Spirit Wolf (20 page)

“He's an injun. He might make it.”

“And if he doesn't?”

Maxwell shrugged.

“It doesn't make much difference to you one way or another, does it?” Flynn asked as he walked up, easing the hammer down on his Sharps.

Maxwell shrugged again.

“If he dies,” Flynn said, “some folks might think that you and your mouthy friend helped him along a little.”

“He's an injun.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Where are you going to find a jury who will hang a white man for kicking a freeloading old Indian out of camp?”

Flynn sighed. “I want you two gone by first light tomorrow. I'm going to keep your weapons, including that knife. Next time somebody from the ranch goes into Billings, he can drop ‘em off at the Stockman.”

By this time, Bullsnake had rolled over and was rocking dizzily on his hands and knees. He got up in stages, and it was clear to the watchers that everything he did for a while would be painful.

His eyes rolled when he looked at Uriah.

“Keep dad crazy sub-of-a-bidge away frob me. He tried to kill me!”

But the opaque-eyed creature had gone, maybe for good. Uriah had beaten his own personal devil in a fair fight, and when he spoke, his voice had no challenge in it.

“Which way did he go?”

Bullsnake had expected a sharp pointed boot in the ribs. Had he come out on top, that's what Uriah would have gotten. But Bullsnake was put off balance by the absence of malice, triumph, hate, or fear in Uriah's voice.

Bullsnake's relief was reflected in his quick reply. “Ober dad hill.”

Then Bullsnake staggered off with Maxwell toward their camp, his arm over Maxwell's shoulder.

Uriah looked at Flynn. “I'm sorry that happened. I didn't mean it to.”

“Sometimes it can't be helped.”

“Dad, we've got to go get the old man, or he'll freeze to death.”

“It's almost dark, Nash. By the time we get a quarter mile the sun will be down.”

“If it was me out there, would you come looking?”

“Sure, but—”

Flynn chimed in again. “You two go ahead. I'll get the fire stoked up and the steaks ready for fryin! When I see you coming back over the top, I'll throw them in the pan.”

“Better walk,” Uriah said. “By the time we get over to the corral and get the horses saddled, it'll be dark.”

The trail was clear enough. The old man had walked almost straight up the hill. Nash noticed one spot where he had slipped and fallen, picked himself up, and started climbing again. Once the old man reached the top, his stride lengthened, and it was clear he had been making good time.

Nash and Uriah followed easily until the trail dipped behind a small stand of juniper. The track led into the stand of tangled, gnarled wood, dead and alive, and disappeared. Uriah and Nash spent the rest of the light looking through that little stand of juniper, but the old man was nowhere to be seen.

Nash was the first to speak. “We might as well go back. We aren't going to catch him tonight.”

Uriah paused. “Nash, you can't really believe that old man's story. He can no more ‘run on the wind' than I can. He probably backtracked and followed somebody else's tracks until he was free of camp. Age has stolen his mind, Nash. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Nash nodded. Had it not been for the tenderness of his toes, the walk back to camp would have been pleasant. It was still cold, but the night was bright with the reflection of starlight off the snow.

Uriah pretended to be otherwise occupied, but Nash could see that he was watching every step the old man had taken from the camp. Uriah was trying to find a sign that the old man had backtracked, some indication where he had stepped off the trail. Nash knew his father was wasting his time.

11

It was still dark when they awoke. Neither felt much like eating, and they left camp just as the false dawn was settling into the hills. Neither talked about what direction to take, despite Uriah's insistence the night before that the old man had backtracked.

They followed his tracks out to the juniper bush and beyond, holding to the direction the old man had set from camp. They didn't talk. There didn't seem to be anything to say. They were bound on the old man's course now, and both felt compelled to follow it to its end. The sun had just touched the eastern horizon when they came to a coulee. The walls were steep, too steep to take a horse down. Uriah scanned the coulee up and down as far as he could see. There were no tracks there, no reason to believe there had ever been life in the coulee beyond the heavy juniper and pine growth hanging on its edges.

