Jon Katz Page 5

  There was the night a stray dog chased Kay Crank’s sheep up into the hills around Hebron. Rose went up into the woods and brought them back. And there was the night Roland Hanks’s cows walked right through his single-strand homemade wire fence and onto Route 22, a busy state highway filled with speeding trucks and cars. That was dangerous, Sam recalled, as the farm’s animals were milling in the road—hard to see at night—and Rose couldn’t round them up without darting onto the road herself.

  Hanks, joked Sam, would never stop talking about how Rose jumped out of the truck, ran the cows into the barn, chased off the hysterical and useless farm dogs, and restored order in minutes. Hanks offered to buy her on the spot, but Sam said she wasn’t for sale.

  Sam felt vindicated, as many farmers liked to ridicule people who paid money for dogs.

  * * *

  TODAY, the farm had its own emergency.

  Rose lifted her nose, raised her eyes, tilted her ears, followed the tracks. She knew right away where the goats would be—up over the crest of the hill and out of sight, foraging for bark and brush, or hiding from the wind. She could almost feel where they were.

  She looked at Sam, who was trying to clear some snow away from the goat pen, and then took off up the hill, through the snow, running and leaping, and plowing through where she had to. It took her a couple of minutes, but soon she crested the hill, reaching a point from which she could no longer see Sam below.

  There, off into the woods on her left, were the three goats, nibbling on the lower branches of some pine trees. They baaed and stirred when they saw her, but Rose knew that goats, unlike sheep, were not flocking animals, nor did they care to be herded. And they neither liked nor feared dogs. Goats were wont to challenge a dog.

  Rose could not manage them with her eyes the way she could the sheep, nor startle them easily like cows. They were smart and stubborn, and they didn’t mind fighting, either, quick to lower their heads and butt, or kick out with their sharp hooves.

  Rose moved around the pine stand to get behind the goats and cut off any flight into the woods, where it might be impossible to push them back out. She had an innate sense of how animals would move, and was always ahead of them in sensing their possible directions. If they broke, Rose was usually waiting for them.

  In her work, Rose was always mindful of Sam, always knew where he was, and always tried to keep whatever animals she was working between her and him.

  Watching her warily, the three goats kept nibbling, almost frantically, on the bark and twigs. Rose crept up behind them until she was a few feet away. She saw they were unnerved by the shrieking wind and by the snow blowing into their eyes, and she worried they might bolt. She sat down and watched, trying to work out how she might move them.

  After a moment, she charged at the goat closest to her, the leader. He turned, then lowered his head quickly and butted her, cracking her on the side of the nose. She yelped, and leapt back.

  He was faster than she had anticipated.

  She paused again, took in the scene, and then moved to the left, shaking off the pain near her eye. She ran alongside his tail and nipped at his side, and as he spun, she bit his haunches. He spun twice, then lowered his head.

  The spinning had confused him a bit, Rose saw. She did it again. Then again. He looked less certain now, less aggressive.

  One of the other goats lowered her head to butt Rose, but waited, cautious about engaging her. Rose gave her the eye, a strong warning look. The third kept eating, watching her nervously. Goats did not act in unison, but Rose knew that these were very attached to one another, and they hated to be alone. They would stay close.

  If she could get one to move, the others should follow. She kept an eye on all of them and didn’t allow herself to be surrounded. Goats had little patience and short attention spans. That was their weakness.

  Rose had lots of patience, and she never quit.

  She backed up, lowered her head, and began barking and growling. Every few seconds, when the male began to nibble on the bark, she would charge at him and bite his shoulder, then spin him again. He was tiring of this. He would rather be eating hay—anywhere—than trying to outmaneuver this determined creature. Rose grasped this. She had to wear him down. He would quit. She wouldn’t.

  The other two were bleating loudly, anxious. She stopped, lowered her head, bared her teeth, barked more insistently. The male came out again to charge at her, but she was well prepared for him now, and he would not get close enough to butt her again. She sidestepped him and turned suddenly, going after the younger female, the most timid of the three.

