I ran to him. Breath leaked from his punctured lung, fluttering the fur where the branch stuck out of his ribs. I was crying, stroking his russet head. His face bore the marks of coyote battles past. Even as a puppy, he’d been my biggest, best boy.

He lay still, breathing. Not a whimper.

My tears fell on him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it.”

He turned his head ever so slightly and licked my palm.

The other dogs returned from the chase and surrounded us. Then I felt a wet muzzle in my ear.

Cassius.

I leaned aside to let him see his father.

Cassius gave a low whimper and ducked his head to Zeus’s. They touched noses.

Zeus’s eyes glazed, and air stopped wheezing through his side.

Cassius looked at me, then back at his father. He nuzzled Zeus’s head a few times, trying to nudge him back to life. Zeus lay there.

Finally Cassius backed up a step and sat.

The other dogs ringed us. Their coats were streaked with mud, their ears tattered from fights. They were wild now.

And yet they looked healthy and well fed.

I bent down and hugged Zeus, burying my face in a fold of fur at his neck. And then I stood, plucked the cowboy hat from the dirt, and put it back on my head.

There were still valleys to cross and mountains to scale and Alex on the other side. Patrick waited back at the school, breathing down his air supply.

I went around to the others and let them swarm me as I scratched behind their ears and patted their wagging rear ends. Then I started for the stretch of woods off the highway where we’d left the Silverado.

I tapped my thigh once as I reached the edge of the clearing. “C’mon, boy,” I said.

But I heard no rustling behind me.

I turned, and Cassius was sitting among the others, imploring me with his yellow eyes and wrinkled brow. He whined once, faintly.

Understanding came, and my heart fell away, a stone dropped into a bottomless pit.

I walked back to him.

“Okay, boy,” I said, crouching before him. “Good boy. Good, good boy.”

He licked my salty face, and I let him.

I looked as the pack of ridgebacks circled around me, proud and free. Then back at Cassius. I said, “Release.”

But he stayed there a moment, blinking at me.

I was finding it hard to swallow. “Go on, then,” I said, waving the dogs off.

They bounded majestically away through the trunks. Cassius paused at the edge of the clearing and looked back at me, eyes bright and alive above that black muzzle. Then he turned and was gone, too.

I stood there wiping my face until I could no longer hear the dogs forging through the brush. Then I stood a while more.