Red Wolf

…

PROLOGUE

The boy was tied to the courtyard post by his wrists. The rest of the students had to gather around and watch, as if the whipping was a powwow at the summer camp of The People. The whip was made of rawhide strips, each with a knot at the end. They ate into the flesh of his back and coiled around his ribcage. It was worse than any pain he had ever felt, but he bit down on his lip until he tasted blood and didn’t cry out. The other boys were silent until the very end, and then a strange thing happened: one started to stomp his boot on the ground in a slow, mournful rhythm, like a drumbeat. Another boy picked up the rhythm, and another, and another, until every boy in the school stomped as one, until the ground pulsed, until the master had shouted himself hoarse.

CHAPTER   ONE

The Algonquian Wilderness

Ontario, Canada

1885

The men slowly reached for their rifles, eyes searching through the lengthening shadows. They appeared calm, almost serene, but the moment they set eyes on the wolves, fear had tainted their sweat. Tall-Legs had discerned the change. He signalled Tika and the pups to drop to the ground. The Uprights he had encountered in his six years of life were not a threat to him, or he to them. They didn’t have the teeth, claws, and speed of his kind, or the formidable antlers and hind legs of the moose or elk. But these Uprights were different. Their pungent odour burned his nostrils. The hackles rose along his spine and his heart beat faster. However, hunger gnawed at his stomach and the meat that lay on the trestle table was tempting. He crouched low, his sensitive nose taking in every detail.

The big one’s mine, the lumberjack drawled, his hand inching toward the rifle that was propped at his side. Nice and slow. Don’t scare ’em off.

Tall-Legs turned to flee.

The bullet caught him in the ribcage, the impact arcing him into the air. He yelped and thudded to the ground, legs twitching. With explosions reverberating around him, one pup whirled and bolted. He had covered a hundred yards before he realized he was alone. He crouched to wait for his family, peering back toward the camp. Everything was still, but his nose and ears told him that something terrible had happened. His paws wanted to flee, but he needed his mother. Taking advantage of the tree cover, he slunk toward her.

Tika lay on her side, her head turned toward him, her yellow eyes demanding that he not approach. He flattened himself on the forest floor, his coat melding with the underbrush, one of his ears pointing skyward in a triangle, the other folded in half. He rested his head on his paws and whimpered softly.

One of the Uprights moved warily toward Tall-Legs and kicked the big wolf in the ribs. The pup cringed, but Tall-Legs made no movement and no sound.

There’s a good pelt on this one. I’ll set to skinnin’ him after supper.

The smallest pup of the litter lolled with his head resting on his sister’s hindquarters. The third pup lay alone. An Upright approached them and kicked each one. The pup with the crooked ear flinched, but his siblings didn’t leap up and run away. They remained still and silent.

The pelts on these young ’uns won’t be worth much. They’re too small, not worth the effort to skin.

We still need the tails for the bounty.

Yeah, just cut the brushes off.

Crooked Ear heard the crunch of blade on bone then his sister’s tail flew through the air, landing with barely a thud on the ground by the tents, the smell of her blood mingling with the choking scent of gunfire.

Another Upright warily approached Tika. This one’s still alive! he shrieked, leaping away like a frightened hare.

Tika was gazing into Crooked Ear’s eyes when the final bullet tore through her body, lifting her slightly from the ground. Crooked Ear turned and fled.

There’s another one!

The lumberjacks unleashed a hail of bullets.

Crooked Ear raced into the darkness of the forest.

All night he ran, instinct leading him to the protected places where the moon barely reached the forest floor. He no longer ran with the playfulness of youth. His puppy days were over. By daybreak his pads were sore and his muscles ached. With heaving flanks, he quenched his thirst at a stream. A tree had blown over, wrenching a large bundle of roots from the earth, leaving a sandy hollow in the ground. He collapsed into it, tucking his nose to his flank and encircling his body with his tail. But even as he slept, his legs still ran, and he whimpered and yelped.

