Few of the other hunters found wolves, either. Some got a fleeting glimpse but didn’t have a shot. No shots were fired in the first twelve days. It turned out that it was harder than anyone realized to hunt a wolf. The hunters grew frustrated and desperate. Any shot was worth a try. Blaine thought he saw the blue streak of a wolf through the woods and fired at wolf height, hitting Cathy in her hip and dropping her immediately in intense pain.
Cathy healed but never went running again. Wolf opponents often named her as “a schoolteacher who was attacked by wolves.” She soon learned that it was useless to try and tell the truth. In Montana, though no one knew her name, it was sometimes said by opponents of the wolf program that wolves in Idaho had mauled a schoolteacher. She received several requests for interviews to describe her ordeal being attacked by wolves. Her response that she was shot by hunters and not attacked by wolves usually ended the discussion. Often she was dismissed as a “leftie” or a “wolf lover,” neither of which disturbed her since they were both true.
Etxegarray, ignoring the facts of the case, still thought it would have been better if the wolves had attacked a skier rather than a schoolteacher. After all, teachers had no importance to the economy.
Dag Olsen announced that his truck had been attacked by a pack of wolves while he was delivering the paper. He wanted $200 to tell his story, but no one paid it. An anti-wolf group in Stanley found him, and they managed to get him $20 to talk to a local online newspaper and another $40 for a cable channel in Mountain Home. But no one really believed that wolves attacked trucks and he wasn’t a sympathetic victim. He looked meaner than a wolf and his backers became concerned that he was actually drumming up sympathy for the wolves. Etxegarray saw his television interview and shook his head. “Can’t they just get a goddamn skier!”
The hunters did manage to get a few wolves, including two from the Big Wood pack. They were both male, of course, since the females all believed the Lady’s warnings. They got the Lord. They weren’t supposed to shoot wolves that had radio collars, but on the last day of the hunt Harwood, who had never got off a single shot, got the Lord in his sights. He could see the collar, but it was too perfect a shot, and he fired and said it was an accident.
Without the Lord, the pack was breaking up. The Lady wanted a small pack with fewer wolves to feed now that the humans were aggressive and dangerous again. Nose decided to pair with Legs and try to form his own pack.
The pack gathered one last time for a howl for the Lord. They climbed twelve thousand feet to the top of Hyndman Peak and howled sad songs. Nose held his head higher than the other wolves and no one challenged him.
Clement Stedlick was still in his glassed-in house late at night, working on his new book. When he heard the howl, he was writing:
He had the ewe in his sight—a big black woolly one. She bleated long slow “bahs,” pleading for her life. But this sheep had smothered more than fifty head of wolves and Buck was not going to let her go.
Clement paused and rubbed his chin. He thought, This is going really well, and then rubbed his head. Or am I just crazy?
But there was no one to answer him other than a distant howl from another mountaintop.
Part Three: Night in Stanley
There was nothing Hal Benson could do about it. The notes suspended in the frozen air echoed off the Sawtooths, a mournful unknown language, a grim call to arms that he could feel running along his limbs. The howl of a killer about to kill. Hal pulled his thick down quilt over his head.
Hal knew they were out there, the sons of bitches sent by the government—the government and the Communists over in Blaine County. But what could he do.
It was March already, but the thaw was late. There was still ice on the wide curve of the Salmon River. There had not even been enough melt to drive the water fast. Life was still hard up on the jagged icebound slopes of the Sawtooths. He used to take six or seven trips up there. The hunting was good and so was the money. Now the elk were all gone. The wolves ate them all. Hardly anyone even asked for trips anymore. They could go other places where the government hadn’t planted wolves.
He got a wolf tag last fall and had been stalking the sons of bitches ever since. He liked to call them sons of bitches, quipping that it was literally accurate. For months he stalked the steep, rocky slopes and never saw one. Then, when he did, the son of a bitch hunkered down low and he couldn’t hit him.
He liked hunting with his old Winchester. A lot of his customers complained because it had a kick like a moose, but Hal said that anyone who wanted to hunt in the Rocky Mountains should be able to take a punch in the shoulder. But with the wolves he kept firing, swinging the bolt, firing again, but somehow he couldn’t hit one. For a large animal they were very fast, faster than elk. Now he had ordered a semiautomatic that fired the same .308 Winchester cartridges. It might not be legal, but no one was going to follow him up to the high country where he was going to hunt the ledges. Everyone in Idaho knew about SSS hunting—shoot, shovel, shut up. Or he could claim that he was attacked. You can do anything if you are attacked. You can toss hand grenades if you have them. Next time he saw one of the sons of bitches he was going to keep spraying until he dropped him. Hell, he might be able to get a whole pack. Just shut up and bury them.
That had been the plan, but now they were coming down for him and he just had his bolt-action Winchester. He thought for a moment about a shotgun. No, he would stick with a hunting rifle.
He got Henry, the fat, white, fluffy Persian angora, in and wouldn’t let him out. What chance would he have—a fat, slow thing who only wanted his belly rubbed. The wolves could take down mountain lions. Henry didn’t even hunt mice anymore. His only exercise was prowling at night, and now with the wolves around Hal couldn’t let him do that. He was going to get even fatter.
