The dog men were Leather's trackers and he always made sure that a few of them were carried along when he went on the road. The dog men moved fast enough to be sent out ahead of the column like the Radlep scouts, but they carried a little extra, an edge, that made them feared and hated—but very good at what they did.

Before the camp was even half dismantled and long before Stanley's pathetic wails rang out in the night, the dog men were off and running. They bucketed out onto. the road, put their heads down, and headed for Altoona.

They were a funny breed, these guys, and they tended to stick together, preferring the company of other dog men or best of all, their great, muscled dogs. Leather dispatched all three of his trackers and they pounded down the road with Leather's orders ringing in their ears: find him.

They were mounted on three-wheeled motorcycles, great hunks of iron that were mostly homemade out of a dozen pieces of a dozen other bikes. The machines bounced along on three large all-terrain tires that were the special gift of the Leatherman. Each man was heavily armed, of course, but each knew that his most effective weapon was not his hardware but the massive dog that rode in the cages built high in the back of the trike, just behind the rider's back.

Inside each cage squatted a dog of immense size and of a breed that would have been unrecognizable to the citizens of an older age, when dogs had been kept around the house to have their ears pulled by young children and to do tricks. No, these animals were something else altogether: they were part mastiff, part pit bull, part wild. They were a couple hundred pounds of bone and muscle whose only purpose was to serve the demands of a powerful set of jaws and twin rows of razor-sharp teeth.

The dog men were from the south and these dogs had been bred and taught in tough swamp country by men who didn't quite fit into the mold of the new world. The massive short-haired brown dogs seemed to share their masters' taste for the kill, for blood.

As soon as the motorcycles roared out onto the dark cold highway, a peculiar animal fury seemed to rise in animal and rider alike. As the dog men crouched low over their handlebars', noses into the wind almost as if they sensed blood on the icy air, so the dogs crouched forward in their cages, growling at the rushing air as if they knew that every inch of highway they covered brought them closer to the ecstasy of a kill.

The icy miles passed quickly and as a gray dawn broke over a frozen landscape the dog men charged into the quiet ruins of the ghost town. The three. machines screeched to a halt in the middle of the main street, where night shadows still seemed to lurk.

The leader of the small squad swung off his machine and took a few steps down the street, his eyes alive; he appeared to be sniffing the air. His fellow riders sat still in their saddles, but the dogs scratched and whined as if they were anxious for the bloodletting that was to come.

"Well," said the leader, "they been here all right."

"How do you know?" asked one of the riders.

"Little feeling I got."

The two mounted men nodded. That was all the explanation they needed.

"Now," said the leader, "which way did they go ...?"

"Reckon we can find out."

"Reckon we can," said the leader softly, "reckon we can." He walked slowly to his caged animal, the dog bounding against the heavy metal wire, delirious with joy as she realized that her master was about to set her free. The man slid back the heavy bolt that secured the door and the dog, knowing the routine, lay down on the floor of her cage whimpering. The dog man threw the door wide open, giving the beast a tantalizing glimpse of freedom. The master grabbed the dog's mammoth head between his rough hands and whispered in her ear: "Now come on now," he said softly. "You come on and make your daddy proud, you hear?"

The huge beast bounded from her confines, prancing on the road at her master's side. The other two dogs, jealous of the freedom of their mate, set up a terrible barking and growling.

"Quiet there," shouted one of the riders, "you'll get your chance."

The soft sensitive snout of the freed dog bent to the cracked road and the animal moved around in a few wide crooked circles, then, like an arrow, seemed to lock on a scent. The handler rapped out a command:

"Go, girl."

The dog sprang forward, the powerful muscles in her shoulders and hindquarters propelling her along the street like a torpedo. Deep in her throat a growl of pure animal blood lust was bom, and as she ran, it developed into a harsh, full-throated, ferocious howl.

