Day of the Wolf

by Charles G. West

  When she had searched through his packs for the blanket, she had found no pots or pans for cooking, so she took the hand axe she had employed to chop limbs for the fire and fashioned a spit to roast some of the deer meat. Resting a little easier at that point, Wolf was reluctant to eat, but she insisted and badgered him until he finally downed a small quantity to pacify her. “You’ve got to build your strength back,” she lectured him. “I’m not going to let you lie around and die on me.”

  “I don’t plan to,” he said weakly. It was enough to encourage her. She gave him a firm nod to let him know that she meant business, and left him to take care of the horses. When she returned to his side, it appeared that he was asleep, so she placed some more limbs on the fire and sat down beside him. Without opening his eyes, he said, “Bring me my rifle, the Winchester, off my saddle.” He paused then as if talking exhausted him, then said, “That Henry on the packhorse is loaded if you wanna hold on to it.” She did as he said, although she feared that if they were attacked, he would be of little use, as weak as he appeared to be.

  In a short time, night descended upon the rugged mountains, filling the canyons and valleys with a deep stillness that seemed to give weight to the darkness that closed in around the little stream and the two souls close by the tiny fire. The wounded man slept, having given in to the weariness caused by his loss of blood. Helpless against any who might seek him out, he lay defenseless. Knowing this, Rose sat beside him, holding the Henry rifle, determined to remain alert and to watch over him. She shivered in the chill night air and tried to draw warmth from the dying fire. There was only the one blanket, so she laid the rifle down after a while and hugged herself against the cold. Another hour passed and the last of the limbs she had been able to find before darkness set in were reduced to glowing ashes. Finally she gave in and crawled under the blanket with him, pressing close to his body. I can still remain alert, she told herself. And the horses will help me listen and warn me if anyone comes near.

  When the first needles of morning light found their way through the thick dark branches of the pines that covered the slope, Wolf woke to find Rose fast asleep, her body tightly pressed against his, her arm around him. The fire had long since gone out, but the slight girl’s body seemed to generate enough heat to keep both of them warm. At first alarmed that he had been so vulnerable to any trouble that might have found them in the night, he tried to rise to look around him. The pain that immediately shot through his side forced him to lie back. The movement was enough to awaken the sleeping girl.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed when she realized she had fallen asleep, and she scrambled out from under the blanket. “I was cold,” she rushed to explain. “I was gonna keep watch. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  “Well, we’re still here,” he responded, “so I reckon it don’t matter. I’m still in bad shape, and I’m hungry.” He considered that an encouraging sign. “Maybe you can get the fire built up again, and we’ll see how bad that wound is.” He paused to think the situation over. “I think you might have to see if you can cut that bullet outta me.” When he saw the immediate look of despair on her face, he said, “I might be able to do it myself, but you’ll have to help me.” He forced himself to roll over on his good side, but not without considerable discomfort. “First thing, though, I need to get to the bushes.”

  Puzzled at first, she realized then that he meant he had to answer a call of nature. “I need to pee, myself,” she said. “Here, I’ll help you.” She took his arm and prepared to help him up. With her assistance, he was able to get to his feet. “You can go right there by that bush,” she suggested, pointing to a serviceberry bush a few yards away.

  A look of despair quickly spread across his face. “I reckon I need to go by myself.”

  “You don’t look like you can make it by yourself,” she said, but his frown of concern remained firmly in place. “Don’t be silly,” she chided. “I’m a prostitute, for goodness’ sake. Don’t you think I’ve seen a few tally-whackers before?”

  “You ain’t ever seen this one,” he insisted defiantly.

  “Come on before you fall down,” she goaded impatiently, took his elbow, and began walking him toward the stand of berry bushes. When they reached them, however, he refused to take care of business until she left him and returned to revive the fire.

  The realization that he managed to stagger back by the fire was further encouragement that his wound was not debilitating and that if the bullet was removed, he might heal more quickly. “I’m gonna cut that bullet outta me,” he told her.

