Wolf

by Asta Bowen

  Marta was well into the next creek drainage and miles from her intended den site when the blue truck finally stopped near Kennedy Creek. This time, there were no gunshots, just the quiet click of an opening door and the muted beep of a radio signal. Only the forest talked as the first star poked through the sky and the day’s melt soaked into the ground. Marta did not return to the den she had started.

  A few days later, intrusions forgotten, she and Greatfoot were loafing along a different creek bed of the Ninemile. Sun poured in between the trees, trickles of water ran out from every last patch of snow, and the wolves were in a mood to run too. They dug up a cache of food and ate well on the thawed meat.

  Marta was working on a leg bone, searching out the sweet marrow, when Greatfoot leaned over and pretended to snatch it from her. She clutched the bone between her bared teeth and rose, growling, then pranced past him, dragging the bone across the ground just out of reach. When Greatfoot pounced she swung the bone away, and the chase was on.

  When Greatfoot tired of chasing Marta, Marta chased Greatfoot, and before long the bone was lost in the underbrush. On one downhill gallop Greatfoot ducked behind a thick bush, and Marta had sprinted out of sight before she realized the game had changed to hide-and-seek. They traded hiding places until they came to a road, where Marta cut loose in a joyous, fullout run. Together, Greatfoot and Marta ran into the forest and they ran across clear-cuts; they ran up creek beds and down ridges. They ran sunny loops and shady circles, feeling the land of the Ninemile grow familiar under their feet.

  Finally thirsty and ready for a place to nap, the wolves dropped their pace. They ran side by side, with an occasional hip check from Marta or nip from Greatfoot, and circled around the edge of a clear cut, heading toward water. Marta crossed a ravine on a fallen log, and Greatfoot raced underneath, getting ahead and disappearing into the next ravine.

  Coming over the rise, Marta peered cautiously around for her mate. But he wasn’t hiding, waiting to pounce. He wasn’t even looking at her. Greatfoot’s head had disappeared into a hole: a fox den it seemed, the way his tail was twitching. Marta barked at her mate’s behind, and he backed out of the hole.

  The entrance was on the steep side of the ravine. Marta poked her nose inside. It was made by foxes, but no one was using it. She backed out and scratched at the dirt with her front foot. It was soft. She pawed with her other foot. The clay was damp, but dense. She sniffed and smelled the nearby creek. Suddenly her ears went forward, and she dug furiously with both paws, widening the hole in the side of the hill.

  Playtime was over. It was time to make a home.

  Forty-Four

  In the Ninemile

  A few weeks later, in the foxhole she enlarged to a wolf den, Marta gave birth to seven pups. All were born healthy and strong except one. Shortly after the birth, Greatfoot heard Marta whining piteously and crept inside; at the mouth of the inner chamber, she had laid the still-slick body of a dead pup. Delicately, he picked it up in his great jaws and wriggled backward out of the den. He trudged with it across the clear cut and up the ridge, then buried the body under a cluster of young fir trees.

  The Ninemile litter was twice as large as Marta’s first, and slowed her down more than twice as much. In those first weeks, Greatfoot did all the killing. He hunted farther and stronger than ever, and Marta kept the pups well fed.

  The den was near a road as well as the clear-cut, but the logging was over, and few people had reason to come near. In the Ninemile, humans and cattle kept mostly to the valley bottom; the wolves, unless traveling, kept to the fringes and foothills around it. Inside the den, Marta sometimes heard the faint rumble of a truck through the clay walls, but the sound never came close enough to bother her. Except for Greatfoot’s occasional run-in with a ranch dog, the wolves existed peacefully with their human neighbors in the Ninemile.

  After a slow start, spring came easily to the Ninemile. By the time the first wildflowers had bloomed and faded, the six youngsters were out of the den and tumbling about the ravine. The pups grew quickly, and as before, their need for food grew with them. When they were ready for more than milk, Marta resumed hunting. She and Greatfoot took turns staying with the litter and bringing back meat, and though both were capable hunters, soon they were eating from, not adding to, their caches of food.

