Wolf Shadows (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)

by Mary Casanova

  Wolf Shadows

  Other Books by Mary Casanova

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  Frozen

  Moose Tracks

  Wolf Shadows

  MARY CASANOVA

  The Fesler–Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series

  Funded by the John K. and Elise Lampert Fund and Elizabeth and the late

  David Fesler, the Fesler–Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series publishes

  significant books that contribute to an understanding and appreciation of

  Minnesota and the Upper Midwest.

  Originally published in 1997 by Hyperion Books for Children

  First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2013

  Copyright 1997 by Mary Casanova

  Mary Casanova asserts her right to be identified as the Proprietor of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

  a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,

  mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written

  permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Casanova, Mary.

  Wolf shadows / Mary Casanova. — First University of Minnesota Press edition.

  (The Fesler–Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series)

  Summary: When his best friend illegally shoots a wolf while hunting in

  northern Minnesota, twelve-year-old Seth struggles to determine whether their

  friendship can survive their different ideas.

  ISBN 978-0-8166-9031-2 (pb)

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Hunting—Fiction. 3. Wolves—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C266Wo 2013

  2013022807

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Eric

  I’m grateful for the expertise of Kathy Anderson, zookeeper of the moose (I loved getting to know Willow, Nah Nah, and Gilly), and Nick Reindl, North Trail Curator, Minnesota Zoo; Lloyd Steen and Dave Rorem, northern Minnesota game wardens; Shirley and Jerry Maertin, who raised orphaned moose; Dr. Wayne Hasbargen, Rainy River Veterinary Clinic; David Mech, renowned wolf researcher; Bill Paul, wolf biologist, Animal Damage Control, U.S. Department of Agriculture; Jim Schaberl, biologist, Voyageurs National Park; the wolves and staff of the International Wolf Center, Ely, Minnesota; and the resources of the Timber Wolf Alliance, Ashland, Wisconsin.

  Chapter 1

  Seth Jacobson froze, balanced between the third and fourth boards nailed to the tree. Tingles shot up the back of his neck. A rustling sound, a brief change in the flickering greenish gray light—that was all. Something was out there, hidden by cedar and black spruce.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Matt, looking up. A year older and an inch taller, he waited below the deer stand in his bright orange hunting jacket and hat.

  Seth stared into the trees, looking for the slightest movement in shadows. He sensed eyes watching him. On the breeze, a sharp, pungent odor wafted to his nose. He suddenly felt like wolf bait. “The deer scent,” he said, sniffing. “We reek!”

  “That’s the idea,” said Matt.

  The opening of deer hunting was two days away, and as a trial run, they’d doused their jackets with “Bag-A-Buck” scent. Without guns, they’d waited over an hour in the stand for a deer to approach. None had.

  Seth finished climbing down the stand, a narrow wooden platform built between three balsam trees and camouflaged with boughs; it rose above a deer path littered with droppings. “Nothing wrong with keeping it to yourself,” Dad had said, “since you built it.” But Seth wanted to share it with his best friend.

  He dropped to the ground. “Remember that guy by Beaver Pass?”

  Matt picked up a pinecone, wound up, hit a tree. “Yeah, the guy was attacked by a wolf, ripped apart. Needed a few hundred stitches.”

  “No, not exactly,” Seth said. “My dad said the wolf knocked the guy to the ground, then took off. The guy was drenched with scent. The wolf probably thought he was a deer.”

  Matt looked at him, brown eyes unblinking. “So?”

  From the ragged top of a dead pine, something swooped down. Seth flinched, but it was only a great gray owl, massive wings skimming the thin layer of snow. Silently it vanished through leafless birch trees, a mouse clamped in its talons. Had he felt the owl watching them? Was that all?

  “I’m just saying,” he continued, glancing around, “maybe we overdid the scent, that’s all. The directions said a few drops, not half a bottle!”

  “Gutless Wonder,” Matt said, dark eyebrows raised. “That’s what I’m gonna start calling you.”

