Rose in a Storm by Jon Katz

one corner where it was dry and sheltered from the fierce wind.
    Rose saw that they were paralyzed with fear, as sheep are when trapped. Off to the right, in the opposite corner of the pole barn, was the ewe, afterbirth trailing from her rear, its smell still fresh, even through the wind and snow.
    The mother was in a panic. She ran here and there, calling out for her lamb—a particular kind of call mothers use to locate their offspring. She charged into the snow but was blocked and fell back.
    Rose recognized this ewe instantly, one of the oldest and most pliant on the farm. She often retreated into the center of the flock when Rose appeared, wanting no trouble with the dog. But she was also a fiercely protective mother who would lower her head and rush in front of her babies whenever Rose came too close.
    When she saw Rose emerge from the blizzard, she did not back off, as she normally would have, or lower her head, but looked at Rose in a way Rose had never seen before—as if pleading. She looked the dog in the eyes, but it was not a challenge, and not just an expression of desperation.
    Rose understood sheep better than she understood people, even Sam. Sam often confused her, but the sheep never did.
    The ewe was worried about her baby.
    Rose stopped in the front of the pole barn, close to the ewe. She caught her breath, shook the snow and ice out of her eyes, leaned down and pulled chunks of ice off of her paws and forelegs with her teeth. Then she raised her nose high in the air. Smells poured through her mind.
    The scent of coyotes came to her clearly. She now understood, and plowed forward through the snow, over the ice, intothe wind, and off to the right, to where the ewe was looking frantically. It took her what seemed like a long time to get that very short distance, as she kept falling into the drifts through the ice crust, her breath labored from the strain and weight of the snow in her fur. She heard a scratching and wheezing sound and was surprised to see the wild dog coming through the forbidding night close behind her.
    After a few minutes, panting harder, her tongue long, Rose made it around the corner of the pole barn to a mound of snow where she could see up the hill. She smelled lamb and she smelled coyote but, at first, could see neither. She heard the shrieking of the wind, the piercing calls of the ewe, the anxious responses of the other sheep.
    Rose did know fear, but it was fear of failing, not of other animals, or of injury or death. She’d felt something strange and new when the ewe had turned to her. It was not an image she could recall, but she felt it strongly, not in her nose or in her mind, but deep within her chest. Rose sensed the ewe’s emotion and it drove her up the hill. Most of all, she knew it was her job to protect the sheep and lambs.
    As she moved a few feet up the hill, she smelled the blood. Some of the drops were still visible in the snow, the scent different from any other.
    Blood was familiar to her—she almost always smelled it running through the woods. But Rose had only smelled the blood of a lamb once, when one was born twisted, near death, and Sam had gone to get the rifle and had shot it.
    The experience had affected her, left her confused and lethargic for hours, so much so that Sam gave her a day off to get over it. But she remembered it, and knew it now.
    She froze. There, not more than a few steps in front of her, was the coyote, the leader, the one she had known as a pup. Hiseyes were ablaze, and a dead lamb was hanging by the throat from his mouth. Three other coyotes stood in a half circle right behind him. The lamb’s head hung off to one side, its eyes closed, its still-warm body hanging down to the ground.
    Rose paused to take in this scene, moving in and out of shadow, framed by snow, ice, wind, dark. It was almost like one of her dreams, but her nose told her it was very real.
    She was still, but teeming inside. It was not in her work—her map—although