Spirit Wolf (7 page)

He stopped and looked into the fire for what seemed to be a long time, light and shadow playing across his face. “Ain't anybody out there got a bottle of whiskey? This one died on me,” Flynn said, turning and flinging it as far as he could. “Anyhow, that's the last time I saw that beautiful beast. There's others that say they've seen his shadow going through the trees. To hear tell, everybody who has seen the wolf since then has put a mortal slug into the animal. I know that cats are supposed to have nine lives, but if all those people are telling the truth, that wolf surely puts a cat to shame.

“People say that the wolf has killed men since Charley. That could be. I don't know. A man can break a leg in this country and never be found. It's easy to blame an animal for fate. On the other hand, I can tell you that wolf took a fearsome joy in killing ol' Charley. He's killed more cattle than he could eat in a dozen lifetimes. It's the only animal I've ever seen that will kill a calf and just walk away, leaving it for the magpies.

“Some of you have asked how you'll know this wolf. But you don't have to worry about that. He lost a toe from his right front foot in Charley's trap. Some folks around here have taken to calling him Three Toes. Others aren't nearly so charitable. He's white, like I said, with dark fur around the eyes and on the back toward the tail. There are probably other white three-toed wolves around this country, but you'll know him when you see him, the same way a greenhorn knows the rattle of a snake the first time he hears it. There's something about this wolf that touches you down deep. There's something in his eyes …”

Flynn broke off. A log was tossed on the fire, and a spray of sparks climbed into the cold black sky. Flynn stood at the fire like a man looking into the door of hell. He was still standing there as splinters from the group of men began to spin off into the darkness, bound for bedrolls and an uneasy sleep.

Nash and Uriah walked back to their camp in silence. They tossed a couple chunks of wood on the embers of the fire and crawled into the lean-to.

It was warmer there, but not much, and both hurried to shed their outer clothes and climb into their bedrolls. They said good night and rolled over to go to sleep, but Nash couldn't take his mind off the wolf. In his mind's eye, he could see him, head down, poised like a snake to strike, long white fangs and green eyes. Eyes as green as the swimming hole on the creek back home. Nash lay rigid, pretending to sleep. He lay there for what seemed to be hours, and he was still awake when his father muttered, “What the hell have I gotten us into?”

4

The lean-to the next morning made all those cold mornings back home at the cabin seem tropical in comparison. A thick rime of frost lined the inside of the canvas, and when Nash reached up and touched it, it dusted down onto his neck. Nash didn't want to leave the relative warmth of his bedroll, but he knew he must. It was still dark and the light of the kerosene lanterns bobbed around the campground. Nash dressed and crawled outside to the sound of muttered voices and the rattle of saddles and bridles being put to horses. Uriah had already fried some sidepork, and Nash fell to, sopping up some of the grease with bread sliced from one of his mother's fresh loaves. Uriah had eaten and was sipping coffee made with water taken from the creek that morning.

While Nash was eating, his father walked over to the corral. When he returned, he was leading Nell and the roan. Both were saddled and ready to go.

As Nash scrubbed out the frying pan with snow, Uriah squatted down next to him. Uriah watched a few moments and then said, “You know we don't have to do this. I've been thinking about what Flynn said last night, and it might just be better if we packed up and went home. There's no shame in that. From the look of things, there's more than one party here that plans to do just that.”

Nash had noticed. Men were packing up, readying themselves for the trip back to their homes. In the shade of Flynn's speech, the hunt had lost its aura. Although none of the hunters would have admitted it, Flynn had frightened them. They wanted no part of this wolf. The cattlemen could do their own killing.

Nash was wavering. He didn't like the idea of going home, admitting to the Anderson children, admitting to Ettie, to himself, that he was still more child than man. But he didn't want to track that killer wolf through these hills, either.

Just then Bullsnake stepped up behind Uriah. “Tough decision isn't it, sonny? Maybe you better ride back home on that plow horse and ask your ma. Is that what you're going to do, boy?”

Uriah stood and turned around. “I don't remember inviting you over here,” he said, “and now I'm asking you to leave.”

