Part 3
The next stretch ran over submerged stones. She took the force of them against her own flank and kept the cub on the side away from the rocks. A sharp edge opened a line along her ribs. Her legs still worked, though the cold was making each stroke slow to begin. She could no longer see the cliff when she turned her head. Gunfire stopped; the water drowned out the men’s voices.
The opposite bank appeared and vanished behind a bend. She aimed for it, lost ground, corrected again. Downstream, the river spread wider. Its pull lessened just enough that she could choose a direction. She swam for the pale strip of sand under the willows. The cub hung still between her teeth. His warmth was gone from her mouth. She tightened her hold whenever the current tugged at him.
Her paws struck gravel. She staggered through waist-deep water and hauled herself onto the sand.
The cub fell from her mouth when she set him down.
He did not move. She pressed her nose along his wet side and licked his face, stopping at his mouth. He was limp as he had been in the current. She nudged him onto his side and licked him again, more urgently, working the wet fur in strokes from his shoulders toward his chest.
He jerked. A little water came out when he coughed. She stepped back as he coughed again, then bent to lick him clean. His breaths were thin and uneven, but his paws twitched toward her. She lay down so that he could crawl against her belly. The scratch along her ribs stung where sand caught in it. She could leave the bank later. For now she kept her body around him and listened to the breath coming through his small nose.
A branch washed ashore a few yards away, turning slowly in an eddy. She watched it drift past while the cub’s paws began to move against her belly. His first attempt to nurse was weak. He missed, found his place, and held on. She let her head sink to the sand, then jerked it upright at a distant sound. The bank remained empty. She had to stay awake long enough to put distance between him and the river, but her legs had spent everything getting them here.
Sunlight moved through the willow leaves. Her coat dried in rough patches. She licked silt from the pup’s ear, and he made the irritated noise he had made that morning in the den. She stopped, then began again more gently. She had carried him a long way and could still feel the strain in her jaw. The scent of the other pup lingered there too, impossible to follow back across the river.
From the far shore came a shout.
She rose on her front legs. Across the water, figures moved among the trees where the men had found a path down. Their dogs barked at the edge. She tried to push herself upright, but her hind legs folded. The pup cried when her weight shifted away from him. She tried again and managed three unsteady steps before falling on her side.
On the other bank, Greg sent Seth toward a ford farther downstream. Paul took the dogs. Their voices grew distant as they moved along the river, then came nearer again from below. The wolf heard them cross shallow water. She could smell wet dog. She folded a foreleg over the cub and showed her teeth toward the trail from the ford. There was nowhere close enough to reach before they arrived.
The red husky came first, spraying water from its legs as it ran across the sand. It slowed when it saw the wolf’s face, but the dogs behind it pushed forward. She pulled the cub under her chest. The husky lowered its head, gathering itself for another rush.
“Hold your dogs.”
The voice came from above the bank. A man in a green field jacket stepped out between the willows, one hand near the radio clipped to his shoulder. He was alone. He had seen the dogs cross the ford and the three armed men following them; the sight of the wet wolf and her pup explained the rest. He stopped well away from the animals.
“Paul,” Greg called, “get them back.”
Paul whistled hard. The husky balked, then retreated to him. The man in the green jacket watched until every dog was behind its handler. Only then did he speak again. “You’re on the refuge side of the river. Lower the rifles.”
Greg came up from the trail with water on his pants and his rifle in his hands. “We’ve been tracking her since dawn.”
“On the other bank,” the man said. “You’re here now.”
He did not approach the wolf or turn his back on Greg. A small boundary sign was fixed to a post among the willows, half hidden by leaves. Greg followed the man’s glance to it. He saw the radio too. The ranger gave his name as Mike Hale and said help was on the way. It was a careful statement: he had called in the dogs and the gunfire when he heard them approaching, and he wanted the men to believe the response was closer than it was.
Greg’s rifle lowered by an inch. Paul looked toward the ford, measuring how long a return trip would take. On the sand behind Mike, the wolf tried once more to stand and failed. The cub nosed beneath her foreleg. Mike kept his voice level while he asked the hunters to leave the reserve. Greg looked past him at the she-wolf and did not move.
Mike had seen injured animals retreat from him even when there was no place to go. This one had stopped trying to rise. She had folded herself around the pup and was watching the hunters, saving whatever strength she had for the moment a dog came closer. He could not offer her reassurance she would understand. He could keep the dogs back and buy time for the people equipped to handle her. The dispatcher had acknowledged his first call. Mike pressed the radio again, leaving the channel ready while Greg stood between the trail and the river.
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