  That goat cried out, and Rose, making sure she was between her and the shed, leapt forward and bit her on the nose, drawing blood. It was a sensitive spot, and it moved sheep rapidly, but it stunned the younger goat, frightened her. The goat turned, complaining in a loud and shrill way, and then began running in retreat down the hill.

  The other two lifted their heads in confusion, and Rose got behind them and lunged and barked and nipped. She had them. Rose kept at it for a few minutes, and, as she knew would happen, they eventually quit the struggle and tore off after their mate down the hill, toward the safety of Sam, whom they associated with food and the shed that was their shelter.

  They bounded nimbly through the snow over the hilltop, faster than Rose could run through such deep drifts, down to the shed. Sam held the gate open and Rose made her way, steadily and laboriously, down the hill after them, to make sure they felt her silent pressure at their backs.

  Sam closed the gate and, that done, looked up at the renegade cows. Without additional conversation or commands, Rose veered off across the pasture and into the stand of trees where the cows were clustered, mooing and huddling together for warmth, trying unsuccessfully to get out of the wind and snow.

  Rose could see that they needed to get down into the lower pasture as the wind was ferocious at the hilltop. She could already feel the warmth draining from her own body.

  Rose went into a crouch and lay still, watching as Sam made his way through the storm to the lower cow pasture, where he shoveled for a few minutes to make sure the gate was clear. It had been forced open a few feet by the wind-spooked animals, and that was where these cows would have gotten out.

  Rose pursued a different strategy with the cows. Though they were more pliant, cows were also more dangerous than goats, especially when they panicked. Cows could kill a dog with one kick, crack her skull, or trample her. She had been kicked a few times, and she remembered it well. Still, cows were also dumber and slower and much more predictable.

  She lay low to the ground, creeping along slowly. One or two of the cows had noticed her and bellowed, but when she stopped moving, she lost their interest again. Rose waited until Sam had the gate cleared. When he waved his hand and called out to her, her ears tilted to pick up his voice cutting through the roaring wind and snow. “Rose, get the cows here.”

  She moved up two or three feet, then stopped. The cows, sensing her movement, became more anxious now, stirring. She eased forward, then paused again. More bellowing, a bit more confusion. She darted to the left, above the cows, keeping them between her and Sam, as always.

  But she suddenly realized the flaw in her plan: They might run farther up the hill, or to the other side of the pasture since they could move through snow more easily than she could. If they did, it would be difficult to get them back across that distance.

  Rose watched them carefully, reading them, studying them. She thought, in her own way, of a triangle. Sam was below, she was above. In her mind, she chose to put pressure on them to move down, while she made sure to flank them on the left and keep them from going off to the side.

  She zigzagged down and to the left, like a sailboat tacking in the wind. The group moved up a bit, away from Sam, so she changed position, went into an outrun, swung away wide and farther up the hill.

  They stopped moving, shifted back to the shelter of the stand. Rose crept slowly down the hill,
Sam no longer visible in the snow. She waited some time, then padded forward again, as slowly and quietly as she could. Soon she was within a few feet of the cows, which did not know where she was or notice her. She could tell that by their silence.

  Then she leapt forward, bursting out of the bushes above the cows, plowing through a string of icicles and sending them crashing to the ground. Landing right under one of the smaller cows, she jumped up and bit her on the underside, making enough noise and commotion in the process for the cows to think she was a pack.

  The cows were duly frightened and confused. They bolted and bellowed in alarm. They fled the trees and started down the hill, Rose in close pursuit, barking, veering to the left and then back, giving the animals in the rear no opportunity to pause or turn around. She moved so rapidly, it was as if she really were a pack.

  Soon the cows’ own momentum was carrying them onward to familiar ground, and they came rumbling down the hill, slowed only by the snow and biting wind in their faces.

  Sam had thrown some hay out onto the ground, and in a few minutes, the cows were back in the pasture and the gate was closed. Satisfied, Rose and Sam began their walk back through the barn to the farmhouse.