  Regaining her resolve, she bravely insisted, “I can do it, but I don’t have anything to kill the pain. I didn’t even see any whiskey in your packs.”

  “We don’t need anythin’. It’s bleedin’ enough to clean the wound. There’s a whetstone in one of the packs. Take my knife and put a keen edge on it. Then I’ll dig around and see if I can work that bullet loose.” He grunted in pain when he tried to shift his body to make it easier for her to draw his skinning knife from his belt.

  Pulling the knife free, she looked at it with apparent disdain. The long, cruel blade had been used to skin and gut animals of all kinds as well as any number of other tasks calling for a sharp tool. Reading her thoughts, he said, “After you put a good edge on it, you can hold it over the fire till it kills whatever’s on it.”

  The surgery was not without difficulty. Wolf insisted upon doing the probing for the bullet himself, but because of the flooding of the wound with blood, he could not really see what he was doing, so Rose took over the job. With his encouragement, she overcame her reluctance to hurt him and began to dig deeper until she was finally successful in feeling the tick of the metal slug with the tip of her blade. During the entire procedure, he made no sound with the exception of a grunt and a deep drawing of breath when she cauterized the wound with the red-hot knife blade. When it was over, however, she saw that he was exhausted. As he lay back on his blanket, she watched him until he closed his eyes to sleep, and she prayed to God that she had not killed him.

  “Dammit!” Skinner cursed. “If you think you can do any better, you can do the damn trackin’. There ain’t no way I can pick out their tracks from anybody else’s on this trail. I ain’t got no way of knowin’ what tracks to look for.”

  Buck Dawson made no response to his brother’s outburst, knowing it was useless complaining on his part to expect Skinner to know one horse’s hoofprint from another. It was the utter frustration of being so close to his prey, yet with no notion where he might have gone, that drove him to complain. With nothing more to go on than reports from those at the saloon that Wolf and the woman had ridden a common trail out of the gulch, he and Skinner could only surmise that they were heading toward Spearfish. The rapidly approaching darkness of the night before had caused them to decide it best to wait for morning before trying to overtake Wolf and Rose.

  At a point now where the trail veered from a heading due north to turn more to the west toward the little settlement of Spearfish, the two brothers paused to consider the state of the man they pursued. “You know,” Skinner suggested, “if that bastard is hurt as bad as they said he was, he might be too bad off to try to get to that little town this trail is leadin’ to. He mighta crawled off in one of these canyons to try to lie up for a spell till he heals up some.” The thought was inspired by a distinct set of fresh tracks left by two horses leading away from the trail, one shod and one not. The fact that there were no tracks of other horses made it even more easily followed.

  “He might have at that,” Buck allowed. In fact, it seemed more logical the more thought he gave it. He dismounted to give the tracks a closer look, as if they might tell him something to confirm the idea. His trigger finger began to itch as he continued to stare at the two distinct sets of hoofprints, and he decided they had to be the same tracks they had started out following before losing them at the onset of winter.

  “Course, it could be some damn Injun that crossed over here,�
�� Skinner suggested. “Might just be an Injun with a horse he stole.”

  Buck considered that possibility before commenting, “They keep sayin’ that feller is wild as an Injun, and he’s ridin’ an Injun pony. We’ll follow ’em,” he decided. “They’d better be the tracks of that murderin’ son of a bitch, because I’m gonna shoot whoever’s at the other end of ’em.”

  Skinner rose to his feet and looked toward a narrow ravine leading down to a canyon formed by two steep slopes. “They look to be headin’ down to that bottom yonder,” he declared.

  “Well, let’s get after ’em,” Buck said, and they mounted up. He held back to let Skinner take the lead, knowing he had the sharper eyes.

