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Bo snaps at his flanks. The wolf-dog lets go and whirls on Bo. They’re nearly the same size, both ferocious, but the wolf-dog is more desperate.
I haul uselessly at the deer. The wolf-dog gets a hold of Bo’s shoulder, and Bo lets out an awful scream.
I give one last giant haul on the deer, pulling it farther onto the solid ice, and let go. I grab at the gun. It’s slippery in my wet grip. The strap tangles around me. I bring it to my shoulder.
The wolf-dog lunges for me again. He’s past the rifle barrel. His teeth rend the air in front of my face, and I fling myself backward away from him. He’s on me again in an instant, Bo just behind him, all of us a tangle of bodies on the ice.
He goes for my throat. I jam my arm between us, and his teeth snap shut over it. Pain lances through my arm. I scream.
He’s too close to get the barrel of the rifle between us. I grab for something, anything, and my fingers close around an arrow. I wrench it out and up as Bo’s jaws close around the back of the wolf-dog’s neck.
His teeth rip free of my arm. I thrust with the arrow.
I’ve never killed anything this close that wasn’t halfway to dead already. The arrow goes in. It only punches through his skin. Blood gushes from the wound, but I haven’t hit anything vital.
The dogs are off me suddenly, and the wolf-dog falls back. He crouches on the ice, bloodied, the snow growing red around him. He snarls and snaps but doesn’t approach.
Rumbling, Bo circles to the side.
“Bo,” I say, warning. He’s bloodied, too. Favoring one leg. Bo might win, but there’s no vet out here to help him after.
I grab for the gun, but the wolf-dog is backing away. Then running, limping, his pelt matted with blood.
Bo charges after him. “Bo!” He stops. Half-charges again. Halts.
Sobbing, I roll onto my side and then up to my knees. I can only kneel there, my arm throbbing. My legs are soaked. I need to move. Need to get warm.
I stand. The ice is crossed and crisscrossed with blood. Snow falls around us; in a few hours, you won’t be able to tell that any of this happened.
If I don’t move, the winter will swallow me, too.
“Come on, Bo.”
WE MAKE IT to the shed alive. Well, Bo and I do. The deer’s another matter. I get it hung through sheer stubbornness and then stumble back to the cabin. I have a little first aid kit. Not much—peroxide is the most useful thing in it.
Bo’s neck is punctured. Gashes bleed sluggishly on his shoulder. With a small pair of scissors also in the first aid kit, I do my best to trim the fur away from his cuts. When I dab at his wounds with the peroxide he yelps and pulls away, but I put my arm around his neck. He could bite my face off if he wanted to, but he stiffens up instead and lets me treat his wounds. When I’ve dabbed peroxide everywhere, I wrap strips of T-shirt around them. They’ll have to do for bandages.
It’s only when I have him patched up that I turn to my own injuries.
I pull my arm out of my sleeve gingerly. The wolf-dog’s teeth went right through my sheepskin coat and left a trio of deep punctures in my arm. I pour peroxide over them, terrified of infection. My arm is bruising in the shape of the dog’s jaws. I flex my hand; it makes the bruises twinge, but I’m certain nothing is broken. It just hurts.
I’ve been out here long enough to recognize the difference between what’s going to make me miserable and what’s going to cause me real problems. This, thankfully, is the former.
Adrenaline fading, I indulge myself in a little bit of sulking and whining as I bandage myself up, using a strip off one of the blankets. I don’t need the blankets as much as I need bandages, now that I have a patchwork of badly skinned furs that keeps me and Bo warm at night.
Still, it worries me to destroy anything. I can’t get more out here. Everything that breaks, everything that gets lost, can’t be replaced.
I get a fire going, piece by piece. I still have three pills left, and I take one to dull the full-body ache that’s working through me. I wish I could give one to Bo. He’s whining on his side, clearly in pain. But I don’t know if it’s safe for him. So I cap the bottle and crawl into bed. I curl around my arm and sleep.
THERE IS NO time to rest and recover in the morning. I get up before I quite realize I’m awake, before my body catches on and stops me. I move fast, as I do every morning, quickly pulling on my clothes, getting the fire started. Once you’re out from under the furs, the cold provides all the motivation you need.
Breakfast is fish, a vitamin, and three thin spears of carrots. The carrots are almost gone, and that’ll be the last of the vegetables. Just meat, meat, and more meat.
I would kill for a little salt.
Or cumin.
I spend the morning butchering the deer. Some of it I pack in snow. Some of it, I cut into thin sections and start to smoke. The smoking station is a tripod with a series of shelves made from branches, lashed together with twine and fishing line. I lay the meat out on the branches and wrap the tarp over the tripod before getting a low, smoky fire going beneath it. The smoke gets caught in the tarp, and as long as I keep the fire going, in a day the meat is cooked and preserved. I’ve only done it with fish and rabbit, but I’m hoping venison will smoke up the same.
