One

Jack crouched low in the brush around the edge of the forest and watched the rest of his pack take their positions in the three acres of meadow below. So far, they’d done well. They’d slipped into their pre-assigned positions quietly, moving as though they were a part of the Earth, as a good Beagle executing a stealthy approach should. They’d been standing motionless, waiting for the command to begin the exercise, for almost fifteen minutes. Now, if only a decent exercise target would present itself!

He had almost given up hope when the wind shifted, bringing him that distinct cinnamon and lemon scent that meant only one thing: rabbits. This particular scent held a hint of basil in it, telling the King of Beagles that this wasn’t just any old rabbit. Jack had been tracking this particular lagomorph on and off for almost two weeks now.

            It was a perfect day for hunting rabbits, clear and cloudless. The June sun was warm without being oppressive, the wind light and out of the south. Jack’s people were away at their jobs, as they should be. Jack had often found that without enough to do, humans could become somewhat needy and clingy. 

Jack adored his humans, the man and the woman, but could see where having them around all the time could get a bit complicated. For one thing, matters of Beagledom state took up a good deal of Jack’s time. To have to drop everything he was doing simply because a human felt a need to throw a tennis ball would be awkward. Lately, his people had been talking about cutting back on their outside work and spending more time on Beagle rescue, and it remained to be seen just what changes that would require in Jack’s daily routines. Certainly the humans would require additional obedience training if they were going to spend more time at home, but Jack hadn’t thought much beyond that.

            The other Beagles caught the scent of the cinnamon-lemon rabbit just a few moments after he did. Jack whined low in his throat, cautioning them to remember their lessons. The pups better not blow this chase to smithereens by giving away their location.

Jack moved forward slowly, listening for any sign that his suggestions were not being followed. (Well, technically, his suggestions were really orders. But Jack was a very congenial sort of fellow and he tried to put things in the most positive light possible.)

He wasn’t worried about the older pack members, the ones who'd been around for a while. Trooper, Boofy and Snoopy had been on too many missions with him to suddenly succumb to rabbit fever. The final adult member of the pack, an unusual lemon-colored Beagle named Barley was new, but he had far more time burrowing into rabbit holes than any of them.

            Trooper and Boofy—could any two Beagles be more different from each other? Both were male tricolors, black, white and tan, but that was as far as their similarities went. They'd arrived at the Kepler’s farm together, but their differences were apparent from the moment he first met them.

Trooper had been a hunting Beagle, and a quite successful one. He had come into the world of rescue and houses and couches and housebreaking at the age of two. At first, Trooper had been timid but Jack had known immediately that wouldn’t last. The boy was a born Alpha dog, one of sterling character, still shy but ambitious.

There were only two problems: First, Trooper didn't know he was an Alpha dog. Second, the pack already had an Alpha—Jack. Sooner or later, Trooper would come to know what he really was, and Jack wasn't looking forward to that day. Alpha conflicts were not anything any Beagle wanted to face.

             Boofy, on the other hand, was the Einstein of the Beagle world. He figured out things that other Beagle couldn’t even understand, not even Jack. His vocabulary was expansive, and Jack often relied on him to translate odd commands from the humans. Recently, Boofy had been experimenting with speaking human language and Jack had no doubt that he would eventually master the skill.

If he ever really applies himself, that is. Despite his intellectual prowess, Boofy was indeed a pup at heart.

            The last adult member of the pack was Snoopy, a sensible yet sensitive senior Beagle who looked and acted much younger than her twelve years. Snoopy was particularly fond of playing practical jokes, especially if they involved spoofing the humans. Jack had fallen afoul of her traps more than once. The last one had been quite elaborate, involving spreading a large quantity of human shaving cream on Jack’s paw while Jack was asleep and then tickling Jack’s nose with a feather.

            Lately, however, Snoopy had been too busy to pull any of her usual tricks. Jack had placed her in charge of the two new rescue puppies, Brando and Wild Cherry. The two were a handful.

Wild Cherry was a tri-color with a lot of white and a bent tail, the latter attribute the result of Brando's inadvertently shoving her out of the car window on a trip to the vet. Cherry was much like Snoopy in temperament, and she looked up to the senior girl Beagle with a good deal of hero worship. Brando, on the other hand, was a chocolate Beagle with amazing green eyes and a screaming, screeching bark. Even though Brando was almost two weeks older than Cherry—well, sometimes Jack despaired of him ever growing up.

            Despite the normal challenges of raising pups in today’s world, Jack was proud of his pack. All in all, a good group of Beagles, as strong and capable and brave a pack as Jack had ever seen anywhere.

He could have chosen other Beagles for his pack, certainly. In the past, he had had several quite capable aides and more than competent staffs. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have been King of the Beagles for as long as he had been.

            But there was something special about this group, the way they worked together, the energy they brought to bear on the problems of ruling the Beagle Empire. There was a synergy, something that made them greater than the sum of their parts, and their capabilities energized him. All in all, Jack was more satisfied with this staff than any one he'd ever put together.

