The Loop

by Nicholas Evans

  They rattled over a cattle guard and past a wooden sign that said CALDER RANCH. There was a smaller one beside it, freshly painted, which said simply HICKS. Dan assumed there was no pun intended.

  They drove beneath the skull and followed the road for another mile, winding among small, scrub-covered hills, until the Calder ranch house loomed ahead of them. It stood assertively on the south-facing slope of a low bluff which no doubt afforded shelter from the winter blizzards as well as a commanding view of the best pastures of the Calder domain. The house was built of stout, whitewashed timber and though it was on two stories, its great length made it seem low and anchored immutably to the land.

  Below it lay a wide cement yard, on one side of which stood an imposing set of freshly painted white barns, and on the other three silver feed silos which towered like missiles above a network of corrals. In the pasture that fell away beyond, a wide-crowned cottonwood grew from the shell of a Model T Ford, rusted the same shade as the horses that grazed around it. They lifted their heads to watch the pickup and its train of dust go by.

  They forked left and two miles farther up the road they crested another hill and saw, in the gathering dusk, the dark red shape of the Hicks’ house. Rimmer slowed so they could take in the scene.

  There were six or seven vehicles parked in front and though partly obscured by the corner of the house, a small crowd could be seen around the rear porch. Someone seemed to have a spotlight on and every so often there was the flash of a camera. Dan sighed.

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Sure looks like a circus.’

  ‘Yeah. And here come the clowns.’

  ‘I was thinking more of the Roman kind, you know, where they feed you to the lions.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Bill.’

  They parked along with the other cars and made their way up to the house and around to the back where all the people were. Someone was talking and Dan recognized the voice right away.

  Up on the porch, in a flood of light, a young TV reporter was interviewing Buck Calder. She was wearing a red suit that looked a good two sizes too small for her. Calder towered above her. He was tall, almost as tall as Bill Rimmer, and much more powerfully built. His shoulders were as wide as the window behind him.

  He wore a light-colored Stetson and a white snap-button shirt that set off his tan. His eyes gleamed a pale gray-blue in the TV lights and Dan realized it was the eyes even more than the man’s physique that gave the impression of power. They were locked on the young reporter with such smiling intensity that she seemed mesmerized. Dan had expected to see the grandfather he knew Calder to be. But here instead was a man in his prime, who clearly knew the effect his confidence had on others.

  Alongside him, looking a lot less comfortable, were Kathy and Clyde Hicks. Kathy was holding the baby who was staring at his grandfather, eyes wide with wonder. There was a table beside them with something bulky and yellow on it and it took Dan awhile to realize it was the dead dog.

  ‘The wolf is a killing machine,’ Calder was saying. ‘He’ll take anything he can. And if it wasn’t for this poor, brave dog here he’d have taken my little grandson. Though I reckon Buck Junior here might have given him a sock on the jaw first.’

  The crowd laughed. There were about a dozen people there. The photographer and a young man taking notes were from the local newspaper; Dan had seen them before. Who the others were, he had no idea. Probably neighbors and family. There were two faces that he kept going back to: a graceful woman, in her mid-forties, Dan guessed, and a tall young man, probably in his late teens, beside her. They were standing in the shadows, a little way back from the rest. Dan noticed how neither of them joined in the laughter,

  ‘Calder’s wife and son,’ Rimmer whispered.

  The woman had thick black hair, streaked with gray and loosely pinned up to show a long, pale neck. There was a kind of melancholy beauty about her that was echoed in the face of her son.

  Everything had suddenly gone quiet up on the porch. The TV reporter, entranced by Calder’s gaze, had blanked. Calder grinned at her with teeth white and perfect as a movie star’s.

  ‘You going to ask me another question, sweetheart, or are we about done here?’

  The laughter this time made her blush. She looked around at the cameraman, who nodded.

  ‘I think we’re done,’ she said. ‘Thank you Mr Calder. Very much. That was really, really . . . great.’

