The Wolfer

by Loren D. Estleman

  While the others were strapping nosebags over their horses' necks and building a fire, he hoisted out the quart bottle he had wrapped carefully and stored in a saddle pouch and drank deeply. Relief and contentment poured into the abused regions of his frame as he pushed the cork back in and returned the vessel to its hiding place.

  He was undoing his cinch when a mournful cry arose from somewhere, literally raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

  At first it sounded solitary, like a lone steam whistle hooting in a tunnel miles away, but as it climbed in pitch it splintered into a chorus of gulping ululations that seemed to issue from everywhere and yet nowhere. At length the other cries began to fall away until there was only one long, clear, billowing note that rose and sank and rose until it ceased to exist. When it did, the blend was so smooth that it was a moment before he could be sure he was no longer hearing it.

  "Gathering the pack," said Crippen, after a long stillness. The sound of his voice made Fulwider start. The foreman resumed adding deadwood to the small pile he had ignited in the center of the clearing, but his subdued tone suggested that he had been affected no less than the journalist by the weird serenade. North's reactions were concealed in the shadows which enveloped the upper half of his body.

  "Are you sure that fire will be large enough?" Fulwider asked then.

  Chapter Five

  The cold lay like metal against the journalist's flesh when Crippen roused him with a surly toe into a pitch blackness relieved only by a patch of metallic gray over the eastern horizon. The horses stamped and blew thick clouds of milky vapor in the uneven light of a fire the size of a man's fist, over which North sat hunched watching something that sizzled in a cast iron skillet. The acrid smell of frying fat clashed with the odors of damp wool and wood smoke and stinging cold. Fifty yards down the slope, the river, as if aroused by the activity, lapped and gurgled with a life of its own.

  Fulwider had not slept well. Every time he had begun to slip off he had fancied some noise easily interpreted as a soft footfall, such as an approaching wolf might make.

  It had snowed lightly during the night. He shook the powder off his blanket, rolled it and the rest of his minimal bedding into a compact cylinder the way the old wolfer had demonstrated in town, secured the cover and stepped a few yards away to attend to a basic biological function. When he returned, North and Crippen were hunkered on opposite sides of the fire conversing in gutturals.

  "When you figure it was?" the foreman was saying.

  "Midnight, maybe. Before the snow." The wolfer used his knife to turn over the bacon, which was hissing and spitting now like a nest of rattlesnakes.

  "Wonder what scared them off?"

  "Us. I reckon."

  Fulwider asked them what they were talking about.

  "Come on." Crippen stood and, snatching a flaming stick from the fire, led the easterner beyond its light to a point where the slope flattened out before attempting the climb toward the distant peaks. There he held out the makeshift torch and pointed to a confusion of huge paw prints in the snow. They were half filled with fresh white powder.

  Fulwider's heart sprang into his throat. He took an involuntary step backward toward the warmth and security of the fire. "Old tracks?" he stammered hopefully.

  "Depends on what you call old." The cowhand's tone was mockingly solemn. "Six hours ain't old to me, but then I been around a lot longer than you."

  "While we were sleeping!" Fulwider remembered the noises he had put down to imagination.

  "Appears that way."

  He retreated another step. "Why? What could they possibly want?"

  "Well, I could say our throats, but I don't get the charge I used to out of hoorawing tenderfeet. They wouldn't attack a man if he was standing on the last scrap of meat between them and starvation. I figure it was the fire. They come in for a closer look-see, was all."

  "I thought wild animals were afraid of fire."

  "That don't mean they don't wonder about them that makes it. Wolves are the curiousest critters on God's good earth. Back in my trapping days I used to snag as many of them with a fancy bandana or a piece of rope for bait as I did with meat and scent. There ain't a lofer living can pass up an interesting piece of junk."

  "Do you think Black Jack was with them?"

  "Can't say. These parts are lousy with the bastards."

  "Grub's getting cold," announced North.

