Wolf Stalker (8 page)

“And strong,” Mike said. “That's how he could survive this. He's in beautiful condition.”

“Dad, Troy noticed something weird,” Jack said. “There's a bullet fragment in the radio collar. Check the battery pack.”

Steven leaned over, but Mike got down on all fours to get a closer look. “So he was shot head-on. Looks like an exploding bullet hit the battery pack from the front,” Mike said. “Then how did he get wounded in the ribs?”

“Obviously there had to be two shots, one from the front and one from the back. See?” With her finger, Olivia traced the bloody path the bullet had taken, back to front, along the rib cage.

“No, Mom, there was only one shot,” Ashley insisted. “Ask Jack. Ask Troy.”

Frowning, Mike took off his cap and rubbed his forehead. “Steve, you better take a lot of close-up photographs of the collar and the wound on his side. There's something screwy here.”

While Steven photographed the unconscious animal from several angles, Olivia pulled another syringe from her pack. She frowned, shook her head a little, and announced, “I have to tell you, this one scares me. It's a tough call.”

“What, Mom?” Jack and Ashley both asked.

“Whether or not I should give him a tranquilizer. If I don't, he might wake up when we move him onto the stretcher, and if he panics he could savage himself and hurt us, too. If I do tranquilize him—and he's already so weak—it might—”

She didn't finish, but Jack knew what she meant. It might kill him.

“You make the call, Olivia,” Mike told her. When he saw how worried she looked, he added, “We could tie a bandanna around his muzzle so if he does wake up, he can't bite.”

“Yeah, we ought to do that too,” Olivia said, “but that part bothers me least. If he wakes up and goes ballistic, he'll start to bleed again.” She took a deep breath. “I better do it.” After she administered the tranquilizer, she rubbed the wolf's side, then leaned back on her heels.

Mike waited a minute or so before he asked, “Is he out now?”

“He's been pretty much unconscious all along,” Olivia answered. “Now he's deeply unconscious. He won't feel a thing when we move him.”

“Then I'm gonna pop that radio collar off him. I want to take a better look at it.” Mike clicked out the blade of a big hunting knife and used it to unscrew two fasteners that held together the overlapping ends of the collar. When he tugged it, the collar snapped open. He must have done that before, Jack thought, because it looked like he knew what he was doing.

The edges of the rectangular battery pack stuck out in uneven shards. “That had to be one powerful bullet,” Mike said. “It's the kind that bursts into fragments on impact.” He reached out as though to pull something off the rough edge, then abruptly jerked back his hand.

Troy had been watching the whole procedure closely, as though daring Mike to handle Silver with anything less than the utmost care. “What's wrong?” he asked.

“There's something stuck on his collar. Right here, where the edge is shredded. It's hair.”

“So?” Troy asked.

“It's not wolf hair.”

All of them crowded around to see, but Mike made them move back. “Get me one of those big plastic bags, Olivia,” he said. “The kind you can seal. We need to examine this and see what kind of animal it came from.”

“Probably a deer,” Steven suggested. “Or maybe a moose calf—whatever the wolf had for lunch.”

“I don't think so. Wrong color hair. We'll check it out when we get back.” Mike dropped the whole collar into the bag, then sealed it shut.

“OK, time to move him,” Olivia decided. She stood up, brushing dirt and pine needles from her jeans. “We need four strong people to carry the stretcher—we'll be going over some rough terrain so it's got to stay as steady as possible.”

“I want the stretcher,” Troy declared.

“Good—Mike and Steve and Troy and I,” Olivia said. “Ashley and Jack, you bring the horses. But before we start—did all you kids get something to eat?”

“I don't want anything.” Troy hovered over the wolf until Olivia made him move away. The muscle relaxant and tranquilizer had both started to take effect: the wolf was a floppy, dead weight as they carefully lifted him onto the stretcher. His tongue hung out, long and pink.

When the campfire had been thoroughly extinguished, Jack and Ashley ran down to get the horses. Jack tied the reins of one horse to the saddle horn of another so he could lead two at the same time. Ashley followed with the third.

It was slow going with the wolf, and Jack and Ashley often found themselves far ahead of the others, which was just as well, because the horses were still skittery from the wolf scent. While they waited for the stretcher-bearers to catch up, Jack watched Troy, surprised how sure-footed he was for a city kid, even with those worn-out sneakers. Since the whole trek was downhill and bumpy, maneuvering the stretcher to keep it level was tricky, but Troy managed.

