its grip. The bright orange tennis ball dropped to the dirt, bouncing twice before coming to rest beside a small tangle of scrub brush.

Submission. Complete and final.

To kill now would be simple, but in the canine world submission was sometimes enough. He tossed the raccoon aside. It hit the dirt and scrub-grass on its shoulder, rolled once, scrabbled to its feet and stood for a second looking at the big dog and the orange round prize that had been so rudely stolen. He gave a final huff, casting his eyes downward and hobbled away like an old bum mourning a broken bottle.

Max had already dismissed the raccoon, his attention on the human coming toward him in the car.

The Alpha. Leader of the pack. The man that had killed the bear and rescued Max from those who captured him. The human who deprived Max of his revenge against the Great Gray Wolf.

Rage burned in his heart.

Ancient imprinting stamped in the genetic DNA of his bloodlines required Max to accept the human as Alpha — for now. But those same genetic drives also pushed him to take control of the pack and could not be ignored forever. Max would be Alpha. His drives, his character traits, his very heritage demanded it.

6

Gil

My house rides the top of a hogback that overlooks C-470 to the east. It affords a spectacular view of Denver and its suburbs. To the west climb the real mountains. Majestic peaks that stab at the sky proudly. I own the entire hogback. I got it for a great price from a gazillionaire client I helped a few years ago. He decided to move out of state, too many bad memories here, and sold it to me way below value. I set up a shooting range on the west side of the slope and an obstacle course thirty yards to the north, complete with a climbing wall and repelling tower. They help keep me in shape. The house itself isn’t that big, 1500 square feet, but Marty, he’s the one who built and sold me the place, attached an enormous garage for his R.V., with about twice the space of the house and a fifteen foot ceiling. I turned a good chunk of the garage into a weight room and added a sauna and steam bath.

It’s a nice place to retreat and rest. The only hard part is getting to the house. The driveway starts at the bottom of the mountain and shoots up at a steep incline. That’s the easy part. It gets steeper