The handler watched the dog dash across the street, hot on the scent of something. She skidded at the entrance of a broken building and wailed. A man broke from his cover within and dashed down the street, the dog hard on his heels.

The man glanced over his shoulder, saw the bared teeth of the animal, and screamed, his wild cries seeming to tear a groove in the morning air. The slave ran, his heart pumping in his thin chest. A scrawny tree that had once given shade to the street was right in his path and he clawed his way up the naked trunk, grabbed the lowest branch, and was just about to swing himself up to safety when the dog leaped high in the air and clamped down with her steel-trap jaws on the dangling foot of the petrified slave.

The sharp incisors sliced down deep into the bony foot and the jaws locked. The dog hung there, pulling at her prey with all her weight. Blood poured down onto her nose, threatening to drown her. She snuffed to clear her nostrils of gore, refusing to let go.

The other two dogs had been released and they were dancing around under the screaming man, jumping up, their jaws snapping like traps.

The dog men wandered over nonchalantly and stood under the tortured man. All three men thrust their hands into the back pockets of their pants and watched for a moment.

Finally the leader spoke. "You gonna be good, boy?"

"Call it off! Call it off!" screamed the slave.

"You gonna behave?"

The slave nodded, his eyes wide with pain and fear.

"Down, girl," shouted the chief. The dog undamped her teeth, dropped to the ground, and sat obediently. The other two dogs stopped barking and lay down.

"Come on down, boy."

The slave let go and dropped to the ground, landing painfully on his chewed-up foot. He yelped as he hit the pavement and grabbed at the bloody wound as if trying to squeeze out the pain. The dogs growled as he writhed; he never took his terrified eyes off them.

"Now," said the lead handler, "where did they go?"

"Who?" 

One of the assistants kicked the mangled foot savagely and the slave wailed again. He placed his boot under the nose of one of the dogs, who gratefully licked the tasty warm blood off the toe.

The leader looked down at the slave and rubbed his whiskers. "Now don't you be that way, boy, or these little ladies here are going to tear you apart. Now a couple of days ago there were some boys here and I heard that they gave the folks here some trouble. You tell us where they went and we'll go see that they never bother you again."

The slave seemed to trust them. He spoke slowly. "They headed out of town. They took the road that way. . . ." He gestured.

"And when was this?"

"Yesterday."

"Good boy," said the leader, as if he was praising one of his dogs. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it? We're going to be on our way now. Sorry about the foot."

The slave relaxed a little.

"C'mere, girl," said the leader, and the first dog jumped up and trotted happily to her master's side and licked the handler's long thin hand. The man fondled the heavy fur on the dog's neck for a moment.

"Dang," he said, "almost forgot."

"Forgot what?" said the slave. He didn't notice that the other two handlers were smiling broadly.

"Why I almost forgot that it's just about feeding time."

The dogs heard the magic words, and with a yelp they fell upon the slave. The long teeth slashed into the man's thin body. The bone razors set in their jaws tore the man into a red raw mess of muscles and meat.

The slave summoned up every ounce of strength that remained in his frail form and thrashed violently in a vain attempt to throw off the devouring beasts.

The jaws squeezed shut, cracking a narrow bone in his arm. A dog latched on to an ear, dug her forelegs into the ground, and pulled and shook her head at the same time until the thin flesh and cartilage gave way. The dog fell back into a heap on her hindquarters, gobbling up the ear like a bloody mushroom. The third dog burrowed into the soft flesh of the groin and tore back and forth like a threshing machine.

The handlers watched as their beasts quickly pulled the slave to pieces. When they judged that the dogs had eaten enough to keep them alive but not so much that they would lose their appetites for further killing, they called them off. The brainwashed animals stopped their anxious snarling and chewing immediately and trotted to their masters' sides, licking their bloody, saliva-damp chops.

"Okay," said the leader, "let's go." The dogs jumped into their cages and the three motorcycles bumped away, leaving the gore-strewn body of the slave behind them.

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