by Asta Bowen
Thirty
A Few Golden Days
As fall made its way down to Nyack Flats, Oldtooth limped after rabbits and mice on the soft leaves of the forest floor. He had not been this hungry in years, not since the drought into which he was born. Constant hunting was all that kept him alive, and even so, his weight was falling. He became bolder, venturing out of the trees and into the pastures to chase small animals darting among the cattle herd.
Oldtooth grew sick. A fever rose and fell as he hunted, and the pain throbbed from what was left of his foot. He moved little, resting often. As flesh and bone fell away, there was nothing he could do but pull off the rotting toes. The pain was flat now, and he gave only a grunt as he bit at his flesh. It was a ghastly contrast to the real food he needed.
As Oldtooth’s condition grew more grave, the smell of the cattle grew more tantalizing; livestock had saved his life in the north, and the taste for meat remained in his dull, cracked teeth. But these days he was no match for a full-size cow.
One night, the old wolf had been out in the pasture for several hours. Awkward on three legs and feverish, he tracked and lunged, lunged and tracked. Mouse, rabbit, or ground squirrel—it didn’t matter; he snapped at everything. When he came upon a small steer that had strayed to the edge of the herd, his reaction was automatic. He lunged.
He caught the animal in the throat. The steer didn’t have time to look; the big gray animal had been limping through the pasture for days, never giving the cattle more than a curious glance. Now Oldtooth had its neck in the blunt trap of his jaws, crushing windpipe and spine in one stroke. The animal fell, and Oldtooth gnawed blindly at its belly until he finally broke through the hide.
Oldtooth feasted that night. He devoured the organs and most of the flesh, then hobbled back to the woods to sleep. The next day he rested, somewhat revived, but when he went back to the carcass, it was mysteriously gone. In its place was the sharp tang of metal and the smell of strange wolf. Even in distress, Oldtooth would not be taken by traps again. He could taste the metal in his broken teeth. He skirted the trap and returned to the trees. His fever had dropped, and he almost chased a mouse as he entered the forest. Several nights later Oldtooth went back to the cow pasture, not wanting to lose the full feeling between his ribs. He killed again, and feasted again.
For a few autumn days in the Middle Fork Valley, Oldtooth savored what was left of his wolf life. Without pack or pups his pleasures were few, but he took them as he could. The hunger softened and pain dulled, he slept each day until the low sun arced over the mountains behind him. Waking to crisp air scented with golden poplar and aspen leaves, he limped through the hills above and the river below at an easy pace. In a safe hollow of the Middle Fork he would sun himself on the open rocks, out of sight of the highway, tasting the breezes that blew through the valley.
So Oldtooth endured for the time that was his. Then one cool afternoon when he was in the pasture, a vehicle pulled up and stopped. The door opened quietly, one metallic click followed by another sliding snap. The old wolf heard neither. Standing at the edge of the trees, his ears were tuned to the low conversation of the cattle and the rustle of leaves dropping quietly behind him.
With Marta now lost to the south and Annie and Sula miles to the north, the wolf who had been their packmate, protector, and teacher stood for a moment, framed by trees, mountain, and afternoon sun. Suddenly there was a sharp noise in the fall air, another noise that changed everything, and at the edge of pasture, Oldtooth lay down for the last time. His arithmetic was done.
Thirty-One
Marta’s Dream
In her moonlit bed by Flathead Lake, Marta sank into unconsciousness. Sleep shut her eyes and slowed her heart. It stilled the muscles that had carried her over mountains and across water. The earth pulled heavily on her, and she settled deeper into her forest bed, drawn by the feathery force of gravity. Her breathing grew long and even. The moon glittered higher, the air grew cooler, and the dark breeze rattled papery leaves in the aspen trees. Larch needles fell in a rain, sprinkling Marta’s back like a dusting of golden snow.
She did not stir. Neither the moon nor the breeze nor the sound of the highway could disturb a sleep so deep.