“Nash, I think we're wasting our time. I think the old man backtracked last night. I think he found himself a hole and pulled it in after him. But I know that you will never feel easy if you don't try to find him. You take the shotgun and drop down into the coulee. I'll take the horses around the head of it and follow down the other side. You walk along the bottom until you find an easy way up. We'll meet up at the top on the other end. If we haven't found some sign of him by then, Nash, chances are we'll never see him again.”

Nash slipped off Nell, handed the reins to Uriah, and started walking toward the edge, carrying the shotgun in his right hand.

Uriah threw him a handful of buckshot loads. He caught all but one, and he bent over to pick it up after he stuffed the others into his pockets. He broke open the shotgun, blew snow off the cartridge, and dropped it into the chamber. He pulled another shell from his pocket, loaded it, and snapped the action shut.

Nash walked up to the edge, picking his way down the slope with his eyes before stepping off. He could hike to that juniper bush there, catch a branch and brake himself. From there, it would be relatively easy to ease down to the rock out cropping, catching his breath there before moving on.

Taking a good grip on the shotgun, Nash stepped out on the slick surface of the slope leading to the coulee floor. He was slipping and sliding, trying to keep his own balance. He sped toward the bottom. Nash grabbed a juniper branch in passing, and it held. He clung there for a few moments, searching for his next handhold. He reached the rock outcropping without incident, and from there it was a relatively easy leg to the coulee floor.

Nash walked carefully up the coulee, taking care not to snap a branch beneath his feet, to conceal himself as best he could while he walked. He was hunting now, simply because it was natural for him to move that way in the winter, with a gun pulling hard against his right shoulder. He didn't really expect to see any animals. He didn't really expect to see the old man. Somehow he knew whatever part he and his father had played in that strange old man's life was over.

Still, Nash trudged along the coulee quietly, enjoying a day made brisk and not bitter by a cold winter sun hanging over the edge of the coulee.

He had just turned a bend in the coulee when he saw the rabbit. It came out of the juniper bush tentatively, moving toward Nash, toward another bush that hugged a rock outcropping at the bottom of the coulee. Better cover there, Nash thought. And then it came to him. The rabbit was moving toward him! Something up the coulee had frightened the animal.

Nash's eyes examined the coulee, seeking movement in shadow, seeking a profile against the backdrop of snow. His eyes moved over it first and then back again.

It was the wolf! It was
the
wolf! Flynn was right. There was no mistaking this animal, no more than the sound of a rattlesnake could ever be mistaken for anything else.

He stood across the coulee, quartering toward Nash and absolutely magnificent. He was huge, with a black band across his eyes, and Nash was suddenly reminded that the old man had told him black was the Cheyenne color of death. Nash knew root deep this was the animal they had been hunting, but still his mind wrestled with that knowledge. This wolf was obviously in its prime. It couldn't be as old as the wolf that killed ol' Charley.… That killed ol' Charley.

And then Nash's reflection was replaced by fear.

The eyes. Flynn had talked about the eyes. They were green, as green as Flynn had said and deep … so deep …

It was a hot summer afternoon, and Nash had abandoned his hoeing in the garden and walked down to the big deep hole in the creek. He shed his clothes, climbing naked to a big branch of cottonwood tree overhanging the water. Then, savoring the chill as the waters closed over his head, he swam. It was green, sun-drenched jade green at the top and darker as he struggled through the water to the bottom of the hole. He swam against the current, trying to reach the head of the pool before he ran out of strength, ran out of air. He was about halfway when it came to him that he wouldn't make it, and when he looked up at the mirror reflection of the surface above, he knew he wouldn't make that either. It was too far away, and his tortured lungs would overcome his brain. He would suck water instead of air, and he would cough himself to death, trapped in that deep green pool.

The wolf took his eyes from Nash, and the boy gasped for air, realizing for the first time that he had been holding his breath, caught in the depths of that wolf's eyes. He stood gasping for a moment before it occurred to him to raise the shotgun. Nash slipped back both hammers to full cock. The wolf was watching the rabbit now, but he made no move toward it or toward Nash. Nash's finger tightened on the trigger.
“Squeeze don't pull.”

