The Loop (46 page)

As it was getting close to calving time, they were feeding in the afternoons now. The theory, worked out by some smart rancher up in Canada, was that a cow that was fed in the afternoon would have her calf in the morning and so make life easier for the calving crew. It mainly worked, but there always seemed to be enough cows who took delight in keeping you up all night whatever time you fed them.

Calving was tough, whichever way you played it. And this year, if the goddamn rain kept on, it was going to be a regular nightmare. Buck could see them ending up doing what those loony Russian women did a few years back and have the cows give birth under water.

Clyde was climbing back into the cab now, huffing and blowing, the water spouting from the brim of his hat all down his mud-spattered slicker. He slammed the door loudly. Maybe it was just the weather and Buck’s black mood, but everything the guy did irritated him at the moment. Buck bit his lip and eased the truck forward, trying not to give the wheels a chance to spin and bed down.

Before he’d gotten out, Clyde had been talking about Jordan Townsend’s house, which the ranch manager had given him a tour of yesterday. Clyde had been going on about it ever since.

‘Anyhow, one of these guys apparently asked old Jordan why he had a thirty-seat movie theater up there and you know what he said?’

‘I have no idea.’ Nor did Buck remotely care.

Clyde laughed, annoyingly.

‘He said, “Why do dogs lick their balls?”’

‘
What?
’

‘“Because they can!”’

Clyde rocked forward in laughter.

‘What’s so damn funny about that?’

Clyde was laughing too much to reply. Buck shook his head.

They slithered and bumped out of the pasture and down onto the road. Clyde got out to shut the gate. The clock on the dash showed it was coming up to five-thirty. They were an hour late for Buck Junior’s birthday party.

‘Is Lovelace still sitting in his trailer all day?’ Buck asked, as they headed for home.

‘Yep. Says it’s too wet.’

‘It’s too wet to feed the damn cattle, but someone’s got to do it.’

‘If you ask me, he’s past it. Way too old.’

‘I didn’t,’ Buck snapped.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t ask you. If you’re so damn smart, you go find someone better.’

‘Hey, I’m sorry, I—’

‘You’re not paying him, I am. He killed three of them. If he gets the rest before we start calving, that’s fine by me.’

Clyde held up his hands. ‘Okay, okay.’

‘And don’t “okay, okay” me either. Jesus!’ He slammed a fist on the steering wheel.

Neither of them spoke again during the twenty minutes it took to get back to the ranch house.

Kathy, Eleanor and Luke were all waiting for them. There were balloons and streamers hung across the kitchen and paper hats which Kathy insisted everyone, including Buck and Clyde, put on. Things were getting a little tense because Buck Junior was hungry and as soon as they’d got their boots and coats off, Kathy put him in his high chair and lit the single candle on his birthday cake. It was in the shape of a six-shooter. She’d made it and frosted it herself.

‘Bam!’ said the baby and everyone laughed and said it too.

They all stood around him and sang ‘Happy Birthday’. Kathy helped him blow out the candle and then had to light it again because he started to holler. A few more times and he got bored and eventually everybody got a cup of coffee and a slice of gun.

‘So what’s this young son of a gun had for his birthday?’ Buck asked.

Kathy went through the list while the baby tried to shovel chocolate cake into his mouth. Most of it seemed to end up on his face or the floor.

‘And Lane sent him a fabulous romper suit, all white and silver. Clyde said he looks like Elvis in it.’

‘He looks completely ridiculous in it,’ Clyde chipped in.

‘He does not, do you, honey? And, what else? Oh, yeah, and Mr Lovelace, would you believe it? He brought over this funny antler thing with animals carved on it.’

There was a moment of silence. Clyde darted a look at Buck.

‘Who’s Mr Lovelace, for pete’s sake?’ Eleanor asked.

Kathy suddenly realized what she’d done and seemed to be trying to think of something to say. Clyde beat her to it.

‘Oh, he’s just an old guy we’ve got doing some joinery work for us up at the house.’

Eleanor frowned. ‘That name rings a bell. Where’s he from?’