  Calder nodded then looked over the heads to where Dan and Rimmer were standing and gave them a little wave. Everyone turned to look at them.

  ‘I can see a couple of fellas over there who you might like to ask a few questions too. I know I’ve got one or two for them.’

  From the darkness of the barn, Luke Calder looked out across the yard to where they were doing the necropsy. He was just inside the open door, kneeling beside Maddie and stroking her. She was lying with her head on her paws and every now and then she would whimper and lift her head and look up at him, licking her grizzled old lips, and Luke would stroke her some more till she settled again.

  Rimmer had the Labrador laid out on clear plastic sheeting on the tailgate of his pickup. He’d rigged up some lamps so he could see what he was doing with his knife. The other guy who’d come with him, the wolf expert, was videoing it, while Luke’s father and Clyde stood to one side, looking on in silence. His mother and Kathy were inside getting supper ready. Everyone else had at last, thank God, gone home.

  That nightmare of a woman from the TV station had asked if she could stay and film the necropsy too but Rimmer had said no. The wolf guy, Prior, had agreed to answer a few of her dumb questions, basically telling her nothing, then politely sent her packing because they needed to get on with the job while the dog’s corpse was still fresh.

  They were skinning him like a deer, Rimmer talking all the while for the video, saying out loud what he was doing and what he could see. Luke could see him peeling Prince’s hide away like elastic from the bloody pink muscle.

  ‘Severe internal hemorrhaging and more bite marks here at the base of the neck. Real deep puncture wounds. Can you see that Dan? Here, I’ll measure them. These incisor holes are nearly two inches apart. That’s a big animal.’

  It must have been the alpha male, Luke thought, the big black one.

  Luke had known for many months that there were wolves up there. He’d first heard them in the deep of winter when the backcountry lay thick with snow and he was out on his skis where he most liked to be, as far away from the world as you could get.

  He’d found tracks and knew at once they were too big for any coyote, and he’d followed them and found the carcass of a fresh-killed elk.

  Then, one day in April, he’d seen the black one.

  First on skis, then on foot, he’d climbed to the top of a high ridge and had stopped there to rest. It was a cloudless day, still icy but with a promise of spring. And as he sat there on a rock, gazing down into the next valley, he saw the wolf trot out from the trees. It made its way across a small meadow of melting snow at the higher end of which was a slope, cluttered with sliprock and blowdown. The wolf had simply vanished into it, leaving Luke to wonder if he’d dreamed the whole episode.

  It was where the mother had denned. And in the weeks that followed, Luke saw the others. When the snow melted, he would ride up there, always making sure to stay downwind, tying Moon Eye a good way off and climbing to the top of the same ridge. He would slither the last few yards on his belly, with binoculars ready in his hands, elbowing his way through the rocks until he could see down into the meadow. And he would lie there for hours at a time, sometimes seeing none, sometimes all of them.

  He had told no one.

  Then, one afternoon in the first week of May, he saw the pups. They were still fluffy and dark and none too sure of their feet and all five of them had come stumbling out from the den, blinking in the sunshine. Their mother with her drooping teats stood proudly by while the father and the two other, younger adults
greeted the little ones and nuzzled them, as if welcoming them into the world.

  Toward the end of June they disappeared and for awhile he was afraid someone had killed them. But then he found them again in another meadow, farther up the canyon. It seemed to Luke a safer place, fringed with trees and sloping gently to a stream where the pups would splash and wrestle. And it was there one morning that he saw one of the younger adults come trotting back from a hunting trip, looking all proud, as if he’d won the lottery or something, and all the pups came running across the meadow to greet him, jostling him and licking his face until he kind of grinned and yawned and retched up meat for them to eat, just like the books said they did.

