Half an hour later he was able to do just that as Mel Forbes came in to interview Ernie.

“You were found by one of the hunters just outside Lenoak,” explained Mel, pulling up a plastic stool to sit beside the bed.

“Hunters?” Ernie asked.

“Oh that’s right, you don’t know,” Mel said.   He went on to tell of the massacre of Eileen and Michael deGraff.   “After the bodies were found, all hell broke loose.   It was bad enough the dingoes slaughtering sheep and cattle, but we couldn’t have them killing people.   So we organised a posse of nearly eleven hundred hunters from all round the BeauLarkin to Willamby area.   One of them found you lying naked in the bush just outside Percival.”   He stopped and looked hard at Ernie.

Realising that the sergeant was waiting for an explanation, which he would need time to invent, Ernie quickly changed the subject.   “And what about the dingoes?” he asked.

“They’re dead, thanks to you.”

“Why thanks to me?”

“Because when they brought you in here, you were raving about the black wolf and the dingo pack.   Most of it didn’t make much sense, but we managed to make out that the dingoes were based up the side of Mt. Abergowrie.   So we organised a full blown search up the mount, located their lair, and blasted the bastards to hell.”

“And what about the tiger?” asked Ernie, meaning had they found the carcase of the Tasmanian tiger.

“Tiger?” echoed Mel, trying to sound matter-of-fact, but leaving Ernie with the impression that be was lying.   “What tiger?”

“The tiger-striped dog that Vic and Warren both saw.”

“No sign of it,” said Mel, looking decidedly uncomfortable.   “Guess they must have imagined it.   After all, both attacks happened on dark nights…Warren isn’t a very reliable witness…And Sam Hart clearly saw the black wolf leading the pack.   Which is a hell of a lot more likely….”

“Then you killed the black wolf?” teased Ernie, knowing full well they hadn’t.

“Well…no,” admitted Mel.   “But it’s possible the black wolf had a lair somewhere else and only met up with the pack to lead them on night raids….”

They talked for a while longer, but seeing Rowena and young Kirsty standing out in the corridor, they were both relieved to have an excuse to end the interview.

*      *      *

A week later Ernie was discharged from hospital, and a fortnight after that he was well enough to drive out to Glen Hartwell to investigate the site of the slaughter of the dingo pack.   But when he reached Mount Abergowrie, he found the clearing had been cordoned off and was swarming with military and CSIRO personnel.

At first they refused to answer any of Ernie’s questions.   When he pressed them, they claimed the site had been found to contain dangerous radioactive elements.   Ernie couldn’t help smiling as the scientists hinted that this had driven the dingoes crazy, effectively removing the need for them to have had any other dog leading them on the uncharacteristically savage attacks.

Though tempted to ask why the scientists weren’t wearing lead-lined suits if the area was radioactive, Ernie decided not to press the matter.   Instead he returned to his sheep station and, he hoped, to a relatively normal life.

He hardly thought any more about the dingo pack or the Tasmanian tiger, until two years later when the newspapers started to carry reports of a series of raids upon sheep stations up in New South Wales.

“The raids are the work of a crazed pack of dingoes,” ran one story in the Glen Hartwell Herald Daily Mail.   ”Although usually less savage by nature, dingoes have been known to take stray sheep or cattle from stations around Australia.   However, the Pack, as the band is called, is unusually vicious and slaughters entire flocks of sheep, sometimes killing the station dogs as well.”

Ernie almost put down the newspaper, before his eye was caught by the final paragraph: “Although unconfirmed, it has been reported that the Pack is being led by a larger dog, with black, tiger-stripes running down its back.”

‘But how?’ thought Ernie, remembering the sight of the Tasmanian tiger with its throat torn out.   ‘It couldn’t still be alive!’   Then he remembered the tiger bitch suckling her whelps, all of which clearly had the tiger-stripes of their father, and he wondered whether two years later one of the thylacine pups was following in its father’s footsteps, leading the Pack in this new series of attacks?

THE END