When he awoke, the day was done and darkness was once more settling over the forest. Bounding onto the trunk of the fallen tree, he threw back his head and howled, straining to hear any far-off reply from his pack, but only the hoot of an owl answered his call.

He was alone.

Softly jumping back to the forest floor, he paced in circles, head to the ground, nose urgently snuffling through the dried needles. He scrabbled at a rotting log until it disintegrated and beetles scurried in all directions. He pounced on one, then another, his indecisiveness allowing each to get away. Probing the remainder of the log, he unearthed a nest of plump white larvae. He curled back his lips and daintily picked up a fat grub in his front teeth. Deciding they were edible, he devoured all of them.

The hollow under the fallen tree still retained his odour and warmth, and he stayed there for some time. He heard the squeak of a mouse, but it flew through the sky clutched in the talons of a red-tailed hawk. Settling on the limb of a nearby pine, the raptor thrust her beak into the mouse’s skull, then delicately peeled the skin from the flesh and ate the body in a single gulp. The scrap of fur fell through the pine fronds. Crooked Ear pounced on it and swallowed. Then suddenly he was running again.

With each rise of the moon his pace slowed. Grubs and small rodents did not stave off his hunger. He inhaled the different scents, separating one from another, identifying them, judging their distance. One made him drool. His paws followed his nostrils until he saw a mallard in the wetland. He crouched in the rushes and advanced on his belly, but when he lunged, the duck rose up on beating wings, its webbed feet treading the air, and Crooked Ear sank into the shallows with nothing more than a mouthful of feathers.

He recognized another delicious smell. The rabbit moved toward him with rocking hops, nibbling the grass. It stopped abruptly. For a fraction of a heartbeat it tried to bolt for cover, but Crooked Ear’s jaws closed on its neck. Within a minute nothing remained.

Fate, it seemed, had brought Crooked Ear to the summer territory of The People. He had picked up the scent of Upright miles away, not the frightening odour of lumberjacks and their exploding sticks, but the gentler smell of those who had lived at Clear Lake where he had been born. He howled, but there was no reply.

The People heard his cry, but were too preoccupied to indulge in wolf talk the way they had in the past. They were worried about the pale-faced people moving up from the south, cutting down the great white pines. Travellers told stories that seemed impossible to believe: tales of limbless tree trunks being dragged away by teams of horses and floated down the river to another world; accounts of severed stumps, the girth of ten men; reports of a vast dead land where there was no birdsong, no chittering of squirrels and chipmunks, no deer, no elk, nothing! Nothing except the strangers who wanted to take all the land for themselves and their four-leggeds.

Night after night The People sat around campfires discussing the latest news, trying to reach a decision about what they should do. They sat in big circles and small. They smoked, sang, drummed, and prayed. For generations they had been able to talk and listen until everyone was in agreement, but the more they talked, the more obvious it became that there was little agreement and that nobody knew what to do.

Crooked Ear was afraid to approach the pack of The People uninvited, yet he could not move on. He paced the periphery of their territory, howling each night and listening for a reply that would invite him to draw near. When his forlorn call was answered, he bolted toward the howl and slithered to a stop in front of a small Upright.

Boy and wolf had not met face-to-face before, but each had a vague sensation that they knew the other. More than two moons had come and gone since they had both lived at Clear Lake, the wolf in the forest on the ridge, the boy in the winter camp on the beach below. It had been a crisp, clear night, right after the spring elk hunt, when wolf and human bellies were fuller than they had been all winter. The moon had risen and the sound of drumming pulsed across the ridge. The wolves had trotted to the outcrop of smooth ancient slabs that tilted toward the crest of the ridge and had listened to the strains of The People. Then, in a tradition as old as the rocks on which they stood, the alpha had thrown back his head and howled. The sound travelled easily through the still night air. The People heard and responded.

Crooked Ear had weaved through the pack that night and trotted to the highest spot on the ridge. Silhouetted against the star-studded sky and clearly distinguished by his ears, one pointing like a triangle to the sky, the other folded in half, the young wolf had thrown back his head and given his first puppy howl. Down on the beach, close to the fire, wrapped in his grandfather’s blanket, the boy had cupped his hands around his mouth and howled a reply.

