Part 5
The fight lasted only seconds.
The wolf lunged at the closer coyote, snapping once near its shoulder. The coyote spun away before the teeth connected. Its companion darted toward the rocks, but the wolf wheeled and drove it back with a second rush.
Both coyotes fled into the trees.
The wolf pursued them for thirty yards, then stopped. It stood with its wounded paw lifted, sides heaving, and watched the forest long after the yipping disappeared.
When it returned, blood marked the snow.
Emma understood then that the animal was not simply resting near the lake. It was spending strength it did not have.
She also understood that this did not make it safe.
When the wolf passed the hollow, she pressed herself against the back wall and held her breath. It paused close enough for her to hear the air moving through its nose.
Then it walked on.
The first night stretched beyond anything Emma thought a night could contain. She slept in brief, dangerous fragments and woke whenever her body stopped shivering.
At dawn, the sky cleared for less than an hour. She crawled to the entrance, tied an orange survey cloth to the end of the avalanche probe, and pushed it above the rocks.
The cloth snapped in the wind.
No one came.
The wolf left after sunrise. Emma watched its tracks disappear toward the forest and felt relief before the loneliness reached her.
She drank the remaining tea and ate another half bar. Snow melted slowly inside the bottle when she held it against a hand warmer, but she knew eating snow directly would cool her further.
By afternoon, her ankle had swollen so badly she could not place weight on it. The toes of her bare foot had turned white beneath the improvised wrapping.
She heard a distant engine once.
Emma crawled from the hollow and shouted until her voice failed. The sound faded without changing direction.
The wolf returned at dusk.
There was ice on its muzzle. It had likely found open water near the spring seam. It circled the sunken vehicle, sniffed the edge of the refrozen break, then came back to the rocks.
On the second night, the storm arrived.
Snow closed the entrance twice. Emma cleared it with the metal thermos because her fingers could no longer grip the shovel. Wind screamed across the ledge, but inside the hollow the sound dulled to a steady pressure.
The wolf vanished behind the blowing snow.
Each time Emma assumed it had left for good, a dark shape reappeared near the spruce.
She stopped speaking to it. Words required energy. Instead, she tapped the thermos against the granite whenever she felt herself drifting too deeply.
Three taps.
Rest.
Three taps.
Sometimes the wolf raised its head.
On Tuesday morning, Hank Parrish saw the animal from the north ridge. He did not see Emma’s orange cloth because the storm had wrapped it around the probe. He saw only a wolf beside a place where black water showed through the ice.
Hank reported it to the conservation office.
The call reached Caleb while he was coordinating the search for Daniel and Emma.
He wrote the location on a map, twenty miles north of the last confirmed vehicle track, and told himself it was unrelated.
Later that day, a forestry worker made the second report.
By then, Emma had eaten the last energy bar.
She could no longer feel two toes. Her lips had split, and each breath hurt her chest. She placed the final hand warmer against her sternum and kept the empty wrapper because throwing it away felt like admitting there was nothing left.
The wolf spent most of that afternoon on the ice.
Twice it walked toward the spring opening to drink. Once it entered the woods and returned with snow on its face and blood renewed above the paw.
When ravens landed near the refrozen hole, the animal chased them away.
Emma wondered whether Daniel’s body had released a scent through the broken ice. The thought made her turn her face against the rock.
That evening, she heard wolves calling in the north.
The wounded male stood and listened. A distant voice answered from the west, then another.
For several minutes, Emma expected him to leave.
He did not.
He remained beside the lake while darkness filled the trees.
By Wednesday morning, Emma no longer trusted what she heard. Engines became wind. Daniel’s voice became branches scraping stone. Once she saw her mother crouching outside the hollow, holding the missing boot and asking why Emma had gone into the cold without both shoes.
Then metal struck ice.
The wolf rose.
Emma heard a man’s voice across the lake, followed by another. She tried to shout but produced only air.
The animal moved onto the ice.
A rifle clicked.
Emma found the thermos beside her and struck the rock three times.
No answer came.
She waited, gathered what remained of her strength, and struck again.
Hours later, while Emma was being flown to the hospital, Caleb returned to the temporary command trailer beside Hollow Lake.
He opened the digital archive from the camera nearest the lake and enlarged Monday night’s images. The wolf’s features were clearer in infrared than they had been through blowing snow.
Notched left ear.
Long scar beneath the right ribs.
Broad muzzle and unusually dark guard hairs across the shoulders.
Caleb searched the state wildlife database for M-47.
The file had been inactive for eleven months. The tracking collar had stopped transmitting after its timed release mechanism opened, and no confirmed sighting had been recorded since the previous spring.
Caleb opened the original capture report.
The first photograph showed Daniel Mercer kneeling in snow beside a sedated wolf. Daniel’s hand was pressed above a deep cable wound along the animal’s ribs. Caleb himself stood in the background, holding the veterinary kit.
The second photograph showed the wolf waking inside a transport enclosure.
The left ear ended in the same V-shaped notch.
Caleb looked from the old image to the new one.
There was no single feature that proved identity beyond doubt. Together, they left little room for another explanation. The wounded wolf at Hollow Lake was M-47. The animal Daniel Mercer had once refused to abandon…
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