Carag Escapes the Hounds After Being Shot

Carag Escapes the Hounds After Being Shot is a prolonged pursuit in which Carag’s confidence in his puma instincts gives way to exhaustion, fear, and a desperate struggle to survive. Far from Clearwater High and the safety of the national park, he must use what he has learned about tracking, animal bodies, and transformation—while discovering how little those skills can guarantee when the hunters catch up with him.

The Pursuit Begins

At dawn, after spending the night outside, Carag hears several dogs barking in the distance. At first he assumes they have found a wapiti or another hoofed animal; then he remembers that hunters do not usually use dogs to hunt those animals. Puma hunting season runs from October through March, and a hunter needs only a license to kill one. Carag realizes he has wandered far from the school’s protected territory and may already be outside Grand Teton National Park. In puma form, without clothes or shoes, changing back would leave him exposed to the cold and a long walk through snow, so he decides to keep moving on four legs.

He tries to shake the pack by leaping clear of his own tracks and changing direction. When the hounds recover the trail, he crosses a deep, muddy ditch on a fallen pine trunk, expecting the dogs to balk at the narrow crossing. Several slip into the partly frozen mud, and one makes it across only after the others struggle. The detour buys Carag little time: a snowmobile approaches, and its hunter leaps from the seat just before the vehicle plunges into the ditch. Carag runs downhill again, knowing that the dogs have not been left behind.

The chase changes from an attempt to remain unseen into a contest over what Carag can endure. He remembers the story of Andrew Milling’s wife and daughter, killed by a hunter and reduced to trophies, and fears the same fate for himself. He also recognizes his own mistake in going so far alone: Brandon and Holly might have helped, but no woodwalker is nearby to hear his mental call for aid. When James Bridger’s lesson comes back to him—that a pursued animal should lead dogs toward a river—Carag makes for the valley, though his strength is already failing. He doubles back over his own pawprints, then leaps onto a tree and a rock to break the trail, but the pack continues to close in.

The River and the Failed Escape

Carag reaches a slow stretch of river edged with stones and willows. He enters the icy water because it may erase his scent and make it harder for the hounds to pick up his trail on the far bank. The current carries him downstream. He aims for a rocky place to climb out, but algae send him slipping from a large rock and briefly under the freezing water. He surfaces, reaches the opposite bank, and shakes out his soaked coat. For a moment, the river seems to have worked: the hounds are behind him, and the hunter will have to find another way across without his snowmobile.

The reprieve ends when the barking grows louder again. The hounds have crossed and found Carag’s trail. Still far from the park boundary and unsure whether the hunter will obey the rules, Carag decides that his last chance is to become human. The dogs are used to people as masters rather than prey, so he hopes a human appearance might make them break off. But panic overwhelms him. He whispers Timbuctù and tries again, with no result. James Bridger’s warning proves true in the worst possible moment: when Carag is terrified, he cannot make the magic word work.

The four dogs reach him before the hunter. Two wear radio collars, a detail that helps explain how the pursuit can continue even after Carag has tried several ways to mislead the pack. He faces them alone, striking one with a paw and injuring another’s ear, but their numbers and stamina give them the advantage. Shadow and Wing suddenly arrive from the sky. Shadow attacks one dog while Wing dives at another, then goes to seek help. Even with Shadow beside him, Carag is too exhausted to fight all four until reinforcements arrive. He climbs the nearest tree, where the hounds cannot follow, and uses the pause to recover his breath.

The Shot and the Transformation

The danger returns before Carag can fully recover. A shot rings out, and he sees the hunter below: a stout figure in heavy camouflage, now separated from the snowmobile that apparently remained in the ditch. Shadow warns Carag to jump. Carag has only a steep slope ahead of him, but staying on the tree leaves him exposed. A second shot hits his back. The pain flares across his body, yet he manages a powerful leap over the dogs, the hunter, and the intervening vegetation, then bounds and tumbles down the slope. His puma strength keeps him moving, although the wound leaves him bleeding and rapidly losing strength.

Unable to transform, Carag asks Shadow to help him find juniper by sending an image of the plant and of himself changing back. Shadow thinks it is likelier to grow among the conifers and searches from the air. The dogs resume barking close behind them, but Shadow spots a small, prickly juniper bush with blue berries. Carag staggers toward it, pushes into the branches, and tries Timbuctù again while imagining himself in human form in the classroom. This time the transformation takes hold. He is wounded and covered in tears and mucus, but he is human again, able to raise and inspect his hands and feel his face. The juniper gives him a way out of the helpless animal form in which the hunter and dogs had cornered him.

Rescue and Aftermath

The hounds arrive and hesitate when the scent trail leads them to a human rather than the puma they have been following. Carag stands at full height and shouts them away. One dog retreats; when the brown leader keeps growling, Carag throws a branch at it. Shadow helps drive off another dog, giving Carag a chance to limp through the trees. Shadow guides him to the nearest road and stays with him until the school van arrives.

James Bridger rushes from the van when it stops. With help from Sherri Rivergirl, he wraps Carag in a blanket and puts him in the back seat. Someone gives Carag an injection, and someone else identifies the wound as a graze. Bridger reassures him that they are taking him to Clearwater High’s infirmary. Carag’s last thought before sleep is that he is still alive and will soon be home. When he wakes, he checks that he can move his fingers and toes and that none of his body has frozen; his back hurts, but he understands that the shot could have been much worse.

Significance

The pursuit turns a school lesson into a matter of life and death. Carag remembers Bridger’s advice about leading dogs to a river and uses it, but the hounds cross anyway; he knows the rule about hunting season, yet that knowledge does not protect him from being tracked. His failed transformations make the danger more intimate: fear is not merely a reaction to the chase but a physical obstacle that prevents him from reaching human form when he most needs it. Survival comes through successive, imperfect advantages—the fallen trunk, the river, Shadow and Wing’s intervention, the juniper, and finally the school’s arrival—rather than one decisive escape. The graze and Carag’s exhaustion leave the pursuit’s cost visible even after he is out of immediate danger.