The wolves trotted steadily along, the alphas in the lead, then the middle wolves, then the female, and at the end Bob with his daughter, who had obediently fallen asleep.
The snowmobiles came screaming out of the woods not a mile behind them, and fanned out across the wider field they had just left, sending up silver plumes of snow in the dawn light. Bob could not make out the words, but he could hear the delight in the voices. The men must be almost beside themselves, seeing the whole pack. Probably these were the first wolves any of them had seen in the wild.
Shots sounded, snowmobiles shrieked and bounded across the land, eating up the distance. The wolves moved steadily along, going from a trot to a lope, the alphas conserving their strength.
It was a hopeless flight. Before another hour had passed the snowmobiles were flanking the wolves. A shot rang out and the little female ahead of Bob, whom he had faithfully obeyed since they met, whom he loved, to whom he often rolled, exploded in a splash of blood and bone. The cub flew out of her mouth. She lunged, grabbed it, and started trying to pull herself along with her front paws. Then her head was blown apart. The cub was hurled screaming into the air. No sooner had it landed than one of the middle wolves grabbed it.
There was no longer any question of conserving strength. The alphas were running hard now, desperate for anything that could be called shelter.
It was slaughter. They were still miles from the seaway and there was nobody to help them. Again the shots rang out, and this time a middle wolf collapsed, dead of a bullet through his heart. Bob closed the line, slinking low, his daughter cub in his mouth, running as hard as he could. He was thinking little, just following the alphas, hoping he wouldn't get shot.
Another middle wolf was hit. She screamed, blood spurting from her side. The cub she was carrying was picked up by another. She lay down in the snow, panting. Like the others Bob went around her. Her eyes were on the wolves, and he knew why. In her dying there was nothing else she cared to see but the long gray line with its waving tails.
"Don't shoot the fuckin' heads!"
She screamed. Then again, louder. She was dying in agony.
"Don't shoot again! You'll mess up the pelt. It'll die in a minute."
Her agony, though, lasted longer than a minute. In her tortured end she gave the others a little time. But they were terribly tired, so it was time not for more flight but time for rest. They trotted until they heard the snowmobiles grinding gears and starting off again. Then they began to. run.
Bob was right behind the alpha female now. The middle wolves remaining were behind him. Pack order was in confusion. Even if the killing stopped now, it would take days for them to sort themselves out again.
Bob could smell her beautiful musk. God, he loved her. He loved her more than he ever had Cindy—or at least differently. His love for her was without equivocation. It was adoring, plentiful, unashamed. But it was not exclusive: it included the whole pack, male and female alike. Only in time of heat did sexual differences really become important.
The snowmobiles were back. The wolves had fanned out, though, in a hunting spread, and so they could not so easily be flanked. A few shots were fired, all misses.
Then there was some luck: one of the snowmobiles hit a tree and its driver fell off and started screaming. He was holding his head when Bob looked, dark blood coming out between his fingers. The wolves kept running.
As he ran Bob cursed himself. Despite his place at the rear of the pack, he had been subtly leading it just as certainly as if he had been at the front. The wolves did not have his intelligence. Pinned into a wolf suit, he was as deadly to them as if he had been a normal human being. It was he who had roamed too far south, who had discovered the town, who had started the chicken raids. Now the wolves were paying the full penalty for his lack of caution.
The cub in Bob's mouth was beginning to squirm and mew. It must be painful, bouncing along as she was. Then Bob heard the mad buzzing of the snowmobiles again. The other wolves put on a burst of speed but it wasn't long before the hunters were back, firing at the remaining wolves.
Another male went down, crying as he fell, his body pierced in the anus. With a whoop one of the hunters leaped from his snowmobile and began to follow the struggling, dying wolf on foot. Bob knew it had been a good shot; no doubt the only damage to the pelt would be a wound under the tail. The wolf dragged himself along. Bob remembered him playing with the cubs through long, happy hours, letting them climb up his back and then shaking them off amid squeals of cub delight. The dying wolf had not had a cub with him now, which was fortunate because there would be no saving it.