And there was Davey, the little white Highland terrier, too small to have a chance. Davey loved to explore along the snowy bank of the Salmon. But now Hal didn’t dare let him wander. Now he had to walk him on a leash—on a leash here in Stanley as though he were a city dog. You couldn’t have dogs or cats or children out anymore. He warned everyone. Sooner or later someone was going to get eaten. Some people listened, especially in Stanley, where the hunting had vanished. But a lot didn’t because there were all those fool biologists going around telling everyone that a wolf won’t attack a human.
Hal had deconstructed the word “bi-ol-i-gist” with such slow venom that if someone did not know the word they would gather that a biologist was something hideous.
Lying bastards. He was going to take his .308 one day and shoot one of them. He swore to God he would. They were the menace. They brought in the wolves, big killer wolves from Canada, and then told everybody they didn’t have to be afraid.
“Why would they do that?” he would ask at the meetings, and then explain in a loud, hoarse whisper, “Because they work for the fucking Democrats!” And then he would look around the room with his hard gray eyes just daring someone to contradict him, and when they didn’t, while he had their attention, he would add, “Them and the Communists.”
A lot of the men would grumble in agreement. Then he would continue. “They wouldn’t bring them into Colorado. Why not? Because they’ve got plenty of Democrats and Communists.” The men would grumble in agreement again.
“First they eat all the game to starve us out. Then when they don’t have any more fresh meat, they’re going to come down and get us.”
He warned everyone, told them to get ready, but not many listened. Already up north a couple of children had been eaten. You weren’t going to find it in any newspaper, but Hal had ways of finding these things out.
It was such simple goddamn science. Anyone who knew any biology at all could see it. They had plenty of biologists in Canada that knew. But they could shut them up. Hell, if you couldn’t figure this out, you weren’t any biologist. He explained it all the time. The wolves h
ad just about eaten all the ungulates—the elk, deer, and moose. That’s right, they could take down a thousand-pound moose. Two would grab the front legs and then one would jump up and tear its throat out. You didn’t see moose around anymore. You didn’t see any ungulates. They could even go out on the ledges and get the bighorn sheep. Hal himself had gotten only one bighorn, ten years ago, by climbing up to a Sawtooth pinnacle and crawling on his belly to get the shot. Damn thing almost dropped off the ledge, but he got it and it was hanging high on the living room wall right now. But the damn wolves took them down all the time.
Now they were going to start on people. It was simple biology—the survival of the fittest, and we weren’t the fittest. It was a matter of time before they ate a few, but when they started to find human skulls gnawed down to nothing but white bone, that’s what it was going to take before people would listen. He almost wished it would happen so people could see. He fantasized about who he wanted eaten—a biologist? The governor? The Fish and Game commissioner? Or, even better, that environmentalist woman from Boise.
He had seen the victims—sheep, elk, deer. Sometimes there was nothing left but bones, head and feet picked clean—the bones scraped bare. Sometimes they would just eat a choice organ or two and leave the rest for the ravens to pick over. That’s why the ravens liked them. But once you have seen a wolf kill—seen what they actually do—you don’t love them anymore. Even the Communist wolf lovers in Ketchum and Boise would change their mind after seeing that. And some day when it will be human remains, that will change everything. Fish and Game will come in by helicopter with machine guns.
One of these days a wolf pack will come down right into town. They probably had already been here casing things out. Wolf packs have advance men who check out new killing fields and report back. They were here now. Tonight. Maybe the whole pack.
Hal knew the wolf pack was in town because while he was walking Davey, the dog was acting very nervous. There was a raven screeching from a black cottonwood branch, calling to his friends, and by the time they were going in there were five or six of them, big black birds shouting from the big black trees. You could see the evil. Hal looked around where the snow was still fresh for wolf tracks. He couldn’t find any wolf tracks, only dogs’, but that didn’t mean a thing. Wolves knew how to cover up their tracks—another thing Hal knew for a fact that the biologists kept denying.
He could not settle Davey down. After they got home his little pads kept thumping on the high-polished ponderosa pine floors. Henry seemed nervous, too. They knew. He stared anxiously at the door.
It was a bright night, a full moon that silhouetted the ravens on the branches. Clouds were moving in, but the sky still had a big clear hole where the moon was shining. Hal could smell the snow coming.
He realized that he needed to secure his house. Of course, the biologists would say that a wolf would never enter a human home. But ranchers have found their tracks right outside their homes, and once a wolf pack decided a human was their prey they would stop at nothing. He loved his house, which he had built himself back when the hunting was good and he was making a lot of money from the wealthy people who came to hunt the Sawtooths and maybe fish or raft on the Salmon while they were here. The days before the government brought in killers from Canada to destroy them.
He built the house from local woods and blue and yellow jasper from up north—everything perfectly fitted by hand. As he pulled the lever by the fireplace, a clever construction he had devised himself to close the damper and block off the chimney—originally from birds—he thought that it might have been a mistake to design a house so low and flat. But at the time there were no wolves and no need to worry about them getting on the roof. They could be on the roof right now. He listened for footsteps above, but of course they wouldn’t make any.
