“And I tell you, it must’ve been something big that done it,” he went on. “The calf was only a week old, but it’s a Holstein and must’ve weighed one-twenty at least. But whatever it was, this thing, it dragged that calf right out beyond the fence. Killed it at the throat, it looked like. Ate through its belly, and tore one whole leg clean off. My dogs wasn’t even scratched, so I figured they was just too scared to take it on, whatever it was, so it had to be mighty goddamn big, I’d say—a wolf or some big dogs gone wild or somethin’ like that.”

Arnie had pulled up behind them in time to hear most of the tale.

“What wolf?” he laughed. “There ain’t no wolves around here, Ralph. You know that.”

Metzler, always short-tempered, took Arnie’s objection personally. “Well, what then? You tell me! A mountain lion? It sure wasn’t no coon!”

“Dogs probably,” Hook said. “And thanks for telling us, Ralph.”

“Well, I thought you ought to know, all the cattle you got. Whatever it is, it could cost you plenty. I wouldn’ta bothered you otherwise, I mean so soon after the funeral and all.”

“That’s all right. We appreciate it.”

“Gonna get me some woven wire fence now,” he said. “I got four more calves just like that one. On buckets. And I don’t want to lose any more.”

“Of course not.”

Metzler drove off then, nodding to Hook and Bobby but pointedly ignoring Arnie, who he evidently felt had looked a gift horse in the mouth.

“Buckets!” Arnie scoffed. “Can you beat that? Handfeeding calves this day and age. That man’s a real tycoon.”

But Hook was more concerned about Metzler’s dead calf than his live ones. “What about the killing? You got any ideas?”

“Like you said—dogs.”

“Whose? If we can’t find them, we’re going to have to baby-sit the herd.”

Arnie sagged dejectedly against the pickup. “I was afraid of that.”

But Bobby had better news. “It was just one dog,” he said.

“And I know where he is.”

From the beginning, the hunt for the killer dog did not seem like the real thing to Hook, probably for the same reason that Arnie had declined to go along with them.

“There ain’t no dog there,” he had said. “The boy’s been seein’ things. Why, the Olsons wouldn’t let a dove roost free on their property, let alone a dog big as that critter was.”

Nevertheless Hook went along with the boy, mostly just to be alone with him. Ever since Hook had returned from the coast with Chris’s body he had watched Bobby going deeper into himself, as if he were drowning in the thing, and except for those few moments in the snow the day before, he seemed to have reached some dark cold depth to his liking now, a place where no one would reach him. As they drove, Hook glanced over at him occasionally, at his strong-boned face and mane of over-the-collar blond hair blowing in the wind, and especially at his eyes, which had the haunted look of a youth come home from combat in Vietnam, someone who had seen and done things beyond his power to understand or communicate. Driving past the cemetery, Hook tried again to reach him.