‘Over Livingston way. Used to do a lot of work for my uncle. Hey, Kathy, look! That cake’s going all over the place.’

The danger passed. Luke didn’t seem interested and Eleanor didn’t ask anymore questions. She asked Luke to fetch some more milk and went off to the other end of the kitchen to make more coffee.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Clyde hissed at Kathy over the baby’s head.

‘I just forgot, that’s all.’

‘It’s okay,’ Buck said quietly. ‘No damage done.’

He walked over to join Eleanor and Luke. What with his wolf work, the boy had been keeping strange hours and Buck had hardly seen him lately. He looked different somehow, more grown up. But kids his age were like that. Look away and they grew an inch taller.

‘Well, stranger,’ Buck said, clapping him on the back. ‘How’re you doing?’

‘I’m f-fine.’

‘Getting much wolf-tracking done in this weather?’

‘It’s a little m-muddy.’

‘So what are you and Helen finding to do up there?’

Clyde sniggered. Luke turned to look at him.

‘I’m s-sorry?’

Clyde made an innocent face. ‘Nothing.’

Kathy groaned. ‘Clyde, don’t make a fool of yourself.’

‘I didn’t say a word!’

Buck had heard the gossip himself, only the other night at The Last Resort, about how Luke and Helen Ross were supposed to be having an affair. It was preposterous. He didn’t even like to think about it, with his own love life in ruins. Luke had never shown the slightest interest in girls. His dead brother was the one who’d gotten all those particular Calder genes. In fact, at times, Buck had worried that Luke maybe batted for the other side.

The boy ignored Clyde’s idiot smirk and turned again to Buck.

‘We’re c-c-collating all the tracking data we’ve got so far.’

Buck took a mouthful of cake. ‘So where are they hanging out nowadays?’

‘Well, j-j-just lately, we haven’t been d-doing much tracking—’

‘Sure, but I mean, the last time you did.’

Luke looked him right in the eye. The boy plainly didn’t trust him at all and it stirred Buck’s temper to see it.

‘Oh, they g-g-go all over the place.’

‘Think I’ll go tell Abe or something?’

‘N-no, sir.’

‘Well, why the hell can’t you tell your own father?’

Eleanor, infuriatingly, as always, came to the boy’s rescue.

‘He can’t give away classified information, can you Luke? He’s working for the US government, remember? Now who’s going to eat the rest of this cake? Here, Clyde, more coffee.’

Buck hadn’t thought of it that way before. His own son working for the goddamn feds. And for free too. It did little to improve his mood. He suddenly realized he was the only one still wearing the damn fool paper hat. He ripped it off and chucked it on the table. In grim silence, he stood finishing his cake, while the two women twittered on about something.

‘I hope that Ross woman knows you’re going to be needed here full-time once calving starts,’ he said at last.

Everyone heard the chill in his voice. The room went quiet. Luke gave a little frown and started trying to speak. Buck cut him off. He’d had enough. The sight of the boy’s stuttering face enraged him.

‘That’s not a suggestion. It’s an order.’

And he clacked his plate down on the table and left the room.

 

With the human world beset by mire, the Hope wolves had the forest to themselves. Though much of the snow had melted, the deer and the elk had grown weak contending with it and were easy prey, even for a pack that had only two full-grown adults.

The death of an alpha male and the ensuing rivalry over who should replace him could cause a pack to fragment. But not this one. There was never a doubt over the succession, for there was only one other adult male: the collared disperser who had joined the pack as a yearling, two falls ago.

After the death of the old black killer of dog and calf, it had taken the other wolves awhile to acknowledge him. But in time they had all happily deferred. They had approached him with lowered heads and tails tucked under and rolled in fealty on their backs before him, licking up at his jaws while, haughty and benign, he stood above them.

It was the new leader’s right and duty to mate with the white alpha female. Even if there had been other adult wolves capable of mating, it would not have been permitted. Only the alpha pair of any pack could breed.

But the new king was now a cripple. The month-old wound made by the wolfer’s snare had festered and the wolf had lain for many days among rocks and rotting timber in a cluttered creekside crevice, licking his foot and daily growing thinner and weaker.