  Crippen produced plates, cups and utensils of dull metal from his packs and the three sat around the fire munching crisp bacon and scooping up blackened beans in silence, washing everything down with bitter coffee poured steam-mg from a pot that had been keeping warm on the edge of the fire. As he ate, North had a queer, dog-like habit of glancing around agitatedly, as if wary that someone or something was lurking nearby to snatch away his meal. But for that, he and the foreman appeared indifferent to the fare itself. To Fulwider, who had been too weary and too distracted by the wolves' howling to take much notice of last night's meal, breakfast was even better than the stew he had devoured in the restaurant in town.

  It did not occur to him until he was scrubbing the dishes in the swift, cold water of the river that this was the first morning in months he had not awakened with an overpowering urge to cough, or the consequent desire to subdue it with liquor. Perhaps, he mused, the secret was to rise ahead of the malady.

  The sun had not yet risen when they broke camp. In spite of the cold, the river crossing went better than Fulwider had feared upon observing the waters swollen from the thaw in the high altitudes and great jagged chunks of ice racing past the steep banks. His pack horse stumbled in mid-stream, but amid shouts from North and Crippen to keep taut the lead line he managed to help the beast regain its footing and reach the other side without further incident. From there they followed a furrowing path identified by Crippen as an old elk run in the direction of the lake.

  Snow exploded in front of them and something brownish gray bounded out of the rut and up the soaring incline to their left, its limbs stretching almost parallel to the rocky surface as it climbed with uncanny swiftness toward the summit. The foreman's rifle crashed. The magnificent flying form crumpled suddenly and rolled, skidding and thrashing, until it lay unmoving in an insignificant heap at the base of the slope. It had a goatlike head and enormous ringed horns that curled in upon themselves like snail shells.

  "One dead ram," said Crippen, levering a fresh round into the Henry's chamber. "Ain't often you get a chance at them mountain sheep this far down. After forage, I expect." He poked another cartridge into the magazine.

  North regarded him flatly. "You wolf passing strange."

  "Preach me no sermons. You know as good as me they're attracted to gunfire."

  "That was back in buffalo days, when shots meant meat for the taking. These wolves wasn't born then."

  "Black Jack was. He's eight if he's a day."

  "I don't hold with vain killing," Fulwider interjected stiffly, "whether it's of man or beast."

  Crippen scabbarded the Henry. "When I kill, I kill for good reasons."

  "Why? We have sufficient supplies."

  Dismounting, the foreman produced a half-pint bottle from a saddle pouch and strode over to the carcass. He squatted and used his boot knife to carve a strip of tallow from the sheep's sleek haunches. This he cut into three sections roughly the size of playing cards, made a slot in each and laid them to one side. He then uncorked the bottle and shook a colorless prism into the palm of his hand. He had placed it inside the slot of the first piece of tallow, molded it into a compact ball, set it aside and was about to repeat the procedure with the second when North struck him.

  He was out of his saddle and upon Crippen in three strides. Fulwider heard three rapid blows like a string of firecrackers exploding, and then the older man was stretched out beside the carcass while North picked up the ball of tallow, removed the crystal and dropped it back inside the bottle. He rammed in the cork with the heel of his hand.


  The foreman sat up and tested his jaw. Glaring hatred, he gathered his legs beneath him to rise. At sight of the wolfer's knife he checked his momentum and fell back on invective.

  "You crazy-mad son of a bitch! What's the matter with you? A poison capsule is the surest way there is of killing wolves!"

  "And bear and fox and whatever else happens to come along and help itself to a hunk of fresh-killed mutton," finished the other. There was no anger in his tone, just that dead calm that Fulwider had come to recognize as a dangerous sign. "Worse than that. It's a slow death and wolves get a lot of time to heave and slobber the stuff out on the snow and the ground, and there it stays for ten years or a hundred, no one knows for sure how long. You don't know what might eat it or what might eat him that ate it. Or maybe you like the idea of murdering some hunter's little girl fifty years after you're dead."