One thing he had done right was build thick wooden shutters for the windows, though he had to go outside to close them. He grabbed his Winchester and slid the bolt to make sure he had a cartridge in the chamber and started for the front door.
“Where are you going?” his wife, Kate, in a cranberry-colored chenille bathrobe, asked while yawning and rubbing her head.
“I’ve got to close the shutters,” Hal said.
“What for? And what’s the gun for?”
“The wolves. They’re here.”
“Really? Where?”
Hal smiled at her naïveté. “You don’t think they’re going to show themselves, do you?”
Some snowflakes were beginning to swirl and hop in the wind. “It’s starting to snow,” she said.
“Yep,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” And he went out and closed all the shutters and locked them with their bars. Each time he finished one he grabbed his rifle and looked around. But hard as he stared into the darkness with his steely gray hunter’s eyes he could see no sign of them. He massaged the barrel of his Winchester and muttered quietly, “That’s okay. I know you’re there watching me. I’ll watch you, too, you son of a bitch.”
It was dark now. But the snow on the ground glowed from the blue moonlight like iridescent paint.
When he got inside, Kate was turning on lights and complaining about how dark the house was with all the shutters closed. “A nice moonlit night, too.”
“Snow will block the moon soon. I can’t take chances.”
“With the wolves?”
“With the wolves.”
Moving to the kitchen to turn on more lights, she said, “A lot of people are starting to think you’re crazy.”
“Yeah. What do you tell them?”
Kate didn’t answer. She could feel them drifting closer to the things they shouldn’t talk about.
They both knew that there was a time when she would not have questioned him about the shutters.
Still, he would protect her. He wouldn’t fail her on this. Not on this.
The wolves were howling. You couldn’t hear them as well with the shutters closed, but they were getting closer.
“They’re near the house,” Hal said.
“This is ridiculous,” said Kate.
“You don’t hear them?”
She stood very still with her head cocked as though one ear was better than the other. Then she shook her head in disgust, put on her fluffy turquoise slippers, and marched to the fireplace, where she gathered dried branches that they used for kindling. She struck a long match that they kept in a pail by the kindling and lit the bundle.
“What are you doing?”
“Wolves are afraid of people and afraid of fire,” she said.
“What biologist told you that?” he sneered, but it was too late. Kate flung open the door and walked out into the snow with her torch to get some wood. She finally showed him what she really thought—out with a torch to face the wolves alone, leaving him and his useless rifle inside. The minute the door was open, Henry, who had been denied his nighttime prowls for months now, ran out in something between a run and a waddle. He was soon out of sight.
“Henry!” Kate shouted. But Henry had disappeared into the dark. Kate looked with her torch that was burning down very quickly, and worse, now Davey, who missed his leash-free cavorting, ran out the door and headed down the road that led to the Salmon River.
Suddenly there was a noise, a screech. It could have been a raven, but Hal knew that it was poor Henry that the wolves had gotten. “Son of a bitch,” he cursed, and grabbed his Winchester and a handful of .308 cartridges and ran outside, so enraged that at first he didn’t notice that he was barefoot in the snow. He thought of going back for shoes, but there was no time. They were going to get little Davey. But as Hal pranced farther, light-footed in the freezing snow, he saw a red glow on the ground. It was Kate’s burned-out torch.
And then he saw Kate; she seemed to be sliding through the snow on her back. Had she fallen? And then he saw one raised foot. It was in the mouth of a
wolf that was dragging her away. He couldn’t see if she was hurt. But her arms were flailing, trying to grab on to something, so she was still alive.
Hal charged forward, his Winchester steadied on his hip. But as he got closer he saw them. There were four. At first he saw only yellow eyes, but then he saw their canine silhouettes. They were much larger than dogs—incredibly large. He had always said that they had brought in giants from Canada. Then he realized that there were three more behind him. He could see their gray-and-black fur. None of them were moving, but they knew they had him surrounded. He cursed himself for having not yet picked up the semiautomatic from the gun shop. But he could still do this in one shot if he was a good enough hunter. His only chance was to find the alpha male. If he could drop the alpha with one chest shot to the heart, the others might back off.
There was a large male standing off to his right. He was the alpha. He stood there like an infantry commander about to give an order. Hal raised his Winchester and had the chest in his sight. It was an easy shot because the alpha, unlike the others, was sitting on his haunches, exposing his chest. He wasn’t hunkering low or running away this time. He had him. He felt the curve of the trigger on his index finger and inhaled. He almost smiled at the sureness of the shot, except that his feet hurt in the snow.
In the next instant the rifle was not in his hands and he was on the ground. He felt shooting pain traveling up both his arms. His wrists were held in the jaws of two wolves. They were too strong. He couldn’t move. He saw the yellow eyes of the alpha moving closer. He couldn’t help wondering if they were going to scrape their bones clean or just eat a little and leave the rest for the ravens to pluck. One thing was certain: when whatever was left of them was found, that would be the end of wolves in Idaho. He had defeated the wolves, but they had also defeated him.
City Beasts Page 13