Wilderness Double Edition 25 Page 4

  By then the calf was barely moving. The big female lay across it, worrying the jugular. Gnashing and rending, she savored the rich wet blood that flowed down her gullet.

  The rest of the herd crashed through the undergrowth in panicked flight. They would not stop until they were exhausted.

  The two sisters and the brother tore at the calf. It was not yet dead, but in deep shock. When the male bit down on the calf’s face, ripping off a cheek and one eyeball, it bleated loudly and shrilly, and then finally was still.

  Now came the best part: the feast. The big female sucked on the jugular until the calf’s lifeblood dwindled to a trickle. She tore at the soft flesh, savoring the deliciously sweet meat. When the male came too near, she snapped at him, biting him, but not deep enough to cause serious harm.

  They gorged until the sun was directly overhead. Sated and content, the quartet lazed in the sunlight.

  For a while the female forgot about her mother and the strange creatures that killed her. She forgot about the three mouths depending on her. She dozed, and might have slept the rest of the day away had the male not growled and the two smaller females not stood up and hissed like a pair of bobcats.

  Then the scent reached her, and the big female rose and glowered at the intruder lumbering deliberately toward them and what was left of their meal.

  A full-grown black bear, every whit as powerful as two of her kind combined, had its huge head tilted back, and was noisily sniffing. It was being drawn to the aroma of fresh blood as it would be to honey.

  The four stood their ground, bristling fiercely. It was against their nature to relinquish a kill. Although they were young and inexperienced, they would perish before they gave up the calf’s remains.

  For a while a stalemate prevailed. The black bear growled and blustered and clawed furrows in the ground. The four siblings snarled and hissed and gnashed their teeth.

  Ultimately, the black bear decided the numbers were not in his favor, and with as much ursine dignity as he could muster, he barreled off into the vegetation, an ambulatory avalanche plowing through everything in its path.

  The confrontation had rekindled the big female’s hunger. She settled down to finish what was left and was joined by her siblings. Gnawed bones and bits and tufts were scattered about when they eventually rose and wound up the gully to the high slopes and the crevice.

  Another day almost gone.

  The first of their new life.

  They laid up only until sunset. Shrouded by twilight, the big female led them out of the den and along the crest of a ridge to a shelf overlooking the valley.

  Far below glowed the lights of the strange ones. The female would like to pay them another visit. Curiosity had a lot to do with it, but so did the most basic tenet of her existence: All creatures were potential prey. From the largest to the smallest, whether fur-clad or covered with features or scales, they were food for her belly, and her belly came before all else.

  The big female started down the mountain. Since the others did whatever she did, they followed. In single file they descended slope after slope.

  The big female wanted to see the strange ones again.

  Presently she crossed the trail of a familiar scent and stopped. She ran her nose over the ground to confirm it. Her biggest brother had passed that way sometime during the night. He was bound for the valley floor, too. Perhaps to the giant log piles of the strange ones.

  The female moved on. Her curiosity and her belly would not be denied. Just as she had cleverly and efficiently ended the calf’s life, so would she end the lives of her mother’s slayers.

  Every last one.

  Four

  Shakespeare McNair did not let on to his wife or Nate King or Nate’s wife or Nate’s son or daughter or Louisa King, but he was worried. Extremely worried. More worried than he had been in ten coon’s ages, and that took some doing. For out of all of them, Shakespeare knew exactly what wolverines were capable of. He’d had more dealings with the legendary gluttons, back when he initially came to the Rockies.

  Shakespeare had been the first. The very first. Before any of the rest. Before Lewis and Clark, before Bridger, before Carson, before Smith. He was the first American to cross the mile-wide Mississippi River and the many-miles-wide prairie and set eyes on the mile-high snow-crowned ramparts that would become his home for the rest of his days.

  Young and green and without a prejudiced bone in his body, Shakespeare had taken up Indian ways. He ate what they ate, wore the same clothes they wore. He fought their enemies, both human and bestial, including Skunk Bears.

  Shakespeare liked to tease Nate about all the times Nate had tangled with grizzlies, but if the truth were known, Shakespeare had tangled with gluttons almost as many times as Nate had with bears, so much so, he was called Carcajou, or Wolverine, by various tribes.

