Part 4
Dr. Lena Carver entered the shed with a stethoscope, a catch pole she did not use, and the patience to wait until Gray stopped tracking every movement of her hands. Regional wildlife supervisor Grant Sutter remained at the doorway. Caleb stood behind him, hollow-eyed from his second drive out of Missoula.
Carver examined Gray from the far side while Walter kept the animal’s attention. “Severe body loss, deep soft-tissue injury, probable bone damage,” she said. “He needs radiographs and laboratory work. Your first aid kept the wound open and draining, which may have saved the leg, but this isn’t healed.”
“I know.”
“He may always limp.”
Gray’s injured paw rested lightly on the straw, as if to settle the matter himself.
Sutter had returned from interviewing Wolfe at the jail. The trap was Wolfe’s; so were several illegal sets found north of Miller Creek. More quietly, Sutter explained why Gray had been alone. A month earlier, after repeated sheep losses, an authorized control action had removed a female and three nearly grown wolves from the Alder Creek pack. Gray had apparently been ranging elsewhere and returned after they were gone.
“There isn’t another established pack within sixty miles,” Sutter said. “He may be the only survivor from this group.”
Walter looked at Gray’s broad, watchful face and imagined a familiar valley emptied of every answer. He did not pretend to know that grief had driven a wolf into a trap. He knew only that hunger, disruption, and solitary travel made mistakes more likely.
Carver closed her case. “We can transport him to the regional facility under sedation. If the leg can be repaired and he can be released without approaching people, that’s the goal.”
“And if he can’t?” Walter asked.
Sutter answered. “Long-term placement for an adult wild wolf is difficult. If he is suffering and there is no safe release or licensed placement, euthanasia is possible.”
Caleb flinched at the word. The previous evening he had demanded that Gray be removed, whatever it took. Now Gray lifted his head when Walter shifted, and Caleb watched the small response as if it accused him.
Walter asked for one night. Carver objected, then saw that Gray’s condition made another forced event that morning a risk. She left written feeding limits and warned Walter not to medicate him. At nine the next day, they would return with a transport team.
Noah stayed after the others drove away. He leaned against his SUV and looked toward the mountain road.
Noah had no authority to countermand Sutter. If Walter understood what came next, so would the sheriff, and Noah could lose his badge for it.
“If an animal recovered enough to leave on his own during the night,” he said, “I’d have to report that.”
Walter studied him. “Would you see which way he went?”
“Not if I was checking the south end of the county.” Noah opened his door, then paused. “Your father’s cabin still standing below Blacktail Peak?”
“Last I knew.”
“Old mining track washed out around mile twenty-six. A machine might get you that far. After that, a man would need a sled.”
Neither of them called the exchange a plan.
Noah drove south at dusk.
At three in the morning, Walter eased the snowmobile out of the barn without starting it. Gray climbed awkwardly onto the padded tow sled after Walter placed the familiar stock coat there. Only beyond Ruth’s dark house did Walter pull the starter.
The machine carried them along the frozen creek and into timber dense enough to swallow its sound. Gray sat upright behind him for the first hour, nose raised to air that held no houses. When the track steepened, the wolf lay down and guarded the injured leg beneath his chest.
Near the washed-out crossing, wind-packed snow had collapsed the old road into a ravine. Walter shut off the engine. The cabin lay five hard miles beyond, not thirty-one miles of impossible walking but still farther than either of them wanted.
He loaded the sleeping bag and food onto the tow sled. Gray tried to follow, limping in Walter’s snowshoe trail. After half a mile, the wolf lay down, sides working.
“No argument,” Walter said.
Gray resisted the sled until Walter spread the old coat across it. Then he climbed on, turned once, and lowered his body. Walter leaned into the tow rope.
The trail had narrowed under fallen lodgepole trunks. Each detour cost elevation. Walter’s lungs burned, his left hip complained about the shove in the yard, and twice he sat in the snow because his legs had decided before he had. Gray stepped off on the climbs and followed; on level ground Walter hauled him.
They camped beneath a rock shelf rather than gamble with darkness. Walter made a small fire, split one meal between them, and slept with the sled rope looped around his wrist so he would know if Gray left. At dawn, the rope still lay slack and the wolf’s back was warm against his boots.
The rock shelf overlooked the drainage where Walter’s father had taught him to read weather from the underside of clouds. Twenty years had passed since his father’s funeral, when Walter locked the cabin and believed grief could be contained behind a door. He and Ellen had returned some summers, but less often each time. Walter had mistaken avoidance for respect, as if leaving the old man’s tools untouched could keep grief from altering them.
Late the second afternoon, the cabin appeared between spruce trunks. One shutter hung loose, the stovepipe leaned, and snow had found a seam in the roof. The squared logs his father had fitted remained solid.
Walter opened the door on mouse droppings, dead leaves, and the smell of iron. “Luxury,” he told Gray.
He patched the broken window with plywood, reset the stovepipe brace, and cleared the firebox before lighting it. Gray watched from the lower bunk. As the first warmth moved through the room, the wolf’s eyes closed without snapping open again at every sound.
For the next two weeks, Walter repaired what winter exposed. Gray’s appetite strengthened, and the wound closed, though the foreleg set at an imperfect angle. Walter removed the splint only when the joint could bear cautious weight. He kept the shed bandage notes in his pocket as if Carver might knock at any moment.
One evening Gray vanished into the trees. Walter waited at the cabin door until dusk erased the trail, furious at himself for expecting any promise from a wild animal. Near dark, Gray returned with a snowshoe hare and dropped it beside the step.
Walter cooked what was safe and left the rest outside. Afterward Gray lay beside the stove and placed his muzzle across Walter’s knees. For the first time since Ellen died, the place around Walter felt occupied rather than merely not empty.
Far below them, Caleb spread maps across Noah’s desk and circled Blacktail Peak.
“That cabin,” he said. “That’s where he went.”
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