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

from there — and curvy — very curvy. With vertical drop-offs the whole way. I’m not afraid of heights, but some of those drop-offs are ridiculous and the driveway is narrow, like one car-width narrow. Thank goodness Marty had it asphalted. How he made it up and down the road in that giant RV of his is beyond me. I get scared driving it in heavy rain, let alone in the snow or ice. Still, the privacy makes it worthwhile. My only neighbor is across the street at the bottom of the hill. You can’t even see his house until you’re almost to the mailbox.

I pulled up outside the garage and shut off the Escalade. It was quiet — spooky quiet. No birds or squirrels or crickets.

Had to be Max.

I couldn’t see him. He’s sneaky that way.

I got out of the car and called for Pilgrim. He popped out from the garage’s doggy door and waited in the sit position, tongue lolling, ears perked, eyes sparkling, barely able to contain himself. His tug-of-war play rope dangled from his jaws.

Pilgrim is thirteen, a German Shepherd from the old Czech Republic.

“Pilgrim, fooss,” I said, using the German command for heel.

He ran straight at me, threw on the brakes as his nose touched my left thigh, jump spun his hips around and came to rest in a perfect heel position beside my left leg. He looked up at me, eyes aglow.

“That’s my boy,” I said in a happy, silly voice. I turned into him and ruffled his big ears. Pilgrim jumped up, his front paws resting on my shoulders, and licked my face. I scrunched his jowls and wrestled playfully with him for a few minutes, grabbing his pull-toy and dragging him around in the dirt in a close game of tug-of-war. Pilgrim growled — a low rumble that sounded like a cross between a T-Rex and the Werewolf’s ugly brother. I let him win in the end, congratulating him with that high-pitched girly voice that dogs respond to so well.

Pilgrim went over to the shade and lay down to chew on the rope.

I felt the hairs hackle on the back of my neck and a chill tickled up and down my spine.

“Hi, Max,” I said. I still didn’t see him, but I knew. I turned and there he stood, twenty feet away — staring. A few drops of blood stained the coat of his chest and the sides of his muzzle.

“Who’d you kill this time?” I asked. He didn’t answer — just continued to stare — like I said — spooky.

He’s only two, but he’s an old two. I got him when he was about fourteen months old. At that age, you can’t always tell if the traits and drives you think you’re seeing are the real thing or just puppy enthusiasm that will fade with age, but I’d taken the chance because the first time I got a really good look at him, his teeth were sunk gum-deep into the neck of a bear. Also, I liked the look in his eyes. The chance paid off (even though I had to shoot a couple of guys to get him).

Max isn’t Lassie or Rin-Tin-Tin; what he is is a loaded weapon, cocked and ready to fire with a hair trigger. He is the best working dog I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. Max, however, isn’t so thrilled with me.

Or anyone else.

He cast a last look in my direction then lifted his back leg and started licking himself.

About the best welcome I could expect from him.

I shrugged my shoulders and went into the house. I poured some food into Pilgrim’s bowl, dumped out the old water and refilled that bowl as well. Max’s bowls were untouched, as always. He hunts his own food and finds his own water. I’ve tried to break him of it, but he just gets grumpy.

I checked my house phone for messages (I know what you’re thinking — who has a land line these days? But hey, I’m old fashioned and I need it for work), saw there were none, and called my friend at VISA. She told me there had been no transactions on Shane Franklin’s Master Card in the last seven days. I thanked her for checking and called my secretary. Yolanda had contacted all the local hospitals and police stations with no luck. I asked her to spread the search to the rest of Colorado. If Shane had run away he might well be out of the state by now, but expanding beyond Colorado’s borders was pretty much useless without at least a possible destination.

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Lisa Franklin. I looked at my watch; it was only twelve-twenty. I wasn’t scheduled to be at her house until two.

She sounded frantic. “I just got home, someone’s been here. Can you come, please? I’m scared.”

I told her I’d be there in twenty minutes and hung up. I went outside and called for Max.

It was time to work.

7

Max

The Alpha gave a command in the native language of the land of Max’s birth. Max’s dog brain didn’t understand German any more than it did English, but it did recognize the pattern of the syllables and the intonations that controlled the flow of the sound of the words.

The conflict always present when close to Gil burned within him. His genetic drive to rule the pack and subordinate to no one versed the knowledge that Gil bested those who bested him, making the human Alpha. Dogs are pack animals and in the pecking order of the pack the alpha dog rules. The only way to wrest control from the pack leader is through combat.

So Max followed by Gil’s side, the desire to attack and assume leadership smoldering within, urging him to strike, but a certain fear kept him at bay, a type of supernatural awe at the human’s ability to outguess him. Max could not actually think in such complex terms, but the gist