Now, face-to-face with the child, the young wolf bowed down on his front legs, haunches pointed skyward, lowered ears and waving tail gesturing submission and friendship.

HeWhoWhistles blocked his son from running toward the wolf pup. He is small, but his teeth are sharp.

Where is his mother? Red Wolf asked.

If she was close, she would speak, HeWho-

Whistles replied. I fear she is dead.

Crooked Ear rolled onto his back, exposing his vulnerable soft belly to the new pack. It was a gesture that The People understood. He says that he will not harm us. He wants to be friends.

HeWhoWhistles approached the young wolf slowly and squatted a few feet away, but when he reached out to stroke the pup’s head, Crooked Ear scrambled to his feet and jumped back.

Compassion filled HeWhoWhistles’ heart. He is starving. Look at his ribs!

Red Wolf tugged at his father’s hand. Can we feed him?

Yes, son, the hunting has been good. We have meat. Go get some.

When the child returned with chunks of venison, it didn’t take long for the pup to eat from his hand. Then, with his hunger satisfied, he leaned his head into the gentle touch of the small human. For the first time in weeks the pup was content.

The days were warm and long and Crooked Ear’s rough, malnourished puppy fur was replaced by the sleek coat of a healthy juvenile. His loneliness vanished along with the hunger in his belly. He was as comfortable with the small Upright as he had been with his brothers and sister, rubbing against him, pushing his head under the soft hairless hands, licking the smooth flat face, and encouraging him to romp like a wolf pup. The boy understood the games but yelped louder than any wolf pup when Crooked Ear nipped or scratched him. The noise startled Crooked Ear so much that he soon learned to play with soft paws and gentle mouth.

Crooked Ear was cautious around the other Uprights. They were unpredictable. They might ignore him, or they might run at him waving their arms and shouting. Sometimes they hurled sticks and stones in his direction. When that happened, he ran into the forest. He caught mice and, if he was lucky, a rabbit or a grouse, but after a while he returned to the human pack, slipping in and out of the shadows and flattening himself into the undergrowth until his senses told him that it was safe to go to the boy.

At nighttime when The People went into their dwellings, HeWhoWhistles sent Crooked Ear away. The wolf is a wild creature, he told his son. He must to learn to take care of himself so he can live wild and free, the way the Great Spirit intended. He has his own path to walk and we must let him find it.

But when all was still, Crooked Ear crept back. He listened for the rhythmic breathing of the family and lay down against the wall of the wiigwam, closest to where the boy slept. At dawn, before The People stirred, he stole back into the bush and waited patiently until the boy came looking for him.

Crooked Ear had become accustomed to the smells of The People, but one day his nostrils quivered at an unfamiliar odour. He didn’t like it. He whined softly. The People didn’t seem alarmed by the smell, and the boy ignored his warning, so Crooked Ear took refuge in the forest.

Red Wolf was the first to see the stranger as he rode into camp. But it was the horse that captured his attention, not the heavyset man or the dog that accompanied them. The child had never seen such a beautiful creature. Its coat gleamed in the sunlight like beech leaves in autumn, and its mane flowed over its neck and shoulder, like a waterfall.

The man heaved himself from the saddle, hitched the horse to a tree and, moving with the discomfort of one who had spent too many hours in the saddle, approached the gathering group of people.

The boy ignored his father’s command to sit in the circle. Instead, he stood close to the horse, captivated, as it delicately tugged leaves from the tree and worked to get them past the heavy metal bit. Green slobber frothed from the animal’s lips and a sodden mess fell to the ground. Red Wolf laughed.

The stranger was a white-skin, but he spoke in Algonquian, a language that had the same roots as their own Anishnaabemowin, and was not hard for The People to understand. He told them he was the government Indian agent, and that loggers would soon be moving into the area. He said they must pack up their wiigwams and leave immediately.

We live on this land, the chief stated. They cannot cut trees here. We hunt and —

The land’s been sold, the agent interrupted.

Sold?