As Marta slept, she began to dream. First she dreamed a spring day in Pleasant Valley, playing in the sugary snow with Calef and Oldtooth. Then she dreamed the birth of the pups in her dark den, and her tail thumped the ground lightly. She dreamed the noise that changed everything, and the hungry days after Calef’s death, and she whined through her teeth. She dreamed the hunting days of summer, and her whiskers quivered in the silvery darkness.
Then she dreamed the capture and the clinic and the Nyack, and her last glimpses of Rann, Oldtooth, Sula, and Annie. The whine turned to a half howl, and her feet strained as if running all the way back to them. But the howl ended in a gulp and Marta’s body went limp, as if her life had ended. Her legs did not move, and her chest did not rise or fall.
After a long stillness she heaved a big breath, a sigh that let more air out than in, and fell into an even deeper sleep. The moon walked across the sky, and the shadows of leaves played across Marta’s back. She drifted into the sleep of the dreamless.
The moon had nearly set, and the sky was frosty black above when a star fell. A blaze of white shredded the sky from north to south, lighting the backs of the mountains. Silent now, Marta slept the sleep of the very old or very young, and did not waken.
The sun rose and the highway grew noisy, and still she did not waken. The autumn day grew bright and warm, and Marta slept on. By afternoon a late storm rolled in across the lake, drenching both shores in rain and pounding the valley with hail. Water dripped from the trees, mixing with the dust and larch needles on Marta’s fur, and still she slept. When a gust of wind splintered a dry pine on the ridge above, the wolf’s body jerked but did not rise.
All the sleep she had not slept, all the food she had not eaten, all the miles she had not rested now weighed her down. She slept until the rain ended and her fur dried. She slept until the sky cleared again and deepened, and the moon peered over the mountains behind her.
In the calm, she dreamed once more. Marta dreamed again, but not of Pleasant Valley. Instead, she dreamed a valley even bigger and more beautiful: a place with deer bounding from every draw, with creeks and hollows, with sweet air and sun. If there were people, they passed lightly, and all that moved overhead were clouds.
Marta dreamed herself in this place, and in the dream she was surrounded by a pack. But the pack she knew was gone, and in its place were four, then five, then six youngsters, black and gray, all nipping at her muzzle. She saw a set of adult tracks, bigger than any paw print she had seen in life, leading from the rendezvous site. Finally, she dreamed a fullness in her belly, a fullness she had not known since Calef’s death. A strong, wise feeling spread between her ribs, and her breathing deepened.
Marta’s dream settled into her sleeping muscles and bones. It was a dream of home, a new home, and it stirred her thin blood. But still she slept. In the last rays of the moon, now a silky ripple on the surface of Flathead Lake, a black wolf slept under clusters of white-berried buckbrush and did not move.
Part Three
Thirty-Two
Counting Coup
When Marta wakened, she sprang to life. As if by magic, after the long sleep and dreams, her ears were forward and her tail high as they had not been for weeks. Her chest throbbed slightly, but no heat came from the wound. She seemed in command of herself, and the alpha look burned again in her eyes. She could not save her pack now, but perhaps she could save herself. She took a long drink of the autumn air. It tasted new.
The look in her eye and the lift in her nose said one thing: Marta was hungry. After weeks with little food, her cheeks were sunken, and hipbones poked through her ragged fur. The appetite she had lost was back, and more. Her hunger for home was drowned out by a surging hunger for meat. Without food, the fire in her eyes would not la
st long; she had little time before disaster or disease would set in.
For now, Marta did not need a home. With no pack to feed and protect, she would not need a real home until spring—and then only if she found a mate. Marta had no interest in a mate. Her one interest was food, and it pushed her like a stiff wind off the lake. Whatever instincts had kept her here were gone now, faded with the images from her last dream, and she left the busy Flathead area for good.
Heading south and east, Marta discovered that the Swan Valley was overrun with whitetail deer, her prey of choice. She also discovered that she was too weak to hunt them. Though her spirit was back, her speed was not, and she would have to build her strength with smaller, less demanding meals.
