by Asta Bowen
As the weather warmed, the snow trails turned to slush and the deer yards grew muddy. While the world melted outside, something began to soften and flow inside Marta, too. The ground warmed under the pads of her paws, sending a twinge up her forelegs. The itch was setting in: the itch to travel, to move, to run with the season. But it was not yet time to leave the safety of her winter range. The does were barely showing the weight of their young, and late blizzards still passed through the mountains.
On a calm evening toward the end of winter, Marta stood on the ridge overlooking Lindbergh Lake. The afternoon dimmed, blurring the gray network of cracks in the lake ice. There was no wind, and no other sound except the hop of a rabbit across the snow. Marta had had a good week of hunting and paid no attention to the hopping. She surveyed the ridge beyond the lake, and the ridges beyond it to the south. Soon—as soon as the weather allowed—she would be running over them.
And in that moment of calm, there came another kind of noise that would change everything. From beyond the lake, many ridges to the south, rose a song: a wolf song. Marta had heard this voice before. It was the strange wolf, the male who had come and gone a few weeks earlier, the male whose tracks were twice the size of hers. Greatfoot was back.
Thirty-Seven
Greatfoot
Greatfoot’s sign appeared the next day. Huge tracks dented the softening snow, and his scent marked trees along his trail. Marta took note of his movements, and as before, he kept a respectful distance. He was hunting nearby, including deer from within Marta’s territory, but still did not cross the boundary she had set.
Marta did not actually see her neighbor for almost a week, and when she did, it was from afar. From her lake overlook she glanced down one morning and there he was, loping along the edge of the ice, hunting. Marta watched as he followed his prey’s scent, tracking and backtracking in lines and loops. He kept an even pace, stopping only to sniff the air or prick his ears to sounds Marta could not hear. When he disappeared around the elbow in the lake, she rose and picked her way along the ridge, tracing his progress.
Greatfoot was tireless. He followed the shore steadily, diving in and out of the woods, and Marta followed from above. She was following him to protect the western side of her hunting grounds, but she was also curious. This wolf had a certain lilt to his pace, a quality that kept her attention. She watched his progress for hours.
He seemed to hunt for the joy of it, not just from hunger. Where other wolves hunted efficiently, he hunted extravagantly: he ran deep into the woods when running shallow would do; he ran fast when slow would do, far when near would do. He had a huge stride to match his huge feet, and even Marta—now as strong as she had ever been—had to rest from following him. That this was a wolf of endurance was obvious, even from a mile away and hundreds of feet up.
Greatfoot made his kill far down the lake from where he had started. Marta did not see it; she only saw him veer off the shore and into the woods on a test chase. She sat, catching her breath, and he did not veer back out of the woods. Her breath had settled when she heard a wolf howl: a killing howl. Marta had watched his hunt with such intensity that she found herself howling in response. A moment later, when her stomach juices started to flow, she clapped her fine jaws shut. What was she singing about? There was no food in front of her.
Marta stood, but Greatfoot had heard her short echo from across the lake, and his song took on a new note. Marta barked gruffly in the direction of her western boundary, then turned and trotted back down the ridge. She had hunting of her own to do.
For the next week Greatfoot remained at large on Lindbergh, but Marta paid little heed. The season was shifting faster now. As the daily light was growing, so was her urge to travel, and Marta began to drift from her territory, taking long loops out beyond the easy paths. She crossed trails with Greatfoot occasionally, trading scent marks, but never met him directly.
One day when Marta was returning home, she noticed Greatfoot’s unmistakable footprint in the softening snow. He was barely ahead of her, and his print was a hunting print. Marta’s back went up; he was headed straight for her deer herd. There were deer to spare, but the way of the wolf was to share hunting only with one’s pack—and Marta had no pack.
Her back went up, and so did her speed. She sprinted until she heard Greatfoot’s step in the snow, then dropped back and kept pace. She was not eager to face a wolf whose paw print covered nearly two of hers. As she followed, she discovered he was indeed hunting—hunting her home herd. Marta knew all their scents now, and she smelled her old favorite, the lead buck, in the tracks.
