“Earlier. Morning time.”

“Nope,” Cal says. “You got school. Which means right now you need to go home and get your homework done.” He stands up and takes the notebook away, ignoring the look that says Trey will do no such thing. “Take one of those cupcakes with you, for your dessert.”

On his way out the door Trey turns, unexpectedly, to give Cal a great big grin over his shoulder, through the half of the cupcake that’s already stuffed in his mouth. Cal grins back. He wants to tell the kid to be careful out there, but he knows it wouldn’t do any good.

FOURTEEN

During the night, something happens. It reaches Cal through his sleep, a snag somewhere in the night’s established rhythms, a disturbance. As he comes awake he hears, away across the fields, a hard savage howl of pain or rage or both.

He goes to the window, cracks it open and looks out. The cloud has cleared some, but the moon is slim and he can see very little except different densities and textures of darkness. The night is cold and windless. The howl has stopped, but there’s still movement, far off and ragged, ruffling the edge of his hearing.

He waits. After a minute or two, the sounds grow and sharpen, and his eyes pick out a shape among the grass in his back field. It’s loping towards the road at a good pace but with an odd ungainly gait, like it’s injured. It could be a big animal, or a hunched-over human being.

When it moves out of his sight line, Cal pulls on his jeans, loads his rifle and goes to his back door. He switches lights on as he goes. Mart has a shotgun, presumably P.J. does too, and the other thing might have or be anything. Cal isn’t aiming to take anyone by surprise.

He sweeps the fields with his flashlight, but it’s not strong enough to make much of a dent in this dark. The hunched shape is nowhere to be seen.

“I’m armed!” he shouts. His voice spreads out a long way. “Come out with your hands where I can see ’em.”

For a moment there’s sharp silence. Then a cheery voice yells back, from somewhere off on P.J.’s land, “Don’t shoot! I surrender!”

A narrow beam of light flicks on and bobs across the fields, getting closer. Cal stays where he is, keeping the rifle pointed down, until a figure stumps into the pale spill of light from the windows and lifts an arm in a wave. It’s Mart.

Cal goes to meet him in the back field, making a few more sweeps with his flashlight on the way. “Holy God, Sunny Jim, put that away,” Mart says, nodding at Cal’s rifle. His face is alive with excitement and his eyes glitter like he’s drunk, although Cal can tell he’s stone-cold sober. He’s holding his flashlight in one hand and a hurling stick in the other. “D’you know what you sounded like there? You sounded like something off that Cops show. You’d make a great aul’ Garda, so you would. Are you going to tell me to get down on the ground?”

“What’s going on?” Cal says. He clicks the safety on, but keeps his finger ready. Whatever that creature was, it went somewhere.

“I was right about that yoke coming after P.J.’s sheep next, is what’s going on. And there was you doubting me. You’ll know better next time, won’t you?”

“What was it?”

“Ah,” Mart says ruefully, “that’s the only hitch. I didn’t get a good look. I was otherwise occupied, you might say.”

“Did you get it?” Cal asks, thinking of the creature’s lopsided run.

“I hit it a coupla good skelps, all right,” Mart says with glee, slapping his hurling stick against his leg. “There I was, sitting up in your bitta woods, thinking I was outa luck again. I’ll be honest with you, I was almost nodding off there. Only then I heard a bit of a kerfuffle down among P.J.’s sheep. I couldn’t see a feckin’ thing in this dark, but I snuck down there nice and quiet, and sure enough, there was a sheep down, and something on it. So busy it didn’t even hear me coming. I caught it a great aul’ clatter, and it let a howl out of it like a banshee. Did you hear that?”

“That’s what woke me up,” Cal says.

“I was aiming to knock it out, but I must not have got it right. I took it by surprise, though, anyhow. I got in another skelp before it worked out what was happening.” He hefts the stick, savoring the weight of it in his hand. “I was afraid I mighta lost the knack with the hurl, after all these years, but it’s like riding a bike: it never leaves you. If I’da been able to see that creature, I’d say I’da took the head clean off it. Sent it flying halfway to your door.”

“It do anything to you?”

“Didn’t even try,” Mart says, with contempt. “Maiming sheep is all it’s fit for; the minute it was up against something that’d fight back, it turned tail and ran. I went after it, but I have to face facts, I’m no T. J. Hooker. All I did was banjax my back.”

“Shoulda thrown the stick at it,” Cal says.

“Last I saw, it was heading your way.” Mart looks up at Cal, his face creased into a guileless squint. “You didn’t happen to get a good look at it, did you?”

“It didn’t come close enough,” Cal says. Something about Mart’s look bothers him. “It was pretty big, is all I saw. Coulda been a dog, maybe.”

“D’you know what it looked like to me?” Mart says, pointing his stick at Cal. “If I didn’t know better, I’da thought it was a cat. Not a little pussycat, like. One of them mountain lions.”

The way it moved didn’t look like a cat to Cal. He says, “Main thing I noticed was it looked like it was limping. You musta got it pretty good.”

“I’ll get it better if it comes back,” Mart says grimly. “It won’t, but. It’s had its fill.”

“How come you decided on that?” Cal asks, nodding at the hurling stick. “Me, I’da brought my gun.”

Mart giggles at him. “Barty’s right about you Yanks. Ye’d bring your guns to mass, so ye would. What would I want a gun for, at all? I’m out here trying to save P.J.’s sheep, not shoot the poor feckers because I can’t see a yard in this dark. This yoke here did the job grand.” He examines the hurling stick with satisfaction. There’s a wide dark smear near the tip that could be mud, or blood. Mart spits on it and wipes it on his pants.

“Guess it did,” Cal says. “How’s the sheep?”

“Dead. The throat’s taken out of it.” Mart arches his back experimentally. “I’d better go give P.J. the news, before this stiffens up on me. You go back to your bed, now. The excitement’s over for tonight.”

“Glad all that waiting paid off,” Cal says. “Give P.J. my condolences on his sheep.”