            Or, at least, he had been until recently. Not that there were problems, not yet. But there was an undercurrent in staff relationships now that he still hadn't fully identified, and until he did, he was being particularly vigilant about supervising all training missions himself.

            Jack circled around the field to his waiting pack. He had intended this to be strictly reconnaissance, a few short lessons on tactics (all lessons had to be brief, given the puppies’ attention spans) and a nice day in the field as a break for the older staff. He also wanted to see how Barley performed, get a good look at the way he worked with the others in the field, and then maybe talk over his conclusions later with Boofy.

            “They’re being very good,” Snoopy said quietly as Jack approached the pack. She licked Brando encouragingly on the ear. The male pup was a bundle of quivering energy, eyes staring past her, focused on the field, totally obsessed with the question of where the rabbits were.

            Jack fixed Brando with a firm look. “You know the rules, right?”

            “Oh, yes, sir!” Brando shifted from foot to foot, his tail wagging furiously. “Absolutely! We were up late studying last night, Cherry and I were.  I can recite them backwards and forwards. Do you want to hear? I could do them right now, if you want me to.”

            Jack suppressed a smile. Had he ever been so overeager himself? It was hard to believe, but he suspected he had. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’ll know by how you perform in the field whether you studied enough or not.”

            “Are we going to chase the rabbit?” Brando asked. “Oh, I hope so! I do so like chasing rabbits. There’s just nothing like it, is there, sir? I mean, if we could just do this every day all day long, I would be—.”

            The fourth member of the group, Barley, the source of Jack's discomfort, reached over and grabbed Brando by the back of the neck, bearing down just a little bit harder than necessary. “Every rabbit in this county can hear you,” Barley snarled. “Don't you know when to shut up?”

            Jack hesitated, not wanting to correct Barley in front of the puppies but dismayed by the other dog’s behavior. Sure, you had to be firm with pups. They had to learn to be part of the pack, to be team players. But still, allowances had to be made. After all, they still had most of their milk teeth, and it was a well-known fact that no Beagle had much sense until he’d lost those.

            Barley, the latest rescue by Jack’s people, was a tough Beagle coming from a bad situation, and had been on his own for long, long time. Barley wouldn’t talk much about it, but Jack had gathered that he’d come from good bloodlines but had ended up in an abusive home. Somehow, he’d escaped and had lived as a wanderer for years before finally getting caught and coming into rescue.

His background wasn’t the only thing unusual about Barley. For one thing, he was of the coloration known as “lemon”, tan and white with no black, with big sad brown eyes and a pinkish brown nose. Evidence of the time he’d spent living on his own covered his body. His tail was crooked, probably broken and never treated, curling like an ‘L” over his back. His left ear had been ripped and he had serious food issues. Indeed, he was just now coming to accept the fact that he would be fed every day and hence didn't have to eat everything in sight immediately.

            One thing that worried Jack was how friendly Barley was with other breeds. Other hounds, yes, you could sort of understand that. After all, as hounds they counted as real dogs.

But Barley also got along with Terriers and Dalmatians, and that worried Jack.  Jack himself often had to deal with other breeds and their rulers and he was capable of sufficient social pleasantries to accomplish that. 

But Barley didn't have to deal with other breeds. That was the whole point of having a King of the Beagles, wasn’t it?

So why in the world does he go out of his way to talk to dogs that aren’t Beagles? I mean, just because a dog can chase a rabbit doesn’t make them proper company for a Beagle.

            Brando hunkered down on the ground, a dejected look on his face. Jack approached him, and gave him a little nip on the top of the head. “No chasing right now. But later, yes. You, too, Cherry. I want to see how you’re coming along on your turns.” The girl pup had a tendency to lose her footing on tight turns.

            “I've been practicing,” Cherry said quietly. “Barley gave me some pointers.”

            “Excellent,” Jack said. Now, isn’t that interesting? Jack made a mental note to discuss the issue with Boofy later on for sure. Perhaps some plan involving supervising the pups would help integrate Barley into the rest of the pack.

            “I've been practicing, too,” Brando announced, clearly eager not to be left out. He turned to Snoopy for confirmation. “I have, haven’t I? Tell him.”

            “They’ve both been doing very well,” Snoopy said, her voice warm and encouraging. “I'm sure they'll do fine today.”

            “All right, then,” Jack said, reassured by Snoopy's assessment. “Another five minutes, and we’ll head out. Don't forget, I want you practicing the spreading arc technique we briefed, not just running in straight lines. It’s an inefficient allocation of assets, clumping up together like that. Especially when you're going after more experienced rabbits like we are today.”

            “Are we going to catch them?” Brando asked.

            Barley gave a short laugh. “You got a lot to learn, son. About chasing and about rabbits.” He cocked his heard toward the two girl dogs. “Among other things.”

            “Enough. Boofy, get them started, then join me at the observation point,” Jack ordered, tired of the byplay. A tactical exercise was no place to be trying to figure out what was going on in the mind of a senior Beagle like Barley, not when there were pups to be trained.

