Mrs. Schultz added another stack of steaming pancakes to the plate in the center of the table. “Ray, I want you to know that these berries are from the rocky ridge along the north edge of our property. A bumper crop last summer.”
North edge. Seth didn’t have to see Matt to read his mind. That’s where they’d found Star.
“Mmm,” Kruppa responded. “Great breakfast.”
“Thanks,” she said. She placed a hand on the back of Matt’s head. “You feeling better this morning, honey?”
Matt nodded, his mouth full.
“That’s good,” she said, and sat down. “Gave us quite a scare last night.”
Seth glanced at Kruppa, then sideways at Matt, whose face was stony. Getting stuck in the woods, he wanted to say, maybe brought you an armload of sympathy, but it still doesn’t erase what you did. What I did.
“You know, I’m noticing,” Mrs. Schultz continued, carefully choosing her words, “that you boys haven’t said as much as a word to each other since last night.”
Seth stared at his plate, at the way the blueberries stained the pancake.
“Am I right?” she pressed.
He always spread his pancakes out in a wide circle, then ate them one at a time. Matt, on the other hand, stacked his pancakes, then cut them like a pie. When they were younger, they’d argued about which way was best.
“Angel,” Mr. Schultz said. “They’re old enough to figure out their differences on their own.” As if to change the subject, he added, “Well, let’s hope Brett and Stubby get their deer today, huh?”
Seth puffed a stream of air from his nostrils. Figure out our differences? Don’t bet on it, he wanted to say. Don’t bet on it.
Chapter 13
Snow had drifted into a cresting wave against the Jacobsons’ barn door. Pushing the silver snow scoop into the drift, Seth slowly cleared a path. Kruppa used a smaller shovel and cleared the steps to the house’s back door.
A quiet had settled over everything, as though nature was resting now that the storm had passed. Black-capped chickadees darted in and out of the bird feeder, from which Seth had brushed away snow.
“I’m done,” Seth called over his shoulder.
Kruppa stuck his shovel in a snowbank. “Okay.”
Seth stepped in and, before his eyes could adjust, heard a clatter of hooves. Something was amiss. He stopped, Kruppa right behind him. “Just a second,” he said. “Better close the door.”
Quest snorted from his stall. The air was ripe with manure. At the far end of the barn, in the walkway, the calf was pacing.
“Uh-oh,” Seth said. “It’s out of its stall. Now what?”
“You got a halter or a lead rope on it?” Kruppa said, stepping alongside Seth.
“Nope. Wish I had.” Seth felt himself buckle inside. How was he supposed to lead Fudge back into the stall?
“How do you think it got out?”
“I must have forgotten to bolt the stall door.” Seth couldn’t just let it wander around, or he wouldn’t be able to clean the stalls or anything. “I touched the calf the other day. Think I should just go up to it and—?”
“No,” Kruppa said firmly, stroking the short curly hairs of his beard. “No, I don’t think so, not if it’s ever going to return to the wild. You don’t want it to bond with you, to get tame. Otherwise, it will be too trusting of people, easy prey during moose-hunting season. It needs its wildness.”
The calf stood still, its head turned toward them, watching. A thickness grew in Seth’s throat, a swell of mixed feelings. He’d let himself believe that touching the calf, becoming friends with it, was a good thing.
“He’s thin, but y’know, Seth, he looks pretty healthy to me,” Kruppa said. “The sooner he gets back outside, the better, otherwise he won’t have the coat he needs.” He paused. “Any reason you shouldn’t let him go?”
Seth swallowed. Any reason? That he wanted him for a pet, to keep him? What kind of a reason was that? He struggled for other reasons. “Well, he scraped against a rusty nail,” Seth said. “Probably should get a tetanus shot.”
“Melanie could help you out there.”
“Melanie?”
“The vet.”
“Oh yeah.” Seth took three steps to Quest, ran the flat of his hand against the horse’s face, his fingers tracing the fine cheekbones. He kept a lookout for the calf. “Then there’s the problem of letting it go with so many wolves around.”
“That’s reality, Seth,” Kruppa said matter-of-factly, as if he didn’t care what happened.
Seth glared at him. “Reality? Is that all you can say?” He’d seen enough kill sites. “Fudge isn’t just another moose! I saved him!”