Every so often they stopped so that Olivia could listen to the wolf's heartbeat with a stethoscope, to make sure he was breathing. Each time, from her expression, Jack knew it was OK. So far the wolf was still alive.

When they reached the flat, grassy meadow next to the creek, a helicopter waited, its rotors turning slowly. Not till then did Jack realize how tired he was. Soon they'd be going home, and he could sleep in his own bed. Would home seem the same as it always had? He didn't think so. Not after all that had happened in the past 24 hours.

Then his mother surprised him by saying, “This wolf shooting has complicated things. I'm afraid you kids will have to miss a school day tomorrow. We're going to stay here a little longer to sort things out.”

I
t was past nine in the morning when they reached the tourist cabins at Mammoth Hot Springs. Their gear had already been stowed into two adjoining rooms with a connecting door between.

“Guys in one room; girls in the other,” Steven announced, pointing Jack and Troy toward the narrow beds. Jack didn't need much persuasion; he zoned out like a broken circuit the minute his head hit the pillow.

Much later, Troy's prowling awakened him. Groggy, Jack mumbled, “What time is it?”

“Goin' on four,” Troy answered. “Your mom's in there waiting for your sister to wake up. Your mom promised I could go see Silver.”

“Where's my dad?” Jack asked.

“I dunno. He left with Mike. They kept asking me a lot of questions about the gunshot—saying there had to be two shots. I told them they were wrong.”

Still pacing, Troy made a quick turn and knocked over a chair. When it hit the bare wooden floor with a clatter, Olivia cried out from the next room, “What was that?” In a sleepy voice, Ashley echoed, “Yeah. What happened?”

“A chair fell over,” Troy called out. From the slight grin that curled Troy's lips, Jack realized it had been no accident. “Did I wake Ashley? Hey, I'm sorry! So can we go see Silver now?”

Jack sat up on the side of the bed and began to pull on his boots. “I'll be ready right away,” he said.

Looking a bit apologetic, Olivia came into the room. “Sorry, not this time,” she told Jack. “Too many visitors at once would spook the wolf. Even though he's conscious now, he's still pretty much traumatized.” Smoothing Jack's tousled hair, she added softly, “I already promised Troy he could be the first one to visit. You and Ashley will get your turns; you'll just have to wait.”

Jack might have been more disappointed if his father hadn't arrived just at that moment, shoving open the cabin door. He'd been waiting for a chance to tell his dad about the wolf pictures.

“You're up, Jack. Good!” Steven said. “Mike wants to ask you something.”

“About the rifle shot? I'll tell him the same thing Troy did. There was only one shot.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. And Dad, I didn't tell you this before, but I took some pictures of where the guy was standing. The guy with the gun. I mean, I didn't take pictures of him, because I couldn't really see him. He was too far away and I only had my little point-and-shoot camera and anyway he was hiding in the trees. But at least it will show where he was.”

“Mmmmm.” Steven frowned. “I'll let Mike know.”

“But Dad,” Jack continued, “this is even more important. I think I got some really great pictures of the wolf. When are we going home so you can develop the film for me?”

Steven was still thinking hard. “We'll be here at least till early tomorrow morning,” he said. “But I think there's a working photo lab in the park administration building. Maybe we ought to develop your film right here, right now.”

“Why, Dad? I don't want anything to mess up those wolf negatives!”

“Because there might be a chance—just a small chance—that we could see something on the pictures of the guy with the gun. I know it's a long shot—” Steven laughed. “Yeah, it really was a long shot for your camera, wasn't it—300 or 400 hundred yards? Or maybe more than that. And he was hiding in shadow. But sometimes—you never know—pictures can be computer-enhanced to bring out details you wouldn't otherwise see. Where's the film?”

Jack handed over his camera, then crossed the room to stick his head under the cold-water faucet at the small sink. The sink was the only “facility” in the cabin. For showers and other plumbing, they needed to hike across the parking lot to the bathhouse. Jack felt pretty grimy and he smelled like a campfire, but since Steven seemed to be in a hurry, he just doused his face with cold water. That woke him up fast.

