The lessons he had learned later were not the same as earlier ones - to fetch a stick, to roll over and wait for a hand to rub his belly, to beg. The later lessons were more complicated: to bark if he smelled that odor of leather; to refrain from barking when his master put a hand firmly on his neck -- again when the men of leather were nearby; when attacking these men to part them from the long sticks they carried from which came noise and fire that tore the flesh. To pounce before a leather man could raise the stick, before the fire could leap out. To leap for the hand that held it until it fell to the ground and his master or his friends killed him with their long sticks that made noise and fire, or the short sharp metal stick the length of the sticks he used to fetch.

He had learned to do with less food, his meals smaller, more gristle and bone than meat, the meagre sustenance provided by the small creatures that ran in the forest. He had learned it was necessary to catch these creatures himself; sometimes he was allowed to eat them, sometimes the master took them and gave him a part. He was now a hunter, yet he wasn't allowed to wander far; if he smelled the leather men he knew to immediately return to tell his master, but first to lose the leather men if they followed him, easy since they were slowed by heavy boots. He did not understand at first why his master did not want him to kill and bring back a leather man as he did with the small forest creatures. It was his master and his men who searched for them in order to kill them. He did not understand this until something inside him like the odor from a long time ago, from his wolf past, told him that the successful pack surprised the hunted before it could escape or turn upon them. Because of this he no longer thought of the leather men as men like his master, but as something less than human, as prey. Now when they dropped their sticks, he went for their throats, as did his ancestors. Now, like his master, he hunted the leather men as if they were the creatures of the forest.

He missed the former days when the master or others in the house of his master or the houses nearby would pet him and give him food, and he could retrieve the stick for the children and roll over and be petted. Now the master did not live in a house, but in the forest. Nor could he sleep as before, in his master's bed, near his warm body, or on the floor by the fire. Now he was often awakened and the group moved quickly through the forest, and far off he would smell the smell of the leather men.

Sometimes they met children and the men gave them food and took them to a house outside of the forest and left them there; they were not like the former children; they looked fearfully at him and did not pet him. The few children that stayed with the group were like men, not children; they did not pet him when he rolled over nor laugh when he rubbed against their legs, only looked at him with sad eyes from which warmth had fled.

Even the animals like himself were no longer the same. A few moments before, for the first time, he had to kill such a creature held on a leather rope by a leather man when it went to attack one of the master's men. They had come to the edge of the forest where in the distance a great fence closed in buildings from where there reached his nose the smell of many people and another smell, stronger yet sweeter, the smell of the smoke which came from the sticks bigger than the men carried, higher than the trees of the forest, but he could not see the fire that he smelled. He had to struggle not to bark at the strange smells and the big fence, his master's hand firmly on his neck. And then another smell came to him, of animals like himself, like the creature he had killed, and something else. The odor of his ancestors again, this time closer; and the knowledge that these animals had been trained to attack men as he had once been trained to fetch a stick and roll over. The growl in his throat died at the tightened hand of his master.

The master and the other men waited; and then fire erupted with a great noise at a point in the fence and he smelled the odor of men coming closer, and more distant, of the leather men. Then the master's men ran toward them and fire came from sticks of the master's men and the smell of the leather men was replaced by that of the red substance. But the men that met with the master's men looked like bones, not men, yet with the shape of men, and he wanted to bite them because they were not men, but bones, although they walked like men. But the master quieted him, and the bone-men looked at him with fear, even after the master petted him to show them he would not harm them.

And all of them ran deeper into the forest.

He wanted to sleep for longer than the brief sleeps he was allowed, but the master and the other men did not stop walking for many days, unless it was to dig a hole and bury one of the bone men.

From far off came the smell of the leather men.

In the days that followed the smell of the leather men came closer.

One night their smell was very close and seemed to come from all sides as if the trees of the forest had turned into leather men, and suddenly many leather men ran at them, with the animals like himself, and there was much fire from the sticks, and his master fell, and the rest of the men and he leaped at the leather men and from the sticks fire came. This time the fire reached him; he felt it hot in many places and he smelled the smell of his own red substance which mixed with the smell of the leather men and he was afraid. He wished to lie down next to the warm body of his master, but his legs would not move, and the howl he wanted to shriek died in his throat.