  The trail proved easy enough to follow for the first mile or so, but after coming to a series of small streams, it appeared that the man they followed had begun to take some measures to cover his tracks. Skinner lost them altogether a couple of times when the tracks entered a stream and failed to come out on the other side. Both times they spent some time scouting up and down the streams until finding the exit tracks, which led them back to the general path first started upon. “He knows we’re on his trail,” Buck said. “He’s wantin’ us to think he’s changin’ directions, but he keeps comin’ back to the same line down the middle of this canyon.” It only made him more anxious to track him down. They continued on until losing the trail again after crossing a sizable stream.

  “Dammit!” Skinner swore. “There he goes again. You go upstream. I’ll go downstream.” They parted then and rode up and down the stream, moving slowly, studying the banks carefully for signs of tracks leaving the water. Skinner continued following the stream as it led him higher up the mountainside. He stopped after going approximately one hundred yards, and paused to listen for any signal from Buck, but there was none. “I mighta missed it, but I don’t see how I coulda,” he mumbled, and decided to keep going. Remaining in the stream, he pushed on until he stopped abruptly at a small clearing in the pines. He cupped his hands around his mouth and turned to call out, “Buck,” repeating it several times until he heard a response from his brother, who had already reversed his search and was on his way to join him.

  After a few moments passed, Buck appeared, walking his horse up the middle of the stream to find Skinner on one knee, examining a patch of grass near the bank. “Take a look at this,” Skinner said. Buck stepped down and knelt beside his brother. “It’s him, all right,” Skinner went on, “and it looks like he might be hurtin’ pretty bad. Lotta blood on the grass.” He nodded toward the remains of a small fire. “They spent the night here, ain’t no doubt about that.” He rose to his feet then and walked over to some berry bushes a short distance away. “Had the horses tied here,” he observed aloud.

  “Question is, which way’d they head out?” Buck said. “And how long ago?” He was hoping that Wolf was hurt so bad that he wasn’t able to get an early start.

  “Hard to say,” Skinner answered, looking around him on the bank for some sign that might enable him to make a guess. “His damn horses ain’t et enough to make a turd.”

  “Dammit!” Buck swore, his impatience growing by the second. “That boy is hurtin’. They can’t be makin’ much time. We need to get movin’.” He led his horse in a circle around the camp and it didn’t take long before he found what he was looking for. “Ha, I thought so,” he crowed. “He didn’t go back down that stream. He cut across and headed right back to the bottom of this canyon. He ain’t just lookin’ for a place to hide. He’s got a permanent camp someplace and that’s what he’s tryin’ to get to.” He peered down the slope, following the direction of the tracks and the occasional broken branch through a thick pine belt. He had a feeling the man they tracked was close, even though there was no physical evidence to substantiate it.

  The object of their search was closer than Buck thought. About one hundred feet above him, near the top of the mountain, the wounded man and the young prostitute lay on a rocky ledge, watching their pursuers. Wolf was tempted to touch off a couple of shots, but there was no clear line of sight to ensure his accuracy, and a miss might put Rose and him in a position hard to defend. Something he was forced to consider as well was his still-weakened state. His aim was not as steady as he would have liked, and the recently cauterized wound greatly hampered his ability to move freely. Added to that was a heightened sense of responsibility for Rose’s safety, so he decided to sit tight and hope the two men would move off down the mountain and follow the obvious trail he had purposefully left for them.

  Ignoring a great deal of pain, he had led Rose down the slope, angling back toward the bottom of the canyon, making no effort to hide their trail. After reaching the bottom, he took pains to avoid leaving tracks then as he led the horses back up the slope to a place where the pines were thickest. Counting on his pursuers’ eagerness to overtake him, he hoped they would not notice that he had doubled back through the forest of pines to return to the stream once again. After climbing back up the stream to their camp of the night before, he had continued past until reaching a rocky ledge. The entire effort was enough to exhaust him, so he positioned himself where he could see their camp below them and instructed Rose to take the horses back farther around the crown of the mountain, where, hopefully, they would give no announcement of their pursuers’ horses. All this was a precaution in case they were, in fact, being followed. And now, watching the two men below them, he had proof that his precautions had been worthwhile. In no condition to fight, he had to satisfy himself with at least the opportunity to get as good a look at his two stalkers as he could from that distance. He felt certain that there would be a day of reckoning between them. His foremost hope was that it would not come before he had been able to regain some of his strength.

