David Gow

Excerpt

Arch couldn’t rest. There was a wolf on the mountain that took his grouse and killed his deer and sometimes came down murderously amongst his farmer’s sheep. It was not a real wolf but an animal descended from the dogs he’d turned out to die or go feral, so it was no mystery why it knew and despised him especially. He felt it was the opposite of a dog now, its attitude towards him something like the opposite of loyalty. At night he heard it howling through the wind while the rest of the valley slept. He’d lie there and tell himself he was lucky that all his torment was bound up in one living creature. How many could say that, and then set out in the morning with a gun to kill their troubles?