  “Good girl,” he said, appreciative, but also focused on other things. There was still much to do to get the farm ready for the worst of the storm.

  He did lean over and look at her head. Her tongue was long, and she was panting. Her eye was slightly swollen from the goat-butting. The cows had not touched or harmed her, and she had moved them easily enough.

  “You’re okay,” he said.

  An hour later, Sam ventured back out to the barn to try to get his spare generator, broken for more than a year, working again, and also to haul more hay to the animals and see if he couldn’t keep the paths clear.

  While she waited for him, Rose lay down in the snow and wind, and, briefly, closed her eyes.

  SIX

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, IN THE FADING LIGHT, DRIFTS WERE beginning to pile up around the walls and tree trunks and ridges in the ground, and the gusts were so strong they nearly blew Rose off her feet.

  She looked up at the altered landscape, and there was nothing in her memory like it. The farm was at the edge of a valley, wide and open fields for miles, ringed by rolling hills and one or two mountains. None of that was visible now. Rose’s world was blue and white, snow whirling up and down across the pastures, the wind a steady roar now, mist steaming up from the hills as the temperature continued to plunge.

  The wind was disorienting to her. Because of it, everything was moving—snow, tree limbs, drifts—and the roar of the air made it difficult for her to sort out sounds. Still, her senses were gradually adapting, separating the movement of the storm from the things living within it.

  Rose caught a strange scent on the wind. She raised her head, then felt, rather than saw, an animal near the barn that did not belong there. That was not unusual. There were almost always animals of one kind or another for her to keep track of. But as she went to check on the sheep, she picked up a scent of dog, familiar, but closer than usual. She recognized it, and focused on the smell. It was within her territory.

  Now she heard it moving. It was large, but it wasn’t the coyote, nor any other coyote—not before nightfall, not in the storm, not so close.

  Rose, moving behind the farmhouse, had to turn her head out of the wind. The snow was blinding now and she needed to leap over the larger drifts.

  Today she was not surprised, as she might normally have been, to look through the curtain of white and see the old wild dog, sitting by the big barn, patiently, calmly, his coat covered with snow.

  The dog was looking right at Rose, but it was not a challenge, as such looks between dogs often are. His look was plain to her: The wild dog was seeking shelter, asking to come in from the storm. And he was waiting for permission, as a gesture of deference and respect to her. He wouldn’t proceed without her agreement.

  He conveyed to Rose—she saw it in his eyes, body posture, scent, tail, and shoulders—that he could not survive this storm out in the woods. That he was tired, weakening.

  Rose’s eyes met his and she froze for nearly a full minute. Fifty yards separated them, the snow and wind swirling about them. It was up to her. One kind of look and he would vanish into the maelstrom, the wind and the drifts, not be seen again. Another and he would follow her where she led him. She could drive the wild dog away with a mere change in posture. He was signaling to her that he would accept this by not advancing, and looking away dropping his shoulders, lowering his tail and ears.

  She could accept his presence, and bring him into the barn, where it would be safe and dry, and where the dog could find shelter and, perhaps, some food. A number of images raced through her mind. Would the chickens and rooster and the sheep be safe?

  For a minute, the wild dog was obscured by blowing snow. When it cleared, she searched his eyes again.

  She knew this dog. He had never been on the farm, yet his smell and presence had been known to her for a long time. He was not a threat to the animals. He was emaciated, she could see, his ribs protruding, his eyes bloodshot, his fur matted with ice and twigs and brush. His breath was weak, irregular. The wild dog was no longer a predator, but was now, she saw, prey, especially for the coyotes, out in the woods. Crippled and alone, he could not run fast or fight hard. Rose understood that she was communicating with an animal near the end of his life, his spirit draining.

  She relaxed her shoulders and ears. He could take shelter here.

  He would not challenge her, or harm or seek food from the other animals. He could not move freely about the farm. She could not protect him from humans or predators. This was all understood.