He was rubbing his head with a towel when Olivia came back into the room. “Before you guys go,” she said, “we need to coordinate our plans. Troy's going with me. Jack's going with you, Steve. What about Ashley?”

“I guess she better come along with Jack and me,” Steven answered.

“OK. Let's all try to meet at the hotel lobby by 5:30. These kids need a good meal. Troy, come on. We can leave now.” As Troy followed Olivia through the door to the outside, he asked her, “Can we call the police about my mother before we go see Silver?”

Steven shook his head slightly, a look Olivia caught. “Why don't we wait till a little later for that, Troy?” she suggested. “We want to get to the wolf pen before the sun's too low.”

After they'd gone, Steven asked, “Ready, kids?”

“Ready.” Their parkas would be too warm now, so both of them pulled on the thick sweatshirts Olivia had packed for them. While they walked along the paved road toward the administration building, Steven remarked, “Poor Troy. He keeps asking, and I hate to have to keep telling him—we still don't know what happened to his mother. The longer we don't hear anything, the more likely it is that she just took off and abandoned him.”

“No way, Dad,” Ashley said. “Last night Troy told us all about his mom. She'd never just leave him.”

Steven didn't answer, but he looked down at Ashley in that grown-up way both kids hated, as though innocent children couldn't possibly understand the ways of the real world. Jack was about to add, “She's right, Dad,” but his father's expression dampened the words before they came out. Sometimes it was adults who just didn't understand. Or didn't trust enough.

As they neared the building they saw Mike hurriedly crossing the road toward them.

“Hey, Mike. What's the rush?” Steven asked him.

“Tryin' to get away from those guys.” Mike tossed his head toward a rusty pickup truck, with huge tires, peeling out of the parking lot. Inside the cab, three big men were crammed together.

“Who are they?”

“A posse of angry ranchers.”

“What'd they want from you?” Steven asked.

“I didn't wait to find out. Soon as I opened the door and heard them yellin' inside about wolves endangering their livestock, I just turned around and scooted right back out.” Mike grinned guiltily over his narrow escape. “I did hear one thing, though, before I closed the door. They were saying George Campbell's dog, the one that got killed by the wolves, was worth a thousand dollars.”

“A thousand? We heard him say 500 on the radio,” Jack mentioned.

“Shoot! I know for a fact,” Mike told them, “Campbell got the dog from an old rancher who lives out past Gardiner, and that rancher never charged more than 20 bucks for a weaned pup. I have an idea the price goes up every time George Campbell tells his story.” Mike chuckled, then asked, “Where are you guys off to now?”

Steven held out his hand to show Mike the roll of film and answered, “Jack and I need to develop this. He took a few pictures that might show something useful, if we're lucky. But probably not.”

“How 'bout if I borrow Ashley for a while?” Mike suggested. “I'd like to check out what each of the three kids remembers about the shooting, one at a time. I can take her to the ice-cream shop—”

“Yes!” Ashley cried. “I've got a great memory! I'll tell you everything that happened.”

Steven rolled his eyes. “Ashley'll confess to anything if you buy her a chocolate sundae. We're meeting at the Lodge at 5:30, Mike.”

“Sounds good. See you then.”

The darkroom was located in the basement—dark-rooms were almost always in basements, because less outside light reached them that way. After Steven checked all the equipment and jugs of chemical solutions, he turned out the lights to begin processing the film.

Jack remembered the first time his father had taken him into their darkroom at home. He'd been not quite eight years old, and excited to be initiated into the mysteries of his father's work. The total blackness hadn't frightened him because he could sense his father's nearness, and all the while, Steven kept talking, explaining everything he did.

At that time Jack had been reading a book about the first Indians who'd lived near the Teton Mountains, deep inside caves lit only by small, smoky fires. If the fires went out, the caves became so black that nothing real could be seen, but after a while, the eyes of the imagination played tricks, and real-looking images would appear before them in the darkness. They thought it was magic. Then Indian fathers would tell their sons about hunting with spears and arrows, and teach them to beg forgiveness of the animals they killed for food.

Two thousand years later, when Jack first stood in the total blackness of his father's darkroom, and Steven explained to him how to develop film, he'd thought of those early Indians in their dark caves. Because images began to appear to Jack then, growing clearer and clearer in the developer trays. They were the animals Steven had captured on film with his camera. Watching them come forth from blank paper, shaping themselves into bears and cougars and bison right in front of his eyes—it had seemed like magic to Jack, too.

