Part 4
Denise snatched up the telephone while Ada struggled into Walter’s canvas coat. Her nightgown caught beneath one sleeve. She pulled it free, pushed her feet into boots without socks, and took the large flashlight.
Ben and Lena were nearby, checking the last stretch of cameras before the ice obscured the lenses. Through Denise’s open doorway, Ben heard a snowmobile running. He alerted the other warden and sent him toward the county-road exit.
“He wants us to stay here,” Denise said.
Ada opened the door.
“Then he’d better hurry.”
“Mom, wait.”
“I let him go.”
The porch steps had a glaze so clear she nearly missed it. She was testing the ground with one boot when Denise caught up, carrying her cane and another flashlight.
“Take this.” Denise put the cane in her hand. “I’m coming.”
She moved to Ada’s left, where the bad vision made the edge of the path disappear. Together they crossed behind the woodshed.
Nook cried again. Ada tightened her grip on the cane and followed the sound down the old skid trail.
Their lights found him about fifty yards into the trees. His left foreleg was caught in a steel trap. The chain had wound around a root, leaving him no room to move away. Snow lay torn up around his body, stained where he had struggled.
Gordon stood a few yards off. His snowmobile idled beyond him, its headlight shining through the trunks. A plywood dog crate sat in the snow beside a folded moving blanket.
“Get back,” he said. “That animal will tear you up.”
Ada kept her beam on the crate.
“Expecting a dog?”
“Coyote set. Bad luck, that’s all.”
“You don’t have permission to set anything here.”
“Hard to tell where a line is in this weather.”
Denise raised her light. An orange posted sign hung on the tree behind him.
Gordon glanced at it, then at the phone in her other hand.
“You call somebody?”
“They’re coming,” she said.
Nook lunged. The chain snapped tight, and he fell back with a sound that made Ada’s stomach turn.
Gordon grabbed the blanket.
Ada stepped sideways, blocking his approach. Denise reached for her sleeve but missed.
“Put it down.”
“He’ll wreck that leg if I don’t cover him.”
“He pulls every time you move.”
Gordon stopped. His cheeks had gone pale around his mouth.
“Do you have any notion what you’re standing in front of?” he asked. “What somebody would pay?”
Ada planted the cane. “You don’t get to sell him.”
“Who said I was going to hurt him?”
His eyes flicked toward the crate.
A distant engine rose above the snowmobile’s idle. Gordon turned his head to listen, folding the blanket against his body.
Ada slipped off Walter’s coat. Cold bit through her nightgown. The canvas was still damp where Nook had lain on it in the mudroom, and the cuffs held bits of bark from the woodpile.
She bent as far as she could and sent it sliding across the crust.
It stopped short of Nook. He reached out with his free paw, caught a fold, and dragged it toward him. His teeth closed on the canvas. His back stayed rigid, but he quit throwing himself against the trap.
Ada held still.
“There you are, Nook. The coat can take it.”
Gordon began edging toward the snowmobile.
Denise lifted her phone higher. “I’m recording. Your face is clear.”
He looked at her with an expression Ada had never seen on him during all those winters of plowing her drive.
Blue light swept through the branches.
Gordon ran.
The snowmobile lurched away, throwing crusted snow behind it. He reached the plowed road and found the second warden waiting across the exit. He stopped there.
Ben came down the trail with Lena. They carried equipment cases and a rolled protective shield. One look at Ada’s nightgown sent Ben’s hand to the folded emergency blanket in his kit.
“Behind that tree,” he told the women. He passed Denise the blanket and waited until both had moved clear.
Lena studied the trap and the position of Nook’s leg. She spoke without raising her voice, asking Ben for what she needed one item at a time.
When Ada shifted behind the tree, Nook raised his head toward her.
Lena noticed.
“Ada, talk where he can hear you. Don’t move out.”
Ada could think of nothing to say. Then she began reciting the bus stops.
“The Colby children first. Their grandmother always had a broom out, no matter how early. Then the Vann twins by the gravel pit. One boot tied, one untied, both mornings and afternoons.”
She drew the blanket around her shoulders.
“And Benjamin Sutter, who thought I wouldn’t notice a frog hopping down the aisle.”
Ben glanced at her once, then returned to Lena.
The veterinarian delivered the sedative from a safe position. For several minutes Nook resisted the drowsiness, claws buried in the coat. Ada went on naming houses that had changed owners and children who had grown children of their own.
At last his head lowered.
Lena and Ben approached only after she was satisfied he was fully sedated. They shielded his eyes, released the trap, and checked the injured foot. Then they eased him onto a rigid carrier.
Ada started forward.
Ben extended an arm. “Give her room.”
“How bad?” Ada asked.
“The foot is warm,” Lena said. “That tells me he has circulation. We need X-rays before I can tell you more.”
“He won’t know anybody when he wakes.”
Ben looked at her. “That has to start sometime.”
She nearly answered him. Then the carrier tilted at a root, and Lena immediately steadied Nook’s neck with both hands. She waited while Ben found better footing. Together they brought him through the trees without jarring the leg.
Denise drove Ada to the veterinary hospital that handled the center’s wildlife cases. The sleet became snow on the way south. Ada sat with the emergency blanket over her knees and watched the wipers clear one small patch of road at a time.
They had traveled nearly forty miles before she spoke.
“I kept feeding him.”
Denise nodded without taking her eyes off the road.
“After Ben told me not to.”
“I know.”
“And I opened the door tonight.”
“Gordon put the trap there, Mom.”
Ada rubbed a stiff finger along the blanket seam. “You aren’t going to tell me the rest didn’t matter?”
“No.”
A truck passed them, filling the windshield with wet snow. Denise slowed until she could see again.
“You should have told me you were calling Ben,” Ada said.
“I should have.”
“But you’d still have called.”
“Yes. I’d tell you first.”
Ada leaned back against the seat and let the next few miles pass without correcting Denise’s speed.
At the hospital they were given a little side room away from the dogs and cats arriving through the main entrance. Denise bought coffee from a machine. Ada held the paper cup until it went cold.
Lena came in near dawn. Walter’s coat was folded inside a clear bag under her arm.
“The joint is badly bruised, and there’s a small fracture,” she said. “But the main tendon held. That gives us something to work with.”
She sat rather than leaving them to look up at her.
Nook would need treatment and rest, followed by weeks in an outdoor enclosure. A healed bone alone would not make him releasable. They would have to see whether he could move well enough to catch prey.
Ada reached for the bag.
“Could I look at him?”
Lena considered her before answering. “A brief observation may tell me something. There’s glass between you. No speaking, no tapping. If he responds to you, I end it immediately.”
Ada followed her to the observation window.
Nook lay in a recovery pen with his leg bandaged. His eyes were closed, his body still loose from the anesthetic. Ada stood with her hands clasped below her waist.
One ear moved.
His eyes opened slowly. He looked past her at first, then fixed on the figure behind the glass. He braced himself on one foreleg and made the small, rough call she knew from the mudroom.
Lena pulled the blind down.
Ada turned sharply. “He was only looking.”
“He was trying to get to you.”
“He knows me.”
“Yes,” Lena said. “And right now he expects you to take him somewhere warm and bring his food. We have to change that before we can turn him loose.”
Ada looked at Walter’s coat through the plastic.
“How long before another visit?”
Lena kept her hand on the blind cord.
“For release to work, this was the last one…”
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