He gurgled and gasped. Looking back, Bob saw his lips twisted back, his legs digging at the snow. Then he went down. Once he barked, and then he was too far behind to watch without slowing down.
A bullet whistled past Bob's skull. He dodged and ran on, slinking to get between some close trees. Another shot cracked and there was a heart-breaking shriek. It was her, she was hurt! Carefully, his mind washed with great clarity, Bob put down his cub and ran for all he was worth to help her. She had a grave wound in her belly. A terrible realization came over Bob when he saw her blue guts dragging in the snow. She fell to her side, gabbling pain. The cub she had been carrying dropped from her mouth.
A laughing, happy man leaped off his snowmobile and scooped the cub up. Bob thought fast. He might be a wolf, but he knew a few things that were going to surprise this man.
"I got me a—"
Bob jumped up on the snowmobile.
"What in hell?"
He surveyed the controls. Handlebar throttle, wouldn't you know. If it had been a pedal he might have managed to drive the thing. He broke off the key and jumped out amid a fusillade of shots. A bullet grazed his back like a hot poker, tumbling him over in the snow. But he jumped to his feet and rushed the man, who was not ten yards away and reloading.
While his beautiful friend died in agony, biting her own guts to speed her end, all of her grace and dignity spattered as blood on the snow, Bob savaged another human being mercilessly. He bit the man's face, he raked his cheeks until he could see bones and teeth, he bit the scarf-protected neck so hard the screams became popping whispers.
Then he grabbed the cub the man had dropped and took it to where he had left the other. The rest of the wolves were already far away, followed still by four snowmobiles.
Bob left her dying, her murderer sitting in shock in the snow, his face a pulp. He would live, scarred. She would die.
She whined and Bob stopped. He could not bear to leave her, nor could he bear to leave one of his cubs. He yapped miserably, hopelessly.
He went to her and gently licked her gaping wound. At first she resisted, then her great head flopped down and she made no further sound.
Her eyes told him that she was dead.
He howled over her, raising his soul's dirge. The man he had injured moaned, his hands fluttering in the ruins of his face. Bob could have killed him, but he would not. Already he had done too much.
Carefully, he picked up one cub and set it beside the other, then he took the two of them in his mouth as best he could. They did not like this at all, they squirmed and yowled. But when he moved, their instincts saved them—or perhaps their understanding—and they became quiet, bearing their discomfort.
About a mile to the north there were more shots, followed by whoops of pleasure. Something snapped in Bob, to hear the easy delight. For the hunters this was nothing more than fun.
But it was so much more. It was so terribly immoral, so fundamentally wrong that Bob almost could not bear that it was happening on the earth. Evil is not entropic, it is not a winding down: evil disguises itself as decay. In truth it is an active force in human life, active and clever and tireless. Evil laughed with the laughing men, and the wolves died.
When Bob reached the top of a low hill, he saw them, a scraggly line of six animals with snowmobiles racing round and round them. There was no hope, but still they ran on
. Bob could see cubs dangling in the mouths of the alpha male and one of the middle wolves. They were trying so hard to save themselves and their infants. For the wolves this was an occasion of the greatest possible suffering and the highest seriousness. How could it be debased to fun by the whooping hunters, now riding their snowmobiles like cowboys on dancing mares.
Stunned by the horror of the scene before him, Bob had stopped almost without realizing it. The alpha was a clever wolf, and he suddenly turned away from his northerly direction and into a dense thicket that fell quickly away to a rushing kill, the torrent foaming with spring runoff. The snowmobiles could not follow. Within the thicket, Bob saw them put down the two cubs. No doubt they hoped to fly as fast as possible, then come back later for the cubs. Or maybe they were simply too tired to carry them farther, and were hiding them as best they were able, with no plan for the future.
