The children shouted, in unison, “ONE, TWO, THREE!” and Nancy and Edison began energetically stroking, as the canoes shot forward, one and all laughing loudly.
“Tio Galen, are you angry that I didn’t want to go in the water?”
“No, Tonio. I know you must have a very good reason. Do you want to talk about it?”
Tonio meekly shook his head, so Galen continued walking but moving slowly enough for him to keep up.
Then Tonio stopped, and Galen stopped as well, turning to him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Tio, do you love me as much as you love Freddie and Carm?”
He saw that the boy was serious.
“Of course, Tonio! Why do you ask?”
“Would you have saved me like Tio Eddie saved Freddie today?”
Galen squatted down to look him in the eye.
“Yes, Tonio. Tio Eddie, Tia Nancy, and I would have worked just as hard, maybe even harder, to save you if you had been in trouble.”
Then he reached over, swept the boy up on his shoulders, and resumed the tour of the trail. In minutes he was pointing out and naming the birds, small animals, and plants they encountered, and Tonio grew giddy at the new experiences.
Galen’s eyes misted, as he realized how much the boy’s moods were like his own, and he wondered if having a son would have been like this.
The two canoes swept forward, bows neck and neck, as they rounded one river bend then another. The water grew a little darker now, almost channel depth. Soon the old railroad crossing trestle appeared in the distance, as well as something else among the glacier-strewn boulders.
Just then Freddie yelled, “What’s that?”
Nancy and Edison saw the problem immediately: An overturned canoe abutted one of the large stones, a young girl clinging to the side.
Both adults paddled toward the trouble spot, with Edison’s canoe getting there first. He caught water to bring the boat to a stop, reached over carefully to avoid tipping, and with Freddie’s help lifted the girl aboard.
“Nancy, I’m going to take this child to the rendezvous point with Galen. She doesn’t appear hurt, just in shock. Will you show Carmelita how to salvage an overturned canoe and follow us to the bridge crossing?”
“Sure,” she replied. “We’ll be right behind you.”
The girl was conscious but moaning softly.
“My sister, where is she?”
Edison bent toward her.
“Was someone else in the canoe with you?”
She started to cry.
“We got into an argument, and somehow the boat tipped over.”
“There she is!” Freddie yelled and pointed toward a second rock farther on.
Edison paddled hard toward the other girl, who appeared unconscious. Suddenly Freddie leaped out of the boat. Before Edison could stop him, he swam toward her. He reached her quickly and instinctively threw his arms around her to raise her up. Edison arrived a few moments later, positioned the canoe, and slowly lifted the child into it.
Then Freddie spotted his brother and Galen, but before he could call out, Edison had reached over and wrenched him into the canoe by his shorts.
“Freddie, I could…” He paused as he thought better of his words then quickly paddled to the river bank, where Galen and Tonio were standing. Nancy and Carmelita were not far behind, with the girls’ canoe in tow. All the boats ran up the sloping bank together.
Galen reached out and pulled both canoes farther onto the sandy soil then scanned the two new occupants of Edison’s canoe. The older girl, about twelve, was still crying. The younger one was breathing but not moving. He gently picked her up, placed her on the riverbank, and examined her for injuries.
“Tio Galen, will she live?” Freddie whispered.
“Oh yes,” Galen said, smiling, as the girl opened her eyes and saw the wet boy standing next to the big man.
At nine years old going on sixteen, Freddie couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her hazel eyes seemed to penetrate his water-soaked skin. Wet, blonde hair closely framed her baby-round face.
“What happened?” he asked.
The older sister answered first.
“We were visiting Grandpa Alex and Grandma Debbie here in Front Royal. Our daddy is with the Air Force—Colonel Luke Daumier. He’s being transferred to a post in Pennsylvania next week, so we thought we’d do one last canoe trip. But then she started to act like a brat, and the canoe overturned.”
Freddie moved closer to the younger girl. He had never seen anyone so pretty.
She looked up at him.
“Did you save me?”
Freddie didn’t know what to say, so Edison said it for him.
“Yes, my dear, he did.”
“What’s your name?”
“Freddie Hidalgo,” he stammered. “Wha … what’s yours?”
“Lilly Daumier.”
Before he could jump back, she sprang from the ground and threw her arms around him.