  Why did Matt always seem to get the upper hand? Whenever they were together, it was as if he had to stay on top, be a notch higher somehow.

  “Hey,” Seth said. “I’m not gutless, it’s just…”

  “Gutless.”

  “Okay then, Brain-Dead.” Seth crossed his arms, met Matt’s stare-down. “You want to lead the way home?”

  “Uh … truce. I don’t know this part of the woods like you do.” He glanced over his shoulder. “And I’m sure not sleepin’ out here.”

  The sun slipped below the horizon, stealing the last slivers of light, as Seth started down the deer path into a rocky bowl. He picked up his pace. Matt was right. He knew this part of the woods well, but without a flashlight or compass, they could still get lost. Matt spent his days at Great Falls Junior High, but Seth usually finished his home school studies early and was in the woods by two o’clock. Seth rambled, finding tracks: moose, deer, black bear, pine marten, fox, and in the last year … wolf. Twice in the last month, he’d woken to howling.

  They climbed a bank, then skirted the east ridge of Mackenzie Lake, which was sheeted with thin ice. A breeze rushed through the pines. Was he really gutless? Not tough enough? He had to admit, he was worried. Matt got a deer last year, but this was Seth’s first season. When the moment came, could he shoot? He wasn’t sure he could or wanted to, but now that he was twelve, he wanted to find out.

  Rounding a snow-topped boulder, Seth jolted to a stop.

  Matt slammed into his back. “What?”

  Seth held up his hand and focused on listening harder, seeing more deeply.

  An eerie creaking rose from behind them. He spun around. A fallen birch tree, caught in the crook of another birch, whined in the breeze. Nothing. It was nothing.

  “What’s with you?” Matt said.

  Seth forced his shoulders back, started again. He didn’t say a word. Maybe it was his imagination working overtime. As he walked through the tall pines, he yanked a cluster of needles off a branch, held them to his nose, and breathed in the spiced air.

  There.

  From the corners of his eyes he saw it—movement on both sides of him. Flashes of dark, long, sleek bodies. Ghostlike. There and gone. He and Matt were a long way from home, with darkness overtaking them. “We’re not alone,” he whispered.

  “What do ya mean?” Matt’s voice jumped high.

  Beneath his ribs Seth’s heart drummed like partridge wings. He couldn’t prove it, couldn’t see anything now. His throat tightened. “Wolves.”

  “Oh great,” Mat
t said, eyes darting left and right. He quickly zipped up the last few inches on his jacket, as if to protect his neck.

  Seth’s gut shrank into a cold, hard ball. He ground his leather boot into the earth and spoke through clamped teeth, “I told you. You never listen to me.”

  “What do we do?” Matt whispered. “Run for it?”

  Every cell in Seth’s body screamed “flee,” but if the wolves were out there, running might give them reason to chase. Chalky fear climbed in his throat. “No,” he said, and started off, walking faster and faster.

  Nearly a half hour later, yards ahead of where the four-wheeler trail met the edge of Seth’s pasture, Seth spotted a low, tawny mound. Three ravens lifted from the carcass, croaking, and flapped up to bare branches.

  Seth slowed down. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been there on their way into the woods. He stepped closer, a trembling sensation growing in his stomach.

  A young doe—its tongue draped on the snow, black nose missing—lay crumpled, deathly still. A fresh kill. The hind section of its body was ripped open. The wolves must have eaten the doe’s intestines first, leaving a deep cavity. Seth swallowed hard.

  “Stealing our deer,” Matt said, spitting out the words. He shook his head. “My dad always says, ‘The only good wolf is a dead wolf.’ Now I know why.”

  “Stealing? But …” Seth stopped beside the lifeless doe, unable to look away. “They need to eat, don’t they?”

  “Come on,” Matt said with a groan. “Don’t tell me you’re a wolf lover.”

  “I just think …” Seth strained to see into the dark undergrowth. Where were the wolves now? Watching them, waiting to return to their kill site? His pulse quickened. “The way we smell,” he said, spinning away.