  North forced the bottle of strychnine crystals into Crippen's hand. "Put that back with your gear. I'd throw it away, except it's only a matter of time before some varmint comes along and claws out the cork. If I see it again I'll kill you."

  Stepping around the foreman, he squatted over the kill and began separating hide from muscle with long sure strokes of his utilitarian blade. From the haunches he carved dripping red steaks as thick as a man's wrist. "No sense their going to waste," he muttered as he wrapped them in sections of hide and got up to lash the package onto his pack horse's back.

  Crippen got up, brushing morosely at the snow that clung to his trousers. Then he put away the controversial bottle and lent his efforts to the butchering.

  While the pair was thus engaged, Fulwider reached into his own saddle pouch and pushed the strychnine he had purchased in Rebellion to the very bottom.

  For the rest of the day the extinct game trail led them ever higher along a twisting route between sheer walls of dead gray granite and jet sandstone and curious vertical streaks of brick red, which upon inquiring the journalist learned represented iron ore seepage from above. The walls didn't match at all for several miles, an eerie stretch bordered on one side by multicolored strata and on the other by pinnacles of blinding white chalk, remains of a major fault wedged open by the glacier's relentless advance ten thousand years earlier. Clumps of birch and blue spruce clung stubbornly to the faces here and there where the soil in which they were rooted had snatched hold of narrow ledges after sliding down from the top. Far below, water whumped and boomed angrily inside parallel grottos carved to resemble Roman arches in the limestone base. Fulwider was startled, then enchanted when an otter looked out at him with glossy black eyes from a shallow cave as he passed by within an arm's length.

  They camped at sunset in the shelter of a smooth, dish-shaped depression worn by high water into the chalk cliff where they dined on savory mutton and the journalist's own treat, peaches canned in their own juice. While North consumed his portion with customary lack of interest, Crippen forgot his disgruntlement over the morning's confrontation and dug in with an energy that made Fulwider fear for the can.

  That night it was North who had trouble resting. Fulwider was dimly aware of him writhing all night under his blanket, muttering oaths in a voice so low he could recognize but a few. Once he shot bolt upright and bellowed a name that tore the others out of their own dreams and echoed down the canyon wall like the laughter of a hundred retreating devils. The fire had died to glowing coals, but in their reddish light the wolfer's expression went from raw terror to bewilderment and finally, as he looked around and met first Fulwider's curious gaze and then Crippen's, sullen defiance. He turned over onto one side and drew the blanket over his shoulder. Presently the even rise and fall of the cover indicated that he had drifted into a deep sleep at last.

  The journalist bundled up for what he knew must be a vain effort to follow North's example. True relaxation would be out of the question until he knew who the woman named Leah was who haunted the wolfer's dreams.

  Chapter Six

  R.G., if I didn't know you better I would swear that was a blasphemy I just heard." Busy loading his pack horse in the surly light of another false dawn, Fulwider refrained from explaining to his bemused friend that blasphemies were to a journalist what a stout rope was to a cowboy. He had been on his best behavior thus far, but the discovery that one of his packs was missing had torn a choice oath from his lips before he'd had time to think. He told Crippen of his plight.

  "Must of broke loose in the river." He set his cinch and folded down the latigo. "What was in it?"

  "Some extra tins of food, which I can do without. And four boxes of ammunition for my rifle, which I cannot. I didn't miss it until just now."

  Crippen stared. "Four boxes? How long did you figure to be gone?"

  "I am rusty," he said shamefacedly.

  "I reckon so. Well, don't fret over it."

  "But the only cartridge I have is in my gun."

  "Don't fret, I said."

  The journalist was still puzzling over these cryptic words of reassurance two hours later, when they drew within sight of a trapper's shack built of sod and huddled into a jagged fissure in the canyon wall. A black man with a blunt face full of coiled white whiskers, red-and-black-checked shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, knelt on the rocky ground in front, toiling over a fresh hide he had staked out in the sun.

