The dog fell silent, then licked Warlock’s cheek in sympathy. Warlock had always been interested in ratings; in his youth he had charted on graph paper all the professional sports teams, in addition to the top forty pop tunes. Like model airplane building, kite flying, the soap box derby, it was essentially a dead-end preoccupation. When he grew five inches in his fourteenth year his graph indicated he would be nine foot three by twenty-one, certainly a capable foe for the great Minneapolis center, George Mikan. Perhaps he would live in Chicago, high above the city with the early playmate Janet Pilgrim, who would see the sensitive person behind the towering height. He would be desirable to all women but would probably stay faithful to Janet, except on extended roadtrips when his huge body would no longer be able to control its dark gorilla lust and cheerleaders would line up at his hotel door crooning their cheers for attention.

This morning he felt so battered he somehow knew that he needed the wilderness even though what he thought of as wilderness included a twinge of fright for him. It wasn’t actually wilderness but a huge river bottom area that included some hundred thousand acres of abused scrub forest, crisscrossed with log roads. After a long walk he intended to stop and seek the counsel of his old friend, Cletis Griscombe, a unilaterally stable carpenter, bricklayer, hunter and fisherman.

He turned the car off the blacktop onto a bumpy two track, slipping it into four-wheel drive. Hud snorted deeply at the unpeopled air, his ridiculously acute senses ready for any challenge.

“Slow down, big stallion. We’re going swimming.”

They were passing through a clearing in the forest, a verdant June meadow, when Hudley suddenly flung himself through the open window with a roar. Warlock was sunken in thoughts that Michigan license plates aptly read Winter-Water Wonderland, and it took a moment or two to swerve to a halt and give chase. The dog was a blur heading for a small grassy knoll a hundred yards distant, upon which some small woodland creature was frittering away the morning. Warlock made a good fifty yard burst, screaming “Hud,” but the dog was already shaking the creature, finishing it off with a high toss in the air, then grabbing it and trotting in a proud circle. It was a plump female woodchuck with small pink teats peeking through the fur. The woodchuck’s eyes were open and Warlock grabbed it by the neck and a tug-of-war ensued with the dog shaking its head so violently that Warlock’s shoulder ached. The limp neck in his grasp told Warlock that the poor woodchuck was deader than a doornail. The dog raced off toward the car with his prize.