The Healer by Daniel P. Mannix

and difficult to ross—separate the tough, outer bark from the soft inner lining. Still, he could count on a few hours to hunt with Dracula.
    It was light enough now to see the whole sweep of the countryside and anything—even a rabbit—would show up clearly against the dead white snow. Billy looked until his eyes watered, wiped them, and looked again. Still, he kept on to the orchard. Here the snow was comparatively light, the brunt of the storm having been stopped by a windbreak of evergreens.
    The light was growing steadily stronger. In the sky, only a single steel-blue star remained along with the fading remains of a bone-white moon. The black bones of the trees stood like skeletons against the pink clouds in the east. Overhead, a jet plane stitched a long white plume, also dyed pink, across the dark blue sky. To avoid the wind, Billy kept along the edge of the evergreen windbreak. Suddenly he stopped. Something else had paralleled the windbreak. In the snow were two sets of pad marks: the long, thin prints of the coyote and the almost round marks of a dog.
    Billy bent over the tracks. Even though there was quite a bit of wind, the tracks were clearly etched, with no trace of drifted snow. They were probably not more than an hour old. Billy called Wasser over, hoping that he could tell from the hound's actions how fresh the tracks were, but the cold was so intense that Wasser could pick up no scent, and tracks without scent meant nothing to him. Ahead, Billy could see where the tracks had left the run and turned into the orchard. Wolf and his companion, the female dog, had also been looking for rabbits.
    The snow was turning purple now where the shadows of the trees lay on it, and visibility was perfect—better than it would be after the sun had fully risen and there was a glare off the snow. Ahead, the dead white was broken by dunes of brown clump grass that lay in sweeping patterns, tracing the path of the wind gusts that had carried the seeds. The sun, blood-red and a perfect sphere, was just clear of the horizon, and in the west the mottled dish of the moon was fading. The clump grass was so exactly the same color as the coyote that once when the wind made a tuft move, Billy started, thinking that Wolf was there.
    Judging from the tracks, the dog had stayed in the orchard, digging either for mice or windfalls, while Wolf had gone to a fence row where the frost had left filigree work around the mouths of the rabbit holes. He had tested each hole with his nose—the imprint of his muzzle could be seen—but had apparently decided that the frozen ground was too hard for digging. He had gone back to get the dog and the two of them had left the orchard and headed for the distant woods.
    Billy knew he would also have to go to the woods, both for the bark and because only in the shelter of the trees could Dracula fly. The owl was growing restless and had jumped off his fist several times, only to swing back again with a flirt of his great, soft wings. There might be pheasants lying-up in the honeysuckle tangles and Dracula could take these fairly easily, as the startled birds rocketed up. Billy headed for the woods with Wasser struggling after him.
    It was turning out to be a mother-of-pearl day. The sun gleamed on the glazed surface. At every step, Billy broke through the crust into the soft snow beneath, and the hard edges of the ice crust hit his boots until his ankles were sore. Wasser slid helplessly on the crust, now breaking through until he was bogged down and then skating over the slick surface. The boy could see where Wolf, in some surprising manner, had walked easily on the crust, but his companion, the dog, had clearly had as hard a time as Wasser; her trail was a series of skid marks alternating with holes where she had gone through the crust and wallowed in the snow. Billy began to wonder if he might overtake them, and if he did what would happen.
    They came to a plowed road which the animals had followed,