  A chestnut stallion was saddled nearby, tethered beside a squat burro whose razor back was rounded over with bundles. Both were oblivious to the proximity of five dead wolves of varied sizes hanging tails down from the cabin roof, one of which had been skinned. Fulwider, who had never before seen a wolf alive or dead, was surprised and not a little disappointed to discover that the largest was no bigger than some dogs he had seen strolling with their masters in Central Park. None sported the infamous black mantle, and so he quickly lost interest in them as he watched the trapper at work. His forearms stained crimson, the Negro was rubbing down the stretched hide with a grayish, sponge-like material that oozed red liquid.

  "Morning, Esau," greeted Crippen, drawing rein. "Fair catch."

  "Done better. Who's your friends?" He spoke without looking up. His voice was a monotonous growl.

  The foreman made introductions. Esau grunted.

  "North I heared tell of," he said. "Ought to sing out first, Crip. These eyes ain't what they used to was. Come near to blowing out one of your'n when you showed." Without pausing in his labors he slid a brown-barreled rifle out from the space beneath the hide. It was cocked.

  "Expecting trouble?"

  "Done had my share this trip. That big gray bastard up there spooked old Fred when I was out checking my snares, near busted my neck. I tracked him down and blowed a hole clean through him longwise when he went to do it again. Then I catched them half-breeds skinning one of my catches. Leg was still in the trap, for chrissake. Got the drop on them and shooed them off proper. When I seen three riders just now I figured it was them coming back with help."

  "Which half-breeds?" Crippen was tense in his saddle.

  "You know damn well which half-breeds."

  "I told them what would happen I caught them on Newcastle land again."

  "Reckon it didn't take."

  Crippen chewed thoughtfully. "Seen them in town morning we rode out. They was hauling a decent load. Must of been ten, twelve hides aback that mangy pack horse of theirs."

  "They had that many, you can bet more'n one wolfer's trap come up empty."

  The silence stretched taut. Fulwider changed the subject. "What's that you're using to cure that hide?" he inquired of the trapper.

  "Brains."

  "Appears you're pulling out." The foreman had overcome his dark humor.

  "Damn right. I'll have them other hides yanked by noon and then my season's over. Nights get colder when you pass sixty. I'm thinking I'll take up farming or maybe run-fling cattle. This here skin goes to a old Nez Perce who'll be along any time. He done me a turn or two."

  "I'd give my left nut to see you behind a plow," chortled Crippen. "That'd be
worth writing home about."

  Talk of writing drew Fulwider back to the purpose of his mission. "How long have you been wolfing?"

  "I don't," said Esau.

  "You don't?" the journalist glanced confusedly at the shaggy gray carcasses suspended from the roof.

  "I'm a trapper. There's a difference. Wolves is just one more thing I trap from time to time."

  "Balls," Crippen growled. "You never trapped nothing but wolves in your life. You just don't want no one calling you wolfer. I know a rancher like you down below Hell's Canyon. He runs about six cows and five thousand sheep. But he calls himself a cattleman."

  Esau said nothing. The gray matter in his hands made wet swiping sounds against the underside of the stretched pelt. "What you want?" he asked at length.

  "City feller here needs cartridges for a 50-70 Remington. Got any?"

  "In the cabin." He rose without looking at any of his visitors, tossed the crushed handful of brains onto the hide and shambled, splay-footed, through the low door of the sod hut. Five minutes crawled past. North made a noise of impatience. The black man returned, carrying a leather sack the size of a melon. "Let's see your hands."

  Fulwider hesitated, then complied, extending them backs up as he had in grammar school for fingernail inspection. The trapper snorted impatiently and turned them over to view the palms.

  "Medium. Dollar a handful." He held out the open sack, inside of which glittered a mound of brass cartridges.

  "A dollar!" the journalist exclaimed. "I never heard of such a price!"

  "Don't like it, go next door."

  "Pay the man," Crippen directed.

  Fulwider slapped a silver dollar into the man's free hand and helped himself to as many shells as he could gather in one spread palm. The sack was immediately withdrawn.