Part 4
For nine days, nothing tested the answer. Will came and went on his own rhythm, Bruno made his slow rounds, and Caleb repaired the outer fence where drifting snow had bowed the wire. The ordinary pattern eased him, though he began checking the sheep latch twice before dark.
He also stopped leaving feed outside overnight. The bowls came into the mudroom after dusk, and he cleared a line of sight from the kitchen window to the barn. These were not punishments for Will. They were the precautions Caleb should have taken against any hungry animal, including ones that had never slept beside his stove.
Late February hardened the land. Snow that had once swallowed a boot now held Caleb’s weight in the morning and turned slick beneath a thin afternoon crust. Deer tracks grew scarce along the creek, and at night distant howls traveled farther through the dry cold.
Will listened to them from the porch. Sometimes he answered with one low note. More often he stood without sound until the voices faded, then returned to Bruno by the stove.
Bruno listened differently. His hearing had dulled, but he watched Will, and when the young wolf’s attention fixed on the north woods, the dog rose and joined him. Their old game of racing the fence disappeared; they spent longer intervals standing shoulder to shoulder in the yard.
Caleb found no fresh sign close to the buildings. Snow kept secrets poorly, and the open acres around the barn showed only Will’s broad prints, Bruno’s shorter stride, and the tracks of hares moving beneath brush. Whatever the two animals heard remained beyond the reach of Caleb’s eyes.
Caleb did not try to translate the sounds. He checked the tree line, the latches, and the tracks in the snow. Will’s next choice would have to show itself in the yard.
On the coldest night of the month, that choice came to the fence.
Caleb woke to a vibration beneath the bed, so low he felt it before he recognized a growl. Will stood in the dark hallway facing the mudroom. Bruno rose more slowly beside him, ears rigid.
The stove had burned down to red seams in the ash. Caleb could hear wind move once along the eaves, then stop. Will’s nose remained pointed at the gap beneath the outside door, where cold air carried a message no human sense could sort.
Then the first howl sounded beyond the barn.
It was joined by another and another until the calls seemed to come from several points in the timber. The sheep began to hammer the floor of their pen. Caleb pulled on his pants, boots, and coat, then took the old rifle from its rack—not because he intended to hunt, but because noise had turned packs from the livestock before.
Bruno crowded the door. Will stood behind him, every line of his body drawn toward the yard.
“Stay.” Caleb pointed toward the kitchen. “Both of you.”
Bruno did not move until Caleb repeated the command in the clipped voice from their search-and-rescue years. He backed one pace. Will watched him and did the same.
Caleb stepped outside and left the mudroom door ajar by a hand’s width. Bruno’s stay command had held through helicopters and gunfire; in Caleb’s urgency, that obedience seemed safer than taking time with the stiff latch.
The cold closed over his mouth and nose. He paused at the top step until his eyes adjusted, locating the barn by its darker shape and the sheep lot by the faint line of rails. The rifle stayed low in his hands.
Clouds broke across a half-moon, showing the yard in pieces. The woodpile appeared, vanished, and appeared again. Near the sheep barn, something struck the outer rails hard enough to crack wood.
Caleb moved off the porch. “Get out of here!”
He fired once into the air. The shot rolled through the trees, followed by a moment of silence so complete he could hear snow sifting from a branch.
On other winters, sound had been enough. A lone wolf passing the north field would turn before Caleb saw more than its tail, and coyotes scattered at a slammed barn door. These animals held their ground.
Then the sheep surged against their gate.
Caleb hurried toward the barn. The pack had not fled. Shapes passed along the far fence, low and deliberate, and another impact splintered a weathered post near the corner of the lot.
He counted when the moon cleared: one wolf slipping left, two near the broken rail, one holding back by the spruce, and a larger male in the open. The leader’s left ear ended in an old ragged tear.
Five.
They were lean enough for Caleb to see the angle of their hips beneath winter coats. Whatever prey had kept them away from buildings was no longer keeping them fed.
The torn-eared male stared at Caleb, then looked past him toward the barn. Caleb worked the rifle’s action and raised it, meaning to fire into the air again before the pack reached the sheep.
The animals rushed the weakened rail.
Caleb ran. His right boot came down where windblown powder covered a sheet of ice. The foot shot forward, and the sky struck his vision before his back struck the ground.
The rifle flew from his hands. He heard it land somewhere to his left with a soft plunge into deep snow.
Pain entered his right knee when he tried to rise. The joint folded, dropping him onto one hand. He swept the other through the drift, searching for wood or steel, but found only crust and powder.
Behind him, Bruno struck the unlatched mudroom door. It opened another inch and knocked against the frame. Through the narrow gap, Caleb saw Will standing close behind the dog.
“Stay!” Caleb shouted, though the command broke under another burst of pain.
The damaged fence gave with a sound like green timber splitting. Sheep crowded the rear of the barn, their panic rising into a single harsh clamor. Caleb dragged himself toward the nearest fence post, hoping to put something solid at his back. A length of split cedar rail lay half buried beside it.
His glove found a groove in the snow where the rifle had landed, but the groove ended beneath a drift beyond his reach. He tried to pull with the fence wire. The post shifted in its loosened footing, and his injured knee folded again.
The yard had become a set of impossible distances: eight feet to the rifle, twelve to the porch, perhaps twenty to the barn latch. Through the mudroom window he could see the weak amber square of lamplight and Bruno’s dark head at the door, with Will’s gray shape deeper in shadow.
A gray shape stepped through the breach.
Another followed. Then the torn-eared male entered the yard and turned from the sheep toward the man on the ground.
The other wolves spread behind him, silent now. Caleb stopped searching for the rifle and braced one boot against the snow, knowing the bad knee would not hold him.
The leader lowered his head and came forward.
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