Jack was a little bit irritated at Barley for the comment about the girls, too, and he could tell Barley knew it. Although he might appear curmudgeonly and rough, Barley knew what was expected of him during a training mission. Jack shot him a quick, firm glance to reinforce the point, and saw Barley acknowledge his authority with a grudging nod of his head. “Barley, point.”

            “Right.” The lemon Beagle turned and disappeared into the tall grass with barely a ripple.

Jack headed to the left and up the hill, taking advantage of the elevation to keep an eye on the rest of the pack. Boofy waited a few moments to give Barley a head start, then turned the pups loose on their own.

Further ahead, and off to the left, Trooper was already waiting for them, crouched low in the grass. The pups were supposed to execute a standard encirclement technique, then break cover on Jack's bay and proceed with individual tactical practice. Barley would be keeping a close eye on Brando, Snoopy doing the same supervising with Cherry, and Trooper was acting as on-scene commander. Boofy would be watching with Jack, giving him an ongoing analysis of how the evolution was proceeding. After all, Boofy had drawn up the whole lesson plan.

            The wind shifted yet again, giving them another bearing line on the rabbits. There was nothing to indicate that the rabbits were spooked or that they even knew the Beagles were there. The wind was blowing from the rabbits to the Beagles, so there was no scent, and the rustling of the wind in the trees and grass disguised the Beagles’ movements. The trick was to move in rhythm with the grass, to become one with it, a part of the Earth—yes, a small tri-colored part of it —that was moving inexorably toward the rabbit, something natural, undetectable. You had to blend in with your surroundings until the right moment, then break the bond with the Earth to give chase. And it all had to be carefully coordinated so that you didn't spoil another Beagle’s approach or trot over his scent trails and confuse things.

             Boofy came trotting over to Jack’s side, and settled into a crouch beside him. “So far, so good. No major down checks yet.”

            Jack gazed at him with affection. “Those pups are a handful, I take it? How are they doing academically?”

            “Brando has all the right instincts—they both do, actually. Brando's ahead of Cherry on air tracking. He's got this wild streak of genius that lets him know where things are, regardless of how the wind is shifting. It’s something you can't teach. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that same weird talent you have.”

Of all the pack Beagles, Boofy was Jack's best friend and could get away with a lot more than the others in terms of personal remarks. “Cherry, though—very capable, good scores on all her skill sets. She works hard, too, a lot harder than the boy pup does. And she's got one other thing going for—she’s a born mathematician. She picked up trigonometry like she was weaned on it and I'm thinking she's going to be ready for matrices and pre-calculus in another month or so. Good mind, that girl.” Boofy nodded approvingly.

            “They're both good pups. We just have to find out what their talents are and bring them out.” Jack chuckled. “All while not breaking their spirits and housebreaking them. Easy enough, eh?”

 Jack and Boofy were silent for moment, watching the scenario play out below them. The Beagles had circled around and were almost in position now. Jack frowned as he saw a ripple in the grass—Brando, it had to be. He was forgetting that he was supposed to be part of the Earth.

Jack turned and surveyed the area where Barley was supposed to be waiting. Not a ripple in the grass, nothing to give the older dog away. Not that he’d expected Barley to make a mistake—far from it. It had been Barley’s field experience that had led to Jack inviting him to join the royal staff. 

For not the first time, Jack wondered about Barley’s background. He’d obviously had a first-class Beagle education at some point. How, then, had he come to be living alone on the streets for so long?

Oddly enough, Barley seemed to get along with other dogs better than he did with the Beagles. The other two dogs on the farm were Marmaduke, a Dalmatian, and Tangle, a Parson Russell Terrier.

For a non-Beagle, Marmaduke was an okay sort of guy. He was large, of course—too large, to Jack's way of thinking. And all those irregular spots—coloration was supposed to be just a wee bit symmetrical, wasn’t it? Oh, Jack knew the legends about the Dalmatian’s origins, that the first Dal was originally the fine steed belonging to a prince. According to Marmaduke, the prince had been rescuing a princess from the tower of an evil witch. While the witch hadn’t been able to stop them, she’d cast a spell turning the white horse into a white dog. The mud spots on the horse became the black spots of the Dalmatians.

Jack always enjoyed listening to Marmaduke tell stories, and he could understand, if for no other reason than that, why Barley would get along with the Dal. Barley probably had some stories of his own to tell, though it irked Jack that Barley would rather tell them to a Dal than to his own kind. And the whole bit about the first Dal being a horse and the evil witch and all—just a bit grandiose, wasn’t it? 

            The Terrier was another matter altogether. The fact that Tangle was a smallish Terrier about the same size as a Beagle mislead some people into expecting that he was just another part of the pack.

But there was nothing even remotely Beaglish about Tangle's personality. He was far more muscular than a dog his size ought to be, and seem to be possessed by demons. He had energy to spare, and Jack often wandered into the kitchen in search of a snack to find Tangle all alone, jumping up and down in one place.