The snowmobiles stopped in a line at the edge of the thicket. A couple of shots were fired but it isn't easy to hit a target running as fast as the wolves were running now that nobody had a cub in his mouth.
Bob saw a chance—not much of a chance, but a very definite chance. He could distract the hunters, draw them away from the other wolves and the two cubs left in the thicket. Without a moment's hesitation he put down his own two cubs and began barking furiously.
Faces turned with alacrity. There were excited shouts. Sure enough, the easier game was more interesting to the hunters. After all, they had already gotten themselves eight wolf pelts and seven fine heads. A ninth—and such a big one— would surely be enough for one day.
Taking up the miserable cubs, Bob started moving north and west, still in the direction of the seaway, but away from the other wolves, who were going east and, Bob felt sure, would soon turn north again.
He ran as fast as his spent, trembling body would allow. The snow was in full melt beneath the noontime sun, and it made movement hell. The snowmobiles had been designed to handle it. They roared easily forth.
If only the men would find their companion with the ravaged face, they might call off the whole hunt. His was far more than the minor head injury the other one had encountered. But he was too far back. They wouldn't discover him until they turned for home.
The engines got louder and louder, the whoops and laughter higher and more excited. Soon early shots were ringing out and Bob saw the snow fountains of bullets all around him. Ahead of Bob was a long, drifted ridge—just the sort of situation that would punish him the most. His cubs were crying. At least the other two were with the main pack. They would live if the pack got across the seaway.
Bob realized that he was going to die. Maybe, somehow, his two cubs would make it.
Not two days ago one of his offspring had made a line of sticks. Made a line! They had to live!
He turned to face the snowmobiles, his head down, barking furiously.
There came out of the south an amazingly unlikely caravan. First was an ancient car, slipping and sliding through the snow, driven by the Indian who had called himself Joe Running Fox. Beside him in the car sat a woman. Bob smelled Cindy. The car had chains on its tires and was a total mess, covered with snow, both lights put out by collisions along the way, the windshield cracked. Behind it was an even more outrageous sight, a spindly old man on a brand-new Kawasaki snowmobile. Sitting behind him was Kevin, who carried a shotgun.
The procession drove right between him and the oncoming hunters, and there it stopped.
Bob could hardly believe what he saw. "You're all under arrest," Cindy shouted. "What you're doing is a felony. You're wantonly killing an endangered species without so much as a permit."
"These damn things have been taking chickens and goats all winter. They're being exterminated." With that one of the hunters took aim on Bob. Kevin's voice came over the noon thrall: "If you shoot, I do, too!"
"Oh, come on." The rifle clicked ominously.
Kevin fired the shotgun high. Thank God Bob had taught him something about shotguns. Otherwise he might have misgauged the spread and given one of the men a face full of buckshot.
"The next one will be for you, Mike Lispenard," the old man said in a thin, slightly English voice.
"You old queer!"
"Maybe so, but you're a murderer."
"Hell, this is a hunt. The worst we're gonna get is a fine, if that. And one of these pelts is worth a lot more than what we'll have to pay."
Kevin fired again. This time one of the snowmobiles leaped back and its occupant climbed down, ripping off his jacket. "A pellet! I got a pellet in my goddamn chest!
"That's a lot more serious crime than killing a few chicken-thieving wolves, lady."
"The worst he'll get is a fine," Cindy snarled, "and it's worth it to see you creeps suffer."
Bob did not wait for the end of this confrontation. He took his two cubs and set off toward the seaway.
All afternoon he loped, his heart still far to the south where the other cubs lay hidden in the snow. He wished mightily that he could go back for them, but he knew that the alpha had been right. Grown wolves could be risked for cubs only up to a point. Bob knew that there would be other seasons and other mates, and many litters.
At least he still had the two. In many ways that was a triumph.
Early in the evening he reached the seaway. For an hour he heard it booming and cracking. He had been sick with fear, but confused, because the ice seemed to be breaking up awfully early.
