Part 2
The coal was no bigger than Hank’s thumb, but it had already eaten through the rug and was working its way into the dry pine boards beneath. Hank hit the floor hard, coughing as smoke slid into his throat. The wolf flinched away with a warning snap that ended in a whimper, her injured leg trembling under her.
She had dragged herself nearly eight feet from the corner where he had left her.
Hank grabbed the kettle from the stove and dumped water over the rug. Steam rose in a bitter cloud. He stamped the last ember out with his boot, then shoved the stove door closed with the poker and stood there breathing like a man who had just come up from underwater. The wolf lay on her side by the table, spent, her eyes half closed but still fixed on him.
“Well,” he said, voice rough from smoke. “That makes two of us too stubborn to die tonight.”
The wolf did not answer, of course. She only watched him.
Hank opened the window a few inches and let the freezing air pull the smoke out. Then he knelt near the wolf, not too close, and saw that her wound had started bleeding again from the effort. He got fresh towels, warmed water, and worked in silence except for the occasional low word meant more for his hands than for her.
When the line came back after midnight, he called Claire.
She answered on the fourth ring with the voice of someone who had been asleep and had already forgiven the emergency. “Hank?”
“I’ve got a wolf in my kitchen.”
There was a pause. “You want to try that again?”
“Pregnant female. Snare injury. Maybe a bad sprain, maybe worse. She’s alive.”
Claire exhaled, and the sleep left her voice. “How bad?”
“Bad enough I dragged her home.”
“Hank.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do. A wolf isn’t a hurt shepherd mix. You can’t just—”
“I know, Claire.”
This time the quiet between them carried Ruth’s name though neither of them said it. Claire had been at the funeral. She had been the one who put a hand on Hank’s arm in the church basement while casseroles cooled on folding tables and everyone tried not to stare at the widower who would not sit down.
Claire said, “Is she contained?”
“As much as anything with teeth and a grudge can be.”
“Keep heat in the room. Don’t crowd her. Don’t sedate her with anything you have there. I’ll come up as soon as I can get through.”
“The road’s blown shut.”
“I have chains, four-wheel drive, and poor judgment. Give me an hour.”
She made it in ninety minutes.
By then the storm had thinned to hard falling snow, and Hank had shoveled enough of the drive for Claire’s old Subaru to slide in behind his truck. She came through the door carrying two bags, her hair shoved under a knit cap, cheeks red from cold. She saw the wolf and stopped, not from fear exactly, but respect.
The wolf saw her too. A growl moved through the cabin.
“Hello, beautiful,” Claire said softly. “I know. None of this was in your plans.”
“She doesn’t like compliments.”
“Most females don’t when they’re injured and surrounded by men making bad decisions.”
Hank almost smiled. It felt unfamiliar on his face, so he let it go.
Claire worked with the calm economy of someone who knew panic wasted time. She had Hank hold a plywood panel between them and the wolf while she examined the leg, cleaned the neck wound, checked the gums, listened to the breathing, and studied the animal’s swollen belly with her mouth pressed into a line. The wolf fought them twice and nearly caught Claire’s wrist once. Claire only pulled back, waited, and tried again from a safer angle.
“She’s close,” Claire said at last.
“How close?”
“Days, maybe less. Three pups at least, if I’m feeling what I think I’m feeling.”
Hank looked toward the corner. The wolf had lowered her head again, but her eyes remained open. The firelight turned them amber.
Claire followed his gaze. “You can’t keep her in the cabin.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“You also can’t haul her to town like this. The stress could kill her, or the pups, or both. I’ll call the state wildlife office as soon as roads are safe, but for tonight and probably tomorrow, emergency care here is the least bad option.”
“I’ve got the old foaling stall in the barn.”
“If we can warm it and secure it, that’s better. But Hank, listen to me. She is not a pet. She is not Ruth sending you a sign. She’s a wild wolf in trouble.”
He looked away first.
Claire’s expression softened, which was worse than if she had scolded him. “You saved her. That matters. Just don’t confuse saving with owning.”
“I’m not that far gone.”
She did not answer quickly enough.
They moved the wolf before dawn, after Claire gave her enough treatment to ease the worst pain without dulling her instincts. The barn had electricity, a heat lamp used for lambs long before Hank sold the last of the stock, and a stall with thick boards and a latch that still held. They bedded it with straw and old blankets. Hank carried one end of the stretcher, Claire the other, and both of them understood that the wolf was allowing exactly none of it. She was enduring because there was no strength left for anything else.
As Claire packed her bag, she bent over the strip of cable Hank had cut from the pine. Her face changed.
“What?” Hank asked.
She turned the cable in her gloved hands. “Where did you find this?”
“North draw. Old service road.”
“You see a collar on her?”
“No.”
Claire parted the fur carefully at the wolf’s neck, above the raw line where the snare had caught. There, half hidden under thick winter hair, was a narrow band where the fur lay shorter and flattened, as if something had been worn there for a long time and recently removed.
“Hank,” Claire said, quieter now, “this wolf was collared.”
“Research collar?”
“Most likely. And it didn’t fall off clean.” She looked from the mark on the wolf’s neck to the cable in her hand. “Somebody didn’t just catch her by accident. Somebody knew exactly which wolf they wanted dead…”
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