Marta hunted as she explored. On the trail she snapped at the smallest creatures, and no ground squirrel was safe in her path. Once she bit at a bright flash of fur before realizing, with a yelp, that what she had attacked was a flash of sunlight on her own front paw.
As the only wolf for hundreds of miles, Marta had little competition. In the generations since the wolf had been driven out, the deer had flooded in, and the margins of the Swan Highway were a boneyard of their losses. Hungry enough to risk being seen, Marta made meals of the more recent roadkills. She ate fast, ready to run from the cars that sped by day and night. The smell of metal and oil hung over the highway, keeping her on edge.
Marta had not seen her pack members die, but instinct no longer pulled her toward their old home. Hunger pulled her now, and so did the season. Fall had come, and with it came the urge to travel. Deer and elk were on the move to winter range, and in a wolf pack, by now the young of the year could almost keep pace with the adults. Marta’s young were gone, and she ran as if to make up for the whole pack, covering ten, twenty, and even fifty miles in a day. Driven by a force deeper than flesh or bone, she covered the smooth Swan Range to the east, the craggier Mission Mountains to the southwest, and the long valley in between. Her meat hunger came back quickly now; her speed did not.
One day when Marta wakened, fullness was the only thing that mattered. Nested in the foothills below Red Owl Mountain, she did not feel the cold nip in the air. When a truck crunched by on nearby gravel, she did not hear it. A shot rang out in the distance, but she did not react. Her fear of being seen was gone for now, and all that remained was hunger: the kind of hunger that pulled life from death.
Marta rose from her nest and stretched her neck into a long, slow hunting howl. A trace of steam rose into the morning chill. She shook herself from nose to tail, then loped off. She pursued one deer track after another, but now that rifle hunting season had started, the animals were skittish. Intent on filling her belly this time, she ignored smaller animals and bone piles, and her hunger rose with the sun.
By afternoon, Marta found herself on a hiker trail in an old forest burn. She ran recklessly, exposed to view on the fire-shaved hillside, but still found no prey to test. Near the top of Red Owl, exhausted and empty, she dropped to her belly on a rocky outcrop. She was still panting when she heard the jubilant cackle of ravens.
Marta stopped panting. Ravens were her longtime helpers from the animal world: during hard times in the north, the big, black birds had led her to many meals. The very sound of their voice made her mouth water. Marta rolled to her feet and leaped down from the outcrop in one bound. Sun danced on the whiskers of her nose. Her black mane ruffled against the radio collar, touched by a warm autumn wind. Marta scanned the valley for the birds.
The sound was coming from below, not far into the steep drainage below Red Owl. The hunting look flickered in Marta’s eyes, and she ran downhill as quickly and silently as she had come up. Within moments she was at the top of a scree slide, listening intently in each direction. No ravens spoke. She jogged right to avoid the scree spurs under her paws, but a strong scent made her stop. A cluck sounded from above, and she whirled around. There, up slope, were the watching ravens—and there, under the ravens’ feet, were the exploded remains of a mule deer. In life it had been a big animal, a five-point prize that would have meant honor to the bow hunter who brought it home. In death, to Marta, it meant one thing: survival.
Marta bounded toward the food. The ravens took off in a storm of protest, and were out of the way when the wolf suddenly came to a halt. One smell towered over the musk of dead deer, and that was the smell of bear. Though the buck died from the arrow broken in its chest, the carcass had been claimed by a large and badsmelling grizzly bear. This time of year it would be an irritable, hungry bear as well.
Marta halted, but only for an instant. The bear was nowhere in sight, and she fell upon the meat. The organs were already taken, so she stripped the hide off the backstrap and ribs. She devoured the flesh, taking such slabs of muscle and fat that they bulged the sides of her neck as she swallowed. She was too hungry to chew. In moments her shrunken stomach was hurting for a new and welcome reason, and Marta kept gorging. She broke lustily into the ribs, savoring the crack of bones under her strong, white teeth.
