Hook walked straight toward it, his gun still on safety. Both buildings were freshly painted a bright barn red, like the main part of the Olsons’ farm lying a half-mile distant, in the direction Bobby was walking. The shed roof was covered with corrugated aluminum sheeting that shone brilliantly in the sunlight. Beyond it a swath of black woods, following the creek that would eventually run through Hook’s farm, divided the gray of the plowed field from the harsh cerulean sky, in which a pair of hawks, far apart, wheeled patiently. Hook continued to move across the rough plowed ground toward the two structures until finally he was close enough to see a kind of opening, a tunneling, under one of the shed’s sliding doors, and for the first time he began to believe that the dog Bobby had seen might indeed have been Emma Danker’s huge beast and not just some other canine wandering through. Closer yet, Hook kicked a clod of plowed ground loose and hurled it onto the roof of the shed. Bobby did the same. But nothing happened. They waited for a few moments and then repeated the process, and this time the dog came snarling out of the tunnel, a blur of bared white teeth and shaggy black-and-tan hair, and it was obvious that the animal was not just fleeing the shed but was attacking, moving in a high blind rage toward Bobby, not even thirty yards away. At the moment Hook sighted and fired, the dog caught sight of Bobby’s weapon and abruptly stopped, whirling in panic. Hook’s shot missed. But Bobby’s did not. It hit the animal in the hindquarters, knocking him over and spinning him around. Immediately the dog began pawing desperately at the ground with its front legs, trying to drag itself back to the tunnel under the door. This time Hook did not miss.

As they walked up to it, Hook was shocked by the size of the dog. He once had killed a deer in Wisconsin and had been surprised at how small the animal had looked in death. The dog, though, if anything looked larger, almost the size of a great Dane but heavier in the body and with the long hair and wolflike snout of a shepherd.

“Go around and look in the window,” Hook told Bobby. “See if you can see anything.”

It was the only way they had to check, for the doors were padlocked shut. But Hook was not worried. Even if there was no sign of the calf or any other killings, he felt they had done the right thing in destroying the dog. It had been on its own and apparently was not starving, so it had to have done some killing somewhere, which made it a threat to all the livestock in the area.

Bobby came back around the building. “It’s in there, the hoof and part of the legs. Other bones too. You gonna tell the Olsons?”

“Later.”

“I’ll get the shovel.” Bobby headed for the Jeep. Bringing it had been his idea, not Hook’s. The boy had been that certain.