Suddenly she heard a grunt and a feathery sound in the snow ahead. Greatfoot had taken to chase, testing one of the animals. In the same instant she heard a snort, and something heaved in her chest: it was the great buck. Greatfoot was testing him.
Marta’s response was instantaneous. She plunged forward, eyes electric and black ruff standing out in spikes, and ran reckless after both wolf and prey. She had little time in which to catch them. Marta surged ahead and soon could taste the spray of slush from Greatfoot’s back feet. He did not hear her; he only heard and saw the old buck.
The other deer had scattered into the woods, and their leader was achingly slow. It was no contest between wolf and deer. Greatfoot was just four lengths from the buck, one big-footed lunge away, when a fearful bellow came from behind and a silver-black force spun into his field of vision. Marta.
The first thing he saw was her teeth. The roaring shape took focus in front of Greatfoot’s face, and with a mighty snap, Marta’s jaws closed a breath away from Greatfoot’s throat. In the instant before she roared again, half howl and half growl, he skidded to a stop and spread his own jaws in her direction.
Marta ducked and rolled out of reach, then came to her feet barking. This was her territory, her winter home. These herds were her lifeline and this, more than any other, was her buck. Greatfoot barked back, a booming response. They were barely inside Marta’s territory. Until that moment, the old buck had been Greatfoot’s chase.
The two barked back and forth, ruffs filled out, backs up, circling furiously. Each growled low, waiting for the other to attack. Marta barked and Greatfoot barked; Marta circled and Greatfoot circled. They barked and circled until their voices cracked. Finally Greatfoot paused. He was on Marta’s turf, and despite his size, she was not backing down. When he paused, Marta paused; the barking slowed. The growls lessened. The silence grew.
Their clamor all but over, Marta made a final move—a token snap, to confirm her claim—at Greatfoot’s nose. He yipped sharply and lifted a huge paw, but Marta’s eye stopped him.
He put his paw back on the ground. Silence. He sniffed, nostrils barely moving. Then Marta barked, but it was not the same bark as before. Greatfoot sniffed again. Marta barked again in the new way—and then she, too, sniffed. Greatfoot opened his mouth as if to bark back, but his voice came out a low cry that lengthened into a howl. Marta’s eyes deepened, and the shape of her fur changed around her face. Her ears softened. She stepped forward and sniffed quizzically at his muzzle. Then she barked again, but the end of her voice trailed out and rose into a call that curved all the way up into the afternoon sky. Greatfoot rounded his lips into another howl, and wound his song around hers.
Not far away in the trees, a single pair of ears flicked back and forth at the sound. The old buck let out a gust of air through his nostrils and stalked loudly away, but neither wolf heard.
Marta had met her match.
Thirty-Eight
Running Together
Strange wolves did not always get along well, as Marta had learned long ago. After her run-in with the black wolf years before, she avoided strangers. The way of the wolf, except among pack members, was to keep one’s distance. Any contact was a risk, and when contact was made, it meant there was a conflict to settle or an advantage to be gained.
Finding packmates was a delicate process. The pack was much more than a casual group of lo
ners who came and went; it was a family. To get along in a family that hunted together, traveled together, and even shared food, all the members had to cooperate and communicate. That took time, and it took a blend of strength and style that didn’t come together just by chance. Members were usually born and raised into a pack, not added as adults; even wolves related by blood didn’t always take to one another, as Marta knew from her birth pack. For strange wolves to form a pack took unusual circumstances, unusual luck, or both.
By the time they met face-to-face, Marta and Greatfoot were not quite strangers. For weeks before the standoff over the buck, they had studied each other as they crossed paths around Lindbergh Lake. Neither had challenged the other and both had plenty to eat, so there was little cause for conflict. When their confrontation finally came, it didn’t last.
That Marta and Greatfoot were each ending the winter alone, the only wolves for hundreds of miles, was an unusual circumstance. That their scents were right and their signals matched was luck. Standing together in the soft snow of the clearing, the buck forgotten, each wolf turned full attention on the other.