Kruppa moved to the hay bales, sat down, his gaze resting on the moose calf, who stared cowlike from the shadows outside its box stall. Kruppa’s mouth worked, but he didn’t say a word, as if he were leaving the decision in the air.
And Seth left it there, suspended like a hot-air balloon. “Can you wait here?” he asked. “I’m gonna run in and get some more fruit and vegetables. It ate some earlier, so I’m thinking, if I bring out another bucketful, place it in the stall, and get the door to stay wide open, maybe it’ll just go back in on its own.” He felt himself talking fast, as if racing against time.
“Sure,” Kruppa said. “You do what you need to do.”
Outside, a gunshot sounded to the east. Ka-blam-blam-blam. Hunting season. He’d almost forgotten. Another good reason to keep the moose calf inside, at least for two more weeks.
He stepped in the back door, nearly tripping on Midnight, who wove in and out of his legs, purring like rain on a metal roof. The smells of his own home, his mother’s vanilla candle on the table, of everything in it, made him suddenly homesick. When were his parents—and little Lizzy—coming home?
He pushed the play button on the answering machine.
“This is for Seth,” came the familiar nasal voice. “Hi, Seth. This is Bart Bishop, you know, from the last home-school meeting at the park. Anyway, maybe you want to come over sometime. Call me if you want to do something.” He left a number, but Seth wasn’t anxious to return the call. Maybe things were over with Matt, but he didn’t need a friend that badly, not yet anyway.
Beep. “Seth, you know who this is”—it was his mother—“but do you know this voice?” A soft crying came over the machine. Seth thought he’d hate to hear crying, but right now, it sounded better than anything in the world. “If you guessed Lizzy, you’re right. She’s just beautiful, Seth, and it brings back memories of when you were little. I miss you, but I’ll see you soon. We’re waiting for the doctor’s visit, and then we’ll be discharged. Um, it’s before eight. Should be there around lunchtime.”
Seth glanced at the clock. He’d missed their call by only a half hour. Quickly, he fed Midnight, dashed food on the top of his aquarium for his angelfish, then cut up the remaining lettuce, cucumber, apple, and oranges for Fudge. He’d cleaned out the fridge, and yet the ice-cream bucket was less than half full. Even if the moose calf loved fresh food, Seth’s parents could never afford the grocery bill. And the pellet food was going fast. Fudge needed large quantities of cheaper food, the kind found only in the woods, he thought as he hustled back to the barn.
“Nice work,” Kruppa said, after Seth lured the moose calf back into its stall and double checked the bolt.
Scrrrrch, Scrrrrch. Seth turned. “Quest is going to go crazy! Two weeks of hunting season. He’ll chew his stall apart! I’ve gotta come up with a way to let him stretch out.”
“Orange tape,” Kruppa said. “Got any?”
On a dusty shelf, Seth found a roll of orange plastic tape his father had used to mark dead birch trees on the edge of the property. Trees slated for cutting. Quest put his head over his stall and nibbled at the roll of tape.
“I’ve seen others use it,” Kruppa said. “They tie the strips to the mane, tail, halter, whatever.”
“With this,” Seth said to Quest, “you can go outside, at least c
lose to the barn.”
Soon Seth was leading Quest out of his stall. Quest’s hooves clomped an anxious staccato beat. Seth opened the pasture door wide and unclipped the lead.
“Stretch out,” he said, motioning toward the corral, a fenced area inside the wider pasture.
Quest tossed his mane, gathered his legs beneath him, and, decorated in dancing strips of orange, cantered around the corral in a wide circle. He stopped and kicked out his back legs.
Seth smiled.
Kruppa was at his side. “That’ll work,” he said.
As Quest lay down to roll, Seth walked from post to post, stringing orange tape around the corral’s perimeter. A hunter would have to be blind to miss that.
When they stepped back in the barn, the moose calf was reaching for cedar leaves piled on the straw, pulling them toward itself across the floor.
“If I let you outside,” Seth said, avoiding Kruppa’s eyes, “I may not get you back in again.”
“Now let’s head back to the Schultzes’,” Kruppa said. “I want to make a quick trek into the woods before the vet gets here or I get another call.”