  “Yeah,” Matt agreed, voice strained, “let’s get outta here.”

  Instinctively, the boys broke into a run. Legs and arms pumping beneath layers of clothing, they sped down the last stretch of dark trail. Branches slapped Seth’s face, and within minutes he sprang from the woods, Matt hard at his heels.

  Seth raced between the split rail fence and crab apple orchard to the red barn, fumbled with the latch, and rushed inside. As soon as Matt was in, he closed the door and leaned against it, chest heaving.

  Chapter 2

  Seth caught himself, saw himself as if from a distance, leaning like a frightened child against the closed door. What an idiot! Did he think wolves were like the one in “Little Red Riding Hood” and could lift the latch?

  He reached for the cord and flicked on the light.

  “They got to you, didn’t they?” Matt said from the hay bales. The corners of his mouth twitched, then he laughed.

  Girls at school called Matt on the phone all the time (especially after he dumped his glasses for contacts), and it was pretty easy to understand why. Not only was he a quarterback, but he always stayed cool, controlled—well, not always.

  “No …,” Seth said. “Just spooked me a little, that’s all. Admit it, you got a little scared, too.”

  “Nah,” Matt said, picking up a piece of green hay and clamping it between his teeth.

  Seth’s quarter horse, Quest, lifted his reddish brown head over the first box stall and blew air from his pink-lined nostrils.

  “Hey, fella,” Seth said, feeling supremely stupid now in the barn’s soft light. His father was a game warden, a conservation officer, after all; he should know wolves don’t attack people. Or was it that no shred of human evidence had ever been found? With a shiver, he pushed away the images of wolves and the lifeless deer and breathed in the comforting smells of hay, salty horse sweat, manure, and molasses-scented oats.

  He forced himself to calm down, to get rid of his jumpiness, and walked over to Quest. “Too bad you’re going to have to spend the next few weeks inside,” he said, scratching under his horse’s green halter. “Some trigger-happy hunter might mistake you for a deer.”

  “We have to keep the cows close to the barn, too,” Matt said, the hay between his lips flicking up and down like a cigarette.

  Seth stepped to the next stall to check on the orphaned moose calf he’d rescued from the frozen creek a week ago. Injured by poachers, it had improved steadily, day by day.

  Seth leaned over the stall rail. “Hi, Fudge.”

  The calf lifted its head, stretched out its front legs, then rose slowly and shook its scraggly coat. With only a faint limp, the calf circled the wood-sided box stall. The gunshot wound on the calf’s rear hindquarter was shaved. He remembered how the vet had cleaned the wound, where a bullet had skimmed muscle, and stitched it with a short railroad track of black stitches. “When the stitches dissolve,” she’d said, “you should be able to let him go.”

  “What about wolves?” Seth had asked, hoping that his family could keep the calf through the winter, maybe longer. At least until it could defend itself.

  The vet paused and looked up from under feathery bangs, one hand on the tranquilized calf. “Sometimes, Seth, you’ve got to let go and let nature take its course.”

  Right. The image of the freshly killed deer forced its way to his mind. Easy for her to say. He grabbed a cedar branch from the pile he’d cut earlier that morning and extended it toward the moose. “Here you go.”

  The half-year-old calf was nearly as tall as Quest. Its ears, lined a light brown, were as big as a mule’s. Unlike an adult moose’s long head, its short head almost reminded Seth of the Arabians he’d seen at horse shows. The calf stretched its neck toward the green cedar. A small triangle of bare skin decorated its muzzle. With rubbery lips, the calf pulled the nubby leaves into its mouth.

  “That’s right, fella,” Seth said, dropping more branches into the trough.

  But the calf stopped nibbling, edged itself into the corner, and like an abandoned lamb, bleated sharply.

