1

She had learned to move at night.  More deaths than she could count had taught the wolf this, and much else. Do not eat meat she had not killed herself. Do not sleep two nights in the same place. Never dig a proper den.  When she could no longer resist her urge to sing she kept her voice thin, offering her voice to the wind and trotting quickly into a draw or thicket. She expected no answer. Any of her kind that survived lived by stealth and silence, always tempering yearning with caution.

Her race lived by memory. She lacked the power of naming, but held inside her every scent and sound she had ever known.  If a trail had once led her to meat she would return to it until the presence of men drove her away. But now the man smells of beef flesh, leather, metal and tobacco filled the plains, so she made her way into the hills of the badlands. She knew the signs in the dirt that meant a trap had been laid and she could scent the traces of oil and steel that meant a gun was near. It was only by a lucky accident that she was alive. A dying mule deer had kicked her down a steep gully onto a heap of boulders.  She landed on her hindquarters, when she stood up pain seared her from deep within her left side.

The hurting slowed her down, but the pack kept her alive. Her sister commanded them to leave remnants of kills for her. They greeted each other at each new rendezvous. She rolled and romped with her sister’s two surviving pups like a proper aunt. She limped along behind the tiny pack, her scent calling to them, telling of her pain and her hunger.  For her part she knew the pack’s growing desperation as they made their way through a hostile land.  There had been no kill for a week. The pups needed to be fed.  Then all was silent ahead of her.  Her need for her pack drove her forward. She could almost run full speed again, but she stayed slow and steady, cutting back and forth down the face of the last ridge that led onto the plain where the pack had wandered after meat. Her fur was coal black except for a frost of grey around her nose and lips. All he life she had kept to the shadows of trees and the shallow draws of the plains where her dark fur made her almost invisible.

Coming onto that plain she saw, she smelled and she knew. Pain stabbed her heart. Her pack was laid out around the cow’s carcass in a circle, each wolf’s lips snarled in the death grimace she had seen so many times. Her sister, her father, both of her aunts and her sister’s mate. The pups had crawled under their mother to die. Why had they eaten from the carcass? How had mere hunger overwhelmed and betrayed her sister’s judgment? The she wolf walked round the place of death, drawing closer at times, and then dodging away, sniffing the air until she was satisfied no trap awaited. She went to her family, touched the deep cold of their flesh, pawed their rigid limbs.  After a while she sat herself down and waited, lost herself to the smell of death, to the stench coming from the bloated poisoned flesh of the cow. Twice the sun made its way from the glow of dawn until the fading purple of twilight and still she waited there. She was teaching herself a new lesson.  Never give in. Never let hunger destroy you with wild imagined hopes.  Only when she heard the distant sounds of horses chomping their bridles and saddles creaking under the meat fed weight of men did she move off, wending her way back up into the hills. She scratched her message in the dust and left a clear trail up into the trees. Let them hunt her, she would lead them on until their horses died for lack of water, until she and her pursuers were lost in cold and rocky places where no meat was to be found.  They would greet death together and she would show them her superiority, how fear had no place in her heart.

But no one followed her. A sudden rain washed away her trail. Some days later she found an unspoiled meadow and stopped awhile, living on mice and ground squirrels, sleeping deep in the brush. One day she took down an old deer that offered itself to her and was living off the carcass when a miracle came upon her. A male wolf had followed her scent and wandered into her valley the same day she went into season. The male’s gray fur was brushed with reddish brown and adorned with a white star shape on his chest. He stood half a head taller than her. He kept his distance, letting her know he would wait upon her answer. They did the old dance and she granted him welcome.

