Part 4
It had been March, earlier in the year Ellen died. Tom was checking the creek crossing below the north cut when he heard a chain strike stone. A young female wolf stood on three legs among the willows, the fourth caught in an illegal trap. Each time she pulled away from him, the chain tightened and she lost what little balance she had.
He had nearly turned back for help. Then she stopped fighting, and he saw how deeply the jaws had cut. There wasn’t time to leave her and make the trip again. He got his coat over her head, secured her as carefully as he could, and freed the leg. Bringing her home took the rest of the afternoon. At the door Ellen took one look and moved the kitchen chairs out of his way.
She hadn’t called the wolf beautiful. She had asked where the clean towels were, although he was certain she’d put them away herself. He told her so, and she said he could be right later, once he’d found them. Even now he could remember how quickly he’d gone to look.
They made a place for the animal near the back door, with a barrier between her and the rest of the room. For three weeks their days arranged themselves around that corner. Dressings had to be changed, water replaced, meat cut small enough that she didn’t have to stand and brace herself to tear it. Tom did the lifting and held what needed holding. Ellen kept her voice low and steady. When she ran out of things to say, she hummed a tune Tom remembered her singing to Daniel.
At first the wolf snapped whenever either of them moved near the injured leg. Ellen waited for her to settle, talking about whatever she had been doing before she knelt down. Once, while working a stuck dressing free, she gave a running complaint about the weather forecast. Tom stood beside her with the basin and wondered whether the wolf found it any more useful than he did.
He hadn’t thought about that in years.
The raw wound closed slowly. A pale strip showed where the fur didn’t return, and the deeper notch on the inside stayed raised. Tom knew it because he had supported that paw in his hand while Ellen eased a fresh bandage around it. When the wolf finally put weight on the leg, Ellen sat back on her heels and let out the breath she’d been holding.
They opened the outside door after three weeks. Tom took down the barrier and stepped away. The wolf came forward with her head low, stopped at the threshold, and tested the yard. She still favored the leg. At the tree line she turned once toward the cabin, where Ellen stood wrapped in the shawl with one hand resting on the doorframe.
Tom had expected her to say something. She watched until the animal was gone, then asked him to bring in more wood. That afternoon there had been bedding to wash and the floor to scrub. He had complained about all of it, and she had listened without taking the broom away from him.
By that fall he was carrying wood into a room where she no longer sat.
In the shelter, the mother wolf’s breath stirred the fur along the pup’s neck. Tom shifted the light until the scar lay clearly within it. The same ring, the same notch. She looked at him, then moved her nose a little closer, drawing in the smell of his glove.
The lips settled over her teeth. He spoke again, softly, and her head remained down. Whether she knew the voice, the scent of his coat, or only that he wasn’t moving toward her youngster, he couldn’t be certain. But the tension had gone out of her muzzle. When he brought his hand nearer, she let it come.
The cabin lay below this ridge. Somehow the pup had found it through the storm, and Tom couldn’t stop seeing the mother at his open door years before. Perhaps she had been making for that familiar place before her strength gave out. Perhaps the youngster had followed the last part of a route she knew. He couldn’t know what had passed between them. He knew where the pup had arrived, and whose leg bore the scar.
He unfolded a dressing and eased it against the bleeding side where he could reach without moving her. His bare fingers felt the cold through the fur. She didn’t try to bite. He held the dressing there and counted her breaths because it gave him something precise to do, but the intervals were lengthening.
The pup pressed in beside him. Tom used the edge of his glove to keep the youngster from the injured shoulder, and the mother turned her head after the movement. Even now she was watching where he went. Tom shifted the blanket under her chin to keep it off the stone.
“Ellen would know what to say to you,” he murmured. Then he stopped. Ellen would have been as helpless as he was; he knew that. She would have stayed anyway.
He folded another pad and put it within reach. The first was already dark, and changing it would only disturb the animal. He left it in place. His hands had started shaking, so he rested one against the rock until it steadied. The pup nudged that hand and returned to his mother, trying again to work his head beneath hers.
She lifted her muzzle. The movement took so long that Tom leaned forward before he could stop himself, ready to support it. She touched the youngster’s neck and pressed. He stumbled sideways, turned back, and was nudged once more.
Tom moved his knee closer, giving him a place to stand clear of the injured shoulder. The mother followed the motion with her eyes. Then she pushed the pup toward him again, until the thin gray body was pressed against his coat.
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