Part 5
Daniel slammed into Rusk’s shoulder and drove the weapon off line.
The shot cracked into the trees, high and wild. Birds lifted from somewhere beyond the ravine in a dark scatter. The pack surged forward as one body, not attacking yet, but closing the distance so fast that Clint stumbled backward and fell into the slush.
Rusk was stronger than he looked. He twisted hard, caught Daniel under the ribs with an elbow, and nearly knocked the wind out of him. Daniel held on anyway. Years of wrestling injured elk out of fences and hauling drunk hunters off trails had taught him that most fights were ugly, close, and over in seconds if a man stayed mean enough to finish them.
Rusk tried to bring a knee up. Daniel shifted, drove him sideways, and both men crashed against a rotting log. The weapon slid away across wet leaves and stopped near a patch of ice.
“Leave it!” Daniel shouted.
He didn’t know whether he was yelling at Rusk, Mason, Clint, or the wolves.
The torn-eared young male lunged down the slope and landed between the weapon and the men, teeth bared. He did not touch it. He simply stood over it, every line of his body saying no one would cross that patch of ground and remain whole.
Clint scrambled to his feet, mud down the back of his coat. Panic had stripped the anger out of his face and left something older underneath. He looked suddenly like a man who had followed hatred into a place hatred could not lead him out of.
“Mason,” he gasped. “Move.”
Mason didn’t move toward the wolf. He backed away from all of it, weapon hanging uselessly in one hand.
“Mason!” Clint yelled.
“I’m done,” Mason said.
Clint stared at him as if betrayal had arrived wearing a familiar face. Then the old outfitter turned and ran.
It was the worst choice he could have made.
The pack reacted instantly. They did not leap for him, but the wolves along the rim flowed in the same direction, driving him away from the mother and pup, away from the weapon, away from Daniel. Clint crashed through willow, slipped, clawed back to his feet, and disappeared into fog with two wolves shadowing him at a distance.
Mason watched him go.
Then he dropped his weapon into the mud and raised both hands.
Daniel had Rusk facedown by then, one knee braced against the man’s back. He pulled a restraint from his belt and secured Rusk’s wrists with motions that felt too ordinary for the strangeness of the clearing. Rusk did not speak. His breathing was hard, but his face, turned sideways against the wet ground, showed only calculation rearranging itself around failure.
“Mason,” Daniel said, “kick that firearm farther away.”
Mason did it.
“Now sit down.”
He sat on a stump with both hands visible, eyes fixed on the mother wolf. “We weren’t supposed to hit the pup,” he said.
Daniel looked at him.
Mason swallowed. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“That’s what you want to lead with?”
The shame on Mason’s face came and went quickly, but not quickly enough to hide. “Rusk said there was a buyer for the white coats. Clint said it was one pack. Just one pack.”
Daniel’s stomach turned. “A buyer.”
Mason looked down at his hands. “I didn’t ask enough questions.”
“You asked the ones that let you sleep.”
Mason said nothing after that.
Daniel keyed his radio, giving coordinates twice because the signal kept breaking. Dispatch answered through bursts of static. State wildlife enforcement was on the way. Sheriff’s deputies were trying to get around the washed-out road. An air unit had been requested but weather might hold it back.
Weather always had its own opinion in the mountains.
When Daniel lowered the radio, he finally turned toward the mother wolf.
The pack had gathered around her, but not so tightly that he could not see. The pup lay pressed against her neck. The old white male stood near her head, scarred eye toward Daniel. The torn-eared young wolf still guarded the dropped weapon, though his gaze had softened by a fraction.
The line around the mother’s leg had tightened during the struggle. She was breathing through pain, sides shivering with each pull of air. The trap had not killed her yet, but it could.
Daniel took one step toward her.
Every wolf in the clearing looked at him.
He stopped and lifted both hands.
“I need to cut that line,” he said.
The old male stared back. If there was permission in that gaze, it did not look like what human beings call permission. It looked more like risk being measured.
Daniel moved slowly. He took the small cutter from his kit without showing the blade in a threatening way. The mother’s ears flattened as he approached. The pup tucked himself under her jaw.
“I know,” Daniel murmured. “I know you don’t want me near him.”
The mother growled.
Daniel knelt several feet away and waited.
Behind him, Rusk shifted in the mud. The torn-eared wolf snapped his head toward him, and Rusk went still.
The sound that followed was not from the mother. It came from the old male, a low rumble that silenced even the fog-dampened drip of snow from the branches. The mother’s growl faded. Her eyes stayed on Daniel, bright with pain and distrust, but she did not strike.
Daniel slid closer on one knee.
He cut the line.
The mother jerked, then froze. The cable fell loose around her leg. Daniel eased it away from torn fur and dropped it into an evidence bag with hands that were careful because anger wanted to make them shake.
“Good,” he whispered. “That’s good.”
The pup lifted his head and sniffed Daniel’s sleeve.
Daniel did not touch him.
He opened the medical kit and cleaned what he could reach. The mother’s body trembled under his hands, but she allowed three passes of gauze, then four. When he wrapped the worst of the leg wound, the old male stepped close enough that Daniel could feel his breath on the back of his neck.
Daniel kept working.
He did not look up until he was done.
By then, the distant sound of engines had begun to thread through the trees. Not close yet, but coming. Human help. Human consequences.
The pack heard it too.
The old male lifted his head toward the sound, and the mother tried to rise. Her front legs buckled at once. The pup cried out. Daniel reached for her without thinking, and every wolf in the clearing lowered its head…
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