Part 3
Somebody knew exactly what she was.
Caleb stayed crouched beside the wolf, the words settling into the cold around him with a weight the storm could not blow away. A trapped predator was one kind of emergency. A collared research animal with a sliced transmitter was something uglier. That meant a person had been close enough to see the collar, close enough to make a choice, and had chosen to leave her there anyway.
The she-wolf’s eyes were beginning to dull.
That moved Caleb faster than anger could. He slid the thermal blanket over the pup and then eased both mother and newborn onto the tarp, using the slope of the rock and every bit of leverage his back could still give him. She was heavier than she looked, all winter coat and exhausted muscle. Twice she tried to push up, and twice the injured leg folded beneath her. Each time the pup squeaked, her head turned toward the sound.
“I’m keeping him with you,” Caleb said. “You hear me? I’m not taking him.”
The dark male on the road watched every movement.
Caleb tied the tarp corners to the rescue sled, making a shallow cradle so the wolf could not roll out when the snowmobile hit ruts. He used the wool blanket to block the wind on one side and left enough space for her to breathe and reach the pup. He did not bind her muzzle again. He thought about it, then dismissed the idea. She had earned the air. Besides, if she had wanted his hand, she had already had more than one chance.
Scout followed him back to the snowmobile without being called. The male wolf shifted then, one paw forward, and Caleb stopped with his hand on the starter. The entire pack seemed to tighten. A smaller gray wolf appeared between the trees to the left, and another moved behind the male, pale as smoke in the headlight wash.
Caleb looked down, not at the male’s eyes but at the snow between them.
“I’m taking her to help,” he said.
The words vanished into the wind.
He started the snowmobile.
The engine caught on the second pull, rough and loud in the narrow wash. The male wolf stepped aside, not far, just enough to open a strip of road between his body and the trees. Caleb eased the machine forward. The rescue sled tugged behind him, the wolf and pup swaying under the tarp. Scout rode on the front footboard, braced between Caleb’s knees, ears flattened against the blowing snow.
At first Caleb thought the pack had stayed behind.
Then the headlight swept across a bend and caught them moving parallel to the road.
They were not chasing. They were not escorting either, not in any gentle storybook sense. They moved through the timber at a steady lope, keeping pace with the sled, appearing and disappearing between trunks. The dark-shouldered male stayed closest. Every time the trail curved, he was there again, a gray shape stitched to the edge of the beam.
The road dropped toward the creek bottom, where snow drifted deep against the banks. Caleb slowed. The sled bumped hard once, and the she-wolf lifted her head beneath the blanket. The pup gave another thin cry. The male wolf stopped in the trees. Caleb felt him there without looking.
“I know,” he said under his breath.
He was not sure which animal he was answering anymore.
The snowmobile fought the drift, skis nosing down, track chewing through powder. Caleb shifted his weight and gave it steady throttle. Too much power would spin him sideways. Too little would bury them. The machine crawled forward, whining, until the track caught packed snow on the far side and lurched up the bank.
That was when the rear hitch snapped.
The sound was small, almost ridiculous, a metallic crack under the larger noise of the engine. Caleb felt the sled jerk, then drag wrong. He killed the motor before the broken hitch could twist the tow bar completely under the track.
Silence slammed down again.
The rescue sled sat crooked behind him, half off the trail. One side had dipped into a drift, tilting the tarp. The she-wolf’s injured leg had slid against the edge. Caleb was off the snowmobile before he thought about it.
“Stay,” he told Scout.
Scout did not stay. He jumped down and planted himself between Caleb and the trees.
The pack had stopped.
Caleb knelt beside the hitch. The pin had sheared where old metal met newer hardware, a repair he had meant to replace properly back in January. He could hear his own voice from that morning, telling himself it would hold for one more run. The woods were full of men who died because one more sounded reasonable at the time.
His gloves were too thick for the rope work. He pulled them off and shoved them under one arm, exposing his fingers to the cold. The wind found them immediately. Pain flashed through his knuckles so sharp it made him clench his teeth.
He threaded rope through the safety chain, looped it twice around the tow bar, and tied a knot he hoped would hold over the last miles. It would not be pretty. It would not survive speed. It might get them to the clinic if he drove like an old man and prayed like someone who still believed he had the right.
A sound came from behind him.
Scout turned first.
Caleb looked over his shoulder and found the dark male wolf standing ten yards away on the trail. He was closer than before, close enough that Caleb could see ice clinging to the fur under his jaw. The wolf’s nose angled toward the sled, toward the hidden mother and pup. He took one step forward.
Scout did not bark. The old dog only lowered his head and stood trembling, every instinct in him trapped behind obedience.
Caleb held the rope in one numb hand. “No closer,” he said quietly.
The male stopped.
For several seconds, none of them moved. Caleb could hear the she-wolf breathing under the tarp. He could hear the pup’s faint rustle. He could hear the wind combing through black spruce overhead. Then the male wolf turned his head, not toward the sled, but toward the far side of the trail.
Caleb followed the movement with his flashlight.
The beam caught a footprint near the road edge.
Not wolf. Not deer. Not his own.
A boot print, deep and fresh, pressed into the snow beside a broken branch marked with a strip of blue survey tape.
Caleb stared at it until the cold in his bare fingers became distant and unimportant. Whoever had cut that collar and set that trap had not disappeared days ago. Someone had been on this trail recently enough that the storm had not yet erased his track. And if the pack had been watching Caleb, there was a chance they had been watching someone else too…
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