Part 4
“Tell me when I’d need to be there,” Beth said. She pulled the store schedule off the refrigerator and turned it over, looking for a clear place to write.
By the next afternoon she had spoken to the owner about unpaid leave and called a neighbor about checking the house. The bank balance on her screen was enough to make the decision possible and small enough to make it frightening. She wrote the regular payments in a notebook and worked out what she could stop buying.
The owner wanted dates. Beth gave him Elena’s estimate and promised to call if it changed. He agreed to cover her position with the assistant manager, who had been asking for more responsibility, and told Beth to keep him informed before her absence became somebody else’s surprise.
She arrived in the mountains in mid-June. Willow and the pups traveled in the agency transport ahead of her, the little carriers from the clinic replaced by larger ones. At roughly ten weeks, Flint had grown into his paws only enough to find new ways of tripping over them.
The cabin stood on a cleared strip outside a large woodland rehabilitation enclosure. Fence lines vanished down steep timbered slopes beyond the clearing; inside were brush, water, rocky ground, and room for the family to get well out of sight. A separate service passage let people tend gates and supplies without stepping among the wolves.
The place had no internet and no cell signal. There was a radio for scheduled check-ins and emergencies, a supply run, a woodstove, and a generator that Elena described as having opinions. The nearest town was three hours away when the access road was good.
Elena stayed the first three days. She showed Beth the service gates, the feeding records, the places she could observe safely, and the work that required the field crew. Beth wrote things down until the notebook’s first pages curled from damp fingers.
“No reaching through,” Elena said, watching Beth look toward Willow. “No petting. Keep your voice for the radio.”
“Even if they come over?”
“Especially then. We brought them somewhere with room to stop coming over.”
Willow stood near the inner gate while they talked. Beth could see the fuller coat, the weight returned along her flanks. It took an effort to keep her hands in her pockets when the wolf lifted her nose toward her.
The first night alone, Beth woke when the generator stopped. She lay still, listening beyond the cabin wall, until she remembered it wasn’t supposed to run all night. A branch tapped the roof with a small, persistent scrape she could do nothing about until morning.
Her alarm rang at five. The stove had gone cold; one sock was still damp from the previous day’s walk. She sat on the edge of the narrow bed, turning the sock in her hands, then put it beside the stove and found another pair.
Much of the work turned out to be carrying things. The field crew supplied dressed deer meat in manageable loads, and Beth moved the portions according to Elena’s plan, working from the protected service route while the wolves were held in another section. Some mornings the round trip covered nearly five miles of climbing and checking access points.
For the first few days, Willow waited near the boundary closest to the cabin. The food was placed in a screened feeding area there, far enough inside that Beth could leave before the wolves came through. Willow would eat, then bring the pups close again, watching the clearing instead of exploring.
Elena listened to Beth’s report over the radio. “We’ll give her time. Follow the next placement on the map tomorrow.”
The new location was farther into the trees. Beth returned to the cabin after setting it up and waited for the feeding check with an urge to go back and move everything nearer. She washed her cup, dried it, and washed the pot she had already washed.
Willow found the food late that afternoon. She approached with her nose low and the pups crowding her hind legs. Beth watched through binoculars from outside the enclosure, afraid that even the sound of her own satisfaction might reach them.
The placements changed gradually. Food appeared beneath brush, beyond a turn in the creek, along ground the family hadn’t used before. Beth was not teaching a grown wolf what prey smelled like; she was making space for Willow to do the work she had scarcely attempted in the crowded center.
On the radio, Elena asked for observations instead of conclusions. Had the mother searched? How far had the pups followed? Was the food gone because the wolves had taken it, or had ravens reached it first?
Beth learned to write down what she had seen. “They looked happy” became “Both pups followed her past the creek.” The second sentence was less satisfying to say, but Elena could do something with it.
There were days when Willow returned to the nearest fence and watched the cabin. Beth would keep working with her back partly turned, every sound from that direction drawing her attention anyway. Once she had to step inside until the urge to speak passed.
In July, she watched from an observation point as Willow worked a scent trail along a shallow draw. Flint charged ahead, stopped to paw at a rock, and lost the route. Wren stayed close until a moth crossed his muzzle; then both pups forgot the trail entirely.
Willow came back for them. She nudged Flint’s shoulder, stood over the place where Wren had wandered off, and moved down the draw again. This time they followed farther before finding another distraction.
Beth smiled into the binoculars. There had been an afternoon when Danny insisted he could ride without training wheels, then stopped every few feet to point out things in the street. She remembered Paul’s patience running out before Danny’s, and her own laughter from the porch.
She lowered the glasses before the memory could take the whole morning. On the far slope, Willow and the pups were still moving. Beth marked their route in the notebook and carried her empty supply bag back toward the cabin.
By August, her belt needed a tighter hole and the soles of her boots had begun to separate at the toes. She repaired one with supplies from town and ordered another pair. The calls about the house and the store had to wait for those trips, brief returns to a world where people could simply pick up a phone.
One evening, on her way back along the outside trail, she heard the wolves beyond the ridge. She left her pack beside the observation screen and raised the low-light binoculars. Below, Willow stood motionless while Flint and Wren watched a rabbit near a fallen limb.
Flint lunged too soon. The rabbit cut past him toward a gap in the brush, where Wren had stayed perfectly still.
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