Oh, sure, it was nice to be able to jump high enough so that your head was even with the counter, Jack had to admit that. He'd seen Tangle snarf more than one bit of food off the counter, then look completely innocent when the people came in.

But what was the point of jumping up and down when there was nobody watching? There was a sort of nimbus of energy that seemed to circle around the Terrier most of the time, and he’d heard the people refer to it as Terrier fire. When he quizzed Boofy, his advisor had admitted having heard the phrase ‘Terrier fire’ before. “It just means they’re obnoxious,” Boofy had said shortly, and could not be drawn out to elaborate on what exactly that meant.

            Terrier fire. Well, Jack would take the ability to air track over that any day of the week. Besides, the Terrier was too nosey and was always trying to boss people around.

Of course, both of the other dogs knew exactly who Jack was and what position he held in the canine world. Marmaduke was always faintly distant but courteous enough, Jack supposed, but Tangle was another matter altogether. He seem to take personal offense at every passing indication of Jack's status, and more than once Jack had had to set him straight on the proper treatment of official envoys. The Terrier had tried to set up a password system at the boundary to the property, and later had even suggested issuing badges. Jack would have none of it, of course. His envoys had to be free to come and go any hour of the day or night, because there was no telling when Beaglish matters would require the attention of the King of Beagles.

            “Bad security,” Tangle had snapped at their last conference. “We'll have people wandering all over the farm if we’re not careful. And not just Beagles, either. When security gets sloppy, everybody takes advantage of the situation.”

            “If it comes to that, I’ll deal with it,” Jack had said calmly. He would have been a good deal more irritated by Tangle’s behavior if he hadn’t known that the Terrier was like that with everyone, even the people. “So far, it's not a problem.”

            “Oh, sure, not as long as you’re here to check each one of them out,” Tangle had snapped. “But what if you weren’t here?”

            Jack stiffened slightly. “You mean at the Rainbow Bridge? Is that a threat?”

            The Parson Russell Terrier snorted. “Don't get your shorts in a knot. It's a hypothetical. How am I supposed to maintain farm security if you won't even discuss potential threat scenarios? One of which is logically what happens if you’re not in the area.”

            “My staff has my standing orders and there’s a clear-cut chain of command in place,” Jack replied calmly.

            “Easy for you to say,” Tangle snapped. “It's not your responsibility, isn't it?”

            “Of course it is. Everything that happens on this farm concerns me. I think even you’ll have to admit that my pack does a good job of letting you know when someone's approaching.”

            “Right,” the Terrier snorted. “You guys will start baying at practically anything. No sense of priorities. Listening to you, I can't tell if it’s a garbage truck or a rabbit or a burglar. I always have to check it out myself.” His voice took on a slightly whining note. “The only one of you that has any sense is the new fellow, that Barley fellow.”

            “How do you mean?” Jack asked, giving the Terrier his full attention, something he hadn't been doing up until that moment

            The Terrier gave two or three vigorous bounds into the air, for no reason Jack could discern. “It’s what you’d expect of him, with his background,” the Terrier said, slightly out of breath. “Shows what a little decent training can do.” There was faint gleam in his eyes and Jack just knew the Terrier was about to launch another tirade on the necessity for security alert drills.

            “A rat!” Jack said suddenly, pointing down the hallway. “I just saw one! I know I did.”

            “Where?” Tangle snapped, whirling around to stare down the hallway.         

            “Running down the hall. Didn’t you hear him?”

            Without another word, the Terrier took off down the hall, every inch of his body quivering, slipping and sliding on the wooden floor as he ran. He rounded the corner to the furthest bedroom at a dead run, beginning his normal examination of the house. No nook or cranny would go uninspected, not with suspicion of a rat on the loose. It would take him hours to complete what Tangle considered a thorough security survey.

            Jack turned away, examining the floor. He thought he’d seen a bit of cheese in one corner, but he was mistaken. Disappointed, he ambled to join the rest of the pack.

He felt bad about it, actually. The Terrier fell for the old “There's a rat!” trick at least twice a day, and never seemed to tire of it. Jack had wondered aloud to Boofy several times about the Terrier's intelligence, wondering if he was just simply not very bright, but Boofy had assured him that that was simply the way of Terriers.

            And how exactly did Boofy know that, Jack mused. More importantly, at least in immediate terms, what was the deal with Barley and Tangle? Why did the Terrier think better of Barley than he did of the other Beagles? And why was that regard reciprocated, as it seemed it was.

            Jack could understand getting along with Marmaduke. Every Beagle in the world loved a good storyteller. But the Terrier? That was a puzzler.

            A low whine from Boofy brought Jack back to the present. The field before them looked completely empty of Beagles.

“Just a few more minutes,” Boofy said. “Those pups are going to be fine pack members, Jack.”

 “And Barley?” Jack asked, cuing on something in Boofy’s tone of voice. The grass around Brando twitched once then stopped moving.