  Shakespeare learned about gluttons fast. He had to. The first one he ran up against seemed to take perverse delight in raiding his traps day after day, depriving him of the furry fruits of his hard labor. He tried to track it to its lair, but the wolverine was clever and did not leave sign. He tried to poison it, but the wolverine never ate the tainted bait. So in desperation he sat up in a tree one night and when, along about dawn, he heard grunts and growls and the crunch of bones, he beheld a wolverine for the very first time—devouring a beaver caught in one of his traps.

  Shakespeare shot it. He saw it drop, and assuming it was dead, he climbed down to examine the body. Only the glutton was very much alive and it came at him like a demented demon, clawing and biting and savagely determined to inflict the same pain on him that he had inflicted on it.

  Over the decades Shakespeare had battled many foes of all different kinds, but it was safe to state that his battle that morning with the enraged wolverine on the bank of a stream that did not yet have a name was one of the two or three most fierce battles of his entire long and tumultuous life.

  Shakespeare, as was his habit, had reloaded right after firing. He got off another shot as the wolverine rushed him and scored a clear hit to the wolverine’s shoulder, but it did not even slow the wolverine down. Shakespeare had grabbed for his knife, and the glutton was on him.

  How he survived, Shakespeare would never rightly know. The wolverine had been immensely strong. Pound for pound for their size, they were the strongest animal alive. Somehow Shakespeare had gotten a forearm under its bottom jaw to keep its awful teeth from shredding his flesh like so much cheese, and he had stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, thrusting his blade again and again into the bulky body until his arm throbbed from the exertion.

  Just when Shakespeare thought the beast was indestructible, it collapsed on top of him.

  His second clash occurred when Shakespeare lived with the Flatheads. Something had been coming around the village at night, helping itself to camp dogs and disemboweling several horses. Tracks were found. The culprit was a wolverine. A warrior named Buffalo Horn organized a hunting party and eight Flatheads—plus Shakespeare—set out to end the depredations.

  Thanks to a light rain that day, they were able to track the wolverine to its den—a small cave. Thinking they had it trapped, they piled dead limbs in front of the cave and set the limbs alight to smoke the wolverine out. The wind was blowing just right and soon the cave filled with smoke, but their quarry did not come out.

  Unbeknownst to them, the wolverine wasn’t in the cave. It was watching their antics from the brush. When they headed for their village, it shadowed them. Their first inkling of peril came when the last warrior in line let out a screech. He had fallen a bit behind, and when they went to find him, he lay sprawled in a ring of scarlet, his throat horribly ravaged.

  They decided to take the dead warrior to the Flathead burial grounds and rigged a travois. Since the tribe did not have horses back then, they took turns pulling the travois. They had not gone far when the man pulling it, who was behind the rest, screamed. He was sitting on the ground, his fingers splayed over his stomach, his in
testines oozing out.

  The warrior lived half an hour. He died stoically and bravely, his last words an appeal that his wife and children be cared for.

  Two of them had died. They had debated rigging another travois but that meant two men had to pull, leaving them vulnerable to more attacks from their fearsome adversary. It was Shakespeare who recommended going back for more warriors and returning in force. -

  That was what they did. But when—forty warriors strong—they came to where the bodies had been, the bodies were not there. Both had been dragged off. They followed the trail of blood and found the first.

  Shakespeare remembered it to this day. The wolverine had eaten the softer parts, the internal organs and groin, and chewed on the man’s face. The second body was in even worse shape. An arm had been ripped off. A foot lay a dozen feet from the rest of the remains. And the wolverine had sucked out both eyeballs as if they were juicy olives.

  They never caught the wolverine.

  As was customary, the Flatheads moved their village shortly thereafter, and the depredations ceased.

  Those two incidents, along with others, lent Shakespeare a respect bordering on awe for gluttons. Wolverines were nature’s supreme predators, killing machines that lived to eat. They were not as big as grizzlies or as agile as mountain lions but they did not need to be. They possessed traits that set them apart and above their meat-devouring competitors.

