Part 2
The cry came again, too thin to belong to the cub already wrapped in Mara’s back seat.
She turned toward the drainage culvert. Snow had filled the ditch since she first arrived, softening every track and burying the mouth of the concrete pipe beneath broken branches. The sound stopped as soon as she moved closer.
Mara dropped to her knees and dug with the folding shovel. Ice cracked beneath the blade. After several frantic minutes, a dark opening appeared no wider than her shoulders, and two tiny paw prints emerged from the shadows before disappearing beneath a crust of frozen mud.
She lay flat in the snow and aimed her flashlight inside.
Twenty feet down the pipe, something blinked.
The second pup was wedged behind a branch, half-submerged in runoff. It opened its mouth, but no sound came out.
Mara’s first attempt to reach it failed. The pipe narrowed past her shoulders, and water poured over her gloves as she stretched. She withdrew, found a length of tow strap in the SUV, and looped one end around her waist so she would have leverage if the mud shifted.
On the second attempt, her fingers closed around wet fur.
She eased the pup free, supporting its body against her forearm as she backed from the culvert. When she reached open air, the animal hung limp in her hands.
“No. No, you don’t.”
Mara cleared mud from its nose with the corner of her shirt and rubbed its chest through a dry towel. The pup coughed once, releasing a thread of dirty water, then took a shallow breath.
She wrapped it beside its littermate and closed the crate.
The female wolf followed every movement from the cargo area. Even exhausted, she tried to push herself closer when Mara placed the second pup inside. Her nose touched the crate door, and a faint sound escaped her—neither a growl nor a whine, but something in between.
Mara closed the hatch and climbed behind the wheel.
Once the SUV descended below the pass, her phone found a weak signal. County dispatch connected her to Flathead Wildlife Emergency Clinic in Columbia Falls, where a veterinarian with a wildlife permit agreed to meet her.
“Drive carefully,” the dispatcher said. “A snowplow is headed east. It should pick you up near the river.”
Mara almost laughed at the idea of caution. Then the SUV shifted slightly on the ice, and the old terror struck her body before her mind could catch up. Her hands locked around the steering wheel. The trees ahead became the spruce beside Noah’s cross. The crate behind her became the sound of a child trying to breathe.
She reduced her speed.
Saving the wolves would not require another wreck.
A county plow met her twelve miles later and guided her through the worst section of the storm. Mara followed its amber lights into Columbia Falls, where Dr. Ben Calder stood waiting beneath the clinic awning with two technicians and a wheeled stretcher.
When he opened the rear hatch, his expression changed.
“You said wolf,” he murmured. “I thought you meant one.”
He sedated the female before anyone moved her. The pups went directly into a warming incubator while the technicians cleared their airways and checked their blood sugar. The smaller pup from the culvert needed oxygen; its temperature was so low the first thermometer failed to register.
Mara remained against the wall, soaked clothes dripping onto the tile. She answered questions about the road, the dead male, the collapsed bank, and how long the animals might have been exposed.
“You did the right thing warming them gradually,” Ben said. “Too much heat too fast can make things worse.”
“Are they going to live?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The female had no major fracture. Her hip was badly bruised, and one rib was cracked, but the deeper danger came from dehydration, shock, and prolonged exposure. Ben believed she had been trapped near the flooded den for at least a day, possibly longer.
The pups were roughly three weeks old.
At 11:30 p.m., the larger pup began nursing from a bottle. The smaller one continued struggling for every breath.
Mara sat beside the incubator until her wet jeans dried stiff against her skin. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Noah’s hospital monitor and the moment the green line had stopped moving.
Shortly after one in the morning, the smaller pup finally lifted its head. It crawled over its brother, found the warmed formula, and drank less than an ounce before falling asleep.
Ben leaned against the counter and released a breath.
“That’s the first good sign.”
Across the room, the female wolf stirred under the heating blankets. Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first. She searched the room until she saw the incubator.
Then she looked at Mara.
The clinic door opened behind them. A woman in a state wildlife jacket entered, carrying a hard case and a stack of forms. She introduced herself as Tessa Grant, senior coordinator for the North Fork Wildlife Recovery Center.
Tessa watched the female’s eyes follow Mara across the room.
“She should be terrified of you,” she said quietly.
“She’s exhausted.”
“Maybe.” Tessa continued watching. “But if she stops fearing people, we could save her life and still take the wild from her…”
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