  As the meadow filled with flowers, Luke watched the pups chasing bees and butterflies and learning how to hunt mice and it was often so comical he found it hard not to laugh out loud. Sometimes when their mother or their father lay dozing in the sun, the pups would stalk them, creeping on their bellies through the paintbrush and shooting stars and the lush, long grass. Luke was sure the parents knew what was going on and were just playing along, pretending to be asleep. When they got real close, the pups would pounce and everything went crazy and the whole pack would go chasing around the meadow, tumbling and nipping each other and the game would go on and on until they all collapsed in one big, exhausted heap of wolf.

  And witnessing this, Luke would silently say a little prayer, not to God, of whose existence he’d had scant evidence so far, but to whoever or whatever decided these things, pleading that the wolves be smart enough to stay up there where they were safe and not venture down to the valley.

  But now it had happened. One of them had come.

  And just now, watching his father lapping up the limelight on the porch, Luke had felt angry at the wolf, not for killing his sister’s dog, whom he had always loved well enough, but for being so utterly reckless with the lives of the others. Didn’t the fool of an animal know how people around here felt about wolves?

  His father was aware how well Luke knew the mountains, how he was always going up there, off on his own, when he should have been helping out on the ranch, like ranchers’ sons were supposed to. And earlier that evening, before all the people showed up, his father had asked him if he’d ever seen any sign of wolves up there.

  Luke had shaken his head and, instead of leaving it at that, for some stupid reason, had tried to say no, he never had. The lie made him block on both the no and the never even worse than usual, and his father walked off before the sentence was out.

  Luke just let it die unspoken, with the other million dead sentences he had inside him.

  Across the yard, the necropsy was over now and Dan Prior had turned off his camera and was helping Rimmer clean up. Luke’s father and Clyde stepped closer and the four men started to talk, their voices low, so that Luke could no longer hear. He gave the old dog one last stroke, stood up and walked out of the barn toward them, stopping a short way off in the hope that no one would spot him.

  ‘Well, there’s no doubt it was a wolf,’ Rimmer said.

  Luke’s father laughed. ‘Was there any doubt before? My daughter saw it with her own eyes. I reckon she can tell a wolf from a woodpecker.’

  ‘I’m sure she can, sir.’

  His father caught sight of him and Luke cussed himself for leaving the barn.

  ‘Gentlemen, this is my son, Luke. Luke, this here’s Mr Prior and Mr Rimmer.’

  Fighting an instinct to turn and run, Luke walked over and shook hands with them. They both said hi but Luke just nodded, avoiding their eyes in case they tried to get him to talk. As usual, his father steamed right on with the conversation, simultaneously rescuing him and consigning him to yet another failure. Luke knew the real reason his father always stepped in so smartly; he didn’t like folks knowing he had a stutterer for a son.

  ‘So, how come you fellas never told us there were wolves around here?’

  It was Prior who answered.

  ‘Well, Mr Calder, we’ve always known wolves do sometimes travel along the continental divide. As you know, there’s a growing population of them in the state—’

  His father gave a mocking laugh. ‘I had heard tell.’

  ‘And as they do travel, sometimes, quite long distances, it’s not always easy to know where they all are at any given time or—’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to have radio collars on them all.’

  ‘Some, yes sir, but not all. Your daughter’s pretty sure this one didn’t have a collar. We’ve had no indication, until today that is, of any wolf activity in this area. This one may be a disperser, a single wolf who’s broken away from some other pack, maybe many miles from here. Maybe he’s hanging out with others that are collared. That’s what we’re going to try and find out. In fact, as of tomorrow morning, we’ll be out there looking.’

  ‘Well, I surely hope so, Mr Prior. And so does Clyde here, as you can imagine.’ He put his arm around his son-in-law’s shoulders. Clyde didn’t look too comfortable about it, but managed a stern nod.

  ‘What are you planning on doing once you’ve found them?’

  ‘I think we need to know a little more before we decide on that,’ Prior said. ‘I can sure appreciate how upset you must be, but if it’s any consolation, there’s never been a case anywhere in North America of a healthy wild wolf killing a human being.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘Yes sir. In all probability this one was only ever after the dog. It’s kind of a territorial thing.’

