The black wolf might have kept running until collapsing from fatigue, if he had not found himself suddenly at the edge of a clearing, looking out at a small weatherboard farmhouse.   Although the small white house offered little real protection against attack, the building seemed like a fortress to the wolf, offering shelter from the terrors of the forest by night.

Weary after the mad rush through the forest, the wolf stood near the perimeter of the clearing for a few minutes, to allow his breathing to return to normal.   Then, dropping to his belly, he began to crawl out into the open, inching his way toward the metre-high, chain-link fence that ringed the farmhouse, extending all the way down to the dog yard a hundred metres away from the house, where thirty or so Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Border Collies and other farm dogs were chained up for the night.

Stealthily the wolf crept along the short grass until lying against the base of the wire-mesh fence, confident that he had gone unnoticed.   Until a low, rumbling growl made him look round to his left, and he found himself looking straight into the black face of a Barb-Kelpie.   Although separated by a hundred metres of yard, the wolf seemed to be looking eyeball-to-eyeball at the Australian Sheep Dog through the links of the mesh fence.

For almost a minute the black wolf lay beside the fence looking across at the Barb-Kelpie.   Then, not wanting to be trapped outside the farm yard when the dog yard erupted into a chorus of furious barking, the wolf rose up to his full height, stretched out his front paws to pull himself up onto the top of the fence, then kicked off with his powerful hind legs.

*      *      *

“Black wolf!   Black wolf!   Black wolf!” chanted Warren Horne happily as they drove slowly through the night forest, carefully keeping the spotlight beam aimed at the trail of leaves and pine needles thrown up in the wake of the fleeing wolf.

“For God’s sake shut that freak up!” shouted Sam Hart, furious that despite his protests Warren was one of the men (along with Des Hutchinson, Murray Senkans, Brian Horne, Bear Ross, Mel Forbes, and Terry Blewett) who had climbed aboard the back of the Land-Rover as Jim Kane and Con Rodriguez climbed into the cabin.