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5
That night, the bunkhouse ran out of water. Since Middle pack had come to Washington Harbor, Ridley had ba
At first light, A
Ridley on the snowmobile broke free of the trees and the pack was on its feet.
Then they were gone.
A
“Children of the night,” she said.
“Let’s go,” Katherine begged.
“Let’s do it.” With Bob’s permission, Katherine was off, trotting down the slippery dock and onto the lake, shuffle-sliding her way toward what remained of the moose.
“Mmm-mm.” Jonah smacked his lips. “Fresh steaming wolf scat and lots of it. For a wildlife biologist, it just doesn’t get any better.”
Apparently carnivore excreta being of little interest to him, Jonah stopped at the ice well to help Ridley refill the plastic water barrels. A
“They may come back tonight, but I doubt it,” A
“I’m going to take a look at their trail,” Bob a
A
“Don’t get eaten,” she said to be personable. After a hard, lean winter, if a wolf ate Menechi
“The axman never gets eaten by the wolf.” Bob gri
For a while, A
While convinced that wolf poop was a fine and desirable thing, without the actual furry beasts around it, A
The scientists thought this the height of absurdity, one more example of Park Service ineptitude. The machinery for weather recording had moved on while the NPS clung to the old ways. Still, when the stations were gone, it would be one more link broken from when the world was a more mysterious – and less endangered – place.
“Think it’ll snow?” A
“I hope so,” Katherine replied. “It makes it easier to map the packs’ movements. You can follow their tracks from the air.”
Watching Katherine scooping frozen urine-soaked snow into ziplock baggies and packing up wolf scat, A
“You’re in love with the wolves,” A
Katherine looked up shyly. A strand of hair escaped from her hood and curved around the swell of her cheek. “I saw one when I was little – three or four,” she said. “We had a cabin on a lake just north of the Boundary Waters.” She laughed. It was the first time A
“We were there one winter, and Momma bundled me out to play.” Katherine rocked back till she sat on her heels like an Arab, arms clasped around her knees, and looked through A
“He was doing the same thing. Flying. That’s what I thought then. He was taller than me and couldn’t have been more than ten feet away. We just stared at each other for a long time. His ears twitched and he blinked. I blinked and tried to make my ears twitch under my hood. Then he turned and walked toward the woods. At the edge of the trees, he looked back over his shoulder, and I started to cry.” She sounded wistful enough to cry these many years later.
“I thought he was asking me to go with him and I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” A
Katherine smiled and went back to her scat gathering. “Momma told me not to leave the yard.”
A
Wistful beauty burned away in a flash, and, for a second, A
Menechi
“What have you got?” A
“Let’s wait for Ridley,” Bob said and planted his feet as if the sheer force of his will would draw the lead researcher across the ice. Menechi
“Would you like me to radio Ridley?” she asked politely.
When he answered the call, Ridley echoed A
A
“It’s not far in,” Menechi
“It’s not far in,” A
“I’ll be there when we’re finished.”
A
Finally A
“Hang on, you two.” Bob sounded like a schoolmaster dealing with overeager children. “I don’t want you tracking up the area before Ridley gets there.”