  He returned the gaze, then lowered his head, looking away. He had accepted. Rose, increasingly blinded by the wind and battered by the pelting sharp snow—and feeling, uncharacteristically for her, the sting of bitter cold—led the wild dog to the rear pasture gate. There she jumped over the snowdrift, already halfway up to the top of the fence there.

  The wild dog, head down, followed her slowly. Rose felt his presence behind her and sensed his struggle. She hopped down the other side, and he made his way carefully, slipping, nearly falling, several times.

  Rose went ahead, saw the sheep stir, reacting to the sight of a strange dog—she held them in place with a look—and then she and the wild dog entered through the open side door of the barn. The wild dog followed Rose inside as she surveyed the space. The chickens fled to the rear of the barn, and the two barn cats came hissing down out of the rafters, keeping their distance, showing their contempt for Rose and the new dog, then slinking away. Rose ignored them, as did the wild dog.

  Up the hill, the goats were bleating in alarm at his sight and smell. He followed Rose toward the rear of the barn, below the circling cats, where the cow feed was stored, past Winston the rooster, who feared no dog.

  Winston, Rose saw, held his ground in part to protect the hens. He took a look at the wild dog, and then at Rose, who was calm, and he seemed to grasp what was happening. Rose was startled when Brownie stuck his huge head through the open barn window. Steers were not usually interested in dogs who were not interested in them.

  Rose and the wild dog made their way to the wooden plank that covered the grain bin but which was rarely closed all the way. The wild dog clambered up, stuck his nose through the opening, and ate hungrily, pausing to look at Rose and to make sure of her continued permission. Rose watched him eat for several minutes. Then, sated, he crawled to a pile of hay, where he lay down and closed his eyes.

  Once he was asleep, the animals around him, Rose sensed, accepted his presence and moved on. The barn was dark and quiet. The chickens hobbled back to their warm roosts, with Winston following, and Rose watching over them all.

  * * *

  SAM HAD ONCE known him as “Flash,” but now called him “that wild dog,” and Rose connected him to that name. She had halfheartedly chased this dog awa
y from the farm so many times that it was just another chore to her. Until now, he had never come near the house or animals, which was curious to her. Most stray dogs tried to get close to the barns, to the chickens, to food. But he always watched from the safety of the woods, and all it took was a look or bark or growl to make him vanish.

  She’d never considered the old dog a threat, and she had never really seen him up close. Still, there was something about him that drew her, some cloudy connection—an air of dominance, dignity, a posture that suggested authority and strength. He seemed careful to defer to her here, yet there was something uncomfortable about that role. He was puzzling.

  But apart from chasing him off, as she did deer and raccoons and other stray dogs, she’d had no reason to consider this animal much until now. What was beyond the fences of the farm was another world, something of curiosity, but not of importance since it was not her work.

  SAM, HOWEVER, did have reason to consider this dog more carefully. It was, for him, a personal story, because the dog had belonged to his friend Harold McEachron. Harold had run a hundred-head dairy farm a couple of miles away in the valley, and he and Sam worked some rental acreage together, planted and plowed the land, shared equipment, traded gossip, hard-luck stories, and news of farm life. Harold was tough, and a tough negotiator. But he was also fair and honest.

  This dog was a working dog when Sam first knew him, just like Rose. A border collie/shepherd mix, smart, aggressive with other dogs, shy of most people. He was tough and tireless, and he herded cattle and sheep and rode around with his farmer on his tractor half the day.

  Like Sam, Harold didn’t have much time for dog training, or much interest in it. Animals had to work to pay their way, or take their own chances. But Harold loved his dog in the same way that Sam loved Rose, and the two were inseparable.

  Sam remembered the funeral. Harold McEachron and his wife, both killed in a car accident five years earlier. He had wondered about the dog, talked about him with McEachron’s sons. No one was living at the farm, the livestock tended by neighboring farmers while the couple’s sons decided what to do with the place. Flash had always slept outside in the barns, even in winter, and he wouldn’t come near the house after Harold died, wouldn’t let anyone come near him.