I was alone again. When I set out from the Beckers’ house that autumn, there was no Bone to follow and no Moon to walk with. There was no summer family, no Rachael, no Dr. Roth. But I knew I could take care of myself.

I wandered through woods and fields and along highways and around the outskirts of towns. The moon grew fat, grew small, grew fat, grew small. The crickets’ voices died, and fallen leaves carpeted my path. The wind became blustery and the air frosty, but no snow fell, and I was able to find food.

One day when weak sunlight was filtering through the bare branches of a small forest, I smelled something familiar, something that made my hackles rise. I growled softly and stalked to the edge of the woods where I saw a group of dogs, as lean as the ones at the resting place on the highway, and just as desperate.

They were fighting one another over an old carcass, leathery now, with no meat left on it. But they fought as if it was a fresh kill. One dog held it between his front paws and gnawed at it. When another dog ran at him, he yipped and snapped, jerking the carcass away, but dropping it as he did so. A third dog swooped in and trapped the carcass between her jaws, but the first dog bit her on the neck and she let the carcass fall.

I slipped back into the forest and crept away. It was time to find a place where I could stay for the winter.

 

I spent two nights sleeping behind the Olive Free Library. On the morning after the first night a man saw me and set out dishes of water and kibble and tried to coax me inside, but I was wary. I ate the food the next night when the library was dark and the parking lot was empty. In the morning I set out again.

I came to a little house in the woods where a man and a woman lived with their cats. I could see the cats looking out the windows of the house. They didn’t go outside, but the woman left dishes of water and scraps on the porch. “T. G. has been hanging around again,” I heard her tell the man. “I saw him twice yesterday.” I didn’t know who T. G. was, and I never found out. I hoped he didn’t mind sharing his food with me.

I spent one night at the Bearsville Garage, the night of the first snow flurries of the winter. There I found good garbage and a dry doorway.

I spent another night behind a big house on a hill with three sheds in the backyard. In front of one of the sheds lots of logs were stacked. I slept in a niche between the logs and the shed wall. I wasn’t warm, but I was dry.

Early the next morning I made my way along the edge of the yard and into some woods. I had my eye on two fat gray squirrels that were chattering and scolding each other. The larger squirrel was chasing the smaller one around and around the trunk of a maple tree. They were paying no attention to me.

I was standing motionless a little distance from the tree, one paw raised, ready to dash forward, pounce, and surprise the squirrels, when BAM! I heard a noise so loud it seemed to jolt my body. The squirrels fled up the tree, jumped to the branches of another tree, and disappeared.

I started to run, but since I didn’t know where the noise had come from I wasn’t sure which direction to take.

Then I heard voices, the voices of men.

“Did you hit it?”

“I don’t know. I guess not. I don’t see anything.”

“But it was right there.”

Two men stepped out of the trees. They were wearing dark clothes, and each was carrying a long stick that looked like the polished branch of a tree.

I remembered the man with the gun, the one who had killed Mine when I was a puppy, and I took off running.

“There it goes!”

“That isn’t a deer, it’s a dog. I think. Anyway, it isn’t a deer.”

I ran fast, as fast as Moon and I had run to escape the dogs at the resting place. I had gone only a short distance when I came to a large doe lying bleeding on the floor of the woods. Her eyes were open — she wasn’t dead — and she turned her head slowly to look at me with glazed eyes. One leg was twitching. I slowed down, then sped up when I heard the men’s voices again. I had almost reached the edge of the woods when another blast thundered through the trees.

BAM.

I burst out of the woods.

And I found myself looking down a hill at a small farm. Next to a pond stood a white house with blue shutters. Not far away were two sturdy barns and a fenced-in pasture.

I walked cautiously down the hill toward the pasture. Usually I tried to stay out of sight, but I was in a hurry to escape the men in the woods, and I didn’t see anyone on the farm. When I reached the pasture, I jumped easily over the stone wall that bordered it and made my way to the larger of the barns. I paused at the door to listen. From inside I heard little rustlings and cooings, the noises of small rodents and birds, but nothing else. I peeked around the corner. The light inside was dim and the dank air smelled of hay and manure and grain. Across from me were several stalls. Two were empty. A horse stood in the third. He stamped his foot and snorted when he saw me. Maybe he wasn’t used to dogs.

I left the barn and investigated the pasture again. I came upon a pile of old vegetables and coffee grinds and eggshells. It wasn’t exactly like the Merrions’ garbage heap, but it was all right. I learned later that it was called a compost heap. I walked a bit farther, warily, my eyes on the barns, the house, the woods.

Far off, on a small rise, stood two cows. I returned to the barn and stood in the door, studying the white house. I saw a truck parked nearby. I saw that the porch was decorated with pumpkins and wreaths of dried flowers like the ones in Claremont before Christmastime. But I didn’t see any people.

I peered into the smaller barn. The inside looked very much like the Beckers’ garage. A car was parked there, and hanging on the walls were tools and ropes and baskets. At one end was a high wooden bench with more tools laid out on it. This was not a good place to make my home, but the larger barn might be.

“Hal!” I heard a woman call then.

I jumped. Then I turned around and zipped back to the other barn.

“Hal, telephone!”

“Coming!”

Neither of the voices sounded close by, so I peeked outside. I saw a woman, a woman who was older than Mrs. Becker, standing at the front door of the house. A man who looked about the same age as the woman was making his way slowly along a walk to the door. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, and he was carrying a bucket.

This was Hal, I learned, and the woman was named Jean, and they had lived on this small farm for many years. They were quiet, kind people who took good care of their animals — the horse, the cows, four cats, and some geese who had made their home by the pond.

I made my home there, too, but I didn’t show myself to Hal and Jean, even though I stayed on their farm during all the days of the cold weather. I stayed while the pumpkins and flower wreaths were taken in and ribbons and evergreen wreaths were put up in their place. I stayed through the snows, one storm so bad that Hal and Jean couldn’t leave their farm for three days, but they fed their animals and I dined on grain and mice until I could reach the compost heap again. I stayed while the snow melted. I stayed until I could smell spring in the air, and then I left.

I spent the warm weather wandering, as I had wandered after I left the Beckers’ house. When the cold weather arrived, I looked for another farm. And that became the pattern of my life. Farms in the winter, wandering the rest of the time.

I had lived on four farms including the Andersons’, and another spring had arrived, when I came upon familiar odors, odors that sent me searching for Bone.