by Asta Bowen
Eight
Rendezvous
It was raining hard by the time Marta led her pack down the draw. The pups’ bravado was gone, and as they left their home behind, their eyes grew wide and their gait nervous. Sula walked stiff-legged, as if each foot was on fire, and Rann and Annie huddled close, bumping sides as they hurried along behind their mother. Oldtooth brought up the rear, nose keen for dangers. The wolves followed the creek from which they drank, winding downstream through fir and pine trees toward the great expanse of Pleasant Valley.
Not far from the den, the path became a grassy road and the stream became a pond with a small dam at one end. Beyond the dam, encircled by the dirt road, lay Dahl Lake and the long meadows of Pleasant Valley. The pups had never seen so much sky. At the edge of the trees, the gray June ceiling rolled out and out in front of them. By now Sula’s feet were barely touching the ground, and Rann and Annie seemed connected by magnetic force. Marta and Oldtooth halted at the road, listening, then shot across the road and into the meadow.
The pups followed close behind, and the moment their feet hit the long, wet grasses on the other side, something happened. Marta and Oldtooth bounded into the meadow without a backward glance and the pups, following their leaders, did the same. Stretching their legs for the first time in a true wolf run, they were unstoppable. All fear disappeared in that instant, and it was playtime again—playtime like they had never known.
Dahl Lake was more water than a pack could ever drink. With a yip, Annie bounced gleefully toward it, Rann still close at her side. Sula outdid them both; she was taking a fast lap around the shore by the time they reached the water’s edge. While the pups raced toward the lake, Marta and Oldtooth made up their own game of high-speed tag, hide-and-seek, and leapfrog. Blinking against the rain, Marta raced toward the glade of aspen trees with Oldtooth in pursuit. Halfway to the trees she stopped flat, dropped into the soaked grass, and let Oldtooth soar over her in a low-flying bound. No sooner had his front feet hit the ground than she was up and galloping after him again. Then Oldtooth dropped, Marta leaped, and places changed again.
The black cattle grazing in the meadow had seen Marta and Oldtooth many times, passing through on their hunts, and barely glanced at the revelry going on around the aspens and the lake. A few cows moved mildly down valley to give the pups—especially Sula, who had found her stride—room to run.
The cattle’s movement caught Oldtooth’s eye, and for a moment he gave chase to a cow instead of Marta. He wasn’t hungry—Marta had brought down a deer just days before—and the animal seemed to know it wasn’t a real chase. The cow ran a few steps, then lumbered away with a grunt. Oldtooth followed at an easy distance, sniffing idly at the tracks and leaving Marta to explore the aspen trees.
When Marta found nothing of interest in the trees, she howled for her pack. The pups had never heard the come-here call from such a distance and came thrashing through the meadow, tongues flapping and coats soaked with rain. When Oldtooth arrived, the pack joined together in a long and happy song, then followed as Marta led them back to the road.
At the dam, instead of turning toward the den, she continued along the road before heading up a different draw. In a small clearing there, as the pups would soon find, were the remains of a whitetail Marta had killed. She had carried some of its meat back to the den in her belly, and its flavor was strong. As they approached, Annie picked up the smell and whined, wrinkling her brow and looking from her mother to Oldtooth. Marta quickened her pace, and soon they were in the clearing.
At the wolves’ approach, ravens that had been picking at the carcass flapped into the trees and began a loud argument. The pups scattered at the wing beats, ducking behind Oldtooth, and peeked at the dead deer with great interest. They craned their necks, but held back with their feet, waiting to be shown what to do. Marta sniffed a circle around the kill site, alert for traps and poison. Next she approached the carcass itself, examining each section as gingerly as if it could bite. Satisfied, Marta tore into the deer’s shoulder, yanking back the hide with a practiced move the pups knew from tug-of-war.
Annie got the idea immediately. As if she’d done it all her life, she reached forward and bit into the muscle her mother had exposed. But Annie’s milk teeth, though sharp, were no match for the flesh of the deer, and after much pulling and growling, she came up with only a small mouthful of shreds. These she carried off proudly and swallowed with a gulp. Before she could run back for another mouthful, monkey see became monkey do, and Rann and Sula were in her way. As Annie barged between them, Marta continued pulling hide from the rump. Oldtooth, with his blunted teeth, waited like the pups for flesh to be exposed; when there was room, he reached in with a grunt and clamped his jaws around a mouthful of the good, strong meat.
