Dire Wolves

by Ken Jolly

  She gestured to Hank, "You have any ideas what could have happened to him?"

  "With a tenderfoot, it was most likely just misadventure. We'll find him."

  “Hopefully before he freezes.” Martha keyed the microphone and contacted Herb, "Any report on the Englishman yet, over?

  Seconds later the radio crackled with static, "Not a sign and neither hide nor hair, over."

  "Herb, I know you wanted us to check the North trail but I'm dubious. That goes uphill and away from town. Unless he was really turned around, I can't see him traveling uphill on foot. I think we might do better checking downhill towards town, over."

  "You can try back towards town, however if that proves negative, go back North, over."

  Martha turned to look back at Hank. "You can never second guess greenhorns, but let’s try downhill."

  Hank tapped her on the shoulder, "Do you think he would cut cross-country. It’s likely he would have stuck to the packed trail. No one would be that dumb."

  "Hank, then you don't know greenhorns, "He might if he took it into his head that it was shorter that way."

  They powered slowly, headed down the trail looking for any sign of the missing hunter. The sled pushed slowly through the fresh snow. They had only gone a half mile down the winding trail when Hank again patted Martha on the shoulder and they pulled up to a stop.

  "Look over there." Hank pointed to an obvious gap in the brush where it appeared something heavy or somebody might have pressed it down.

  "Martha shrugged and dismounted. “Best not to leave any stones unturned."

  They pushed through the brush. Found a deer trail that climbed into heavy forest and continued following the trail. Martha spotted it under the trees where the snow had not piled up as much. "Footprints."

  Hank bent down to study the footprints, "Didn't they say he was a short fellow?"

  "Yep he was short."

  He pointed at the trail, “Then by this stride I would say he was running!"

  Around the next corner, they found his shotgun pointed muzzle down into the snow and examined it to find both barrels had been fired. Martha got on the radio to Herb, "We found his trail and it’s not looking good, over."

  Herb asked, "You are sure it's him? Over."

  "Yep, found that antique shotgun of his, over."

  "Where are you, over?"

  Martha read back the coordinates off her GPS.

  "I'll redirect the other teams to your location, over."

  Forty yards further on Hank bent over to study another track. "He looked up at Martha, his expression was grim with only one word. “Wolf."

  Not much further, they found the first sign of blood on a tree trunk. After that, the blood became much more obvious. Scarlet red patches on white snow. Both guides were accustomed to following blood trails however never before from a human. They came out into a snow-dusted meadow that told the rest of the story. Three wolves hunched over a big red lump. A long streak of blood in the snow where it had been dragged and fought over.

  Martha pulled out her revolver but at that distance, the shot did not hit anything. The sound did scare the wolves from the kill.

  Before they got to the center of the slaughter Martha stumbled on a detached arm and in a visceral shudder had to look away.

  “You want to wait back on the trail?” Hank asked.

  “No, I have the only gun. It’s best if we stick together.” She shuddered again, “They might come back.”

  At the kill zone, it was worse. Many body parts were either missing or had obviously been feasted on.

  Martha keyed the radio to report while Hank looked around the clearing. "There were a lot more than three wolves here. The entire area is trampled and I can't count the individual tracks." He looked at Martha scratching his head. "There were a lot of them.” He paused, “At least half of Slocomb’s body was drag off," and gagging he threw up.

  Martha looked the other direction. She felt close to following his example.

  Hank straightened, his eyes grew big. He was looking into the muzzle of her weapon.

  The noise of the bullet passing his ear was reverberating. He picked himself off the ground where he had fallen flat.

  "What...?" He finally realized she had missed him and was pointing past him.

  A huge wolf lay dead in the snow not more than ten feet behind him.

  Martha couldn't speak for a minute and said weakly, "I guess it was hungry."

  Hank swallowed hard, still recovering from the near shot and realizing how close the wolf had been to him, "I guess they are not scared of man?"

  "They've had a taste."

  Trek to Town

  As soon as the sun was up, I took Jake to my improvised range where I practiced marksmanship.

  I had heard James Butler Hitchcock, that's Wild Bill of the Cody Wild West Show fame, practiced every morning to ensure his pistols worked and that his eyes were straight. I can't claim to shoot every morning however more often than not I did come out and shoot. It helped to keep bears and varmints at a good distance.

  Five shots down range and Jake seemed satisfied with the gun.

  Seeing Jake's smug grin at his tight grouping of shots, I told him, “I’m going to put up another target. This time at 100 yards."

  "Son, that rifle is made for a lot longer ranges than that."

  I just shook my head and started walking.

  "You don't even have a target with you," he shouted after me.

  "It's in my pocket," I yelled back as I continued through the trampled snow to the 100-yard line. There was an old picket post there. I stopped and pulled a match out my parka and stuck it in the top of the post.

  "What's that," he asked when I got back.

  "A match. It’s one of those old fashion white tipped strike types."

  He squinted at the post. "You sure you put a match there?"

  "Jake, you are showing your age or you could use some glasses. Give me the gun."

  I pulled one round out of the box and worked the bolt to chamber the round.

  "You think you can hit that,” Jake asked?