“Okay, let’s get the girls back to their folks and the boats back to rental,” Nancy said. She and Carmelita helped the two girls along the path, accompanied by Freddie, who wanted “to keep them safe.” Galen and Tonio brought up the rear, while Edison alone powered the armada of rope-linked canoes back up the river.
“Tia Nancy, why did Freddie do that … I mean … jump into the river?”
“Because he’s a boy, Carm. Because he’s impulsive, impetuous, and…”
She thought back to the day that a certain scrawny, cross-eyed young man had climbed into her canoe despite her protests. She sighed.
“Tio Galen, why did Freddie turn all red when the girl hugged him?”
“There are several answers to that, Tonio. The scientific one has to do with dilated blood vessels just under the skin. The human one has to do with feelings. Unfortunately, we can’t control either one. Let’s head back now.”
Bear and cub moved in unison along the trail.
“Bob, where’s Galen? Didn’t the two of you come home together?”
The men had headed out at the crack of the autumn dawn, her Bob to play with his beloved old locomotives at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, and Galen to one of the city’s free clinics where he “kept his hand in,” as he called it, by volunteering medical care for the indigent locals. The work had helped to lift the dark clouds that still seemed to take hold of him periodically in the six years since he had joined his friends on the mountain. He felt useful again. With the three kids progressing so well in school now, Nancy also kept busy volunteering for the Red Cross.
“He’s somewhere in the woods,” Edison said. “He asked to get out of the kidmobile on the way up. Said he was carrying out some observational experiment with the forest animals. I gave him one of the phones, so we can call him when the school bus drops the kids off. Better he keeps his mind active. I don’t want to see him slip into another depression.”
Nancy nodded and returned to the kitchen and her dinner preparations. Three adults and three preteens could scarf down a lot of food.
Galen sat in the blind he had set up as his observation post, quietly waiting and watching. He had trained his binoculars on an opening in the rocky hillside, upwind from the blind, and he mentally reviewed his notes. He still couldn’t believe it—
Canis lupus
, the gray wolf! Actually two of them, male and female. What were they doing this far south? He had always thought them to be northern predators.
Must be the ever-encroaching developments
forcing wildlife closer to the cities and suburbs
.
He had read that even his beloved Northern Virginia was seeing an influx of coyotes. Deer were overwhelming the subdivisions, and traffic incidents involving the animals had become near-daily occurrences. One poor black bear paid with his life for wandering into a hospital.
There! He saw the movement. The male, must be a good eighty to ninety pounds, carrying a dead rabbit in its mouth to the den opening. Then he saw the reason why: The smaller female was limping—she couldn’t hunt. He adjusted the binoculars and saw the healing wounds of buckshot.
Oh, no, Mrs. Wolf. You don’t want to fall into the sights of any of our local brave hunters!
The male put the dead rabbit down and sat on his haunches, while the female hobbled to the prey and ate her meal.
Slowly, slowly, Mrs. Wolf, don’t wolf it down.
He chuckled softly to himself at the absurdity of the thought.
The male nuzzled the female, and they both entered the den. It was still a bit early for mating. That would happen in a few months, probably sometime in January, and the cycle of life would start over.
Galen sighed as he watched the lupine couple.
Leni, Cathy, June. You all shared my life so briefly, only to be snatched from me, leaving me no family, no one to share my later years.
He felt the clouds gathering and caught himself.
Yet, here I am living on a mountain in the middle of Pennsylvania caring for three orphans.
He noticed a blurred reflection of his likeness in a rain puddle at his feet.
No, old wolf, your time isn’t quite past. You still have pups to raise.
He glanced at his watch then quietly slipped out of the blind and walked the half-mile down to the bus stop to wait for the kids, thinking about how at dinner he would tell Carmelita, Freddie, and Tonio about the new guests on the mountain.
The dog felt the pain from the kick radiate up his abdomen to his back. It was not the first time the two-legged one had done this. Usually he would just slink away to a corner of the yard at the end of his run, tail between his legs, to show the big one he understood who was dominant.
Not this time.
Maybe it was because he was old now. Or maybe in his dog’s soul he felt the urge to try at least once for dominance. So instead of retreating, he turned his head toward the large one, mouth muscles pulled back along his long jaw line in a snarl. He felt the satisfying penetration in his teeth, as they pierced the large one’s pain-making leg. His tall pointed ears heard the cry of agony that only he had vocalized in the past. Now his attacker felt the pain.