  Seth shrugged. “Something about being penned up—he just doesn’t care for it. Maybe with time …”

  Matt tossed his piece of hay into the stall. “I don’t see why you can’t keep him as a pet,” he said. “I mean, can’t you just see it, you and me”—he stretched his arms wide as if to a grateful audience—“riding a tame bull moose down Main Street?”

  “It’s against the law, that’s why,” Seth said.

  “Riding a moose? Come on.”

  “No.” Seth rolled his eyes. “Keeping a moose. If my dad weren’t a game warden, I couldn’t have him here.”

  “If you let him go,” Matt said, his smile fading, “the wolves will just make a quick meal of him. I’d rather starve to death than be dragged down by wolves.”

  Seth’s stomach twisted. The idea of wolves pulling Fudge down was too much. He’d struggled to save the moose calf; he wasn’t about to let it go that easily. When the calf was at its weakest, Seth had asked Matt for help. Matt brought over a bottle of warmed evaporated milk, same as he’d used with his cattle. Next, Seth took his mom’s advice and called the Minnesota Zoo; a zookeeper told him where he could order special moose food. The large Purina pellets—made of corn, grains, and ground wood—looked about as appetizing as wood chips, but Fudge loved them.

  The calf dropped to its front legs, lowered itself, and chewed.

  Matt jutted out his lower lip, the way he did when he was thinking, which wasn’t all that often. “He’s ruminating, just like a cow.”

  “He’s what?” For once, Matt had him stumped.

  “You know, he has four stomachs and keeps rechewing his food.” Matt nodded to himself. “He’s neat. You should try to keep him.”

  The moose stared with earth brown eyes.

  Turning away, Seth let out a slow breath. “I gotta go,” he said, running his hand along Quest’s stall. “I’m probably late for dinner.”

  As they left the barn, the automatic floodlight tripped on, cutting a swath of sparkling snow out of darkness.

  “See ya,” Seth said.

  “Later,” Matt called as he jogged toward his house across the road.

  Seth stepped on the d
eck and reached for the door of his farmhouse. He still felt stupid about how he’d overreacted, racing back from the wolf kill to the barn. Even so, he couldn’t help himself. He glanced over his shoulder and scanned the black shadows—shadows that stretched north into endless wilderness—just in case yellow eyes were glowing back.

  Chapter 3

  “Hey, Dad!” Seth called, stepping in. “We found a fresh—” He stopped. Mom’s paperwork was scattered across the table.

  Dad—still in his tan shirt and forest green pants—held the phone to his head of short blond hair and pulled at the skin of his neck. “I don’t know, they’re coming every two-and-a-half minutes, and they’re harder, too. Water broke a minute ago.” He licked his lips like a nervous young boy. “You bet. We’ll be there. Fifteen minutes or less.”

  A moan—as if his mother were in real pain—coursed down the hallway to the kitchen and hit Seth’s stomach. He didn’t bother to take off his boots. They’d discussed the whole thing a few days ago. When the time came, he was to go to the hospital, too. Part of the family. He didn’t have to be in the delivery room (as if he wanted to be), but Mom wanted him nearby. Heck, maybe he could smoke a cigar in the waiting room while Dad coached his mother on how to breathe. How to get through the pain. Problem was, the baby was coming too early.

  Next to a humming row of snack machines, Seth leaned back in a plastic chair and tilted the can of 7 Up. It fizzed down his throat. His day-old sister, Lizzy—Elizabeth Ann Jacobson—a bundle of red skin, pink flannel, and fuzzy dark hair just like Mom’s, waited in a plastic bubble on the second-floor Maternity Unit. Lizzy was still in the oxygen tent, and Seth had only watched her from behind the glass wall. Now he waited alone. The doctor, Dad had said, would give an updated report soon. But that was more than a half hour ago.

  At another table, two men hovered over cups of coffee.

  “It’s gonna be a tough season,” complained the man with wire glasses. “Last winter the snow was so deep, lasted so blasted long, we lost a third of the deer! No doe licenses—not one issued this year. Can’t believe it.”