  "It's a good weapon, if I'm lucky I'll light it."

  "No way. This I have to see!"

  I walked over to a nearby tree with a low limb that could be used as a rest. I wrapped the sling around one elbow and slowly lined up the sights. Truthfully, I couldn't see the match either but I knew where it was. "Care to make a wager?"

  Jake shuffled his feet.” I don't want to take your money."

  "You wouldn't be taking my money. You would be making a donation."

  I steadied the weapon on the limb, estimated where the match was and allowed slightly for the wind out of the North. A long slow press of the trigger and the recoil made the rifle jump.

  "Come on." We walked down range.

  Jake carefully extinguished the burning match. "Son you've been practicing."

  "Sometime I’m lucky."

  We had a quick breakfast, as I was a little worried about what might be happening back in town. We then loaded essentials and additional guns into the toboggan that I had freed from the snow drift behind the cabin. I secured a tarp over the load.

  Jake eyed the load dubiously. "That's a lot of guns. Do you really think we need all of that?"

  "Might come in handy. Prefer having them if we need it."

  Jake seemed abnormally quiet again on our way back down the mountain. At first, I thought he was tired of shouting over the engine noise, and then I realized how wide his eyes became as we hurtled near shear drops of over a thousand feet. This was terrain I lived in and had become accustomed, which I rarely noticed. I suppose if I did notice, with my fear of heights, I might be intimidated also. Sometimes it’s best to not notice.

  Half way back to Laurel I pulled over to a wide spot in the trail. "This used to be an old gold mine." I shrugged, "or at least they claimed it was a mine that went dry. Don't know if anything was ever taken out of it."

  "Doesn't look like much
."

  "The tunnel collapsed long before my time." I hit the switch to restart the engine and got nothing. No sound at all. No grind of the engine turning over, trying to starting. "Damn. This is not good." We got off the machine and I lifted the cowl and poked around at the guts as if I knew what I was doing.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Don't ask me. I might guess a battery problem?"

  "Isn't this a kick start?"

  "No, that's the problem with modern technology.”

  "We could wait for someone to come along?"

  "Not many people use this path. We are at least 2100 feet above Laurel but its miles by the trail because it descends a bunch of switchbacks."

  "Then waiting isn't going to be of much use?"

  "I guess we have to walk.” I looked at the dim sun. “We are already loosing daylight."

  "I can't get used to how short the days are."

  "At this latitude, this time of the year we only get four and a half hours of light. A little more counting predawn and sunset."

  I looked back at the toboggan. "Don't want to leave this stuff. We could rig up a yoke and pull the toboggan."

  "That's quite a way to pull."

  "Relax the problem isn't going to be pulling. It's mainly downhill. The real problem will be stopping it from running away. We will have to keep it from speeding downhill or going off the trail and over the edge."

  Jake looked doubtful. "That's going to be really slow."

  "Nothing else to do, but do it. I have a hunch we are going to need this stuff in town, not to mention it would be criminal to leave the guns unguarded.

  Jake looked doubtful. "That's going to be really slow."

  I looked at the rapidly descending sun. "Soon it will be dark and really cold. We are going to need a place to lie over."

  Jake suggested, "Why not here? I see a couple of walls still standing. At least we can get out of the wind.”

  "We might do even better. Help me get the tarp off and we can push the sled into what’s left of the mine entrance. We can use the tarp to block the wind."

  Jake puzzled it out. "Could as comfy as we will get tonight. Then we can push down to Laurel at sunrise."

  I woke to a noise and laid there for a few seconds then hearing it again and I woke Jake. He sleeps like a log but snores loud. It was the sound of gunfire in the distance.

  "It’s pretty far away?"

  "These canyons carry sound a long ways. It's not very close."

  After another flurry of rounds, the sounds died away.

  "Whatever the problem, they either took care of it or it took care of them. If we looked for them now, as dark as it is we would slide off one of these cliffs."

  Dawn did not bring any new excitement. We pulled the tarp down and refastened it to the toboggan. I had a little rope that we wove to fashion a crude yoke.

  Walking was not too bad, as I said it's mainly downhill and we had broken a trail on the way up to the cabin. In some of the steeper grades we had to take a blight of line on trees to check the sled as heavy as it was it wanted to rush going down.

  We had been walking almost two hours when we came around a switchback on the trail to a gruesome surprise. A snow machine lay racked against the mountain where it had burned. When we looked further, Jake discovered the two bodies. They hadn't been too hard to find because of the blood in the snow. Red shows up really well.

  I stepped over a length of intestine. "Looks as if they were ravaged." I picked up a rifle that lay on the side of the trail. I worked the lever. Empty, no ammunition in it.

  Jake looked sick and was turning a terrible shade of gray, "We might have seen more gruesome things in Afghanistan, but I don't remember any as bad as this. They were eaten.” He pulled some of the bigger pieces together without throwing up. Do you recognize them?"

  “There's not much left to identify. Help me load them on the sled and we will bring what's left of them back."

  "You know Hoss, I think we need to divide the duty with one of us armed and guarding. Looks to me like they were taken by surprise. Do you think it was wolves?"

