Part 2
Nora lowered the hickory stick. The movement cost her more courage than raising it would have, but the silver wolf stopped when the wood touched the ground. Behind it, higher in the trees, a second shape passed between two trunks and vanished.
The injured youngster tried to rise. Its bound foot failed, and it dropped against Nora’s thigh with a startled yelp. The silver wolf leaned forward, nose working, then moved sideways until it had a clear view into the shelter.
“I didn’t put the iron there,” Nora said.
The words were for herself. The wolf cared about scent, posture, distance, and the distress call of the animal beside her. It came no closer than thirty-five feet. In the wavering light, Nora could see ice along its whiskers and an old notch in one ear.
The youngster answered with a softer sound. For several seconds the two wolves held still, joined by something Nora could observe but not translate. Then the adult backed into the timber.
It did not leave. Nora caught glimpses of it as the storm moved the branches: a shoulder, the silver plane of its face, the sweep of a tail. Once, a darker wolf appeared beside it. They moved through the timber beyond the firelight, never close enough for Nora to mistake their watchfulness for trust.
The small flames sank. Nora fed them the last dry twigs within reach. She knew she should crawl out and search for more, but her hands had begun to fumble, and the thought of standing felt oddly complicated. Those were bad signs. She had explained them to elderly patients who insisted they were merely tired.
“Don’t you dare use my own lectures on me,” she muttered.
The youngster’s shivering had slowed. Nora opened the emergency blanket wider and drew it closer, careful not to disturb the bandage. The red scarf held a patch of warmth at its chest. She slid her bare right hand beneath the wool and felt the rapid beat there.
From the timber came one low howl. It was not the theatrical cry people put in movies. It began rough, gathered into a clean note, and traveled through the storm until the slope seemed larger than it had a moment before. An answer came from across the draw, then another farther north.
The youngster struggled again, calling back in short, unfinished sounds. Nora tightened her arm around its shoulders long enough to keep it from worsening the injury.
“They know where you are,” she said. “That is more than mine know about me.”
The thought cleared her head. She found the dead phone, warmed it under her shirt, and held the power button. The screen returned for three seconds. In the corner, where there had been no bars, a tiny arrow appeared beside her message.
Sent. Then the phone died for good.
Rachel would see it. Rachel would also see the time and know Nora had ignored three calls before asking for help. If she reached Willow Draw alive, Nora would have to listen to everything her daughter had earned the right to say.
The wind shifted and shoved smoke back beneath the roots. The youngster coughed. Nora pulled apart the fire with her stick, preserving a red core but reducing the smoke. Beyond it the silver wolf flinched from a scatter of sparks, then resumed its watch.
Hours became hard to count. Nora sang without sound when her lips would no longer shape the tune. She saw Cal kneeling by the spring box in his green work coat, though she knew he was not there. She saw Toby at seven, crouched beside a line of ants and blocking the path so no one would step on them. Memory offered both of them whole. Cold made that cruelty feel like kindness.
She pressed the point of her broken stick into her palm until the pain anchored her.
Sometime later, the wolves disappeared all at once. The absence frightened her more than their presence had. The forest went blank. Nora listened and heard, beneath the wind, the rising and falling whine of a snowmobile beyond the ridge.
She tried to stand and could not. The youngster tensed under the blanket. Nora pulled the red scarf away from its throat so it would not catch if it bolted, then struck her stick against the root plate.
“Here!” Her voice broke. She tried again. “Willow Draw!”
Light flashed between the trees. Another answered from below. Human voices called her name, distorted by snow.
The silver wolf reappeared at the edge of the clearing. It looked toward the approaching lights, then back at the shelter. Nora understood only that a meeting between frightened rescuers and a protective wolf could end badly.
She hauled herself onto one knee and struck the stick against the ground between them.
“Go on.”
The wolf held its place, its silver chest turned toward her.
“Go.” Nora threw the last of her strength into the word and swung the emergency blanket so its silver surface cracked in the firelight.
The wolf recoiled. It turned uphill, paused once beside the sprung trap, and flowed into the trees. The darker shape followed.
Tom Avery reached the clearing less than a minute later, his red search jacket white at the shoulders. He had been Cal’s neighbor, hunting partner, and occasional enemy for forty years. Tonight his beard was rimed with ice, and fear had stripped all humor from his face.
“Nora.” He dropped beside her. “Look at me.”
“The wolf first.”
“Of course you’d say that.” His gloved fingers found the pulse at her neck. “You sent Rachel six words and knocked ten years off both our lives.”
Two members of the county search team arrived with a rescue sled. Behind them came Deputy Morrow and Lena Ortiz, a wildlife veterinarian who ran the licensed rehabilitation center near Seeley Lake and volunteered with the county team. Rachel had called everyone whose number Cal had ever taped beside the kitchen phone, and Lena had joined the search when the dispatch note mentioned an injured wolf.
The young wolf panicked when strangers crowded the shelter. Lena made everyone back away. She watched its breathing, its attempt to stand, and the way it tracked movement before she prepared a sedative.
“Juvenile, maybe five months,” she said. “Female. I can’t tell what the trap did until we get images, but the limb has circulation.”
Nora kept her hand on the red scarf until the wolf’s head lowered. Only then did she let Lena lift the animal into a padded carrier.
“Will you bring her back here?” Nora asked.
“If she can be released, and if her pack is still using the area.” Lena glanced toward the timber where the silver wolf had vanished. “Those are two large ifs.”
The search team wrapped Nora in heated blankets and strapped her to the sled despite her objections. Tom walked beside her on the climb, one hand on the rail. At the place where she had found the wolf, Deputy Morrow uncovered the trap and the wired deer hide.
“Fresh set,” he said. “No tag.”
His headlamp swept the slope. Another patch of disturbed snow lay thirty yards away. The deputy marked it and told the team not to step off the packed route. What Nora had taken for a single act of cruelty might be a line of traps.
Tom stopped walking. Nora saw his face in the moving beam. He was looking not at the deputy but at the chain, where three links had been welded into a flattened triangle. Tom used that weld on gates, tow chains, anything he expected to pull against frozen ground. Cal used to complain that the join was ugly and admit it never failed.
Tom took off one glove. His hand shook once before he closed it around the sled rail. “Nora,” he said. “Those traps are mine…”
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