Part 2
“Keep Gray alive until he can leave under his own power,” Grant said. “After that, there won’t be anything here for Bracken to take.”
Ray studied him, perhaps deciding whether the answer was brave or merely stubborn. He finished his coffee, said he had never seen the wolf, and left with a warning not to mistake time for permission.
By late March, Gray could brace himself on all four legs for several seconds. He still folded at the hips when he tried to walk, but the strength returning to his body made the mudroom seem smaller each day. Grant built a pen on the enclosed porch and kept the dogs in the rear run.
Eli arrived on a Friday afternoon, tall enough that Grant had to revise the boy he had carried in his head all winter. He wore city sneakers in half-melted snow and came through the door talking about a disabled bus, a driver who would not let him walk the last six miles, and a black bear the driver insisted was already awake.
Then Eli saw Gray beside the stove and forgot the rest of the trip.
“Dad. That is not a dog.”
“Good start.” Grant took his son’s backpack. “Don’t crowd him.”
Gray raised his head. He sniffed once, ears forward, while Eli remained by the door with both hands visible. Grant expected the familiar tightening around the muzzle. Instead, the wolf’s tail moved against the blanket in one cautious sweep.
“Did he just wag at me?” Eli whispered.
“I’m choosing not to take it personally.”
Eli slept on the couch near the porch door that night. By morning, Gray allowed him to set down breakfast without retreating, and by the third day, the wolf took meat from his fingers. Eli watched every movement of the damaged hind legs and asked questions Grant could not answer.
“I saw a rehab center work with a dog that had nerve damage,” Eli said. “They didn’t make him stand. They moved the joints slowly so they wouldn’t stiffen.”
“A dog is not a wolf.”
“His legs don’t know that.”
Grant almost laughed. Under his supervision, Eli began with a few gentle motions, stopping whenever Gray’s ears flattened or his breathing changed. The exercises did not perform a miracle; rest, food, and healing did most of the work. But Gray tolerated Eli’s hands, and the boy gave patience a daily shape.
First Gray crossed the porch by leaning against the wall. A week later he reached the yard and stood in the mud, trembling, while Eli crouched six feet away and refused to call him closer. Gray chose the distance himself. That mattered to Grant more than the steps.
The boy and the wolf became a quiet pair. Eli read homework aloud while Gray slept, carried water without being asked, and learned to split kindling instead of merely attacking it with an ax. Grant had imagined teaching his son how to read tracks and set a clean camp. He had not expected Eli to teach him how long a frightened creature might need before kindness stopped looking like another trap.
One evening, Eli asked what would happen when Gray recovered.
“We take him north,” Grant said. “There are packs beyond Granite Divide.”
“What if he wants to stay?”
“Then we remind ourselves wanting isn’t always the deciding thing.” Grant kept his eyes on the whetstone in his hand. “He’s getting comfortable with us. That doesn’t make this the life he’s built for.”
Eli went quiet. A minute later he said, “I don’t want to go back either.”
Grant set down the knife. Tess had warned him that Eli was unhappy with her new husband, Matt, though “unhappy” could mean anything at fourteen. Eli said he could attend the small school in Alder Creek and visit his mother on breaks. He said Matt was not cruel, only that the apartment felt like a place where he had to ask before occupying air.
“Your mother loves you,” Grant said.
“I know. I can love her and still fit better here.”
Grant heard no rebellion in it, only a fact the boy had been carrying alone. “I’ll talk to her. That’s all I can promise.”
The Coldwater broke open in early April. Grant and Eli stood above the river watching plates of ice grind past one another, Gray beside them with a slight hitch still visible in his left rear leg. The wolf lifted his nose to the thawing earth as if the whole valley had begun speaking at once.
An engine climbed the logging road behind them.
Dale Bracken stepped out of a mud-streaked state truck wearing a game warden’s green jacket and the expression of a man arriving to confirm his own suspicion. He was compact, thick through the shoulders, with pale eyes that moved from Grant to Eli and settled on Gray.
“There he is,” Bracken said. “The pet wolf.”
“He isn’t a pet.” Grant moved between the warden and his son. “He was injured. He’ll be released when he can travel.”
Bracken glanced at the healed drag marks in the mud. “Interesting timing. Ranchers lose sheep, and the local trapper happens to acquire a wolf.”
“He couldn’t stand when those sheep were killed,” Eli said.
Bracken’s gaze hardened. “Adults are talking.”
Gray lowered his head. Grant rested a hand against the thick fur at his neck, feeling the vibration of a warning growl.
“You have no rehabilitation permit,” Bracken continued. “I can seize him, cite you, and have the animal destroyed if he’s judged habituated or dangerous.”
He nodded toward Gray, and for the first time his anger made room for a point Grant could not dismiss. “You teach a wolf that houses mean food, he walks into somebody else’s yard. Then they have to kill him.”
“That’s why he’s separated from the dogs and why we’re taking him north.”
Grant knew enough to hear where authority ended and theater began. “You can also explain the elk hides at the old Miller line shack. The ones that never showed up on a tag report.”
Color left Bracken’s face. For a second, the river was the only sound between them.
“Careful,” the warden said.
“I have been.”
Bracken looked at Eli, then at Gray. “I’ll return with an inspection team. They’ll search every outbuilding, every freezer, every trap record. And when we’re done, Holt, I’ll take that wolf where you can’t interfere.”
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