While the pups and Oldtooth did what they could with the teeth they had, Marta used her canines and incisors to strip the carcass. When the deer was skinned, she twisted off a foreleg and dragged it under the raven tree. She gnawed peacefully on the bone, watching her youngsters relish their first fresh meal.
The rain let up, turning to mist as they ate, and the pups began to complain. Their pulling and tugging and tearing was not filling their bellies, so Marta left her leg bone to break off single ribs, dropping one each for the pups. They fought for the meatiest rib, Annie nosing out Rann, and Sula getting the last pick. Then Marta broke off a few more ribs and left them in reach of Oldtooth. The pack feasted until the gray sky grew steely and dark—but Marta did not rise again to lead them back to their old home. This would be their home for now, the first of the summer rendezvous sites where the pack would meet and eat and rest. They would not return to the den again.
Nine
Growing Pains
Although the pups no longer needed the den, moving away from it was a heady adventure. In a single afternoon they went from a safe world they knew, down to the last blade of grass, to a completely new world—full of things to explore, but full of uncertainties too. The pups saw by the cautious way Marta and Oldtooth moved that they, too, had to be watchful here. The days of puppyhood, however short, were already over.
The rendezvous site was a halfway place between the safety of the den and the freedom of the forest. As the pups grew, Marta and Oldtooth would let their world grow with them. A clearing like this gave the young wolves more room to play and explore while keeping them safe from the full-size dangers of the forest. Only when they were big enough to survive on their own would they be given full freedom to roam.
The pack stayed at their first rendezvous site for several weeks. Within days the deer carcass was picked clean, and Annie made an endless game of the bones. She teased Sula with the forelegs and played soccer with the skull. Sula, since she had discovered running, wanted nothing else to do; she wore a path around the clearing in ever-faster circles. Once again Rann was champion of hide-and-seek, camouflaging himself among the stumps and shadows in the clearing. The pups sharpened their hunting skills, graduating from grasshoppers to mice, and chasing any hapless rabbits that came too close.
With the deer carcass reduced to bones, it was time for Marta to hunt again. She called the pack together for a howl, and the voices that drifted into the sky were longer and throatier than before; the pups were growing up. After a wet salute from her pack, Marta loped away. In a matter of moments Annie had dragged off the pelvic bone from the deer, and Rann and Sula were playing hide-and-seek. Sula’s idea of “seeking” was to race around the clearing at top speed, so Rann was hidden for longer than usual. The pups thus occupied, Oldtooth trotted out to sniff the breeze for squirrels. Now that the youngsters needed less supervision, he could leave long enough to hunt a small meal.
Sula ran around and around the rendezvous site, but when Rann still did not come out, she grew bored. Finding him in none of the usual hiding spots, she ran to join Annie’s attack on the hipbone. It was a fine toy, big enough for two, complete with shreds of meat to fight over. The game had turned to full scale tug
-of-war—Sula losing—when they heard a terrified howl from beyond the clearing. Annie dropped her end of the bone, and Sula fell backward in surprise.
The yowl was followed by thrashing and barking—Rann’s voice!—from a nearby thicket. A terrifying medley of sounds made Sula and Annie dive for cover under the nearest bush. A fearsome fight was taking place, and when their brother’s bark turned to a distressed squeal, Annie sprang out of the shrubs and dashed toward the sound.
Halfway across the clearing, she was cut off by Oldtooth. He looked huge, standing sideways with his gray ruff raised around glittering eyes. Annie stopped in her tracks. Sula peeked out from behind her bush, but when Oldtooth flicked an ear her way, she popped back in. The noise in the thicket tripled, and in the bedlam they heard a new sound. It was their mother—and yet it was not. It was Marta’s voice, but none of the pups had ever heard such a shriek; her fiercest scolding was gentle by comparison. This was the voice of teeth, the promise of death.