Without dreams or hope, for those are both human inventions, they formed a life. They marked a territory, noting where the deer ran, where the rabbits bred.  She dug a deep and wide den above a stream that flowed through the deer woods.  Then on a day when the sun was falling on tired leaves, when she let herself lie quietly, listening at a place where a small stream foamed over rocks and made a soft music, she heard a rifle shot from the edge of their territory. Her new mate did not return to her side. The wind brought her the scent of his blood mingled with dirt. She took this new lesson deep into the brush.. She abandoned the ancient wolf custom of running their territory by a familiar path, renewing their marks every few days to warn off coyotes, other wolves and even bears if the pack was strong enough. She would be a mystery to herself, to her kind and most of all to the men who waited only to bring her death.

It was this death, the last of so many, that made her once and for all a creature who moved by night. Her dark coat, her abilities to listen and watch and wait, to know the truth amidst all the killing she had seen and smelled and tasted, would allow her to live for a while.  She had learned patience and strategy. She understood that she must never do anything by the old ways, she must trust only what she smelled and saw for herself.

Then nature tortured her with a routine miracle.  She felt new life growing in her womb. Her yearning to feed the litter growing inside her chased her from her hiding.  Winter was coming and the high country meadows would not feed her. She must find a place where she could keep fed through the winter. And she must have a den.

After a week wandering the fringes of the fields full of the slow lumbering beasts that men had loosed upon her land, she found a valley, a great cut in the land, a place with bluffs and ridges and brush choked streams leading down to a river, the river’s banks bordered by marshes and dozens of tiny woods.  The river valley was a night’s run wide in places and cut through by dozens of scrub filled draws and gullies. Deer and rabbits lived here. The meadows were full of mice. But this last wild place lay amidst the lands of men. Their wire fences lined the plains above. She would be seen and hunted.  She let this vision flow for several days and nights while she smelled the cold settling over the hills and heard her prey moving into the lowlands or bundling up for winter sleep. No other answer presented itself to her. Though it would bring her among men she must stay in the valley. Her belly was growing heavy. She would feed and hide and do her best to raise this litter. She did not trouble herself with worry. What happened would teach her what must happen.

She dug a den into a bare earthen bank cut by a creek. A tangle of tree roots hid the entrance. She lay there most of the day, coming out at sunset to hunt for mice, fish and any other unwary creatures she might chance upon. When the snow came she took a deer that had bogged in a drift and fed off it, sleeping nearby and burying the carcass with snow after she fed, until only scraps of hair showed the place of her kill. She learned where the rabbits found grass and studied the tunnels small creatures used to move about under the snow.

As her birthing time grew near she spent a great deal of time sleeping. Often she dreamed of the great hunts of her pack. They ran down deer and elk, joying in the chase, but staying calm, trotting steadily, nipping at the animal’s hooves and shanks to force panic, to keep them moving until they stumbled or their wind gave out. She would leap to close her teeth onto the creature’s face or neck, to bring its head down while the pack swarmed over it, biting through the leg tendons. When she opened her prey’s throat they understood one another, each knew their place in the dance.

The she wolf woke hungering from these dreams.  She needed another kill, but her time was almost upon her. When her pups came they would need her warmth to stay alive.  The first colors of spring had brushed the land.  Small flowers and green shoots of grass were poking through the snow in the sunnier meadows.  Fear scorched her heart like fire as she lay in her den. Her task was impossible. Her kind were meant to care for each other.  Someone must bring her food while she nursed and protected the pups.

Maybe it was this fear that kept her from killing the dog.  She scented it one night when she hunted farther than usual up a brush choked draw. The dog had run off from a farm, somehow survived the winter in a crude den it dug among some rocks. The wolf waited upwind of the dog’s den and took it as it came crawling out of its rocks just before dawn. She laid the dog on its back, held its throat in her jaws. They knew everything they needed to know about each other. The dog waited, submitting completely. Without the power of men, it had no defense against its cousin.  If it had fought back at all the she wolf would probably have killed and eaten it. But the dog waited on her verdict and followed her back to her den. Somehow they knew what they needed to know about each other. They could take deer together, the dog chasing them to where the wolf lay in wait. The she wolf grew strong. She smelled of milk and her pups.