Marta was saved. The past weeks had pushed her to the brink of exhaustion, and she needed nothing so much as a filling meal—especially one she didn’t have to chase. Weak as she was, Marta could never have taken down a deer this big. She crunched into a second section of rib bones.
The crunch in her ears was loud, but the roar of the bear behind her was even louder. Marta choked and coughed out a spray of bone. She didn’t need to see the face that went with that growl; both loomed over her, and she sprang away from the sound.
A few steps away, she glanced back at the bear. He was enormous. His golden fur shimmered with the rumble in his chest. Marta still had time to run for safety, but something stopped her: the taste of the meat still on her tongue. She had a blood tie here, a survival pact with this carcass, and she was not going to turn tail now. A coyote would have; a different wolf might have; in less desperate times, even Marta might have run. This time, she stood her ground.
The bear had Marta on size, but she drew on the last of her speed. He reared above her, long claws sticking out like a giant sunburst from his forefeet. Marta kept low, growling up at the waving paws. As he dropped to the ground, Marta backed away, barking and snapping at his massive feet. The bear reached out to swat her, and one claw kissed the end of her nose. Marta dodged down slope—a harder angle for the bear to follow—and before he could see what was happening, she veered uphill, headed for his backside.
It was a sight that Red Owl Mountain had not seen for a hundred years: a hungry black wolf making a run at an angry grizzly bear. He was fat from a month of huckleberries; she was thin from a month of hardship. The wolf could not kill the bear, but she could make it known, with the point of her teeth, how much she needed this meat.
Marta counted coup on the grizzly bear. To count coup is a battle of will, not strength, and the wolf struck the telling blow. Coming from behind, she tore a neat tuft of fur from the bear’s haunch, and his growl swelled to a bellow. He spun around, hurt more in his pride than his flesh, but Marta was on the offensive. She snapped from the left and barked from the right. She ran head on toward his chest, then dodged away at the last second. Wild-eyed, she teased and tore at him in a frenzy. The bear lurched and snapped at her, but she only sheared closer, teeth clicking a hair’s breadth from his hide. He made to rear up again, but the wolf took aim at his belly and he quickly dropped to all fours.
He paused for a moment, coolly, as Marta continued her furious assault. For now, the bear would have no peace here. He glared at the blur of black whirling between him and the deer carcass. He growled tersely in Marta’s direction, turned with a snort, and ambled off.
Marta dove for the meat. She sank her teeth into the deer with new relish and, casting a satisfied look in the bear’s direction, she ate until she could eat no more.
Meat drunk for the first time in weeks, her head reeled as blood rushed to her stomach. She would need water soon, but for now she pulled herself away from the carcass and lay, h
alf-panting, as the evening light fell over the mountain. She rested until dark, then rolled to her feet, sides bulging, and found her way back to the hiker trail.
As she trotted down the sometimes-rocky path, her feet hit the ground with new weight. Wherever this land was, it would feed her. For now, its trails would be her home.
Thirty-Three
Gray Wolf
The summit of Gray Wolf Mountain is not a cozy place. One of a dozen stony teeth at the western lip of the Mission Mountains, the peak rises into thin, cold air. On the day when Marta found herself at the foot of Gray Wolf Lake, looking up, the summit was hidden in the first blast of a late autumn blizzard.
Marta was strong again. Well fleshed from weeks of good hunting, her chest healed, a coat of winter fur now thickened across her chest and shoulders. Her body had recovered after her feast on the bear’s buck, much as her spirit had recovered after her long sleep and dream. A lone wolf again, she fell easily into those ways. Once her strength returned, she had no need to scavenge meat or settle for small game; she tracked and killed deer and elk on her own.
The autumn urge to travel was strong, and for the past month it had pulled her through the Mission Mountains to the west, the Swan Mountains to the northeast, and the valley in between. She loped down logging roads, picked her way along ridgelines, and scrambled through brushy clearcuts. As hunting season brought more human traffic to the area, she kept to high places like this cirque.