“You damned sonofabitch, I’m gonna blow yer brains out!”
Lem Caddler clutched his right leg to staunch the flow of blood. He backed away slowly from Clyde, or as he usually called the big, German Shepherd-Labrador mix, his “good ol’ huntin’ dawg.” This had never happened before. For one thing, he had been raised believing a dog was an animal, not a member of the family. For another, he had learned from his father that you gotta show a dog who’s boss, which was what he had done—often. And now the bastard had turned on him. He held his hand on the wound as he hobbled toward the farmhouse to grab his shotgun. No way he’d let that dog get away with this.
“‘Bout time to break in that new dog, anyway,” he muttered to himself. “This one’s got wuthless for huntin’.”
Clyde trembled as he watched his master enter the house. Instinctively, he knew: Escape now or die!
He looked around the yard and spotted the chain holding the new dog, like himself but younger and sleeker, cowering behind the large maple tree. He loped over to the animal and they faced muzzle to muzzle. The smaller dog, possibly sensing its own future fate with Caddler, rolled over onto his back, exposing his underbelly to Clyde. Then he rose and followed him in a run to the full extent of their restraints. Clyde had expected the usual sharp snap against his neck, as he had felt so many times, but now the leather collar, grown weak and cracked over the years, gave way easily.
Not so with the young dog. He let out a painful yelp, as the stretched chain yanked him back on his rear end.
Just then Caddler emerged from the farmhouse, shoving shells into his gun’s twin barrels.
With all his strength, Clyde bit into the dog’s collar.
“What the…?” Caddler cried out. “I’ll shoot ya! I’ll shoot ya both! Dumb bastards!”
He raised the shotgun and fired. The rain of buckshot struck the two animals like the simultaneous stings of a hundred hornets.
Pumped with fear and pain, Clyde bit through the collar, and he and the other dog lit out for the woods. Before Caddler could load up and get off another round they were gone.
The three children helped clear away the dishes from dinner—a nightly custom—then sat back down at the table. The next activity, also a custom imposed by Nancy, was inviolable. Each evening, they were required to report the happenings of the day at school. What lessons had they learned? What were their homework assignments? Were they having any problems with the schoolwork, the teachers, or their classmates?
The after-dinner time became like a family conference. It was an opportunity for everyone to share newly learned lessons, to vent emotions, to ask questions or receive explanations, to admit lapses in judgment or behavior and, in some cases, for the children to accept the stern words of their elders. The three guardians took their parental role very seriously, and they involved themselves as much as possible in their charges’ lives. Only when they grew older did the children fully appreciate how different their tios and tia were from the modern-day, average American family.
Sometimes, what the adults talked about actually interested the thirteen-year-old girl and the twelve- and eleven-year-old boys—and tonight was just such an occasion.
“Guess what I saw today!”
Galen actually grinned as he looked at the others seated around the table.
“We have some surprise guests on our mountain!”
Freddie rolled his eyes.
Probably another bird
, he thought.
Always perceptive, Carmelita caught the unusual degree of excitement in her tio’s voice. Tonio, the youngest, spoke directly to Galen.
“Did you see something from that blind we helped you put up in the woods, Tio?”
“Yes, Tonio. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a strange and wonderful new family living nearby: Mr. and Mrs.
Canis lupus
!”
“Can us loop us?” Freddie asked, stifling a yawn.
Galen sighed to himself.
Puberty isn’t far off for this one. Hope the three of us can handle it.
Nancy and Edison caught on immediately. Nancy’s voice registered worry.
“Will they be dangerous to us? Don’t they attack people, especially children?”
With that comment, Freddie suddenly became all eyes and ears.
“Shouldn’t we get the game warden to remove them, Galen? I know we agreed to keep the mountain undeveloped as a Nature Conservancy project, but this might be a bit more than we can handle.”
“The wolves are a classic case of ‘don’t bother us and we won’t bother you,’” Galen replied. “I don’t think we need to worry. All they want is shelter and food.”
The after-dinner session ended on a rollicking note, as Edison leered wickedly at the kids.