  “They’ve gone,” Rose whispered when Buck discovered the obvious trail down through the trees, and was quick to alert Skinner. The tone of her voice betrayed the bravado she was trying to display. “We’ll be all right now.”

  He nodded slowly to reassure her but kept his eyes on the little clearing below and made no move to pull back from the ledge. “We’d best wait here awhile longer, in case they found where we doubled back and figured out where we’re hidin’.”

  An hour passed, and then another. Still there was no sign of the two men who hunted him. Finally, when his weary eyes threatened to close on him, he decided they had successfully evaded their pursuers. “It’s time to go now,” he said, and struggled to get to his feet.

  She was there immediately to help lift him. “Lean on me,” she insisted. “I may not be big, but I’m strong.” She slipped under his arm and strained to shoulder his weight. His weakened condition would not allow him to puzzle over the girl’s eagerness to help him. For now, his only concern was to reach his camp by the waterfall where he felt they would be safe.

  With Rose to help support him, he walked to the horses and managed to climb aboard the bay. Instead of returning to the canyon they had ridden the day before, he continued around the crown of the mountain and descended the other side to what appeared to be a box canyon. He had killed an elk in the canyon before the passes had been closed last winter and knew there was a narrow passage at the end that led to a long valley. Once they reached the valley, they would be less than half a day’s ride from the cross canyon where he had made his camp. Upon reaching the valley, however, he found he was too weary to continue on that day, so Rose was called upon once again to make their camp, a chore she eagerly accepted. After the horses were cared for, and a fire showed a healthy blaze, she carved off more of the smoked venison to roast for him. Feeling that there was no more immediate danger from the two men who had been trailing them, Wolf found it easier to relax and accept the nourishment his wounded body needed. On this night, Rose made no pretense of remaining on guard. Instead, she slid under the blanket beside him and snuggled close to his body. Although weak and exhausted, he was sharply aware of her slender warm body next to his. He was not certain how to interpret his
feelings.

  He awoke the next morning feeling a little steadier, and even though any twisting motion he made brought a stabbing pain in his side, he was convinced that he was beginning to heal. Rose, too, noticed the signs of improvement, and she went about making his breakfast in a more cheerful mood, even to the point of chiding him about his meager supplies. “The first chance we get, I’m going to buy some coffee,” she said. “I need coffee to get my day started.” She pretended to scold. “Maybe you are used to living like an Indian, but I’m not.”

  He shrugged, then winced when it caused a sharp pain in his side. “I have coffee beans in my camp,” he said. “You can have coffee tonight.”

  “It’s a good thing,” she joked, “because I might be too cross to live with unless I get some.” She smiled then in case he didn’t realize she spoke in jest. She was almost lighthearted with the new sense of safety since losing those who had pursued them.

  With plenty of time to reach his camp, they saddled up and moved off down the valley. It was early afternoon when they came to the cross canyon he had told her about. Though uncomfortable sitting up in the saddle, he felt well enough to make the ride with no stops to rest. Entering the cross canyon, they rode only a little over one hundred yards before coming to a notch in the mountain on their right. Looking toward a hole in the thick forest above when he pointed, she saw the falls created by a sheer drop in the rushing stream from a ledge about seventy-five feet above the canyon floor. As a precaution, he hesitated before riding through the narrow opening in the rocky face of the mountain base while he scanned the trees, then checked the ground to make sure there were no fresh tracks to indicate anyone had visited his camp while he was gone. Satisfied then, they rode in.