He was back on stand at four thirty, and he remained until the light was too poor to shoot by. It was big odds against. He didn't see anything, but it had been worth a try.
He showered carefully that night and rinsed himself under clear water a long time. He had his wife run a set of clothes twice through the washing machine while he boiled leg traps in a couple of roasting pans.
He picked the traps out with tongs and when they were dry he pulled on rubber gloves and dropped them into plastic bags, twisted the ends closed. In the morning he dabbed himself with doe tallow. It stank, but it would mask any of his own, human odor that lingered. On Claypipe, he put on the gloves again and set and staked the traps burying them under a thin layer of loose soil and leaves. He wired bait alongside them, mostly hunks of beef, but three live chickens too.
Over the next week he caught some raccoons and skunks, and one badger.
A foraging squirrel had stepped on a pan and been cut in half by the jaws. He didn't see anything else.
Trudging up the hollow with his chain saw one morning in the second week, he stopped and cocked his head. The usual racket of the woods (and it was a racket if you knew how to listen to it) was greatly muted. He listened, and the absence grew as loud in his ears as a diesel taching up, and the hairs on his neck lifted and he smiled and lengthened his stride, devouring the ground. Buddy, of Buddy, of Buddy has caught himself a prize.
It was the third trap in, a chicken-bait trap, at the edge of a vine and briar thicket, shadowy in the murky dawn, a few stars still visible, the sky a low soiled overcast.
He stopped and squinted.
He had one.
A gray dog, maybe fifty pounds.
It was caught by the left hind leg. It had pulled back from Stokes' approach the length of the stake-chain. It stared at Stokes, unmoving.
It was panting, saliva dripped from its tongue.
"Your ass is mine!" Stokes said.
The dog pulled against the chain.
The Browning was back at the truck, racked across the cab's rear window. He had a sharp Buck knife sheathed at his hip, but he'd take a couple of bad bites before he could do the job with that.
He knelt, primed the saw and jerked the cord. It caught right away-Buddy kept his machines and tools in fine condition. He hit the trigger, revving it up, and the roar filled the valley. The toothed chain rocketed around the edges of the bar.
The dog lunged against the trap.
Stokes advanced. He revved the saw in bursts, showing his white even teeth.
Bone poked through the raw flesh of the dog's leg where the trap had bit.
Unable to escape, the animal twisted back to face Stokes. Its lips wrinkled from its teeth. Stokes set his legs and pressed the trigger down. The saw screamed. In a unified motion, he threw one foot forward to take his weight, he crouched and swung the saw in an arc from left to right. The dog bit at it. Its tongue and lower jaw were ripped apart in a spray of blood and teeth. The dog went over backward. It thrashed upright to face Stokes again.
Its eyes were insane. Stokes doubled the saw back. The animal threw itself away, nearly pulling its broken leg apart. Stokes went after it. The saw chewed into the back of its skull-and Stokes' neck exploded in fire. He was knocked sprawling.
The gray bitch had reached the chicken first. It squawked and beat its wings and jumped in a circle. The bitch went after it. Something erupted from the ground. It seized her leg and she fell yowling. The spotted dog leapt past her and killed the chicken. The bitch twisted around biting at the thing that held her leg. Orph charged and bit it too, but only once: it had no life. The gray whimpered. The pack gathered around her. They sniffed, they pawed at the earth, uncovering the chain. The black and the dun licked solicitously at the blood on the gray's leg. Orph frowned, tried to comfort her with his tongue on her face. The pack circled uneasily. Now and then one of them would lie down next to the bitch, or draw off looking over its shoulder barking for her to follow, returning after she'd jerked futilely at the chain, whining. They lay down with their heads between their paws and watched her. She groaned. They made little sounds of anxiousness.
Orph got up and paced back and forth. He wanted to be gone. He could feel the danger in his chest. He chewed on the chain, transforming his repugnance for the taste of metal into anger at the thing. The bitch pled to him with whines.
The metal would not give. He lay close to the bitch and brooded. The black dog prowled restively. The woods tensed around them.
Orph smelled a human. He didn't understand how, but he knew the human had done this. It upset him to have been bested, and it made him apprehensive.
He swiveled the cups of his ears. He scented deeply. The human came with menace.
He led the dun and the spotted and the black bellying into the brush.
They waited, watching, with their ears flattened. The gray strained toward the thicket. Then she went still. Footfalls sounded. She turned to face them.
Orph winced when the great chattering noise began. The others crawled backward and shifted unhappily, wanting to flee, waiting for Orph to lead them off.
Orph sprang to his feet: the man was killing the bitch.
Orph bounded from the thicket and went up in the air. His teeth sank high, in the neck, and his weight slammed into the man's back.
Stokes fell atop his saw. It chopped into the meat of his thigh. He screamed and threw himself off. The motor died, he heard vicious snarling, there were spikes in his neck. He struggled to his knees and rammed his elbow back hard, once, twice, driving the bony point against hard flesh.
The spikes jerked loose. Stokes somersaulted forward and came up on his feet, spinning to face the dog. A big shepherd, almost on him again. He kicked hard. The dog seized his boot. The pressure was great, but the heavy leather stopped the teeth. Hopping, Stokes grabbed his knife from the sheath. The shepherd took him on the shin.
Stokes shouted in pain. He swung the knife blindly. He was struck on the hip by another animal and knocked over the shepherd. The blade cut nothing but air. Black dog on his hip.
Tooth grinding on bone. Another animal tore into his forearm. Knife, hold onto the fucking knife! Oh God! A fourth dog slashed at his side.
"An-yahl" Stokes flung the spotted dog from his arm and heaved to his feet, the teeth of the others tearing down through his flesh.
"Goddamn you!" he roared. He stabbed with the knife, hammered down with his clenched fist. His cry went rolling up the mountainsides.
The shepherd came into his side and he went down in agony. The shepherd cracked a rib apart and bit again. They were all over him.
Stokes chopped the black with the knife. The blade plunged into the black's neck. The black snarled and bit Stokes' elbow. Stokes screamed. His hand jerked open, losing the knife. The black released him, twisted and snapped at the knife embedded in its neck, then lunged back. Stokes' vision filled with teeth and gaping red mouth. He threw his hands up but the black had him, and Stokes squeezed his eyes shut in terror, his hands bunching the black's ruff and skin. The black tore his cheek away and split his nose, came again and ripped scalp off. The shepherd ground through the biceps of his left arm and the arm fell useless and the shepherd bit into his chest.
Shrieking, Stokes found the knife with the fingers of his right hand and pulled it free. The dun buried her teeth in his armpit and the knife fell from his hand. He clawed in the dirt for it, throwing his head from side to side trying to slip the black. His genitals were savaged. He choked on vomit. He rolled over, pinning a dog beneath him that bit into his belly.
He rolled again, madly, with a high pulling, and the dogs went with him, ripping. The spotted tore off an ear. The black vi sed his face and crushed his cheekbones. The dun opened his belly. Stokes flopped across the ground, threw off the spotted and blindly-his mind shrunk to a functionless pea-got the black's ear and wrenched the dog from his face. He pulled to a sit, flailing with his right arm. Orph hit his throat and tore it open. Blood fountained. Orph crushed through the larynx. Stokes went up on his knees, then his torso bent forward until his forehead touched the ground, and he stayed arched that way, his lungs convulsing against the blood flooding into them and coughing it out in thick drops and explosive mists through his opened throat and his mouth and nose. Orph bit into his back. Stokes fell face down on the soddening earth.