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“Presuming not,” Dalton says. “That’s what drew the wolf in.”
“Damn.”
“Yep.” Dalton takes a slow breath, audible in the silence. “I’m going to try to scare it off. You got it in your sights?”
I lift my gun. “I do.”
He doesn’t tell me not to fire unless I need to. He knows I won’t. He also knows that I won’t hold back longer than I should in hopes I won’t have to pull the trigger.
Out here, there is room for common civility toward other predators, giving them a chance to retreat. There is not, however, room for sentiment. The beauty of this creature might take my breath away, and I will regret it if I need to pull this trigger, but if that’s what it comes to, I’ll do it. Those bearskin rugs in our living room aren’t trophies—they’re honoring encounters gone wrong by making use of the beast Dalton had to shoot.
“Ready?” Dalton says.
I lay a hand on Storm’s back. I don’t grab her collar. That’s respect, too—I acknowledge that she’s intelligent enough and mature enough to make her own choices. I’m asking her to stand down, and she tenses as Dalton moves forward, but she stands her ground as she holds the wolf’s gaze.
“Hie!” Dalton says, waving his arms. “Hie! Hie!”
The wolf’s gaze flicks Dalton’s way, but with only the mildest of interest, and that sends a chill down my back. There are three things it should do at this point. Be startled and run. Be annoyed but back away. Or, if we’re unlucky, attack.
Fight or flight. That is nature. But the wolf only glances at Dalton and then looks back at Storm.
“Eric?” I say.
“Yeah, I know. Something’s not right.”
I don’t ask if it could be rabies. There hasn’t been a reported case in the Yukon in nearly fifty years. That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Same as distemper. Uncommon in wolves, and uncommon here. We still get Storm vaccinated against both, though.
This doesn’t seem to be either of those obvious answers. The wolf gives no sign of being confused or even unnaturally curious. It just isn’t bothered by us.
“All right,” Dalton says, his voice louder than usual as it rings through the forest. “We seem to have ourselves a situation here, sir. You want that poor man. You might also want our dog, but that’s a little less clear. Either way, we’re going to need to refuse, and you’re going to need to move along.”
This time, the wolf’s ears flick Dalton’s way. They stay in that direction as he talks, and while its gaze remains on Storm, I’m reminded of when I talk to Storm and she listens for words she recognizes.
“Get ready,” Dalton says. “I’m going to need to lunge at it.”
I adjust my grip on the gun.
Dalton lunges, stopping a few feet short of the wolf. The canine’s eyes roll that way and then back.
“I… think the wolf just gave you side-eye,” I say.
“Huh.” Dalton crosses his arms and stands tall, only to get another sidelong look from the wolf, one that makes me choke back a laugh.
“Someone has not developed a proper appreciation for our position at the top of the food chain,” I say.
“Because someone knows that’s bullshit.”
Dalton takes another step, and that’s when the wolf reacts. It drops its head in a warning growl. Storm feints, snapping andsnarling her own warning. The wolf glowers at her and then growls at Dalton again.
“All right,” Dalton says. “He’s chill until we get near his dinner. This is going to require a little extra incentive—”
A sharp whistle sounds. I don’t jump—I can’t, not while I have my gun trained on the wolf—but I do give a start. The wolf’s head jerks up. Another two piercing whistles in succession, and the wolf lunges, and here is where I am glad I have learned my lesson about having my finger near a trigger. If I did, I’d have fired before my brain registered that the wolf wasn’t lunging at Dalton or Storm. It’s leaping into the forest.
One huge bound, and then it’s running, and all we see is its pale form darting through the trees until it’s gone. We still stand there, poised and listening. A moment later, the bells tinkle again, and I realize they’d stopped. Now they’re on the move again, heading away.
Bells in the same direction that the wolf ran. The same direction that the whistle came from.
“Did someone just call their pet wolf?” I say.