  Hunting was only half the work. Keeping track of six wolf pups was a full-time enterprise, and the more the pups grew, the harder they were to contain. Sometimes Marta found herself dashing from one youngster to another, scolding with a short bark or the tips of her teeth, just to keep them safe in the ravine.

  One day when Greatfoot was hunting, one of the pups wandered from Marta’s sight. Two of the others hadn’t learned how to fight without hurting each other, so while the rest of the litter was playing with bones and sticks, Marta refereed Tenino and Camas. She let them wrestle, but separated them before they drew blood.

  Tenino, a black female, was in a fierce mood, and Marta finally had to pull her off Camas before she did real damage. Nudging Tenino toward a meaty bone, Marta checked the others and found only three of them. Silver, a gray female, was missing. Hustling Tenino and Camas into the den, Marta plucked up the others and deposited them at the mouth of the hollow. She barked them all back into the darkness, then went looking for Silver.

  At this age, a pup could not travel far. Marta followed Silver’s scent up the ravine until she heard an ominous rush of wind and felt the wings of an owl beating the air above her. She stopped, holding her breath, and peered into the brightness overhead. There was no small gray shape in the owl’s claws, and Marta let out her breath. But as she continued along her daughter’s trail, the prey bird remained overhead.

  Marta and the owl heard Silver’s squeal at the same moment. The owl dived and the wolf lunged. The wolf had a tangle of bushes to go through, but the owl had farther to fall, and Marta reached Silver as the bird’s talons opened. Instead of covering the pup, Marta attacked skyward, reaching up with her fangs. The owl was flailing just above Marta’s head, stalled in its dive but not rising back into flight. Marta easily could have closed her jaws around the body of the bird, though not without a mouthful of talons and feathers. The wolf took a deep breath and roared. Silver closed her eyes at the sound, her attacker flapped free, and Marta closed her long teeth around air. Then she crouched over her daughter as owl droppings rained down through the trees.

  Marta seized Silver by the neck and carried her back to the ravine. The other pups were clustered at the mouth of the den and came barreling forth when they saw their mother and sister. The youngsters mobbed Marta with puppy kisses and she dropped Silver to the ground, then sank down wearily in the shelter of the ravine. The youngsters tumbled over one another to get to her milk. When Greatfoot returned, sides bulging from the hunt, such was the scene that greeted him: Marta asleep, heaped over with pups, each one breathing steady and warm.

  At their father’s arrival, the heap of pups sprang to life. Greatfoot smelled richly, but before the youngsters could storm him with their begging, into their midst stepped Marta. Knee deep in pups, she reached for her mate’s muzzle and closed her great jaws lightly around it. Greatfoot blinked at the feel of her pointed teeth on his soft, whiskered cheeks.

  As he stepped away to unload his cargo of meat, a song began low in Marta’s chest. She tipped back her head and one by one, six little heads also tipped back; she sang, and they joined in. It was the coming-home howl, and they sang until Greatfoot had emptied his belly. Then he, too, joined in.

  When she finally lowered her head, Marta saw what she had seen once before, only in a dream, during her long sleep on the shore of Flathead Lake. Now the dream unfolded around her. The strange valley was the Ninemile; the strange pack was her own; and the great, looping tracks in the golden clay around the den belonged to her mate. Marta was home.

  Part Four

  Forty-Five

  Another Noise

  From the moment the pups were allowe
d outside the den, it was clear that Silver liked to run as much as her elders did. She was also the leader of the litter, so when she took off, others tried to follow. Soon after Silver’s encounter with the owl, it became impossible to keep the pups together in the ravine, and the time had come for the pack to move to its first rendezvous site. Marta left the youngsters with Greatfoot and went on a mission.

  In part, her mission was to move: to stretch, to run, to feel the earth moving underneath her feet. In part, it was to hunt: the meat from Greatfoot’s last kill was gone, the food caches were nearly exhausted, and the pups’ appetites were growing like meadow grass. With luck, she would be able to make a kill near a good rendezvous site and lead the pack to it.

  Spring was turning to summer. Except for her recent hunts, Marta had been confined in the den and ravine, and she was eager to travel. She took off eastward, toward the sun and Kennedy Creek, with a bright bound that matched the brightness of the day.

