“Ernie!   Ernie!” cried Rowena, backing deeper into the bedroom, not daring to look away from the leaping wolf, not wanting to be caught alone in the room with the creature.   “Ernie, where are you?” she pleaded, forgetting that her husband was away in Melbourne.

*        *        *

Not wanting to frighten the woman more than she was already, the wolf turned and started toward the chain-link fence a dozen metres from the farmhouse.   But then, hearing Warren’s chant of, “Black wolf!   Black wolf!” emanating from the front of the farmhouse, the wolf stopped in his tracks.   He looked toward the empty paddock beyond the fence, wondering whether he could make it to the start of the forest, over a quarter of a kilometre away, before the hunters gunned him down.

Eyes shining from fear, the black wolf hesitated for a moment, then turned back toward the farmhouse.   After a second’s indecision, he sprinted forward and, using his powerful hind legs like springs, leapt straight through the window pane.

The window shattered with a report like a shotgun blast, showering the double bed with shards of glass and causing Rowena Singleton to shriek and back away hurriedly.   Her first instinct was to run for the gun-cabinet across the hall in the lounge-room.   However, seeing the tired, pleading look in the black wolf’s eyes, she sensed that this was no killer.   As a child her American grandfather, Dwight Frankland, had often regaled her with tales of his adventures in the American wilderness.   She remembered him once sitting her on his knee and telling her, “Wolves are the most cruelly maligned creatures on God’s good Earth.   Treated kindly, they’re nothing but very big dogs.”

Although her fear threatened to overwhelm her, Rowena sensed that the black wolf was more afraid than she.   Tentatively she stretched out one hand toward the beast, which licked her hand with his rasp-like tongue, thump-thump-thumping his large, bushy tail dog-like on the bedroom carpet.

She stroked the wolf’s lush black coat, appalled by the sight of his bony ribs sticking up through his undernourished hide.

“You need feeding up!” she said and the wolf thump-thump-thumped its tail as though it could understand her.

“Shush, boy!” she said, hearing the sound of the hunters outside.   Quickly she led the wolf across the hallway to shut him into the lounge-room, then returned to the bedroom to face the approaching hunters.

*        *        *

“Get out of the way, you bloody freak!” shouted Sam Hart, racing past Warren Horne, at the sound of breaking glass around the side of the house.

Des Hutchinson followed suite and the two men arrived at the bedroom window together … To see Rowena Singleton in her nightgown, kneeling on the bedroom floor, picking up pieces of broken window glass.

“What happened here?” asked Des.

Trying her best to sound suitably relieved to see the men, Rowena said, “A large black wolf burst in through the window…”

“Where’d the bastard go?” demanded Sam.

“Luckily he heard you approach and fled back out the window and across the side paddock,” she replied, pointing back behind the hunters.

The two men looked round in surprise.   They had expected to corner the wolf inside the house, however, the few moments it had taken to force their way past Weird Warren could just have given the wolf enough time to reverse direction and race across the empty paddock without them seeing him.

“Here we go again!” said Sam Hart as the tired hunters straggled off again.

They crossed the chain-link fence and were almost at the start of the forest before realizing that they had lost all trace of the wolf’s paw prints.

As the hunting party slowly disappeared from sight, with Weird Warren happily chanting, “Black wolf!   Black wolf!” Rowena Singleton stood by the window wondering whether they would give up the hunt after tonight, or whether they would be back tomorrow night and every night thereafter?

She waited till the men were well and truly out of sight, then returned to the lounge-room where she found the black wolf patiently waiting for her.   He wagged his tail at the sight of her and willingly followed along as she called him down the corridor toward the kitchen.

Rowena’s first thought was to give him a large bowl of crunchy dog pellets, but then seeing his emaciated state again, she took pity on the large wolf and served him up a large helping of mutton, thinking, ‘Thank God he produce our own!’

As the wolf devoured the meat ravenously, she thought, ‘How will I ever explain you to Ernie when he returns?’   Her husband had been a confirmed dog-lover all his life, which explained why the sheep station usually contained at least thirty or forty Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Border Collies, Alsatians and other breeds.   Although Ernie supplemented their farm income by selling dogs to the neighbouring sheep and cattle stations, the truth was that they were mainly a beloved hobby to him.   Even so, she thought, ‘Will he be able to love you, big fellow?’

She was still pondering the black wolf’s future, when she heard the patter of little feet racing across the linoleum floor.

“Big doggie! Big doggie!” cried young Kirsty with delight, throwing her little arms around the black wolf, giggling with pleasure as he stopped eating long enough to lick her face with his rasp-like tongue.

“Well I guess that settles it!” said Rowena out loud, knowing that Kirsty was Ernie’s greatest weakness; he could never refuse his daughter anything.   “Well I guess you’re here to stay big fellow.”

THE END