Perhaps because the alpha female and the three remaining pups knew that their survival as a pack depended on him, they tended him and stood watching him and brought him food back from their hunts.

And as January drew to a close and the weather grew cold again, the alpha female started to bleed in readiness and would lie with him in the cave and lick his face and, if he let her, his wound as well. And he would lick her too and sometimes struggle to his feet and go with her to the creek to drink and they would stand there and he would nuzzle her and place his swollen, seeping paw across her shoulders.

Had another male disperser passed through, he might well have laid claim to the stricken pack and its alpha female. And she might well have allowed herself to be wooed and won. But none came.

And in the first week of February, with the windless world again freezing hard and the snow falling in feathered flakes upon and about them, the white queen coupled with her maimed king and they stood tied together for a long time, while the three surviving pups watched silently from across the creek.

 

On that same night, away across the blanketed forest, Luke and Helen lay naked and entwined in the candlelit cabin.

She was sleeping, curled like a fetus upon him. Her head was on his chest and he could feel her breath, warm and soft and slow, on his skin. Her left leg lay across the top of his thighs and he could feel the gentle rise and fall of her belly against his hip. He was aware of every inch of her, of every textured nuance of her flesh. He would never have guessed his body could be so thoroughly and so constantly alive.

His earliest attempts to be her lover had been fumbling and feeble. In those first few days after she came back, after their kiss in the car, it was always over as soon as it had begun. He’d felt infantile and wretched and wondered why she didn’t laugh at him or tell him to go and get lost, which was what he thought women always did to men who couldn’t hack it.

But she’d told him it didn’t matter and helped him to relax and, after awhile, he found he could do it. And it was more wonderful than he’d ever dreamed or dared imagine. And not just because of the vivid, flesh-quaking feel of it, but because it made him see he wasn’t just a useless, stuttering boy anymore and that maybe he was ready, at last, to step into life. And all this, as well as so much more, he owed to Helen.

The candle on the chair beside the bunk had burned low and the flame began its final throes, making their joined shadow leap and bob on the cabin wall beside him. He reached out, carefully, trying not to wake her, and snuffed it out between his fingers. Helen stirred and murmured. She tucked her hand for warmth into the hollow of his arm and moved her leg and then settled again into sleep. He pulled the sleeping bag up over her shoulders and wrapped his arm around her, holding her to him securely and breathing the warm and wondrous smell of her.

He thought of that day in early fall when he’d taken her to where the wolves had denned and how she had gotten him to slither down into the hole as she had done. He remembered lying there alone in total darkness, and thinking it was a perfect place to die.

And now he knew he was wrong. This, here, now, in darkness just as black, but with this other living creature in his arms. This was the perfect place.

30

T
he trial of Abraham Edgar Harding took place in late February and its third and final day was drawing to a doleful and predictable close. It was too warm to snow and too cold to rain and a compromise of sleet angled unforgivingly on the sorry band of Harding supporters who trudged up and down in the leaden light outside the Helena federal district court building.

From the Saharan warmth of inside, Dan stood surveying them through a corridor window, while he waited for Helen to come back from the restroom. The jury had been out for half an hour and he wondered what on earth could be taking them so long.

Outside, there were only eight demonstrators left and even as he counted, one more broke away and headed forlornly for his car. Spurred by his defection, the others boosted the volume of their chant, though from inside, it was like the dying drone of a bee in a bell jar.

On the first morning there had been fifty or sixty of them there, corralled by almost as many police at a safe distance from a smaller but equally voluble band of ‘pro-wolfers’. To the evident satisfaction of the assembled pack of photographers, press and TV reporters, the two sides heckled, chanted and brandished placards of varying degrees of wit and literacy.

Some of the slogans had a pleasing symmetry: NO WOLVES, NO WAY! was mirrored merrily across the street by WOLVES, WAY! Some were more sinister, such as the one being touted by a dourly bearded young man whom Dan thought he remembered from the night of the meeting. He wore a camouflaged hunting cap and jacket and boots laced up to his knees. His placard said, FIRST WACO, NOW WOLVES.