Late one afternoon, as I took my shortcut through the sheep pastures, I saw one of the village shepherds backed into the corner of the stone fence by a small pack of wolves. His sheepdog was already dead at his feet. The man swung his staff in front of him to keep the wolves at a distance. His arms were already trembling from fatigue. He wouldn't be able to do that for much longer.

I almost walked away to leave the shepherd to his fate. Cougars have nothing to do with the unending war between wolves and humans. But if the wolves always won, it could make them bolder and increase the number of attacks they made locally. That outcome was undesirable because then the humans would increase the number of hunters. More hunters would be a danger not only to the wolves but also to me and every other predator in the northern forest.

No wolf is a match for a cougar but a lone cougar is seldom a match for a pack of wolves. It was a small pack of just one family so I would have a chance if I approached an attack with the right tactics. There were six wolves: two parents, two adolescents, and two pups. With that much inexperience in the pack, I estimated that dropping the alpha male would disorganize the rest of the pack.

I realized that if I was thinking like this, I had already decided to break up the attack on the human. I crouched low and quietly moved through the tall grass of the pasture. I would only have one chance for a surprise attack so the preparation had to be perfect.

Cougars dislike fights. We like to sneak up on our prey and then leap on them so we can use our powerful jaws to kill with one swift bite through the back of the neck. Our hind legs are the most powerful part of any cougar, giving us incredible jumping ability. I myself can jump upward more than twice the height of a draft horse. I was confident that I could jump on the alpha male and kill him with a neck bite from thirty feet away.

My jump was a work of art and my killing bite was perfect. The problem was the other wolves. One of the adolescents was closing and snapping at the legs of the shepherd while the mother wolf had turned on me. Worse yet, she was on my back, allowing her to bite my neck. She tried her best but her jaws were not strong enough and my neck muscles were too thick. Still, it hurt. Oh boy, did it hurt.

I ran straight for the stone fence and ducked my head to roll forward. The maneuver worked and the mother wolf was slammed into the stone fence and got squished between my greater mass and the fence. She let go of my neck and slumped to the ground. As she tried to regain her footing I had time to dispatch her to wherever wolves go in the afterlife.

The shepherd was trying his best to fend off the two adolescents. They were doing a decent job of nipping at his legs and forearms. I could see blood seeping from several wounds through his torn trews and shirt. I walked up to the first adolescent who was too intent on attacking the human to notice me. One quick bite was all it took. The other adolescent stopped attacking, appraised the threat I represented, turned tail, and ran. The pups followed. I hurt in several places and felt disinclined to chase.

The shepherd sat on the ground. His legs were shredded. I wondered if he could walk on his own back to Herman's Close.

The man laughed with bitterness, "I guess now that I'm helpless, I'm next on your menu of victims this evening."

From what he was saying, it appeared that he was too wounded to walk. I couldn't speak like a two-footed so there wasn't a way to invite him to sit on my back and let me carry him. The problem then became how to get him help without getting myself killed by the villagers.

The man eyed me warily as I laid down to take a rest. I had bites on my neck, chest, and forepaws. None of the bites were deep but they stung and ached at the same time. I cleaned up and groomed the bites as best I could, unable to reach the ones on the back of my neck. The man watched me as I groomed, befuddled as to why I wasn't making a snack out of him.

I had a plan by the time I was done cleaning the wounds I could reach. I got up, stretched, and walked up to the shepherd. He picked up his shepherd's staff which had a special crook at the end for catching sheep and tried to prod me away from him. It was so good of him to make it easy to grab his staff, which I did. My jaw and neck muscles trumped his feeble human strength in the tug-of-war over the staff. Of course, I won and jumped over the stone fence with his staff.

"Hey, that's my staff! Where are you going with my staff?" he shouted after me.

It was dinnertime in the village. There was no one out on the streets but I could hear voices and the clatter of dishes through windows cracked open to catch the evening breeze after a warm day. I sat down with the staff in my teeth debating which door to knock on. I picked a house where many voices were talking and laughing.

Stepping up onto the front stoop, I used the end of the staff to knock on the door. Then I backed up and sat down on the ground in front of the stoop. A short plump middle-aged woman in a blue dress and white apron opened the door. She stared at me for a moment as if she could not believe what she was seeing.

This was encouraging. I carefully put the staff down, put my paw on it, and then tilted my head at her. She promptly screamed with impressive intensity. Well, maybe that wasn't so encouraging. I picked up the staff and strolled down the street looking for another house. I picked one two doors down from all the dinner noise I could hear inside. I noticed that several men with swords and spears erupted out of the first house where I had knocked on the door. They stopped rushing and stood still while they watch my approach to the second house.

"What's that mountain cat doing?" I heard one of the villagers say.

I admit to feeling a little nervous by now but no one had shown up yet with a bow or a crossbow, the only weapons that I couldn't outrun. I forced myself to walk up to the door, knock on it with the staff and then retreat and sit while waiting for the door to open.

The door opened and a young fellow in the deerskin jacket of a professional hunter looked out. He blinked at the sight of me. I repeated my routine of putting the staff down, putting my paw on it, and tilting my head.

"Well, Merciful Matadee, that's a cougar," he said to no one in particular. "Honey, bring me my crossbow and quiver, please. We got wildlife in our front yard."

Crossbow? He was getting a crossbow? In that case, I was getting out of there. The problem now was to exit so they could all follow me. I picked up the shepherd staff and leapt onto the roof over the hunter's front stoop.

"The cat's on the roof!" someone in the growing crowd yelled. I jumped onto the roof next door.

"Dang, that pussy cat can jump."

I jumped onto the roof of the first house I knocked at.

"Don't let him get away. They're the most dangerous when they're not afraid of people."

I made sure I didn't cross the roofs of houses so fast that they couldn't keep up with me. At the last house, I jumped into the lane and trotted up the road to the sheep pastures. I'd stop frequently so the party of men and boys following me could catch up.

"Why do I get the feeling he wants us to follow him?" someone asked.

"Sure seems like it, don't it?"

"What I want to know is where did he get that shepherd's staff?" said the voice I had identified as the hunter. By now, he indeed has a loaded crossbow.

It only took a few minutes to get to the sheep pasture. I leapt the wall and padded up to the shepherd. The man's eyes were closed. I put his staff down and licked his face. That woke him up.

"Gah!" he shouted, startled that I was so close to him. I licked him again.

"Uhg! Yuck! Will you stop that, you weird beast!"

Just for saying that, I licked him one last time with as slobbery a tongue as I could manage.

(Continued in installment 4)