Part 3
The first time Ash followed him outside, Jack went only as far as the woodpile. June stayed between the pup and the open clearing while Ash examined every hollow Jack’s boots had left in the snow. After ten minutes, the youngster turned for the cabin and slept until supper.
By December his feet had healed enough for longer outings. Flesh covered the sharp line of his backbone, and the dark fur lay smooth when he moved. Jack still watched for the small hitch that meant a pad was bothering him, but Ash increasingly had to be persuaded that the walk was over.
June found ways to keep him occupied. She brought a stick from the woodpile and dropped it in front of him, snatching it away when he reached for it. Then she bounded into a drift, buried her nose, and emerged without the stick. Ash followed her tracks and dug until he found it.
At first he searched the place she had just left. Later he circled, put his nose into the wind, and approached from another side. June waited, sometimes stole the recovered stick, and started again. The husky who had scarcely noticed the first snowfall now came indoors with ice packed around her whiskers.
Jack watched from the porch. He had always known June could find anything she wanted badly enough; he had retrieved enough stolen gloves to prove it. What he hadn’t expected was how closely Ash would watch her, or how much of that watching would become his own behavior.
He brought out an old canvas toy and a length of cord. June crouched behind a mound when he dragged it across the yard, then rushed it from the side. Ash initially charged straight at the cord. After several afternoons, he began waiting where the toy would pass while June came around behind it.
“You two are cheating,” Jack told them, pulling the empty cord out of the snow.
June had the toy. Ash had one of its canvas legs. They dragged it away together, and Jack stood laughing with his mitten full of string.
He began taking them into the sheltered drainages above the station, away from the public trails. June picked her way through the trees with Ash following, his nose close to each place hers had touched. At a hare crossing he crouched, brushed loose powder from the prints, and waited while the youngster investigated.
“These are the long ones,” he said, pointing without expecting the words to mean anything. “Hind feet land ahead.”
Ash sneezed into the tracks. June moved on to another crossing, and he hurried after her. Jack stayed down a moment, looking at the marks they had left beside the hare’s, before getting up to follow.
Trust made those walks possible. It also troubled him. Ash came readily to the man who fed him, and Jack did not want that welcome extending to anyone who happened to carry a lunch.
He asked Pete to check the farther trail on a morning he knew he could keep well off it. From cover, Jack watched Ash catch the unfamiliar scent before Pete came into view. The youngster froze, then slipped among the young spruce; June followed him. Jack waited until the forester had passed before moving again.
He had hoped to see caution. Seeing it did not make him like the little arrangement any better. Pete had walked the route as a favor, unaware of what Jack was concealing twenty yards away.
At the cabin, Ash learned another thing by watching. June lifted the old lever latch with her nose when Jack left it unsecured. Soon he was trying it too, stretching up awkwardly on his hind legs. Jack fastened the bolt at night for now and watched both animals whenever the door stood open.
On December 15, they crossed a narrow meadow where grass stems showed through the crust. Ash stopped so suddenly that Jack nearly stepped into him. One ear turned; his nose dipped toward a patch of unbroken snow.
June sat beside Jack. Neither of them moved as the youngster lowered himself and advanced, setting his front feet with a care Jack remembered from those first days. Then he leaped, forelegs punching through the thin crust.
He lifted his head with a field mouse in his mouth.
June went to him, sniffed, and touched his muzzle. Ash stood taller under her inspection. Jack rubbed a mitten over his face and pretended to be clearing frost from his eyelashes.
It was a mouse. He had watched wolves take much larger prey without feeling a thing like this. But he had also watched this youngster fail to cross eight feet of floor, and the snow around his boots had blurred.
That night he found his old field journal beneath a stack of maps. The last entry was dated five years earlier, on the day Ellen died. Below it, half a page remained empty.
He turned to a new page and wrote the date. Ash caught a mouse in the lower meadow. June stayed back and let him finish. He paused, then added what he could remember of November: the split pads, the torn ear, June backing across the sill. His handwriting grew smaller as he tried to fit the particulars in.
When he shut the book, Ash was asleep beside June. His feet extended beyond hers now. Jack put the journal on the desk where he would see it the next morning.
The following day he went alone to check traps on the distant tract. Near a rock outcrop he found wolf tracks crossing his route, several sets laid down since the last light snow. He followed them only far enough to establish their direction: north, toward the bluffs, about nine miles from the cabin.
At least five animals. Some of the prints were broader than his palm.
He returned before dark and counted his own steps up the porch, making himself slow down. Ash met him at the door, head tilted, while June searched the cuffs of his pants for the day’s news. Jack rubbed the youngster’s neck longer than usual.
“You aren’t ready,” he said.
Near midnight, a howl carried down the valley. Ash lifted his head at once. June rose beside him and rested a forepaw across his shoulders, keeping close while he listened.
Jack sat up in bed. Another voice joined the first, farther away or lower on the slope; he could not tell. Ash made a small sound without opening his mouth, and June pressed against him.
Jack had been teaching him how to leave this house. He lay awake until morning, listening for what he had helped make possible.
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