They pulled out dripping mouthfuls of flesh and gut. The spotted dog joined them. Blood fountained from the calf's throat. Orph and the black went to the belly with the others. They shoved their snouts deep and fed greedily. The black and gray came out holding opposite ends of the same bloody chunk. They tore it in half and gulped down, went in again. Massive convulsions wracked the calf, its legs beat weakly.
Homer McPhee was applying a poultice to an abscess on a cow in the main pasture when the uproar reached him. He'd never heard anything like it before, but he knew it was the sound of mortal dread. He ran up the small hill between the two pastures. The calves were 400, 450 pounds now and he'd separated them from the cows to wean them last week.
He topped the hill and looked down with shock to see one of them bloodied and standing on wobbling legs under attack by a pack of dogs.
His mouth gaped. The calf went down. The dogs swarmed over it.
Homer balled his hands into fists and raised them over his head and bellowed. The dogs were tearing bloody pieces from the calf and gobbling them down. Homer grabbed a fist-sized rock from the ground, kicked another one free of the soil and picked it up, ran down the side of the hill screaming, "I'll kill you, you bastards, I'll kill you!" A length of thick branch lay in his path. He dropped a rock and snatched up the branch. He reached the fence, threw himself on his stomach and rolled under it.
He was two hundred yards to the slaughter. He ran it blindly, furiously.
The dogs didn't see him. He skidded to a stop and hurled the rock. It thudded off the side of the dead calf. Orph and the black went still.
The dun bitch and the spotted dog backed from the carcass. The gray dipped down to feed again.
"You fuckin' bastards!" Homer roared. He rushed them. The bitches and the spotted dog ran off a few feet. Orph and the black took a slow step backward. Homer swung the club in a looping blow and caught the black in the side. Ribs cracked and the black toppled over. "Yaahhh!"
Homer screamed in violent, mad triumph. He raised the club again.
Orph hit him, teeth plunging into Homer's forearm. The sudden, crushing pain staggered the boy. He screamed. The branch fell. He couldn't free his arm. The massive German shepherd bore down, digging his feet into the ground and moving backward with a muffled snarl, dragging the boy with him.
Homer was in agony. He sucked breath noisily, the color drained from his face, sweat popped out over his body. He saw the black on its feet, lips skinned back from its teeth. The black growled, then shot forward. Homer shrieked. The black bit into his knee and threw him down. Homer's mind gibbered. He tried to pull his knees up to his stomach and he hunched his head into his shoulders. He kicked at the black, beat at the German shepherd with his free fist. The black was tearing at his legs.
The German shepherd released his arm, and Homer saw the great jaws yawning toward his face. He flung his hands up and the teeth crunched down on them.
Homer fainted.
He was unconscious only a few moments, and when he woke, his eyes snapping open, his bowels and bladder emptying into his underwear, the German shepherd was standing a few feet from him, its teeth showing, a deep rumbling sounding, and the others were tearing meat from the calf.
Homer squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed. His body shook. The German shepherd snarled. The sound of the feeding stopped. It was quiet several moments. Homer's lids lifted slowly, despite his will. The German shepherd was trotting off toward the fence bordering the trees.
The other dogs were following in a file.
They disappeared into the woods.
Homer lay still, afire with pain, his mind incapable of thought. He was crying. He performed the impossible task of sitting up. His hands were bloody and raw. Jagged ends of tiny white bones showed in the ruin of the right one. His index finger was missing. Dumbly, be tried to stand. His bloody legs shook so violently that he couldn't. He began to crawl in the direction of the house, openmouthed and spasm-wracked, moaning.
Chapter 7
SPIRIT had been roaming. For a while he'd paired with a collie who belonged to a mail carrier (he slept two nights with the collie under the woman's porch, and she fed him) and for a while by himself. He was on the south face of Sproul's Mountain, four or five hours from the Treehouse if he went over the top, seven or eight if he circled around the base. He was tired and he took the longer, easier way.
He grew hungry trotting along the potholed road, so he turned off on a dirt driveway and went up toward a small house with a raw plywood extension. Sensibly, Spirit never put himself to the effort of hunting when there were alternatives. He was facile with garbage cans. He could look endearingly forlorn. A child was playing in a sandbox in front of the house. Spirit stopped discreetly fifty feet away and waited to be noticed. Some humans were definitely not friendly. They chucked rocks at him when he came begging. He'd be off in a flash at the first aggressive move: if he got a smile or a call, he'd rush and roll over and whack his tail on the ground, making himself lovable, and invariably food would follow.
The child glanced up, made a noise and climbed out of the sandbox and ran into the house.
Spirit looked after him in perplexity, but still with hope.
Eileen Jernholz was taping and spackling the new sheetrock John had nailed up in the addition last night. One more wall to sheetrock, then the framing around the windows, sheet vinyl over the subflooring, and it would be done.
The larger of the two new rooms would be for the baby, which was due in three months, the smaller would be a laundry room-she could finally get the washer and dryer out of the cramped kitchen.
Mark ran in. "Mommy there's a dog outside!"
Eileen set the spackling knife aside and wiped her hands on her jeans.
"Where, honey?" Mark was four and overly excitable. She didn't want to send him into hysterics.
She and John had warned him about dogs last week, after that terrible incident with the McPhee boy in Marbleville, which wasn't far. For two days after, he'd refused to go outside without one of them with him.
John was a town constable. He'd seen animals killed by dogs and he'd shot two wild ones last winter that were tearing apart a crippled deer.
He'd instructed Eileen clearly and unequivocally, and she, who had been raised in the mountains, was not a vacillating woman.
She went into the kitchen and looked out the window. She'd never seen this dog. It wore no collar. Its coat was matted and dirty, there were burrs in it. It was not a groomed animal, not a pet.
"Mark, honey," she said. "Go into the living room and turn on the television. Mommy's going outside for a couple of minutes. I'll be right back."
Mark's parents regulated his television time strictly. He was thrilled with this windfall. He dashed into the living room. The set came on, loud.
Eileen took down a double-barreled 20-gauge shotgun from pegs over the door, broke open the breech and dropped two high brass Number Four shells into the chambers. She snapped the gun closed and thumbed the safety off.
A woman came out of the house. Spirit stared at her, searching for a sign.
She pointed something at him. Spirit became confused and anxious; she'd given him no tone of voice to interpret. Her quiet focus unsettled him and he took a step backward.