Greatfoot sniffed gingerly at Marta’s muzzle, then at her collar. Marta held still for a moment, then sniffed back. As she did, the wrinkles softened in Greatfoot’s forehead, and his ears went back. Cautiously they sniffed closer, alert to the tiniest changes of breath and stance. Neither wolf tried to dominate as the two explored the space between them, and Marta’s tail slowly lost its angry bent. When their eyes finally met, no sign of threat remained in either face. Greatfoot did not turn to leave Marta’s territory, and she did not chase him away.
In the next days, the wolves followed one another’s every move. Closer and closer they came, observing in detail what they had sensed at a distance. When Marta made the play face, Greatfoot’s ears went forward in kind; when she made the warning face, his ears went back. The two began running together. Running led to playing and playing to hunting; eating together led to exploring together, and soon their tracks made a single line through the coarse, grainy snow.
The wolves’ urge to travel grew, and every day they ventured farther from Marta’s winter home. In the week when buds began to swell on the huckleberry bushes, Marta and Greatfoot left Lindbergh Lake for good.
They ran south along thawing roads into the Jocko River drainage. The Jocko was quiet this time of year. Logging trucks were idle, and snow machines had abandoned the muddy trails. Marta and Greatfoot had the forest to themselves: they had the mountains, the timber, the clear-cuts, their choice of deer and elk, and only the flat, fast-running river for company.
Marta and Greatfoot followed the Jocko west until it ran into the lower Flathead Valley. Fences and roads circled every meadow, and houses dotted the ranch land as they did in the upper Flathead, where Marta had last dodged civilization. She and Greatfoot dodged it again, retracing their steps back into the forest.
As the days grew longer, the urge to run broke free from its winter cage, and the wolves ran the valleys and ridges of the Missions and Swans as wolves had done in ancient times. They ran like fire galloping up a mountainside; they ran like streams roaring under a snow bridge. They hunted with new hunger and played like youngsters. Shoots of green took hold underneath the snow as they ran, and over their heads the sun rose higher and higher, as if to grasp and shake out the blanket of white that had lain over the high country all winter.
The Jocko did not hold them for long; now that spring was coming, nothing could. In the next weeks, Marta and Greatfoot headed in every direction: a little south, a little east, some north, back south, west, and south again. They followed the wolf compass wherever their noses pointed, discovering the long valleys west of the great divide: Jocko, Rattlesnake, and Blackfoot; Monture, Rattlesnake, Ovando, Ninemile, and Rattlesnake again.
The wolves explored old timber, abandoned trails, and softening river bottoms, hunting and playing as wolf packs had done centuries before. Most of those packs were larger than two, but when it came to survival, the difference between one wolf and two was difference enough. Marta and Greatfoot became a pack.
Thirty-Nine
Rock Creek
Even the widest swath of forest was hardly wide enough for a pair of healthy wolves on the move. On a day when the snow crusted over and running was easy, Marta and Greatfoot could cross half a mountain range, hunt and kill a meal, feast and nap, and be off the mountain before dark—with time for games and grooming in between. On days they didn’t hunt, they could travel farther or play more.
The back country was their own for now, but few of the forests were more than a day wide. Where the woods ran out, the wolves ran into people: their highways, houses, animals, and their scents of metal and oil. For the most part, Marta and Greatfoot left the human places to the humans. When they did go near, it was often at night and out of necessity—to get from one forest to the next—and rarely from curiosity.
After leaving the Jocko Valley, Marta and Greatfoot spent days exploring the Rattlesnake Wilderness. South of the wilderness ran a freeway: not a two-lane highway like the Swan but a four-lane interstate. One cool morning, they reached the freeway at Rock Creek. Cars and trucks hurtled past, pushing gusts of wind over the wolves’ backs as they waited below the rise of the road. Grit peppered their faces. Greatfoot seemed to have no fear, but Marta was edgy; she still cringed at the possibility of being seen.