“Nah,” Seth replied, not wanting to be around Matt any more than he had to, “you go on. I’m fine here.”
“Come on,” Kruppa said, turning and waving Seth to join him. “I’ve got an idea you might want to join me.”
Why couldn’t he just say no? Seth hesitated, then followed Kruppa into the blinding sunlight. As they walked down the plowed driveway, he told Kruppa about the deer kill they’d found, the howling he’d heard lately, and finding Star in the field.
“Wolf numbers are way up,” Kruppa said, “and that’s great. Up until 1967, they were trapped and hunted almost to extinction. They’re returning to Wisconsin and Michigan, too, but it takes time. Now if we can just get people to stop seeing wolves as their enemy.”
Seth told Kruppa about the conversation he’d heard at the hospital.
“Oh yeah,” said Kruppa as they crossed the road to Matt’s house. “That kind of thinking is tough to change. You can only do it one slow step at a time.”
At the Schultzes’ doorstep, Seth ran his gloved finger through the white mound of snow along the railing. He didn’t mind Kruppa, but he really couldn’t handle this. He turned away, started down the steps.
“Seth, stick around,” Kruppa said, knocking.
“Door’s open!” Mr. Schultz answered from inside.
Seth found himself walking back up the entry steps and stepping reluctantly inside the Schultzes’ house. He didn’t want to face Matt.
Chapter 14
Mr. and Mrs. Schultz were doing the dishes. The aroma of coffee filled the air.
Kruppa stood in the entry. “I’ve got an idea Matt and Seth just might be interested in,” he said.
“Let’s hear,” said Mr. Schultz, waving Kruppa forward. “Matt, come here.”
Matt appeared from the living room but stood at a distance, holding up the wall with his shoulder.
“Yesterday afternoon,” Kruppa explained, “my receiver showed that one of the wolves in Pack Thirty-six was stationary, not moving. And when I checked again this morning, Big Gray still hadn’t moved.”
“Big Gray?” Matt asked with a snort. “You actually named a wolf?”
“Well, that’s the name I gave him,” Kruppa explained. “It fits—he’s big and mostly gray.”
He scanned the faces in the room. “Looks like its close by, so I’m going to take a quick trek and see what I can find out. Who knows, he might need to be freed from a trap.” He looked back toward Seth. “Anyway, as a kind of learning opportunity, I thought the boys here might want to join me.”
Mr. Schultz curved his lower lip, shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t see why not.”
“But…,” Matt said, glancing at Seth. His brown eyes were sharp, warning. Don’t say a word. “I better help with the cows.”
“We can handle chores this morning, Matt,” said Mrs. Schultz. “You go ahead. Might do you and Seth some good.”
“Besides, you can’t hunt till we’re free to go,” said Mr. Schultz. He nodded at Kruppa. “Which will be just as soon as we’re assured our money for that calf.”
Before they left, fully dressed in orange for protection from other hunters, Kruppa stopped by his pickup truck and pulled out two rectangular black boxes. “Receivers,” he said, handing one to each of the boys. Then he handed them antenna grids. “Yagi antennas,” he explained. “Each collared wolf has its own transmitter signal. You’ll be able to help locate Big Gray-Number 273.”
Seth opened the receiver case and studied the knobs and monitor needle.
Matt held his receiver but was staring past Kruppa, toward his snowy field.
“Well,” Kruppa said enthusiastically, “let’s head out. Our destination point,” he said, checking his compass and rumpled map like a Boy Scout leader, “will be the northwest edge of Mackenzie Lake.” He looked up. “You guys know a quick way to get there?”
“Yeah,” Matt volunteered, nodding toward his barn. “Snowmobiles.”
Within minutes, they were on two Arctic Cats. Matt led the way, with Seth and Kruppa following, riding double. The snowmobiles glided through waves of deep fluff, flying along the wide trail. At the towering pine, they stopped and hopped off, tracking equipment in hand.
Seth broke trail through knee-deep snow. He turned at a familiar V-shaped tree, a dip in the creamy landscape, a hole-riddled stump, until he came to the beaver dam, sweat forming under his jacket. Sun glinted off the snow into his eyes. He remembered his own words: “I swear, if you stand up, I’m gonna hit you!” He’d never been angrier with Matt, at what he’d done. “… You find your own stupid way home!” But he’d never done something so careless before. And though he wanted to point a finger at Matt, the finger kept pointing back to himself.