Now he waited, hoping that his own pictures would turn out perfect. In his mind's eye, in this darkness, he remembered how the wolf had stared at him with those yellow eyes, alert and unafraid. He wanted to show his mother just how majestic the wolf had been before the bullet slammed against his body. As his father lifted the strip of color negatives from the stabilizer solution, Jack crossed his fingers. Were they any good?

He lost all track of time. After the negatives dried, his father let Jack put them into the enlarger. There were ten prints. The four of the mule deer when the wolves had chased it across the creek were too out of focus to be any good. There were three of the wolf, and three others of where the gunman had stood. The rest of the negatives, blank because they were unexposed, Jack threw away.

They loaded paper into the tube and began to process the prints. When the lights came on and the prints emerged from the processor, Jack let out the breath he'd been holding. The wolf pictures were going to be beautiful! He waited for his father to exclaim over them, but Steven just stood there, acting puzzled.

“I don't get this,” Steven said.

“Dad!” It was a cry of disappointment. “What about my wolf shots? Are any of them any good?”

“What! Oh—Jack—they're so good I'll need a half hour just to tell you how great they are. It's these other pictures I can't figure out.”

“I know the deer pictures are out of focus—it was moving too fast.”

“No—these.” Steven held up the strip of negatives to examine them. “First I thought maybe it was a flaw in the film, but the negatives are fine. Look at that—” He pointed. “In the negs it's a little green dot; in the prints it's a bright red dot. It's on all three pictures of where you said the gunman was standing.”

Lifting the wet prints carefully, one by one, touching them only on the corners, Jack saw what his father meant. Each of the three prints showed foothills, a clump of pine trees—and a red dot in the middle of the trees. The dots were tiny, like pinpoints of red light, although one of them seemed to have a small halo around it.

“Maybe it's sun reflecting off something,” Jack suggested, but Steven answered, “No, sunlight reflects white, not red. Oh well, you ought to be really happy with your wolf pictures, son. As soon as we get home, I'm going to enlarge them and frame them for your room. But we gotta go now to meet your mom and Troy and Mike and Ashley, so we'll let these prints dry and pick them up later.”

“Take the negatives!” Jack insisted. Prints weren't too important—he could always make extra prints, as many as he wanted. Negatives, though, were irreplaceable.

Everyone met in the hotel lobby and then hurried across the street to the restaurant, because by that time the kids were really starved. At least Jack was; Troy looked gloomy and Ashley had already eaten a chocolate sundae, so maybe she wasn't too hungry.

After they ordered, Mike said, “Take a look out the windows, guys. We have visitors.”

A herd of elk had arrived at the restaurant for dinner, too, but they were dining on the front lawn, literally. A big bull elk, with an impressive rack of antlers, lay comfortably on his belly, chewing his cud and wiggling his ears to drive away flies. His harem of three elk cows stood nearby, heads down, munching the lawn. Two middle-size calves faced away from them, providing a super view of their pale rumps to the watchers at the restaurant window.

Olivia put her arm around Troy's shoulders. “These are the animals I work with, Troy, down at the Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole. Every winter whole herds of them migrate from Yellowstone to get fed at the refuge. And they don't just come from here. They come from all the higher ranges in the Tetons, too. We get 10,000 head of elk coming into the refuge every winter, and for each animal, each day, we put out 10 pounds of hay.”

“Hay! That's a lot!” Ashley joked.

Troy didn't answer.

A day ago Jack would have thought he was just being surly; now he realized how much Troy was hurting inside, about his mother.

“If we didn't help feed them, a lot of the elk would starve over the winter,” Olivia said.

Across the road an even bigger bull elk, with even grander antlers, shook himself and pawed the ground with his right front hoof. He seemed to be putting on a lusty display for the benefit of the cows. As he bent down to scrape his antlers against the grass, his powerful shoulder muscles bunched up; then he lifted his head and bugled. Even from inside the restaurant, with the doors and windows closed, his bugling sounded impressive.

“I like wolf song better,” Ashley admitted.

Their food arrived then, and the six of them sat around the table, eating and talking—all except Troy, who didn't do much of either.