            Boofy was silent for long moment. “I don't know yet. Oh, his skills are fine—ahead of mine in a lot of areas. And he's got a good streak of Alpha in him, not that that’ll be a problem. This is probably the best place for him. Anywhere else and he’d be with another Alpha and the other Alpha would feel threatened. You, that's not a problem.”

            “But?” Jack prompted. That was the thing about Boofy—sometimes you had to keep him on track.

            “But—I don't know what yet. Just something about him. He's not really a team player. He might be—Jack, I really hate to say this, but he might be a solitary.”

            Jack’s heart sank. A solitary—not what I need in a staff position. “Are you sure?”

             Boofy shook his head. “No, I'm not. If I were, I would have come to you before. But he’s got the signs of it, Jack, you know he has. The only question is whether it's part of his character or just a habit from those years alone. If the latter, fine. He’ll get over it eventually. But if he’s a natural genetic solitary—well, I don't have to tell you what that means.”

            “No, you don't. If that turns out to be the case, I'll deal with it.”

            By nature, Beagles were pack animals. They liked being around other Beagles, liked hunting together, running together, and sleeping together. The only thing happier than two Beagles was three Beagles—their general rule was the more the merrier.

            But sometimes nature threw a curve into the gene pool. Some Beagles liked being on their own and preferred to be solitary animals. While they could be taught to hunt as a part of the pack and learn the social graces necessary to survive in the pack environment, they would never be truly comfortable there. That made them undependable, unpredictable, something nobody needed in a pack. And particularly not on the staff of the King of Beagles.

            Then again, it wasn't as though Jack were willing to simply transfer his problems to someone else. Oh, sure, he knew that the Beagle who had a pack two farms over would cheerfully take Barley if ordered to do so and do his best to make Barley a comfortable part of the pack. And, in truth, a solitary Beagle forced into a pack environment would be far less disruptive somewhere else than on the King of Beagles’ staff.

            But Jack didn’t like transferring his problems to anyone else. No, he’d picked Barley out, and one way or the other, he’d deal with him.

            Just then, Trooper’s excited bay interrupted his train of thought. “Here they go,” Boofy said, rising to his feet.

Jack jumped up, the thrill of the hunt pounding in his veins. “Come on, kids—play it smart.”

“So far, so good,” Boofy said, his voice detached. That was something Jack particularly admired about him, the way Boofy approached grading exercises. Just looking at him now, you wouldn't have known that Boofy had taught the skills that the pups were now practicing. He had this ability to stand off from his own work and look at it with a critical eye. Jack knew himself that this was sometimes a failing of his own, the tendency to become committed to a plan or idea well past the point of reasonableness.

            But then again, wasn't that part of the King’s job? To give his pack, his breed, a sense of priorities, make them feel that what they did in the world was important, that they were part of the whole. Not only mattered to the pack, but to the world as well, that what they did matter. Sometimes it was as much the appearance of substance as much as the actual thing that motivated Beagles.

            But it could be a weakness as well, this ability to instill passion and belief in others. When Jack had been choosing his very first staff Beagles, he had picked out Beagles like himself. The result had been chaos. Now, more experienced in the ways of government, he chose his advisors to balance his own weaknesses.

Boofy had been one of his first choices. He’d been captivated by the Beagle’s intellect and insight.

            While Jack recognized this was a strength, those same characteristics also irritated him sometimes, and now was one of those moments. How could Boofy feel so distant from the chase, so cool and analytical at a time like this? Jack could feel his own blood pumping at the mere thought of the chase going on down below them. A normal Beagle never got tired of the chase, never. That was the way life was. At the same time, Jack knew that Boofy’s temperament made him an ideal teacher, one who could do wonders with pups in a way that Jack could not. Jack could inspire them and lead them—Boofy could teach them.

            “Brando overshot again,” Boofy noted, not the slightest trace of irritation or disappointment in his voice. Jack knew from long experience that Boofy would already be formulating exercises to correct that deficiency in Brando's tactics.

            “Cherry sees he’s out of position, though,” Jack noted, his excitement showing in his voice, a marked contrast to Boofy's calm tones. “Look, she’s warning him off to the right.” And indeed, Cherry was urgently baying out a warning to her fellow pup, urging him to slow down to trap the rabbit between the two closing pincers of their attacks. The way Brando was running now, he would overshoot, allowing the rabbit to cut back hard to the right and go behind him and slip out of the Beagle’s paws.

            “He's not listening,” Boofy said, and for the first time there was a note of frustration in his voice. “Barley sees him now, too.” The harsher tones of the lemon Beagle wafted up to them, urgent and demanding. “Young pups and rabbits—if only Brando would pay attention once in a while.”

Oddly enough, Jack felt an urge to defend the pup. Was he the only one who remembered what it was to be young? “Maybe Brando’s got a hearing problem of some sort.”

             Boofy shot him a wry glance. “You were the same way at that age, weren’t you? It must seem like I’m criticizing you when I talk about his mistakes. Because you don’t really believe he has a hearing problem, do you?”