That promise made, suddenly there came a screech from the brush, and a tawny shape shot across the clearing behind Oldtooth. No taller than Annie, the bobcat was fat and fast, and it streaked out of sight before Oldtooth could manage a hoarse bark. Annie crouched motionless, and Sula stayed hidden until the noise died away. Oldtooth, having caught his breath, finally galloped after the tail-less end of the cat.
In a few moments Marta appeared from the thicket, carrying Rann by the neck as she had when the pups were infants. His whole body drooped, from the ears to the nose and from his shoulders down to his slack tail. The coal-black fur was matted with spittle and spiked with blood.
Sula crept out from hiding and tiptoed toward Annie, who slowly rose from her crouch. Stock-still, they watched Marta lay the black shape in the grass under a young fir. The legs and hindquarters were limp, but as soon as his shoulder touched the ground, Rann exploded with a wail. He was alive. Though bleeding from many scratches and from a paw-size slash on his shoulder, Rann gave a cry that was the sound of life, not death. Marta cleaned the wounds, tugging loose skin back where it belonged with her fine front teeth. She treated Rann from nose to tail, smoothing his roughed coat with strong strokes of her tongue.
Except for his shoulder, Rann was in one piece. When the bleeding finally slowed and Marta paused in her treatment, Annie and Sula whimpered. Rann stirred, as if to get up and play, but something stopped him: a long, low growl from the black throat of his mother. She shaped her form around his in a protective half-circle, and slowly the warning growl turned to a contented grumble. Survived again.
Ten
Oldtooth’s Find
After Rann’s misadventure, Marta put off her hunt. She tended his wounds constantly, sniffing each puncture and sometimes cleaning so deeply that Rann yelped in pain. While Marta stayed close, keeping him from the temptation to play, Oldtooth returned to the woods in search of small game. Annie and Sula became adept mouse hunters who gobbled down their catch instead of offering, as Oldtooth did, to share. But the squirrels and rabbits Oldtooth brought back were not filling their bellies, and the deer carcass in the clearing was still a litter of blood-marked bones.
By the time Rann’s shoulder had closed, the whole pack was out of sorts from hunger. One afternoon Oldtooth returned to the rendezvous site with his ears high and his tail waving like a young willow. Rounding his lips and lifting his chin, he howled an unexpected song: the feasting song. Marta cocked her head, hesitating; Oldtooth always carried small kills back in his mouth. This song meant there was something he couldn’t carry.
Marta studied Oldtooth, who continued to howl until she, too, raised her head and sang. Then the pups ran to greet their old friend and join in the howl. They licked and nipped at Oldtooth’s muzzle, but Marta did not do the same; she was the alpha wolf, regardless of who did the hunting. Still, it was Oldtooth who led the pack away from the clearing, slowed only by Rann’s limp, out toward the big meadow and the lake.
As soon as Sula saw the fringe of treetops give way to the Pleasant Valley sky, she began to zig and zag from their single-file formation, but she knew better than to bolt before Marta gave the sign. At the road they heard grunts from range cattle and the drone of a tractor in the distance. As Marta and Oldtooth flicked their ears and sniffed the air, the pups sniffed and listened too.
Finally Oldtooth led them across the meadow, past the grazing cattle. Marta’s nose twitched at their smell, but the wave in Oldtooth’s tail promised food—and they all needed food.
At the edge of the meadow, where the land buckled into a pine-dotted hillside, the smell of death hit Marta’s nostrils. It was not the smell of a wolf kill; there was no salty tang of blood, no sign of a chase or struggle, no flesh or hide strewn about. Oldtooth led on, and when they saw the size of his quarry, it was obvious why he had not carried it back. But this was no deer: it was a steer. A black yearling lay in the lengthening sun, its head buzzing with flies.
The animal had died on its own, with no help from Oldtooth, and the wolves were not the first to find it. Where the belly was chewed open, the smell of coyote was strong. Marta approached tentatively, ears forward, instincts troubled. Since the poisoning of her pack in the north, she rarely ate anything she didn’t kill. Though cattle weren’t her choice of food, their meat could become tolerable—if not tantalizing—when she was hungry enough. After nearly a week since her last meal, she was almost that hungry.