Then he saw why: there were icebreakers on the water, long, gray ships plunging and rearing along, leaving dark blue tracks of open water behind them. Bob remembered the roach—the fact that it was out should have warned him that spring was proceeding. The sailors knew it: like the insects, they gave not a moment more to winter than necessary.
Bob ran as hard as he could, but it was not hard enough. By the time he reached the seaway the water was blue down a trench in the middle at least fifty yards wide. And the ice for a hundred yards on either side of it was shattered and thin, floating precariously on the current. -
Bob sat down on the bank. A wave of blackest despair washed him. Putting down the two cubs, who immediately began to tussle and play at his feet, he raised his muzzle in a disconsolate, lonely howl.
From the far bank he was answered. He counted six wolves. Since he was the seventh, it meant that they had ultimately killed nine. A terrible toll, more than half of them. But the survivors were over there, not here, and for that Bob could be glad.
He decided to hide these cubs in a snow den and go back for the others at once, so that they wouldn't have to spend the night in the cold. As long as he lived, they had a chance, all four of them.
As he dug his den, he heard the howling from the far bank of the St. Lawrence, and thought that it was the saddest sound he had ever known, far more sad than the deepest human sorrow, because it had to do with the final tragedy of their species, and they sensed this.
Miserably, Bob dug the snow den. These were such early cubs, maybe they were never fated to live, any of them. Bob had been so randy that he had interrupted the dance of heat with an impregnation weeks before it would normally have occurred. Again, his human nature had unbalanced the delicate life of the pack.
He nosed the little cubs into the den and turned south, counting on the rising dark to conceal him. He had not gone a quarter mile before, quite abruptly, he collapsed in a heap. For a moment he was confused. Why wouldn't he go? He tried, but he got nowhere. It was fully fifteen minutes before he could get himself to move again. And then he could barely manage to walk back to the snow den.
He lay down beside it, curling his nose under his tail. Soon he had two very happy and relieved cubs cuddling into the warmth of his fur, tugging and snuffling for the best position. He knew they must be hungry. He'd deal with hunting in the morning. God willing, the thaw would bring out some squirrels.
He dropped to sleep thinking of the other cubs out there in the night alone, the poor children of his body. And her, he thought of
her, how beautiful she had been, the most beautiful female creature he had ever known.
But when he slept, he dreamed of Cindy's arms around him.
The light that woke him was not the sun. It came stealthily through the woods, and brought him to his feet.
"It's us, Bob."
They came forth out of the scrub forest. Bob smelled a hot car nearby, and he also smelled something else, an odor that made his hackles rise even as his heart was charged with hope.
"We have the cubs. We saw you carrying the other two. We know how important they are to you."
Cindy and Kevin loomed up out of the dark, each carrying a cub cuddled in their arms. Both infant wolves were curled up, motionless with fear.
When they smelled Bob, their heads began to wobble. Then they started mewing, and his every instinct was aroused. They were so precious: they bore the spark of intellect. Such cubs as these were destined to save the wild!
The cubs were put at his feet, and soon all four of them were scrambling about together, their fears forgotten in the protective shadow of their father.
"Bob, do you still understand?" Cindy was a perceptive woman. He'd heard enough language this day for it all to have come back to him. One tap was yes, two was no. He tapped.
"Oh, Dad, you're still in there, you're really still in there!"
Kevin's voice, so full of loyalty and love, practically broke Bob's heart. Before he realized what he was doing, he raised his nose and howled out his combination of joy and sorrow. From the far bank there almost immediately came a response. He felt the longing in their voices: they had lost lovers and cubs. Also, though, they had heard his joy and there was an undercurrent of hope in their sound.
He looked at his son. For an instant, their eyes met. Then Kevin looked away.
Bob thought, I can do it.
"The seaway trapped you, didn't it," the elderly man said.
Bob tapped once.
The old man looked at Cindy and Kevin. "Amazing. Can it really be true? Every word you've told me?"