On a certain morning she snarled, snapped her teeth at the dog and went into the den.  He knew his place and waited outside while her five pups slipped forth into the light of this life.

They became a family. The dog became skilled at capturing the careless spring rabbits.  Almost every day he laid one at the entrance of the den.  He would wait there, listening to the whimpering sound of the pups, smelling the warm smells of milk, of the pups’ flesh and fur. The wolf never left the den. When she stretched out her neck to take the rabbits the dog glimpsed pups dangling from her belly as they tried to keep suckling. The dog’s reward for his loyalty was these glimpses of the pups and a raised lip, the gleam of the she wolf’s teeth and a deep growl if he dared step into the den entrance.

Soon the pups’ eyes had opened and their ears stood straight. They were allowed out of the den and the dog at last could play with them. The pups scampered along the bank of the stream wrestling over twigs and bits of hide, growling at each other and tumbling upon the dog in sudden leaps as he lay in the sun. The pups fought for the right to latch onto the dog’s ears and nose, wagging their tails and tumbling off him, leaping up yelping and launching new attacks. The dog stayed calm, holding his head up and wagging his own tail slowly so the pups knew they were welcome. The she wolf watched him carefully as he played with the pups. When her instincts told her she could be sure of him, he could herd the pups back into the den when he sensed danger, he would protect the litter with his life, she left him in charge of the pups through the night and went off to hunt down a spring fawn. She had to build up her strength, to keep her milk flowing. But she found no fawns.

The place she had chosen and marked stank of men and horses and the metal that meant death. No deer were to be found. A cold panic started again in her belly. Her milk would run dry. When she came upon a pasture full of cows nursing their spring calves she knew what she had to do.  She took a calf and brought back a belly full of meat for her family. She buried the carcass at the top of a draw and returned each night to feed until she had crushed the bones between her jaws and there was nothing of the calf left. Her milk flowed, her pups stayed strong, she shared some of the meat with the dog. The dog was giving them bits of rabbits and other small fry to chew on in their play. The wolf allowed the fear in her heart to ease a little. She would go back and kill one more calf. The spring fawns were being born, soon the family could go deep into the woods and live through the fat summer on deer and opportunity. She took a second calf and buried it under brush and leaves along the same draw before heading back to her family.

The first born pup, a girl with a hide as black as her mother’s, was the natural leader of the litter. Wild, fearless, a little wicked, the needles of her puppy teeth had more than once drawn the dog’s blood.  The dog only loved her more for it. He held her head softly in his jaws and waggled her back and forth, her tail dragging in the dust until she yipped with delight. On the nights the she wolf stayed away the black pup led the litter on chases through the brush. One evening, during the last romp they were allowed before their sleep, the pups barged into a field that held a small pond. The dog ran along behind them, excited by the smells of Spring. The pups dove into the pond, swimming across the water for no reason at all. The black pup was first onto the far shore, her litter mates yelping and tumbling on her as they pulled themselves out of the water. The dog watched the pups shake their fur in the sunlight, happy to smell the fresh soil, the clover blooms and the new grass.

They heard a sound that was new and mysterious to the pups, but far too familiar to the dog; the jingling of harnesses. The dog yelped. He ran then and the pups ran after him, all their play gone, their eyes fixed on the dog, their legs stumbling. The dog dropped behind the pups, running half speed as they made for a brush line and safety. He heard the sharp pop of a rifle. He got the pups into the brush but the men on horses kept coming across the meadow.  At the den entrance the pups dove into the tunnel. The dog made a great show of barking and growling, trying to lead the men away.  But the men dismounted and advanced on the den. There were four of them, two carried rifles, one held a shovel and one carried an axe handle. His fingers stroked the thick head as he carelessly let the thin end tap along the ground. The dog held his ground, barking defiance at the cave entrance until a rifle shot felled him.

