The wolfhound attack on Frenchman Mountain is a turning point in Ben Givens’s journey: a rescue that forces him to use lethal violence is followed by the discovery that Tristan is dead. The danger begins with the pack pursuing a coyote, but when the hounds turn on Rex, Ben can no longer remain an observer. His intervention saves Rex from the immediate attack, while the later discovery of Tristan’s death makes clear that the encounter has already cost him the older dog he had brought into his life as a companion.

The Pack and the Pursuit

Under the full moon, Ben searches a draw crowded with sumac and willows after hearing the hounds. He cannot see them at first, but their noise convinces him that a coyote is being driven from its refuge. He calls for Rex and Tristan, uneasy that neither answers and distrustful of the dogs he can hear below. His concern for his own dogs is therefore present before he sees the attack: the hounds’ pursuit already sounds cruel to him, and he fears the consequences of their proximity.

A coyote breaks out of the thicket close to Ben and changes direction when it becomes aware of him. A much larger wolfhound follows, and four more hounds emerge; Rex is among them. The coyote runs into the sage, with the dogs closing the distance. When it turns to face the pack, several hounds bring it down. Rex then drives into the fray. The sequence shifts the scene’s central danger: what began as a pursuit of a wild animal now places Ben’s dog among the attacking pack.

Ben Intervenes to Protect Rex

Ben sees the hounds turn from the coyote toward Rex. They force him down and hold him there, and Ben rushes toward them with his shotgun. He first fires a warning into the air. The pack largely stops, but one hound continues to attack Rex, leaving Ben unable to end the danger through warning alone. He strikes and kicks at the animal, yet it does not release Rex.

With Rex still under attack, Ben presses the barrel of his Winchester against the hound and fires. The action is presented as an urgent choice, not a return to easy confidence with weapons. The narration emphasizes that Ben has resisted acting this way in the years since the war ended. Here, however, the immediate stakes are his dog’s life, and he acts without pausing to reconsider the destructive force he has set in motion. Afterward, he turns directly to Rex, kneeling beside him rather than dwelling on the shot.

The Rider Leaves; Ben Stays

A dirt bike approaches while Ben is struggling to reach the dogs. Its rider challenges him over the weapon and leaves with the pack of wolfhounds following. The departure does not resolve the scene for Ben: the rider moves away, but Ben has already turned from the confrontation to care for Rex. The contrast is stark. The rider treats the encounter as a contest involving a gun and imagined bullets; Ben’s attention is on the injured dog at his side.

The scene thus separates force from responsibility. Ben’s use of the shotgun is violent, but its immediate purpose is to stop the hound attacking Rex. Once that threat is interrupted, his role changes at once: he kneels beside his dog as a doctor. The rider’s departure leaves Ben alone with the consequences rather than offering any help or repairing what has happened. The attack’s human confrontation recedes; care for Rex becomes the work that remains.

Finding Tristan

With daylight, Ben goes in search of Tristan. He has known the older dog for ten years, having brought him home at seven weeks not as a hunting dog but because he wanted a dog in his life, a remnant of childhood. He remembers Tristan’s long decline through illness and old age, and the way he grew slower and increasingly needed to rest. Ben had brought Rex home in the hope that the younger dog could learn from Tristan before the older companion died. That history makes the search more than a search for a missing hunting partner: Ben is looking for a dog whose life with him spans a decade.

Ben finds Tristan dead at the base of a willow. The discovery confirms the loss he had feared while calling into the dark. He carries the dog to the sageland and digs a shallow grave with the entrenching tool in his rucksack. Though he has little strength left, he gives Tristan a place to rest, kneels beside the grave, closes the dog’s eyes, and covers him with sand. This burial is modest, but it is a deliberate act of care after the violence of the night.

Significance

The attack brings two distinct losses into the same sequence: Ben must act to protect Rex, and afterward he finds that Tristan has been killed. The contrast between the dogs matters. Rex is the younger companion Ben hoped Tristan might teach; Tristan is the older dog he once brought home simply because he wanted a dog in his life. The attack therefore threatens the future Ben had imagined for Rex while ending, abruptly and violently, the companionship associated with Tristan.

The episode also joins Ben’s past and present through his use of the gun. His years of resistance to violence do not prevent him from firing when Rex’s life is in immediate danger, but the act does not become a triumph. The narrative moves from the shot to Ben kneeling beside his dog, and from that urgent care to the later search and burial of Tristan. In this order, protection does not undo loss. Ben can intervene in one crisis, but he cannot recover the companion he finds beneath the willow.