At the first break in traffic, the wolves dashed across the highway. On Rock Creek they found a road little used by human beings, but well traveled by many other animals. Marta and Greatfoot were hungry enough to chase test a deer, but by now winter had taken the weakest of the herds, and the wolves were not yet hungry enough for more than easy hunting.
The sun warm on their backs, Greatfoot and Marta continued lazily up the drainage. They played tag on the snow-packed road and stopped to drink from the swollen creek. Moose tracks ambled in and out of the brush, but the wolves barely noticed. Today other things were more interesting, like the bounce and splash of the river, the taste of greening grass, and smells rising from the melting snow. Marta, in addition, was noticing a different kind of spring energy, the kind that came from inside: her breeding time was coming.
As the day bloomed around them, Marta’s games of tag became more pointed and her pace more reckless. She ran up hills and down again, circling in on Greatfoot with a hummingbird’s precision. On one downhill run, thundering straight for the creek, she sideswiped his flank with a playful nip. He lunged at her but missed, hanging his head as Marta sailed over the bank and made a solid four-foot landing in the water. Planting her feet in the icy rapids, she turned to face him, gulping mouthfuls of bubbles from the torrent and shooting defiant looks in his direction.
Wrinkles appeared in the dark markings above Greatfoot’s eyes. If he jumped in, she would jump out; if he stayed out, she would stay in. His ears flicked forward and back as he paced the creek bank, keeping an eye on Marta’s mischief. In midstep he caught scent of a tantalizing track. He stopped, pressing his nose to the earth, and discovered a second, smaller track. Two fresh tracks made that morning. Moose tracks. Greatfoot’s play face changed suddenly to the hunting face, and he whined faintly. His pace widened into a run, dodging back and forth as he investigated the tracks. They led across the creek.
Without a glance at Marta, Greatfoot gathered his legs and sprang past her. But at the last push of takeoff, his hind feet slipped on a wet boulder, and instead of soaring onto the other bank, he landed with a splash in the deepest part of the current. Marta saw the whitewater sweep him under. The mischief went out of her and she scrambled back to shore, barking when she saw two of his great paws beat the air and disappear again.
A few breaths later, his gray snout and drenched head reared up from the current. Snorting out a gust of water, Greatfoot righted himself as the swift current continued dragging him downstream. Then with a few strokes he paddled, still snorting, to the far shore. Pulling onto the bank he shook, coughed, an
d shook again. He looked back upstream until he found Marta, and their eyes locked. When he barked, it was a hunting bark. He put his nose to the ground and disappeared into a thicket of poplars.
Marta remained on her side of the creek. Standing in the whitewater to show off was one thing, but getting rolled in it was something else again. She didn’t have Greatfoot’s bulk to protect against underwater boulders or his strength to pull free of the current. What she did have was the spring blood, and it drew her toward Greatfoot. Instead of pulling her into the water, it pulled her back onto the road, and Marta raced downstream along the bank, eyeing the creek for a shallow or calm place in its rapids. Finally she saw a poplar trunk fallen across the stream. She trotted across it and sprinted back to the place where she had last seen Greatfoot.
His tracks followed the moose tracks, and she followed both into the poplars. The trail meandered from one swampy area to the next, a pattern of steps belonging to a cow moose and a smaller yearling. The cow’s tracks pressed heavily into the mud; she was probably pregnant. The big wolf tracks looped this way and that, pursuing but not yet chasing the pair. Greatfoot, as usual, was taking the long way.
Suddenly Marta heard a great bellow. There was a crash, then the sound of slush spewing and branches breaking. Another bellow, and silence. Then several short, hoarse grunts, silence, and the thump of a hoof. There were no wolf sounds. Marta crept toward the noise until she saw what it meant: Greatfoot was backed against a clump of willows, flanked by a cow moose on one side and a smaller, mean-looking bull on the other. Both had murder in their eyes, and the mother had the size and hooves to do it. From her hiding place Marta could see that the cow wasn’t pregnant. She was just enormous.