            Jack's irritation grew. Oh, intellectually he understood that he had to be up here supervising the chase, giving the pups the freedom to run, letting Trooper try his hand as on-scene commander. But the frustration he felt was something he could not deny. It was that way with any Beagle who had a desk job instead of a field position. Boofy was the only Beagle he’d ever met who didn’t appear to feel that frustration.

            Bet he’d feel that way if I shut his lab down. For a moment, Jack was tempted to do just that so the other Beagle could experience frustration. Immediately, he felt ashamed of the thought. He was King of Beagles, darn it all. He was supposed to be better than that.

Sometimes the way Boofy could look into his soul bothered Jack more than the other dog could possibly know. It shouldn’t bother him, Jack knew. Because it wasn't personal to Boofy, not at all. His comments were scientific observations borne of his long experience with Jack, of his extensive knowledge of classical hunting tactics, and his cutting edge research that had earned him a name amongst Beagles worldwide. The particular maneuver being executed below was a variation on a classical technique, one that Boofy himself had developed, one that had spread across the Kingdom and was now in worldwide use

            No, Boofy’s comments about Jack weren’t meant to be personal, not at all. That didn't mean they didn't sting.

            But Jack was nothing if not King of Beagles, and he was always conscious of that responsibility. All too often, like this very moment, it meant he had to put aside his own reactions and feelings for the good of the pack. Right now, the good of the pack meant not inadvertently hurting the feelings of his most trusted advisor.

            “No, I don't think there’s anything wrong with his ears,” Jack admitted finally. “He's just ignoring everyone else. That's got to stop, Boofy.”

            “I know. But it won't until he sees the consequences of his acts a few times, and that means letting things go wrong.”  Boofy shot him another one of those keen and analytical glances, this one tempered with a good deal of personal affection and almost humor. “You learn more from mistakes than you do from things going right, you know that. It doesn't mean you have to like mistakes—it just means they have to happen.”

            Suddenly, everything was all right between them. All Jack's earlier annoyance vanished, if not the surge of hunting adrenaline. He smiled at Boofy. “We were never their age, were we?”

            “I wasn't,” Boofy said, and Jack wasn’t entirely sure he was joking.

Four hundred feet below them, Barley was not nearly as sanguine about the exercise as Boofy and Jack were. Oh, sure, he had trained more than his share of pups in his day, although he’d never told the others about it. He knew exactly what was happening, and he could predict with a fair degree of certainty what both Boofy and Jack were saying about the disaster unfolding in the field. But that didn't mean he had to like it.

            “Fall back,” he bayed again, stretching his legs in an attempt to catch the younger, faster pup. If he could just get his jaws around the youngster’s neck, he’d make him pay attention.

If only Brando would just listen once in a while instead of trying to reinvent the wheel or go solo on every hunt! Brando had so much potential. But the pup had to learn he was part of the pack, he had to. Otherwise—.

            Otherwise, you’ll end up like me. Even at a full run, Barley shivered slightly. He knew what the others said about him, the speculation that had to be going around the pack about a possible wild solitary gene. Knew it, and knew it wasn't true. But somehow, he could never summon the energy to talk about what had happened to him, why he was the way he was. It would be opening wounds which were starting to scab over, cutting deep into arteries. He had no desire to bare his soul to them, not yet. Maybe not ever.

            He was reasonably sure Jack wouldn't throw him out of the pack, even if he did have a wild solitary gene. Barley knew how to make himself useful, and had a fairly accurate assessment of his own strengths and weaknesses.

            And at the moment, one of those weaknesses was the fact that he was no longer a pup. There was no way he was going to catch Brando before the pup loused up the whole hunt, no way at all. The pup’s youth gave him an unfair advantage.

            He could hear Cherry and Snoopy baying, too, their voices filled with the hot blood of the hunt, frustration evident in their cries. “Slow down, Brando,” Cherry bayed again, her voice high-pitched and piercing. Snoopy echoed the sentiment, adding a harsher note of command to her voice. But Brando seemed not to hear any of them.

            His frustration mounting, Barley opened his mouth and bayed, “Peanut butter! Peanut butter and jelly.”

            Ahead of him, he saw Brando stumble slightly. His favorite treat, one that could always get his attention. Barley hadn’t been sure it would be sufficient to distract the younger dog but he had taken the chance anyway. Fortunately, it worked. The oldest trick in the book.

            The mere mention of PBJ distracted Brando just enough to make him temporarily lose his footing. He stumbled, slowing as he did, then resumed the chase. But that momentary slowing gave Barley just what he needed—time to catch the pup. With one prodigious leap, Barley pounced.

            Barley slammed into Brando's hindquarters and clamped down on the young pup’s tail with his teeth. Brando tumbled, disoriented by the sudden appearance of the older Beagle, dragging Barley off his feet. Barley winced as he hit the ground, already experiencing the stiffness he’d feel the next morning from the tumble. He seized Brando by the scruff of the neck and shook him, but not as hard as he would've liked. “Going too fast—he's trying to cut around behind you,” Barley growled, his voice fierce and hard. Brando growled back, the light of hunt insanity in his eyes. Then horror raced over the pup’s face, followed quickly by determination and something that might have been embarrassment. “Rabbits aren’t supposed to do that!”

