Carag Hunted by Hunters and Hounds

Carag Hunted by Hunters and Hounds turns a night spent alone in the wilderness into a life-or-death test of Carag’s judgment, survival skills, and ability to transform under pressure. Pursued across snowy ground by four dogs and an armed hunter, he discovers that knowledge from school can keep him alive—but that neither clever tactics nor the power to change shape guarantees safety. His rescue and eventual midyear-exam promotion make the chase both a physical ordeal and a turning point in his place at Clearwater High.

Background and Stakes

Carag had been outside through the night and knew he had to make an important decision by the following day. At dawn, he heard several dogs barking in the distance. At first, he assumed they were following wapiti or another large hoofed animal. Then he remembered that hunters did not use dogs to hunt wapiti and bison: a hunter pursuing a fresh trail could instead release dogs to find an animal such as a puma. The barking, once merely part of the forest’s background, became a warning that the hunt might be for him.

A lesson in Bridger’s Lotta e Sopravvivenza class had established that puma hunting season ran from October through March and that a hunter needed only a license to kill one. Carag was far from Clearwater High’s protected surroundings and believed he might already have left Grand Teton National Park. He had no clothes with him, so changing into human form in the snow would leave him exposed and unable to travel safely. He chose to stay a puma and run.

The danger sharpened when he remembered what Andrew Milling had told him about his wife and daughter: a hunter had killed them and turned them into trophies. Carag feared the same fate, imagining his own pelt displayed in a human home. He also regretted leaving without Brandon and Holly, whose help might have given the three of them a better chance. His mental call for help brought no answer; no other Woodwalker was close enough to hear him, and the school was too far away.

The Pursuit and Carag’s Tactics

Carag first tried to break the dogs’ trail by leaping away from his tracks and changing direction. When the barking persisted, he found a deep, muddy ditch crossed by a fallen pine trunk and crossed it to wait out of sight. The lead dog hesitated before venturing onto the trunk. It and two followers lost their footing and plunged into the partly frozen mud; a fourth dog managed to cross. The delay gave Carag a moment of relief, but not an escape. A snowmobile appeared, and its hunter leapt aside just before the vehicle crashed into the ditch, apparently unaware of the obstacle.

Carag continued downhill, only to hear the dogs recover his trail and close in again. He remembered another piece of advice from Bridger: lead pursuing dogs toward a river. The plan demanded more strength than Carag had to spare. The dogs were built for endurance, while he depended on short bursts of speed; his muscles grew heavy, he had to stop for breath, and frost formed on his nose. Even as exhaustion and fear mounted, he kept heading for the river, hoping that water would disperse his scent.

Before reaching it, Carag tried a subtler trick. He doubled back over his own tracks, placing his hind paws where his front paws had landed, then jumped from the trail onto a tree and from there to a rock. The maneuver could make the trail seem to end, at least to dogs following his scent. He eventually reached the river and entered its icy water, betting that his odor would be harder to follow across it. The dogs nevertheless crossed and picked up his trail again. The river bought him no lasting escape.

The Ordeal and the Rescue

With the dogs closing in, Carag attempted to transform, but panic stopped the change. He had been taught that his magic word would fail when terror took hold, and now he experienced that limitation directly: he remained a puma as the four dogs reached him. Two wore radio collars that could help the hunter locate them. Carag fought back, striking one dog into the bushes and injuring another’s ear, but the pack surrounded him and attacked again.

Then someone called Carag’s name inside his mind. Shadow and Wing, two large black birds, swooped down to help. They attacked the dogs from above, clawing and pecking at them and disrupting the pack’s assault. Their arrival gave Carag support at the moment he had feared no Woodwalker could reach him. The respite did not end the danger: Shadow warned him when the hunter appeared, and the first shot made the snowy woods blur as Carag looked around for a way out.

Carag tried to leap clear. A second shot struck him, sending him sideways, but his claws caught a branch and kept him from falling. Pain spread across his body; still, he made a powerful leap over the dogs, the hunter, and the surrounding vegetation, then descended the steep slope in jumps and tumbles. The drop forced his pursuers to find another route and left the hunter with a difficult descent. Wounded and limping, Carag pressed on rather than lie down and give up.

Shadow spotted a juniper bush with blue berries and guided him to it. Among its branches, Carag imagined himself back in class in human form and tried his magic word again. This time the transformation worked. The shift brought overwhelming relief, though the gunshot wound still burned. When the dogs followed the scent of the puma and found a human instead, their response changed: one backed away, a gray dog wagged its tail uncertainly, and the brown leader continued to growl. Carag stood upright, shouted at them to leave, and threw a branch at the leader. A diving Shadow helped drive off another dog.

Shadow then guided the injured Carag through the trees to the nearest road. The school van arrived, and Bridger ran to him. With Sherri Rivergirl’s help, Bridger wrapped Carag in a blanket and loaded him into the back seat. Someone injected his arm; the wound was described as a graze, and Bridger reassured him that they were taking him to the Clearwater High infirmary. Carag’s last thought before falling asleep was that he was alive and would soon be home.

Consequences and Significance

Afterward, Lissa Clearwater told Carag that his ability to transform again at a moment of extreme danger, despite already being injured, had impressed the staff. The school reconsidered its assessment and promoted him in the midyear examination. The decision did not erase the injury or the mistakes that had led him into danger, but it made his survival consequential within the school as well as in the wilderness.

The chase places two kinds of rule and protection in sharp contrast. Clearwater High teaches practical survival skills, including how to mislead dogs, while its protected grounds offer a measure of safety from the human world beyond them. Outside that boundary, the hunting season and the easy availability of a license make Carag’s puma body a target. His escape depends on using animal abilities—speed, scent, balance, and movement through snow—alongside lessons learned from Bridger and help from other Woodwalkers. Yet the pivotal change comes only when he can regain enough control to transform: the dogs’ pursuit shifts when the animal they are tracking becomes, to their confusion, a human standing before them. Carag survives not by relying on any single advantage, but by combining knowledge, endurance, assistance, and a transformation that fear had first denied him.