“Well, as long as you're asking, I might,” Bullsnake said. “I get all upset when people aren't polite to me. I don't think you would like it much if I got upset, mister.”

“I don't like you much either way,” Uriah said, an edge poking out of his voice like a rock breaking the smooth flow of a stream.

Bullsnake sprang back in mock fear. “My, my, my. Pa is getting a little feisty. I better run back to my camp before I get so scared I pee my pants.”

Nash saw the muscles knot along his father's shoulders, and his eyes seemed to glaze for a moment, becoming opaque. Nash had only seen that happen once before. His father had been shoeing Nell, but the big animal kept pulling away from him. Each time he positioned the shoe on the mare's hoof, she would take it away from him. He had worked on her for nearly an hour, quietly, soundlessly. Then he began muttering. It was then that Uriah's eyes turned opaque. He was holding the tiny shoeing hammer in his hands, and that was all that saved Nell's life. If Uriah had had something heavier, he would have killed her. But he didn't. He began beating her with the hammer. Nash watched, and then he had begun screaming at his father to stop. He picked up a stick and jabbed Uriah in the leg, and his father had turned, hammer upraised, and Nash thought the monster was going to strike him, kill him. Then, as Nash watched, the monster died, and his father returned. Uriah had walked rubber-legged over to a stool. He sat there shaking, pale, as though he were very ill.

Then Uriah had stared at Nash as though he were sitting naked before his son, and his eyes filled with tears. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. We'll take Nell over to the Andersons' tomorrow. He's a better farrier than I am. I'm sorry, Nash. I'm sorry.”

And now Nash stood there in front of the fire and hoped that monster wouldn't come back again. He hoped he wouldn't ever see him again.

But Uriah's eyes cleared, and Bullsnake moved off, chuckling to himself.

Uriah climbed into the saddle, and Nash mounted Nell. They rode outside the circle of light from the campfires and waited a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness before moving on.

As they waited there, Nash asked, “What makes him mean like that?”

“I don't know, son,” Uriah said. “All I know is that he is what he is. We have enough to do worrying about what we are.”

They climbed a ridge to a high, flat plateau that stretched off to the southwest for miles, and put the North Star over their right shoulders. The night was still black and the stars bright against it. Patches of grass and brush loomed out of the snow, and Nash saw a dozen wolves crouching beside the trail—until proximity transformed them into juniper and sage.

The snow muffled the sound of the horses' hooves, and as false dawn touched the sky to the east and dimmed the stark black and white relief of the night, the animals seemed almost to be swimming in a sea of white. An hour had lapsed before Uriah spoke. “There's a big coulee up here that comes off the east fork of Dry Creek. It's heavy with brush and cover. I'm going to let you off at the mouth. I want you to wait there about forty-five minutes or an hour, while I take the two horses up to the head. Then you come up along the bottom. Whenever you come to a branch bear to the right. I'll be waiting up at the top for anything you spook ahead of you.

“And Nash, I want you to be real careful. I don't think that wolf is as dangerous as Flynn said—if I did, I wouldn't let you go. But I don't want you taking any chances anyway. Anywhere that brush gets too heavy for you to see into it, you climb the canyon wall. Just sit down and watch. Animals are funny. They'll lay real quiet while you're busting through the brush, but stop a minute, and they think you spotted them. Their nerve breaks, and that can be fatal. Remember that.”

When they reached the coulee, Uriah climbed down off his roan. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out five twelve-gauge shells. Then, very carefully, so the sound would not alert any animals in the area, he broke open the gun's action, dropped two cartridges into the breech, and closed it.

He leaned over and whispered in Nash's ear, “You be damn careful. If a storm moves in, you climb back up the side of the coulee. I'll come down and pick you up. I'll come to you. Don't you try to find me. Take it easy. Go slow.”

Nash stood in the snow listening as the sounds of the horses' hooves disappeared in the dull light. He had never felt so alone, so utterly alone. He stood there for some time, attuning his senses to the space around him. He knew he should sit down so he wouldn't stand out against the skyline when the sun rose, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He stood there listening, poised as though for flight. He was still standing there motionless as the sun cracked the sky to the east. There was no warmth in its rays, but Nash's soul soared with the light. The wolf was a creature of the night, of bad dreams. His time was past, and Nash's beginning.