  At the den, Greatfoot gnawed patiently on the ball end of a deer bone as he watched the pups dig in the clay, play tug-of-war with sinew or bark, and wrestle. Twice he had to separate Tenino and Camas, and several times he marched off to collect Silver, who was no longer content to chew sticks and chase grasshoppers. Punctuated by Greatfoot’s lessons, the morning disappeared in a rhythm of play and napping, nap and playing, and slowly turned to afternoon. The weather changed with the day, and what had been a golden, spicy morning became a tense and gritty afternoon. The sky crusted over with gray—a cold, hard color—and the birds that had been out collecting food for nestlings settled into silence.

  It was too late for a spring blizzard, but the mood overhead was one of threat, not promise. The pups gathered close to Greatfoot as the weather changed, and when the first drops began to pelt, he nudged some and carried others into the den. Silver ran in on her own. The youngsters were old enough to be out in the rain—they had already frolicked in one spring storm—but this smelled like hail.

  The first lightning struck moments after the pack took to its shelter. Marta had not returned and the pups were hungry, so Greatfoot dashed out to the nearest cache, dug up the last of the meat, and brought it back to the youngsters. They fell upon it like lost souls, chewing hard with their pointed milk teeth, and looking surprised when a mouthful proved hard to swallow.

  Outside, the storm raged and fumed. Hail fell like bullets, and one sharp crack after another pierced the air. A tree fell with a great snap in the direction of Kennedy Creek. At each new sound the pups looked up from their chewing to see whether they should be afraid, but Greatfoot sat calmly at the entrance to the inner chamber, his profile outlined in the gray light from outside.

  Finally the thunderstorm began to subside. The last balls of hail popped onto the flat grasses, and the sky brightened with the promise of sunset. Cracks of thunder rolled across the heavens behind the storm, and one final shot sounded in the next drainage. As the weather calmed, the pups dropped off to sleep, all except Timber, one of the gray males. Timber was too hungry to sleep—he still preferred milk to meat—and sat with Greatfoot at the entrance, waiting for the sun and Marta’s return.

  The sun came, but Marta did not. A fiery sunset spread across the Ninemile, and the birds resumed their peeping. Greatfoot wriggled out of the den with Timber close behind. A large gray shape, stepping gracefully, followed by a small gray shape that tottered and tumbled, made its way from the ravine to the edge of the clear-cut. They stood silently as lightning bolts spiked out of the red-edged clouds, and suddenly Greatfoot howled. He reared back and called Marta with a cry that echoed off the Ninemile peaks. Timber howled too, but his little voice drowned in the storm of his father’s. Greatfoot’s call was wide and long, aimed to find his mate wherever she had holed up from the storm. There was no reply.

  Greatfoot howled again, Timber beside him. Again no reply.

  As the last tinges of red dissolved from the sky, the deep wolf call sounded again and again across the Ninemile Valley. The only response was the fading rumble of the away-going storm.

  Forty-Six

  No Sign

  Marta never returned. Greatfoot called and called, but she did not answer.

  Just as Marta had searched for Calef, Greatfoot searched for Marta. That night, leaving the pups in the den with an abrupt bark, he left and followed her tracks. Her path zigged and zagged along the usual trails until it crossed the Kennedy Creek road. There it vanished. There was no blood, no fur, no sign of struggle. No sign.

  The forest was silent.

  Greatfoot was silent. A heaviness weighed on the land, as though each sprig of green around him struggled to hold the sky in place. Greatfoot sniffed once at the place where Marta’s footprints vanished. A boot mark pressed into the wet clay. There was a car track. Greatfoot did not sniff it. He stood and did not move for a very long time.

  When he moved a howl rose from the center of his belly, but his throat closed around it. No sound would come out.

  Forty-Seven

  Greatfoot Hunts

  Marta was gone, and Greatfoot was alone with the pups. He was more alone than Marta had been without Calef, having no packmates—not even a wise one with broken teeth—to help raise the litter. Greatfoot’s alpha instinct rose. He hunted with twice his usual vigor and ran with twice the speed, and his success was great. But it did not bring Marta back.