He stopped. A soft trickling sounded from the snow-covered creek, water running beneath ice.
Kruppa planted his feet. “By air, a receiver can pick up the signal from up to five miles, but on the ground it’s only a quarter mile, at most.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, Matt. Still with us?”
“Yeah,” Matt said, his voice low.
“I think your bout with the cold knocked some life out of you, eh?” Kruppa asked.
Matt walked up closer, stopped a few feet off. “Maybe.”
Seth looked away, pretending to study the beaver dam. “Slipped here yesterday,” he said, “so be careful.”
“Oh? You were out here, Seth?”
Matt leveled his brown eyes on Seth.
“Uh, yeah … guess you could say we came by here.”
Kruppa nodded. “Hunting?”
“Uh-huh.”
“See any action?” Kruppa asked.
Seth glanced at Matt, then shook his head. He couldn’t meet Kruppa’s eyes. “No, not really.”
“Well,” Kruppa said, pausing. “Why don’t I lead from here on out, if that’s okay with you.”
“Fine,” Seth answered, letting Kruppa cross the dam first, arms out for balance.
Matt elbowed Seth hard, knocking the air from his chest, then started after Kruppa across the dam.
“Watch it!” Seth said under his breath.
“Don’t worry,” Kruppa replied, nearing the dam’s length. “I’m being careful.”
A rush of embarrassment warmed Seth’s face. Matt. That jerk.
They pushed on through thick cedar, a low area further north of Mackenzie Lake where Seth had never explored. Kruppa stopped. “Here,” he said. “Let’s set our receivers.” He showed each of them how to set their dials to 273 and point their Yagi antennas. Seth swung the antenna slowly back and forth in front of him while Kruppa led Matt twenty or so yards to the left.
“Okay,” Kruppa called, “hold your positions.” Then, with a compass reading and two intersecting coordinates, Kruppa determined the wolf’s position and led the rest of the way. “Getting closer,” he said time and again.
>
Seth and Matt followed, avoiding glances.
At the base of a west-facing slope dotted with white pine, Kruppa stopped and pointed to one old tree, jutting like an L out of the hill.
Just beneath the tree’s trunk, a hole the size of a basketball gaped in the snow. “Yup,” he whispered. “I think that’s where he’s denned up. At least we didn’t find him in a snare or trap. But there’s no movement. Either his collar fell off, or …”
Kruppa hiked closer, examining the snow. Seth looked, too, but didn’t notice any fresh tracks. If there was a wolf in the den, he went in yesterday before the snow fell. What if a whole pack was in there? He shivered, then told himself to calm down. Get a grip.
“Okay, guys,” Kruppa said. “I’m gonna try to crawl in. You hang back.”
“You’re what!? W-what if it’s alive?” Seth whispered. “Won’t it attack?”
Kruppa shook his head. “At this point, I doubt it’s alive, but the answer is no. Wolf hunters used to enter dens, sometimes with the alpha female inside. They’d shoot the pups and she never attacked. Then, unfortunately, they’d shoot her, too.”
“Probably shot ’em,” Matt said flatly, “because they stole livestock.”
“Y’know, Matt, sometimes I have to do that,” Kruppa said, digging a flashlight from his backpack, “trap and shoot a wolf that has gone after livestock. Worst part of what I do.”
Matt shuffled uneasily back and forth, nearly bouncing, the way he did before the start of a football game. Seth watched him, stomach churning.
Next to the den’s entrance, Kruppa got down on his knees, then began pulling away at rocks until the hole widened.
Boom! boom! came the echoes of a distant gun. Maybe Brett or Stubby got a deer.
A breeze swept overhead, sending down a shower of white clumps. Branches swayed, and a mound of snow softly plopped on Seth’s shoulder.
Kruppa slid his arms, then his chest, inside, his legs sticking out from the hole.
Matt turned to Seth and mouthed, “You better not say a word.”
“Believe me,” Seth whispered, “I’m tempted!” But deep down, he didn’t think he could, couldn’t actually turn his friend in, even if their friendship was demolished.
Wolf Shadows (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage) Page 6