But the finger stopped, still in place but motionless. Nash was thinking about the old man, about the stories he had told about this magic wolf. He remembered the wonder in the old man's voice as he spoke about the medicine lodge where the spirit wolf had revealed his secrets to a young Cheyenne boy.

He remembered Uriah talking about how badly they needed an irrigation ditch if they were to survive the Montana summers, remembered the watermelon he watered every day, only to drop it on the way to the house. He remembered his mother sitting at the piano, wringing her hands and weeping softly.

The weight of the barrel was pulling the muzzle down away from the wolf. Nash let the barrel drop. He took a deep breath and another, trying to quiet the pounding of his heart. Still the wolf didn't move. The animal's attention was focused up the hill behind him. Nash raised his shotgun again.

Ka-whump!

The shotgun reared against his shoulder, and Nash stepped back against the recoil. Then he looked up the hill where the wolf had been. The animal had slipped to the bottom of the coulee. It lay there, green eyes open, but without magic.

Nash let down the other hammer of the shotgun. He was standing motionless as Uriah came around a distant bend in the coulee, the roan scrambling to keep his footing in the snow. Uriah pulled up and jumped down. “You okay?”

Nash nodded.

Uriah levered a cartridge into his rifle and walked toward the wolf, holding the rifle to his shoulder, the muzzle on the animal. Uriah reached out, prodding the wolf with the barrel of his rifle before kneeling to examine it.

“Looks like we're going to have to do a little more target practice. You only hit him with one pellet, right in the temple.”

Nash walked over to the animal. “Look, Dad. His fang is missing, just like Flynn said. It's the wolf, isn't it, Dad?”

“It's the wolf. There's no way in hell there can be two animals like this around. How'd you run across him?”

“It was almost like he was waiting for us. He just stood there. He didn't move, except to look up on the ridge there behind him.”

“Well, we'll get a chance to see what he was looking at. We'll have to take the roan up that side coulee to get out. No way we'll ever get up what I just rode down.”

“Why do you suppose he just stood there like that, Dad?”

“Nash, you know enough about animals to know that they don't think. He wasn't waiting. You just caught him by surprise. Maybe he was listening to me and the horse and didn't even know you were coming until you got there.”

“I think he knew.”

“I think you're making something out of nothing. Next thing you know, you'll be figuring there's some connection between this wolf and that old man. Don't let your imagination get away from you.”

The roan shied a bit from the extra load and the smell of wolf, but Uriah gave him a boot in the ribs and the horse settled into the task. The side coulee was broad and gentle, and it was obvious from the number of tracks that animals used it regularly. It forked near the top, leaving a point of rock directly ahead of them. Uriah took the left fork, angling toward the top. A few minutes later, they topped out. Uriah pulled the roan to a stop, looking over the land below so that all the details would be clear in the telling and retelling of the hunt.

“Dad! Look at that!

Nash was pointing to the little rock promontory overlooking the valley below. Just back from the edge of the rock was an Indian burial scaffold, and on the scaffold was the old man.

Uriah and Nash climbed down, Uriah taking the old man's buffalo robe from behind the saddle.

The old man lay on his back on the scaffold, his arms hugging his chest as though for warmth. His eyes were closed, just a sliver of black and white showing beneath the lids. But there was no glitter there now. The magic had left his body. He seemed older than he had in life, and infinitely fragile.

Uriah picked up the old man as though he were a child, holding him in his arms while Nash spread the robe, hair side up, on the platform. Then Uriah lay the body gently on the robe, folding it over and tying it with leather thongs from his saddlebag.

“That will keep the magpies out of his eyes. I don't know how to do this,” Uriah continued, and Nash wasn't sure whether his father was talking to him or to Wolf Runs on the Wind. “But I will do the best I can.”

Uriah took off his hat, waiting for Nash to follow his lead. Then he bowed his head and closed his eyes.