In the den the girl pup crouched in front of her brothers and sisters and listened. The slice of the shovel into the earth, the grunting of a man lifting loads of soil, the slow patient breathing of the horses, the sound of birds on the edge of the clearing, carrying on their ordinary songs, their combats over a branch or a grasshopper, all of it came to her. Behind her the other pups waited, a few whimpered. When the last bite of the shovel broke through the wall of the den the pup leapt forward. Ahead of her was the leg of a man, tall as a pillar to her and soft as any flesh when she sank her teeth into his calf. When the pain hit him, when he swung wildly with the shovel, the pup had already let him go and raced into a tangle of thorny berries. She kept moving through the deep tangle of vines ignoring the loud voices of the men, the squeals and cries of her brothers and the thorns that tore her fur and nipped her flesh. Her mother would find her. Above her the birds bickered on.

Night’s blanket had smothered the valley when her mother found the black pup.  They exchanged a quick greeting hten waited side by side, letting the scents and sounds of the night settle over them.  When the moon slid out from a wide bank of clouds the she wolf led the way back to the den site. There was no hope, their ears and noses had told them what had happened, what they would find.  The she wolf pawed among the skinned carcasses of her pups, sniffing the blackened dirt where her family had been bled out while the moon splashed a bone white glow upon the clearing. She lifted her pup with her mouth and ran up the valley, letting the pain in her heart find its answer in the ache of her legs and the burning in her lungs. They passed along the hunting path silent as ghosts, passing up small fry, even a newly born fawn the she wolf smelled trembling in a thicket while the doe thrashed through the brush to lead her away.

By the time the sky threatened dawn the she wolf was tiring. They laid up in some deep brush near the base of a bluff and fell into sleep. The mother saw her pups in her dream, smelled their fur, heard the cries they had made when she came back to them from the hunt. She woke near sunset to the bleating of sheep being driven into a night pasture. Her hunger had come back to her. It was big as the world and full of a terrible rage. She commanded her pup to wait for her in deep brush. She worked her way up a gully to a wire fence.  She let her anger carry her over the fence in a long leap. The sheep ran from her smell towards the farthest corner of their field. The she wolf took up the chase, her heart full of the joy of the hunt but also something darker, something not natural to her race. She heard the barking of a dog coming to protect the flock.  The smell of men was everywhere and for the first time in her life the wolf ran towards it.

2

The first of us to die was no more than a boy. He had an overgrown child’s scarecrow shoulders, dark eyes wide as sunset and black hair that had not seen a comb since he lost farm and family. He took it bravely; more bravely than I was taking the present situation. My knees shook as the night riders led him across the clearing to an old live oak. Long low branches spread over the clearing slicing shadows from the moonlight. The longest and strongest branch was strung with a dozen nooses. It took all my remaining will not to wet myself and fall to my knees crying. Maybe the boy was too wasted by hunger to fight.  They trussed his arms and sat him on the bare back of a stolid plow horse. The horse was led under a thick low hanging oak branch where a noose hung in groove worn in the bark. A night rider came up beside the boy. His horse’s hooves thumped softly and slowly until he was in position to slip the noose over the boy’s head and tighten it around his neck.  The boy’s thin lips quivered and his cheeks gleamed with tears in the light of the torches. The rider’s hands were patient and careful as he slipped a sack over the boy’s head.  They had surrounded our little camp of vagrants while we slept. I was waiting in a line with a couple dozen failed farmers and cast off journeymen. There had been a few women with us, a loyal wife, a cousin who followed her family off their farm, all the other starving and stumbling et ceteras that crowded the roads during that depression year. Those night riders had plucked the women out of our midst first thing of all. Now they were going to show “this gang of agitators and socialist troublemakers how it felt to swing from a good American tree!” That was one of the more coherent things being shouted as they waved torches, passed flasks but unfortunately also remembered to keep several rifles aimed at us.

William K. Burke