good dog.”
As he continued to sweet-talk the retriever, it ceased growling. Its bushy tail
wagged once, twice, tentatively.
“That’s a good boy,” he said slyly, coaxingly. “That’s better. You and I can be
friends, huh?”
The dog issued a conciliatory whine, that familiar and appealing sound all dogs
make to express their natural desire to be loved.
“Now, we’re getting somewhere,” Travis said, taking another step toward the
retriever with the intention of stooping and petting it.
Immediately, the dog leaped at him, snarling, and drove him back across the
clearing. It got its teeth in one leg of his jeans, shook its head furiously. He
kicked at it, missed. As Travis staggered out of balance from the misplaced
kick, the dog snatched the other leg of his pants and ran a circle around him,
pulling him with it. He hopped desperately to keep up with his adversary but
toppled and slammed to the ground again.
“Shit!” he said, feeling immeasurably foolish.
Whining again, having reverted to a friendly mood, the dog licked one of his
hands.
“You’re schizophrenic,” Travis said.
The dog returned to the other end of the clearing. It stood with its back to
him, staring down the deer trail that descended through the cool shadows of the
trees. Abruptly, it lowered its head, hunched its shoulders. The muscles in its
back and haunches visibly tensed as if it were preparing to move fast.
“What’re you looking at?” Travis was suddenly aware that the dog was not
fascinated by the trail itself but, perhaps, by something on the trail.
“Mountain lion?” he wondered aloud as he got to his feet. In his youth, mountain
lions—specifically, cougars—had prowled these woods, and he supposed some still
hung on.
The retriever grumbled, not at Travis this time but at whatever had drawn its
attention. The sound was low,, barely audible, and to Travis it seemed as if the
dog was both angry and afraid.
Coyotes? Plenty of them roamed the foothills. A pack of hungry coyotes might
alarm even a sturdy animal like this golden retriever.
With a startled yelp, the dog executed a leaping-scrambling turn away from the
shadowed deer trail. It dashed toward him, past him, to the other arm of the
woods, and he thought it was going to disappear into the forest. But at the
archway formed by two sycamores, through which Travis had come Only minutes ago,
the dog stopped and looked back expectantly. With an air of frustration and
anxiety, it hurried in his direction again, swiftly circled him, grabbed at his
pants leg, and wriggled backward, trying to drag him with it.
“Wait, wait, okay,” he said. “Okay.”
The retriever let go. It issued one woof, more a forceful exhalation than a
bark.
Obviously—and astonishingly—the dog had purposefully prevented him from
proceeding along the gloomy stretch of the deer trail because something was down
there. Something dangerous. Now the dog wanted him to flee because that
dangerous creature was drawing nearer.
Something was coming. But what?
Travis was not worried, just curious. Whatever was approaching might frighten a
dog, but nothing in these woods, not even a coyote or a cougar, would attack a
grown man.
Whining impatiently, the retriever tried to grab one leg of Travis’s jeans
again.
Its behavior was extraordinary. If it was frightened, why didn’t it run off,
forget him? He was not its master; it owed him nothing, neither affection nor
protection. Stray dogs do not possess a sense of duty to strangers, do not have
a moral perspective, a conscience. What did this animal think it was, anyway—a
freelance Lassie?
“All right, all right,” Travis said, shaking the retriever loose and
accompanying it to the sycamore arch.
The dog dashed ahead, along the ascending trail, which led up toward the canyon
rim, through thinning trees and brighter light.
Travis paused at the sycamores. Frowning, he looked across the sun-drenched
clearing at the night-dark hole in the forest where the descending portion of
the trail began. What was coming?
The shrill cries of the cicadas cut off simultaneously, as if a phonograph
needle was lifted from a recording. The woods were preternaturally silent.
Then Travis heard something rushing up the lightless trail. A scrabbling noise.