Nash slipped over the edge of the coulee and made his way down the steep hill. The coulee bottom was still in shadow, but he could easily see the other side. There were broken rims on each side carved from the sandstone slab that underlay most of the region. The slopes on both sides were steep, punctuated by pine and juniper mixed with the more common sagebrush and yucca. A sharp break at the bottom marked the course of the spring snowmelt. In some places that cut was ten feet deep or more, and it wound back and forth across the floor of the coulee like a snake. Occasionally, the coulee opened into wide meadows of five to ten acres. Elsewhere precipitous walls plunged into the cut at the bottom.

Nash knew he would have to stay close to the bottom—a den could easily be hidden in the walls—yet far enough up the slope to view what lay ahead and behind.

The fear that had fled ahead of the morning light was waiting in the shadows ahead. Nash could feel it there, a palpable presence undeterred by the weight of the twelve-gauge in his arms. As he stepped ahead, Nash could feel his heartbeat, hear the whisper of blood coursing through his arteries. He wondered if the wolf could hear it too. He wondered if the wolf were waiting, lying under one of the juniper bushes ahead, listening to the heartbeat of his approaching prey, savoring the prospect of stilling that heart and leaving the prairie quiet again.

Nash stalked on. Hunting deer with his father, he spent much of his time watching the ground, taking care that he didn't snap a twig or dislodge a stone and send a deer rattling out of sight to safety. But it was different now. Nash felt an even greater need for quiet. Maybe if he could slip through that coulee in near perfect silence, with no more sound than that of the stretching of his sinews, the wolf wouldn't hear him. Maybe the wolf would sleep on, oblivious of the boy gliding past on soundless feet.

Nash had never seen a coulee as he saw this—not as a hunter, but as prey. Each bush, each rock, tree, and cut might have hidden the wolf. Nash's eyes scoured the landscape looking for the slightest clue; a trail through the snow leading into a bush and not continuing out the other side, the hint of a predator's hot breath against the frosty air. Anything and everything that might give him the split-second warning it would take to swing the shotgun's muzzle on line, to cock the ornate curved hammers that rode along each side of the Damascus barrel.

He had walked along less than a quarter of a mile, step by hesitating step, when he came to it. The coulee had narrowed, and he had been forced to scramble along the sidehill. That slowed his pace even more. He kicked the soles of his boots into the hillside for purchase, sacrificing silence for safety. Still each step threatened to send him plunging to the bottom. The coulee took a sharp bend to the east, and as he edged around the bill, he saw it.

It was just as Uriah had said. The coulee opened into a little park, but it was wall-to-wall juniper and pine. The brush was so thick there was no hope of seeing into it or walking quietly through it.

Nash paused for a moment, looking below. A whole pack of bloodthirsty wolves could lie in ambush there, waiting for an unwary deer—or man—to stumble into the brush. Nash stood there, and the fear grew in him, gnawing at his gut like a live animal.

Then he realized the pain wasn't imaginary but real. Oh, hell, he thought, gas.

Nash knew he couldn't wait. Not long anyway. He and his large intestine had worked out a bargain long ago. The large intestine wouldn't bother him until it was absolutely necessary. Sometimes two or three days stretched between those times. But when the call came, Nash was expected to answer with very little hesitation.

The bargain had been necessary, the result of the gap-sided, splinter-ridden, one-holer out back behind the Brue cabin. It was a miserable place. In winter the thought of sitting down on that seat with a wind whipping a miniblizzard through the walls was enough to give anyone pause. And still winter was better than summer. In summer the stench was unbearable. Lime dumped down the hole occasionally would help, but only for a while. Sometimes at night the reek of putrification would drift down toward the house and send everyone outside to evening chores. Nobody lingered at the outhouse, even if the Sears Roebuck catalogue was there for reading—and other purposes, too. Flies buzzed around the building in a cloud, and sometimes Nash thought he would inhale one of the creatures. Knowing as he did what drew the flies to the outhouse, the thought of one of them touching him was enough to make him gag. It was because of that one-holer that the bargain had been struck. And now he had no time to waste.