Part 2
Wild wolves did not come to people’s houses. Everything Walt knew said so. They feared smoke and iron and the smell of men. Yet here was a pup, scrawny and small for its age, likely the runt of a late litter, lying at his feet in the worst storm of the year.
He knelt in the snow, set the lamp aside, and reached for it. The pup didn’t run or bare its teeth. It had no strength left for either. He picked it up and was shocked at how little it weighed; under the wet coat he could count its ribs. Ice had stiffened its fur into a shell.
He backed inside and slammed the door on the storm. The room went quiet except for the low boom of wind in the chimney.
He set the pup by the stove, dug a thick wool blanket out of a box, and wrapped it up to its nose. Its breathing whistled faintly. The stove would take care of the frostbite, but the animal needed food, and fast. Hunger kills quicker than cold.
Yesterday’s venison stew was still in the aluminum pot. He set it on the stovetop, and as it warmed the smell filled the room. The torn ear twitched. The black nose began working the air.
Walt spooned the stew into a deep metal bowl, cooled it with water from the bucket, and set it in front of the pup.
“Eat up, you little drifter.”
The pup tried to stand and collapsed. So it dragged itself to the bowl on its belly and bolted the meat, barely chewing.
Walt watched. He knew the rules out there. The weak die first. A mother will leave a sick pup to save the rest. The woods have no mercy in them. On a thousand winter patrols he had found frozen birds, foxes in traps, deer left by poachers, and he had learned to take death as part of the country. This pup was different. It had beaten its fear of man for a chance to live.
It licked the bowl until it shone and got every drop of broth. Walt expected it to drop off to sleep, as any animal would after a night like that.
It didn’t. It worked its way out of the blanket on shaking legs and shook itself, spattering snowmelt across the floor. Then it turned toward the door.
It took a few wobbly steps, stopped at the threshold, and raised its head. A low, mournful sound came out of it.
“You can’t go out there,” Walt said. “That’s a death sentence. Go to sleep.”
He reached to carry it back to the stove. The pup twisted away from his hand, lunged, and caught the cuff of his winter pants in its teeth.
Walt froze. The pup dug its hind feet into the floorboards and pulled with everything it had, toward the door. It was growling, but the growl held no threat, only desperation. It kept tugging and glancing back at the door, as if pointing.
“Let go.”
He tried to work his leg free. The jaws clamped tighter. Once the pup let go, just long enough to whimper and look him in the eye. There was no fear in that look and no threat. It was asking him for something.
Then it had the cuff again, pulling. Then it was at the door, clawing the planks with its bloody paws, trying to get back out into the storm.
Walt’s heart began to pound. Forty years in the woods put the pieces together for him. In winter, pups stay close to the den. They don’t leave their mother. If this one had come to a man’s house and now wanted nothing more than to get back out into a killing storm, it hadn’t come for warmth or food.
It had come for help.
Somewhere out in that dark was something that mattered more to it than its own life, and this worn-out little wolf had decided that a lonely old man could save it.
“No,” Walt said. He pried the pup’s jaws gently off his pants. “There’s nothing out there but death. We’re not going anywhere.”
The pup flinched back and looked up at him with a hurt so plain it was hard to watch. Then it was at the door again, scrabbling at the oak with its torn claws, crying loud enough to carry over the wind.
Walt went to the window. Beyond the glass the world was a solid wall of white. He couldn’t see six feet. On a night like this a man could get lost between his porch and his woodpile, and the snow would fill his tracks in minutes. His knees ached. His heart wasn’t the heart he’d had thirty years ago. If he went out there, the odds were he wouldn’t come back.
He looked at the sealed boxes. In a few days he’d be in a warm room in town, safe, done with all of this. All he had to do was go to bed and wait for morning. Let the woods settle their own business. The strong lived and the weak died, and nothing he did would change that.
The pup stopped clawing. It turned, panting, its whole body trembling, and came back to him on unsteady legs. It lay down across his boots, rested its head on the leather toe, and made one last small sound. It had stopped demanding.
Walt looked down at it. This animal had put its life in his hands. It had walked up to its worst enemy for the sake of someone else.
Something in his chest that had been frozen since the funeral gave way.
He thought of Ellen. She would never have left a living creature out there. She’d already be pulling on her coat and packing the medicine, and she’d have marched him out the door ahead of her. He took a long breath and understood. If he turned this pup away, he wouldn’t die someday in a nursing home. He’d die here, tonight, in this room, whatever was left of the man he’d been.
“All right.” His voice came out hoarse. “You win, little drifter.”
He moved fast, and the stiffness of age seemed to fall off him. Out of the wardrobe came thick wool socks and his heavy winter boots. Off the hook came his sheepskin coat, the one that had seen him through more bad winters than he could count. He tied the flaps of his old fur hat tight under his chin.
From the trunk in the corner he took his canvas pack. Rope. Waterproof matches. A thermos of hot, strong tea. The first-aid kit, a wide roll of bandage, a tourniquet, a big bottle of iodine, a tin of warming salve. A clean wool blanket. He had no idea what he’d find out there, and he meant to be ready for any of it.
He took the double-barrel shotgun down from the wall, checked the action, and dropped a dozen buckshot shells into his coat pocket. Last, he took the big flashlight from the shelf and thumbed the switch. A hard white beam cut across the room.
The pup had watched all of it. When the shotgun and the light came out, it struggled up, and its tail moved once. It went to the door and waited.
Walt looked down at it. “You lead. You lose the trail, and we’ll both be lying out there till spring. You hear me?”
The pup gave a soft yip and stared at the door.
Walt’s hand closed on the cold bolt. His heart was beating hard and even. The fear was gone. What was left was the job.
He shot the bolt and shouldered the door open. The wind hit him in the chest like a fist, and the snow blinded him. The pup leaped off the porch without hesitating and vanished into the white.
Walt tightened his grip on the shotgun, switched on the light, and followed. He pulled the door shut behind him. Ten steps out, he looked back. The lamp in his window was already gone…
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