“Lions and tigers and wolves, oh my!”
He began growling, baring his teeth, and raising his claws like the Big Bad Wolf, and the children responded with giggles and squeals of delight.
He had to find food for his mate. The biological imperative had driven the dark-gray beast farther than usual from the den. It was nighttime now, but his powerful olfactory sense detected the smell of small game. There—over there, the place where the great beasts roamed at running speed over the hard not-grass. He would have to cross it, even though he feared the noise and the strange odors. No sooner had he started across than one of the monsters bore down on him. He felt the terrible pain radiate throughout his body as he was thrown into the air by the impact. He landed in the ditch by the side of the road. His legs twitched briefly, and then his life force departed to run and hunt forever in the Elysian Fields.
The SUV driver had felt the impact, as he rounded the bend on the tortuous mountain road.
“Can’t stop now,” he said, out loud. “Have to be in Pittsburgh by mid-morning.”
She grew weaker. Powerful hunger stirred her, but her injuries kept her from roaming outside the den. Where was her mate?
“Tio Galen, something must be wrong. We haven’t seen the male wolf in three days.”
“Yes, Tonio, I agree. That’s not like him. I have a bad feeling he’s been injured or killed. Around here, it’s either hunters or cars. And the female can’t travel to hunt. She must be starving.”
He stroked his jaw line a moment, pondering the dilemma.
“Go up to the house and ask Tia Nancy if she has any raw meat we could leave near the den opening.”
As Tonio raced back to the house, the old man marveled at the boy’s speed and agility. He felt … proud.
Tonio returned about ten minutes later carrying a paper bag. Then man and boy quietly approached within a few steps of the den and placed the chopped beef, which Nancy had provided, on the ground, being careful to hold only the wax paper wrapping to avoid scenting the meat with their hands.
They retreated as quietly as they had come, waiting and watching from the blind, until the female caught the smell and dragged herself to the opening. She saw the meat then looked around for her mate. Who else could have brought it? But his scent was not there. Something else was—something she had not experienced before. Her hunger quickly overpowered her fear, and she grabbed as much of the food as she could in one bite and slipped back into the den.
They had bonded, the old dog and the younger one. They had escaped from the two-legged pain-giver, and now they roamed the countryside as their distant ancestors once did, living off small game and the occasional, unsealed garbage can.
Slowly, the wounds of that day had healed, as little by little the buckshot fell from the pits it had made in their bodies. They would not have comprehended it, but when Caddler had let loose with both barrels, he was standing outside the shotgun’s effective range. He had injured both animals, but their fear-driven adrenaline was enough to power their flight to safety, and now they had regained their full strength. The big tan dog and the smaller-but-swifter, gray-brown mixed breed made a good team, as they hunted and wandered.
They had begun to feel the change in season, as the temperatures slowly dropped day to day. By instinct they knew they would need shelter soon.
Their roaming carried them higher and higher up in the mountains, and the rocky outcroppings became more clustered, some forming good protection from the rain—but nothing enclosed enough to ward off the impending cold.
The younger dog sensed it first: a strange mixture of messenger scents—food, female, two-legged ones—coming from the same direction. He ran ahead of the older dog and approached a large stone ledge. As they moved closer, the scent grew stronger: female. They reached the den opening and found food remnants scattered about.
The older dog felt a stirring within, and for the first time in his life he let out a howl, his ancestral memory taking over. The younger dog watched his pack leader and let out his own, piercing warble. Then, from within the stone cave, came an even higher-pitched, solitary reply.
“Tio Galen, are those more wolves?”
The three children crowded the blind with the bear-sized man.
“No, those are dogs, but from the looks of them, they must be wilding. I bet they ran away from wherever they lived and now roam free. Let’s see what Mrs. Wolf does. The food we’ve been leaving seems to have given her strength, but she’s still listless. She must miss her mate.”
Galen stood mute as the impact of his own words struck him.
Her muzzle twitched, as the male scent hit her olfactory system. No, this was not her mate, and so she felt the tensing of the fight-or-flight reflex building in her muscles. She inched toward the den opening, and then she saw them: two males, sitting there, watching her, not moving. She let out a warning snarl, but they didn’t respond. She moved out farther, tail stiff in the aggressive posture, front legs apart, ready to run or lunge.