Marta was not that hungry, but her pack was. The pups, who had developed an appetite for meat, whined at the smell. Sensing nothing unnatural, Marta bit once at the opening in the steer’s belly. Then, fighting back the odors of cow and coyote, she jerked angrily at the skin, which was tougher than deer hide—almost as thick as moose. The pups hung back as she worked, sniffing curiously at the strange-smelling meat. When they saw Marta opening the carcass like a deer, they surged around her to get at the food. Oldtooth had to steady the body, holding a leg in his jaws, while Marta pulled away the skin. Meanwhile, the pups gobbled up the smaller organs they could swallow without much chewing.
Marta kept skinning. She worked grimly, fur flat and eyes narrowed. Hungry though they were, the pups mimicked their mother’s mood; her tail did not wag, and neither did theirs. Finally she stopped to circle the steer, sniffing at each of the pups and inspecting Rann’s shoulder. His skin was holding. Now Marta stopped to gulp some scraps for herself, but she had to swallow hard to get them down. This was not good food. Wrinkles appeared in Marta’s black brow as she watched her pack grow red-mouthed around the body of the steer.
Eleven
First Warning
One evening in midsummer, having left the pups with Oldtooth at their latest rendezvous site, Marta killed a young elk in the aspen grove by the lake. Rann’s injury had healed, and she was back to hunting as before. Crossing the road toward the rendezvous, a happy howl rising, the sound suddenly caught in her throat. Something was wrong.
The dusty road had been traveled since she crossed it, and there were human footprints on the path next to the dam. Marta’s hair prickled on her back as she sniffed out the tracks. One set seemed to amble without direction, but the other went past the pond and up the stream, straight toward the old den site. Fighting the urge to run, Marta followed the tracks, her breathing short. Darkness gathered in the trees, and soon she was moving on scent alone. Her gait grew cautious as she edged along the creek, stopping now and then to listen, to smell the air or to bury her nose in a moist footprint. There were no sounds, and no trace of human breath in the cooling air. Marta continued.
She was almost to the den when a new smell assaulted her nose. Her body went rigid, as if to disappear into the shadows. This was not a smell she had found in Pleasant Valley: it was the scent of a strange wolf, a trespasser. Marta’s hackles went up, and the fur swelled around her neck. A low growl, almost inaudible, rumbled through her throat.
The first strange wolf Marta met nearly killed her. It happened in the north, shortly after her pack died. She was in
her first breeding period, a time that turned her instincts upside down. Marta had been traveling for miles without a real meal when she heard a convention of ravens on a hillside. She followed her stomach toward the noise.
She never got there. Posted around the kill site, on stumps and rocks and patches of snow, was the scent mark of a strange wolf, a sign that said KEEP OUT. Marta had seen her father and mother lead the pack away from such smells, and she bared her teeth at it. She sniffed again, trying to guess how long ago the sign had been posted and how far away its owner was, when suddenly a growl came from behind.
It was a black wolf. Marta was too young, too confused, and too hungry to fight, so she simply fled. The strange wolf chased her for miles, in and out of the creek, up and down the hillsides. Marta was faster, but he knew the terrain better, and finally he cornered her against a short cliff.
But he did not attack. He did not snarl or threaten. Instead, he began sniffing aggressively at her and whining as if he were hurt. As she cowered, ears flat, suddenly he reared up and placed his paws on her shoulders, something that hadn’t happened since she was a scruffball pup. Marta backed against the rock wall and before she could shake him off, something in her snapped. The smell and the strangeness and the hunger exploded together, and she spun out from under him like a leaf in whitewater.
Fangs bared, she went for the wolf’s leg. When she felt a bone crush between her jaws, the blood madness boiled up and she clung fast to his foreleg. He snarled, but in the instant before he lunged, she released her bite and ran. Sickened by the taste of wolf blood, she ran harder and harder until she heaved the taste from her mouth. She never saw or smelled that black wolf’s sign again, and from that day, Marta regarded strangers as enemies until they proved otherwise.