  ‘Oh is it now? Tell me, Mr Prior, where do you come from?’

  ‘I live in Helena, sir.’

  ‘No, I mean originally. Where you were born and grew up. Somewhere back east is my guess.’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact. I come from Pittsburgh.’

  ‘Pittsburgh. Hmm. Grew up in the city.’

  ‘Yes sir, I did.’

  ‘So that’s your territory?’

  ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, I guess it is.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you something, Mr Prior.’

  He paused and Luke saw the look in his father’s eyes, that flash of smiling contempt which all his life Luke had dreaded, for it always heralded some crushing remark, some witty, withering flourish of words that left you wanting to crawl away and hide under a rock.

  ‘This here is our territory,’ his father went on. ‘And we’ve got “kind of a territorial thing” about it too.’

  There was a tense space of silence across which his father held Prior in a vise-like gaze.

  ‘We don’t want wolves here, Mr Prior.’

  3

  Buck Calder was baptized Henry Clay Calder III but he had never been too keen on the idea of being third or even second to anyone, and both to those who liked him and to those who didn’t, he’d always been much more a Buck than a Henry.

  The nickname came when, at fourteen, he carried off every prize on offer at the high school rodeo, revealing only when all was safely won that he had two broken fingers and a cracked collarbone. Even back then, the name’s more carnal connotation was not lost on the more knowing of his female classmates. He was already the object of wide-eyed whispers and once of a stern and exclusively female inquisition when his name was found on a wall of the girls’ toilets, coupled in rhyme with a word from which it differed by only one letter.

  Had any of these girls seen fit to share such secrets with their mothers, they would perhaps have found less surprise than they might have expected. For a previous generation of Hope schoolgirls had flushed with similar feelings for his father. Henry II, by all accounts, had practiced a particular method of kissing that a girl never quite forgot. A winning way with women, it seemed, swam strongly in the male Calder gene pool.

  Of Buck’s grandfather, Henry I, no such intimate detail endured. History bore witness only to his great resilience. It was he who in 1912 had loaded a few cows and chickens, a young bride and her upright piano onto a train in Akron, Ohio, and headed west.


  When they got there, they found all the best land had already gone and Henry ended up filing a claim way out by the mountains where no one had yet been rash enough to try. He built his homestead where the big ranch house now stood. And while countless others gave up, driven out by drought, wind and winters that killed even the hardiest stock, the Calders somehow survived, all but the piano, which after the journey never quite sounded the same.

  Henry bought the land his neighbors couldn’t make pay and, little by little, the Calder ranch spread wider and deeper down the valley toward Hope. With dynastic ambition, he named his first son after him and set about making the linked HC brand something to be proud of.

  Buck’s father never went to college but every moment he wasn’t chasing women, he spent reading everything he could lay his hands on about rearing cattle. He would have the library order special books he’d heard about and get livestock magazines shipped all the way from Europe. His father thought some of the articles the younger Henry read to him too newfangled but he was always smart enough to listen. It was at his son’s urging that he switched from a commercial to a purebred Hereford operation. And the more he handed over decisions, so the more the herd thrived.

  Buck grew up with all the confidence and not a little of the arrogance such status can give a child. No ranch was bigger than theirs, no rancher smarter than his daddy. There were some who expected - and others who secretly hoped - that the legendary Calder drive might dissipate in this third Henry’s veins. Instead, it seemed to redouble. He had two older sisters and two younger brothers but it was clear from the start that he was the only proper heir to the empire.

  Buck went to college in Bozeman and learned all about genetics. And when he came back, he helped take everything a step farther. He started keeping an individual file on every animal they reared, charting its performance in minute detail. Birthing ease, mothering skills, weight gain, disposition and much more were scrutinized and ruthlessly acted upon. The progeny of those who made the grade flourished; those found wanting went swiftly to the wall.