  Nothing could bring Marta back. Like the winter snow that had vanished from the Ninemile, she too had disappeared. Greatfoot hunted for her; he hunted the hills and lowlands near the den, but when he smelled her sign, it was old sign; when he found her tracks, they were old tracks, usually mixed with his, all made before the day of the storm.

  Greatfoot could not find Marta because she was not there to be found. The poacher who took her life also took her body, leaving only her radio collar—leather cut, transmitter smashed—submerged in Kennedy Creek. The merest hint of Marta’s scent rose from the creek bubbles there, too faint to be found even by her mate’s great nose.

  As the sole provider for the new litter, Greatfoot had at least one shortcoming: he could not turn meat to milk. The pups were almost ready to be weaned, and though Greatfoot could hunt all the meat they could eat, they could not eat much with their baby teeth. Wanting to nurse, Silver attacked Greatfoot’s belly, protesting when she found his nipples hard and dry. When Greatfoot snapped at her the other pups stood back, perplexed—but stayed away from their father’s belly.

  With his next kill, Greatfoot moved the pack to a rendezvous site. Not far from the den, it was on a logging road that had been gated shut, and no traffic came through. The clearing had water and surrounding trees for cover; the grass was thick with mice and moles that made good practice for beginning hunters.

  After Marta’s disappearance, the pups changed in different ways. Tenino grew tense and high-strung while Chinook, the other black female, became timid and withdrawn. Timber and Camas, the gray males, wrestled constantly. Silver remained the leader, getting the most and best of everything. Even so, she sometimes stood alone at the edge of the rendezvous site and crooned, a quiet howl sung only to the forest. Blackfeet, the black male, became a full-time hunter. While the others lost weight, Blackfeet fed himself on a steady diet of small animals and even insects.

  Greatfoot was on the run. It was not his usual joyous running, but a desperate, hungry pace that left him increasingly thin and tired. He slept hard and played little, but even as his body ran down, his alpha blood ran strong. Asleep or awake, when the pups begged for food, he responded. Greatfoot became a creature of one purpose, with a single search image in his head: the whitetail deer. He let nothing get in his way.

  There was little to get in his way except the dogs who sometimes harassed him as he came and went across the Ninemile. The harder he hunted, the less patience he had for these not-quite-wolves. One night, returning from a hunt that had taken him across the freeway and into the Idaho forest, Greatfoot was pulled off course by the insistent barking
of a ranch dog.

  Many times he had ignored such an uproar. Tonight he was foot sore and meat drunk, and his belly was stretched agonizingly full with food for the pups. Veering off his path to the rendezvous site, Greatfoot turned onto the ranch and shouldered through a herd of cattle toward the dog.

  The closer Greatfoot came, the louder the dog barked and the more confused its message became. The dog was protecting his territory and expected Greatfoot—as the intruder—to back down. But its bark said nothing about territory to Greatfoot. As the alpha wolf in his territory, he expected the smaller animal to back down, and he leaped the fence where the dog was contained. When the wolf finally faced the dog, still barking, he charged.

  Blood-mad at the tangle of canine and human scent, Greatfoot attacked. The two snapped and bit at each other—sometimes connecting, sometimes not. Suddenly Greatfoot stopped and raised his head: there was a vehicle coming down the road. The wolf leaped back over the fence, leaving the dog licking its wounds, and bolted past the cow herd.

  Still weighed down by meat, he barely cleared the barbwire fence, and it made a bloody gouge in the skin of his belly. As Greatfoot disappeared into the woods below the rendezvous site, a pickup truck bumped slowly past the ranch, raising a cloud of dust in its taillights. The dark-blue color of the truck blended into the night, but the low, clear rumble was the same as ever.

  Forty-Eight

  The Way of the Wolf

  Being hungry and half orphaned was not enough to keep wolf pups from their job of growing up. There were games to be played, bones to be chewed, races to run, and wolf ways to learn. The rendezvous site was the scene of at least one ongoing boxing match, interrupted by greedy feasts when Greatfoot reappeared, and long naps in between.