            Brando took off running along the correct vector, now pacing himself to maintain position on Cherry. Barley sank down to his belly, too winded to follow, and watched him go.

            “When will he learn?” he said as he watched the others head after the rabbit.

The rabbit successfully cut between Brando and Cherry and now had a straight shot at its bolt hole. “Headed for the black rabbit hole again, I see,” Jack said, watching the rabbit run.

            The black rabbit hole was a source of endless speculation among the Beagle community. Legend had it that an evil monster lived there, one who particularly liked to snack on Beagles. The entrance was supposedly guarded by a black rabbit who lured Beagles into the den. The story was so wide-spread that Jack was inclined to give it some credence. There probably was some being that lived under the tree. Then again, no one had ever actually seen the monster.

            “Does it every time,” Boofy said agreeably. “I wonder how old that fellow is? He has to have been around for a while. He's not fast, but he’s smart. Did you see the way he suckered Brando in?”

            Jack nodded. “It doesn't help any that he goes down the black rabbit hole,” he said. “We’ve warned them about it so many times that they’re a little hesitant to approach it.”

            “Not as hesitant as you think,” Boofy said.

            Jack stared intently at his aide. “You know something you’re not telling me?”

             Boofy shook his head. “Just a feeling, Jack. They're getting too old for the monster stories, you know. Pretty soon they’ll start wondering if we made it up, if it’s a fantasy like the Easter Beagle. The stories won’t keep them away from it forever.”

            Jack could feel the hunting frenzy fade in this veins. The outcome of the hunt was now no longer in doubt. The rabbit, running out of energy, had a good enough lead on the two pups that there was no doubt he’d escape down the black hole.

            If we can just keep them away from it until their brains catch up with their bodies, they’ll be okay. Just until they’re old enough to know that they’re mortal, vulnerable. They have to stay away from that hole, they have to.

            “Do you think there’s really a monster down there?” Jack asked as he watched the rabbit vanish into the hole. “I mean, seriously? It's not just a story we made up to frighten pups?”

            “Marmaduke thinks so,” Boofy said. Boofy started walking down the hill, intent on rejoining the rest of the Beagles for a debrief. “Say what you will about him being ditzy, he knows about things like that.”

            What the heck is this?  Boofy talking to the Dalmatian, too? For a moment Jack felt disoriented, then annoyed. Before Barley had arrived, Boofy hadn’t been quoting the Dalmatian. Just as Jack had feared, the new rescue was destabilizing everything.

            “I guess you really believe there's a monster down there,” Jack answered, a derisive note in his voice. “A big, dark scary monster with long fangs that eats puppies, right? And wings, maybe.”

            Unperturbed, Boofy turned to look back at Jack. “I do indeed.” Leaving it at that, he headed down to the rest of the pack.

            Jack stopped dead in his tracks, staring after him. There’d been entirely too many surprises today. And this was just the latest—and perhaps most unpleasant—of them all.

Finally, he started down towards the rest of the pack. He'd be expected to add his comments to Boofy's analysis of their performance. While he was still out of earshot, being an essentially honest Beagle, Jack said softly, “So do I, old friend. So do I.”

Two

“I could've caught him,” Brando muttered. Cherry, keeping pace with him behind the rest of the pack, sighed. “I could have,” the male pup insisted, “in just a few more seconds. Then Barley shoved me—he shoved me! I almost had that rabbit, and Barley shoved me!”

            The rest of the pack was ahead of them, pointedly keeping their distance from the puppies. After the debacle, there had been no doubt in anyone's mind about the rest of the pack’s opinion. Most of the criticism had been directed at Brando and his failure to heed the warnings to fall back, but Cherry had been in for her share of negative comments as well. In particular, her cornering ability was still markedly below par.

If a pup couldn't execute the most intricate maneuvers, that held the rest of the pack back. The last thing Cherry wanted was to be the weak link in the anchor that was the pack.

Cherry suspected that Jack was making the point just to keep Brando from feeling that he alone was at fault. Yes, the more she pondered it, the more certain she was that a good deal of the criticism directed at her was because of Brando’s exceptionally poor performance.

            Oh, sure, he could corner, there was no doubt about that. And he was faster than she was, too. Physically, he was in better shape, stronger and more agile. He was no slouch when it came to understanding tactics, and seemed to have an instinctive feel for them. Cherry herself was a whiz at figuring out angles of approach and intercepts, but for her it was a lightning-fast conscious calculation, not the instinctive measuring of angles and speeds Brando seemed to possess.

            “I almost had him,” Brando muttered once again, and Cherry noted he kept his voice low enough so the rest couldn't hear.

            “You did not,” she said finally. “He would have beat you to the hole by at least three yards.” Mentally, she ran through her calculations again, and smugly concluded she was right. “Maybe four yards.”

