The woods went silent except for the final sounds of the deadly struggle as Frack completed strangling the bigger dog. It was now down on it side, its eyes bulging and its rear legs kicking helplessly. Frick came bounding back to us, still carrying her bloody trophy. The air was filled with a sudden acrid smell of gunpowder and then dog manure as the big dog died.
Greenberg apparently saw something move out on the edge of his vision. He fired two snap-shot rounds in the general direction of the sound. There was a yelp in the woods, but I couldn’t tell if it was human or canine. We got down behind some logs and waited. I reminded myself not to make any more assumptions. After five minutes, Greenberg took a deep breath.
“Chapter two,” he said quietly, and we started running again, the shepherds bounding alongside, their hackles still up. Greenberg loaded his spare magazine and racked the SIG as we ran through the trees. I wanted to look back over my shoulder but had to pay attention to my feet, as the slope had steepened noticeably. Greenberg stumbled and went down in a heap of pine needles and furious language. Then we burst out into the open, picked our way across a wide strip of rocks and gravel, pushed through a ten-foot-wide stand of stubby, stunted pines, and slid down a rocky bank to the edge of the lake. Once down on the water, I tried to decide which way to go. A rifle bullet kicked up a waterspout ten feet out in the lake, and we both dived back to the base of the bank as the boom from the rifle arrived. I whistled the dogs over from the water’s edge.
“Which way?” Greenberg said.
“If he’s up high, he can’t see us as long as we stay under this bank. Let’s go that way as far as that point, see if we can spot the island.”
We hunched over and went west along the lakeshore, making sure we couldn’t be seen by the long-range shooter up on the ridge. We’d gone fifty yards when a goddamned dog started barking at us from up on top of the bank. Greenberg stepped out and fired once. He missed, but the dog jumped back when the ground next to him blew up. Another bullet smacked a waterspout into the air offshore, indicating that the shooter, taking his cue from the dog, now knew where we were and, more important, in which direction we were running.
“Fucking dogs,” Greenberg said, prompting disapproving looks from the shepherds. We were still a hundred yards from the point, and, to make matters more dangerous, our friendly bank dissolved into a narrow, rocky beach at the point itself, creating a no-cover zone.
“We’re going to have to wait until it’s dark,” I said. “We can’t cross that open area with riflemen up there.”
The dog returned, barking furiously at us from the edge of the bank. Then a second one joined in. They weren’t making any effort to come down to the shore, but they were making it absolutely clear to anyone watching from the ridge where their quarry was holed up. I judged we had another hour at least before it would be dark enough to try to cross that open ground, and then we’d still have to deal with an unknown number of dogs. A third hound joined in the noisy chorus up above, and yet another heavy round punched a hole in the lake, followed this time by the distinctive boom of a black-powder rifle. A second round hit the top of the bank, blowing a spray of rocks and dirt out into the water and scaring the dogs, but only for a moment.
As long as we stayed down below the rim of the bank, we were safe from gunfire. But we couldn’t get away, and, as more dogs joined the ones up on the bank, it was only a matter of time before the pack mentality took over and our pursuers would spill over the bank and come to dinner.
“How many rounds you got left?” I asked.
“Not enough for all that,” Greenberg said, pointing with his head at the rim of the bank.
Another heavy bullet hit the top of the bank. The shooter was either trying to keep us pinned down until others could get down to the lake, or he was just showing off, I thought. A puff of wind blew in from the lake toward the shore, which gave me an idea.
“Got your lighter?”
Greenberg patted his pocket, nodded, and fished it out.
I took it and began looking around for a small, dried-out bush. I found one and ripped it up out of the sandy ground. The barking and snarling from up above was getting more enthusiastic. Greenberg took careful aim and dropped one of the dogs. Its body came tumbling down the slope, which seemed to just make the survivors hungrier. The two shepherds lay with flattened ears next to the water, for the first time looking worried.
“You gonna start a fucking forest fire?” Greenberg asked.
“A little one,” I said. “Remember that gravel strip? That should act as a firebreak. Hopefully the fire will drive the dogs and the humans off the bank.”
“But what if it gets loose?”
“We’ll blame it on God,” I said, setting the lighter to the dried branches. “There’s precedent: It’s a burning bush.”
Greenberg rolled his eyes as I climbed up the bank and then whipped the smoldering bush around my head until it burst into bright flames. The dogs suddenly shut up. I threw the flaring bush up into the line of dry pines at the top. At first, the pack went nuts, but when the wind from the lake gusted and began to blow a flame-front down the lakeside strip of vegetation, the dogs decided enough was enough. I peered over the top just long enough to be sure and saw a satisfying brush fire with lots of useful smoke roaring down the beach line.
I signaled Greenberg. Time to go. When we got to the edge of the clearing, the fire behind us was audible, pushed along the lake margins by a suddenly interested onshore breeze. So far, the gravel strip was doing its job, but I didn’t know how far that strip extended. Greenberg was right: I might have just started a major forest fire. But that beat being eaten by a pack of dogs.
“We gonna run for it?” Greenberg asked as we crouched under the last of the cover.
“Any better ideas?”
Greenberg took a deep breath and then nodded. We took off across the open stretch of beach, the shepherds running with us. Amazingly, Frick still had her trophy leg. There was no gunfire as we splashed through the shallows at the point of the rocky spine and then around it, where we were again sheltered by a high bank. The point with the island at the end was right ahead, and there appeared to be cover all the way as we were now on the back side of the ridge. The sun was finally setting, glowing yellow through the big cloud of smoke behind us and making it doubly difficult for anyone up on that ridge to get a good shot. The glow of the fire silhouetted the lower spine of the ridge as we moved out onto the island itself. I kept telling myself that the fire was diminishing, but that may have been wishful thinking. Now all we had to do was figure out how to raise those two canoes and get the flock out of there.
We made it back to my cabin at just after four in the morning. Greenberg had brought his stuff down to the lake in his personal pickup truck, which now had both boats strapped in the bed out in the lodge’s lower parking lot. I made some coffee, and we dropped into chairs out on the creekside porch.
“Well, that was fun,” I said. I wanted some scotch in my coffee, but my legs were too rubbery to get up. “So now what?”
“We witnessed a near murder, executed right in front of the Robbins County sheriff,” Greenberg said, lighting up a cigarette. “Can’t just let that sit.”
“We witnessed an apparent near murder,” I said. “While basically trespassing on private property and spying on private citizens, without a warrant or jurisdiction and, in my case, against the explicit orders of the local sheriff not to leave town. Then, let’s see, we shot somebody’s dogs, killed some wildlife, and started a forest fire in a national park. Can’t wait to go in and tell local law all that good news.”