  I checked the trail for tracks. "Couldn't be much else. It’s going to be slow going with only one of us on the yoke.”

  “At least we’ll get there.”

  All I can say the trip back was colder and getting colder by the hour as the sun peaked and started down. Here in the mountains there is limited light and even less warmth due the sun crossing the mountain peaks.

  We had not seen any wolves however; we found more tracks in the snow. When Jake asked how many were in the pack I couldn’t guess. Just a lot more than the normal, I was familiar with from stories.

  As slow as we are, we didn’t make it into Laurel that day. We did find an old trapper’s shack to weather the night.

  A little past midnight we heard wolves again. I struggled out of my warm sleeping bag to check out the rough wood trimmed window. Didn’t see any wolves and Jake joined me. “Can’t a man get any sleep around here?”

  I pointed, “Look over to the iced pond on the left.” There was no way to tell how many wolves, but it was a lot.

  Jake went away then came back with the FAL. “How far off do you think they are?”

  “At least 300 yards give or take.”

  Jake leveled the FAL and squinted. “I might get one. They are bunched.”

  I started to stop him, but what the hell. As things now stood, we were not getting out of the cabin any time soon. He might be able to pick a few off.

  The FAL roared with its characteristic wincing thunderclap. We didn’t see any wolves fall but they tore off scurrying at the sound of the shot. That was good because I was not keen on sharing the neighborhood with them.

  After the sun rose barely above the horizon, we checked and did not see any wolves. This did not mean they were not out there, but we risked it. The toboggan runners had iced to the trail and it took both of us to unstick it.

  Just as the sun was setting, we pulled the sled into the edge of town. We had traded off pulling and doing guard duty so the trek had been slower. Once we had heard howls in the distance. Every nerve was at attention, listening. Not hearing more howls even made us jumpy, but we never saw any wolves.

  The village seemed strangely deserted. Very few lights and there was no one in the streets. Turning right onto Main St. the reason became obvious as we saw a large dark red stain in the road. I was tired of seeing blood signs, and lately there have been humans’ involved. As I thought, it seemed that things in town had gone from bad to worse.

  Jake watched behind as I continued leaning into the yoke pulling to the Lodge. I stopped short when the building came into view. The Barn where we parked snow machines had burned to a pile of ashes and twisted remains of metal. We smelled the burnt building before we saw it.

  Someone must have seen us coming. Sam stood at the door motioning us emphatically to come in. Our leisurely pace seemed to agitate him more.

  He was glancing up both directions of the street and waving us urgently forward. "Hurry! We saw wolves only a few minutes ago."

  His attitude did quicken our speed.

  "We brought back a couple of bodies. Any place we can put them? It's not pretty and we can’t leave them out for predators."

  Sam checked inside. "There is a wood shed out back. Wait a minute. I will get a rifle and cover you. We don't go out without backup any more. Especially after we lost Norman."

  "Was that on Main Street?"

  "No, that was Jean who was hit on the street. Until then we didn't think wolves came into town."

  "We’ll drag the bodies on around. No need for guards."

  "Need any help?" Sam cautiously ventured.

  "Unless you have a strong stomach, we’ll handle it."

  "I've seen a few bodies already. We lost six people from town. Haven't found all of the bodies yet. Doubt that we ever will."

  I questioned, "What happened to the Barn?"

  "Someone panicked yesterday. No one
knows but another two died in the fire. It may have been a mercy that the wolves did not get them."

  Sam gestured at our sled. "Any idea who it was."

  "Best we can tell from what is left of the remains there are two people. One had a red plaid jacket."

  "That would be James and that means the other must have been Will. They left yesterday to try the mountain pass."

  I had been down that trail. "Not the easiest trail even in good weather."

  "Yeah, well we are getting a little desperate. We hoped they could bring back help and supplies."

  "What do you need? Ammo?"

  "Wouldn't turn that down, but after the wolves ravaged the General Store, food supplies are getting kind of short. If we don't get extra grub there is going to be skinny people by spring!"

  "Wolves got into the Store? How's Hazel?"

  "She's OK but a little messed up. They grabbed anything edible. Between Laurel relying on supplementing our provisions with wild game and the Store stocks we are getting pretty short."

  I asked, "What about the radio. Can we get a plane in with some supplies?"

  "The wolves took care of that. They knocked the radio off the shelf. Two of the guys are working on it but they have doubts."

  "That's not good."

  He scratched his head, "What happened to your snow machine?”

  "Died on the trail."

  "What about James's snow machine."

  "Pile of junk. It ran into the mountain."

  "That's a shame. With the Barn fire most of the better machines were ruined."

  I frowned. "It would be a miracle for a snow machine to get through the pass with all of this new powder." I kicked the toboggan." If James had not broken a trail, doubt that we would have been able to pull this load."

  "Jake, do you want to cover me and we will get these bodies into the wood shed? The ground is too frozen now to bury them."

  "Sure, let's get this over with. I'm looking forward to some food and”, he brushed snow off his head, “warmth."

  Sam added, “While you are at the shed can you bring back some wood? We've been making armed runs to bring in firewood."

  I jumped when we were rounding the corner of the Lodge. A shot ringing almost in my ear.