            “No way,” Brando snapped. “I had him.”

            “What makes you think you can catch him when Jack hasn't yet?” she pointed out. Brando was an impressive physical specimen, but he was still only a puppy, and Jack far out-powered him in a run.

            “I would have.”

            “Would not.”

            “Would to.” Brando seemed about to add something else, then shut his mouth abruptly. Cherry stopped, gazing at him for moment, then laughed, a not entirely pleasant sound. (It's always sad to see cynicism in such a young pup.)

            “It's that rabbit hole, isn't it?” she said between chortles. “I bet you’re glad he got away from you. That way, you didn't have to get close to the hole.”

            “I'm not afraid of that rabbit hole,” Brando scoffed.

            “Not the hole, no. But there's a monster down there.” Cherry’s voice took on a singsong note, the kind used to sing songs to small pups who couldn't sleep. “Brando's afraid of the monster, Brando's afraid of the monster.” Her voice got louder and louder until Brando was almost certain the rest of the pack could hear her.

            “Be quiet. There's no such thing as monsters.”

            “Oh, really?” Cherry asked, her voice still faintly mocking. “Then why did you slow down a little bit there at the end?”

            “I didn't slow down. I didn't. And even if I did, it was just because we’d been running a long way. And my shoulder hurt. I took a nasty fall when Barley shoved me, you might recall.”

            “Oh, you can’t fool me,” she said, her voice faintly superior. “I don't care what you say, I know what you were thinking. It's like Boofy always says—you lost focus. You were thinking about the monster, about how we're going near its hole, and you forgot about the plan.”

            “That's stupid.” For his own part, Brando knew Cherry well enough to know what would sting her, too. “You’re stupid! And on top of that, you can’t corner.”

            The black rabbit hole located at the far end of the south meadow had been a matter of contention for decades. The hole itself was situated at the base of an ancient oak tree, one with broad, spreading limbs, intricate loops and whorls in its roots that poked up above the ground, and a deep layer of leaves, some dry, some almost completely decayed. The hole itself bore into the ground right at the base of the tree. It was wide enough for two Beagles to enter at the same time, at least from its outward appearance. Whether it narrowed down or got wider further in, no one could say.  No Beagle would ever admit to having gone down that particular rabbit hole. In fact, it was expressly forbidden.

            From their first day on the farm, Cherry and Brando had been told to stay away from the black rabbit hole. There were monsters that lived there, supposedly, ones that came out at night, on the prowl for puppies who were too inquisitive, talked too loud, didn’t eat their vegetables or otherwise annoyed their elders. The monster that lived in the black rabbit hole was something the rest of the pack used as a threat, promising dire consequences if a puppy so much as thought about venturing down there.

The monster was also the reason they were not allowed on the midnight runs. Jack told them time and time again that once they were able to control themselves and were team players—that was a favorite phrase of Jack’s, team players—that he would consider granting them nighttime hunting privileges. But until then, daylight hours only.

            “It's not stupid. It's a simple fact,” Cherry retorted, ignoring the comment on her cornering ability. In her mind, that settled the matter. Facts were not open for discussion.

            “It would be a fact if somebody had been down there, seen the monster, and come back to tell us about it. But nobody has, have they? Therefore, it's not a fact.” Brando was pleased with his reasoning. It sounded like something Cherry would have said herself.

            “Legends don’t persist that long in a culture without some basis in fact,” Cherry said, her voice taking on a pedantic tone. She sounded remarkably like Boofy. “There is something down there, Brando, something that's dangerous.”

            “It's not dangerous if you can corner right,” Brando snapped. “Which some of us can do. And maybe some of us aren’t willing to put some effort into cornering because we’re afraid we’ll end up too close to that scary, scary hole.”

            “Oh, really?” Cherry said.

            “Yes, really. You know Jack won’t put you on night patrol until you can corner right. So as long as you can’t, you don't have to go out at night by yourself. No patrols, just a warm, snug bed to sleep in while the rest of us pick up the load.”

            “That's not true. And like you’d know. You’re not even on night patrol yourself yet.” She bitterly regretted ever confiding in Brando her uneasiness about being out at night. She should've known he would use it against her.

            “I think it is. In fact, I think—.”

            “Are you to going to lollygag back there all day?” Barley’s rough voice snarled, breaking up an argument that was about to become quite circular indeed. “Because if you are, you’re going to miss dinner.”

            “Dinner!” both pups said at once, all thoughts of continuing the argument gone.

            “Race you,” Brando said, darting off toward the house.

            Like most Beagles, dinner was one of their favorite part of the days (along with snacks, breakfasts, and the occasional PBJ.) The possibility of dinner was enough to drive out almost any thought in their heads—except, maybe, of rabbits.

There was a more practical reason for their haste as well. Barley was a keen chow hound and if they were late by so much as a millisecond, they were in danger of having him scarf down their dinner as well as his own. No Beagle in the house was ever late for dinner.