  Wolverines were absolutely fearless. Mountain lions might cower in fright when treed. Bears might bawl in fear when beset by hunters. But wolverines were never afraid. Cautious, yes. Endowed with that most basic of instincts, self-preservation, yes. But fear? An alien emotion.

  Shakespeare had tried to figure out why that should be. Even grizzlies were afraid sometimes. Why not wolverines? What set them apart from all the other creatures in the animal kingdom? They were incredibly powerful and endowed with razor teeth and claws, but that alone could not account for their fearlessness, or bears and cougars would be equally fear free.

  Wolverines were highly intelligent. But so were wolves and foxes and mountain lions.

  Shakespeare finally came to the conclusion wolverines were so exceptional because of their exceptional force of will. When a wolverine set its mind to do something, nothing deterred it. Gluttons had the unique ability to focus their entire being on whatever they were doing at any given moment, with the result that random emotions, like fear, were completely blocked out.

  Of course, it was pure speculation on Shakespeare’s part. For all he knew, wolverines were so fearless and fierce because that was how they came into the world. They were simply being true to their natures.

  And it was their nature that had him so worried.

  Thus it was that on the third morning after the mother wolverine was slain and the morning after Shakespeare learned that Zach and Evelyn had found evidence of a glutton near the lake, that Shakespeare came out of the bedroom in his cabin with his mind made up.

  Shakespeare did not want his wife to guess his intent. She would try to talk him out of it, or worse, bring her womanly wiles to bear, and he could do without the nagging, glares and pouts.

  Blue Water Woman was busy cooking breakfast. They took turns. Shakespeare liked to cook and flattered himself that of the two of them, he was better—a belief he did not share with her to spare himself the aforementioned glares.

  Now, grinning cheerfully, Shakespeare came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and playfully nuzzled her neck. “Good morrow, fairest of the fair. How are you this most outstanding of days?”

  Pausing in the act of taking a plate from a cupboard, Blue Water Woman twisted her neck and arched an eyebrow. “What’s this?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Shakespeare stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “Is that any way to respond to your husband’s loving greeting? Verily, woman, thou art a trial.”

  “And verily, husband, thou art a windbag.” Blue Water Woman placed the plate on the counter.

  Shakespeare puffed up like a riled male grouse. “Now see? This is why women drive men mad. All I do is say good morning and you accuse me of having an ulterior motive.” He could not resist quoting the Bard. “You are pictures out of doors, Bells in your parlors, wild cats in your kitchens, Saints in your injuries, devils being offended, Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.”

  “And, you, sir, are changing the subject.” Blue Water Woman’s English was excellent. She had decades of practice. She also knew her man as well as she knew herself. “What are you up to?”

  “I refuse to stand here and be maligned,” Shakespeare huffed, and stepping to the table, he took his seat. “Go to, woman. Throw your vile guesses in the devil’s teeth, from whence you have them.”

  “Is that so?” Blue Water Woman absently ran a finger through her long hair, which was streaked with wisps of gray. Her lovely dark eyes were questioning. “Maybe I am wrong, then.”

  “Of course you are!” Shakespeare seized the advantage. “I am as innocent as a newborn. To accuse me of deceit is to accuse the sun and the moon of being blackguards.”

  “I like that comparison,” Blue Water Woman said sweetly, “since your head is almost as big.” She finished cooking and brought him a plate heaped with his favorite breakfast; flapjacks covered with a syrup she made herself from brown sugar and crushed berries.

  “O curse of marriage! That we can call these delicate creatures ours,” Shakespeare quoted.

  Blue Water Woman set the plate in front of him. “If you choke I will not shed a tear.” She handed him a fork and knife and walked back to the counter. “Are you going to tell me or go on pretending I am stupid?”

  “You are many things but never that,” Shakespeare said tenderly.

  She filled his tin cup with steaming coffee and brought it over, along with the sugar bowl and a wooden spoon. Then she leaned back against the table with her arms folded across her chest and regarded him intently. “I saw how you reacted when Evelyn told you what happened yesterday.”

  Shakespeare stalled by slicing a piece of flapjack and forking it into his mouth. “Mmmmm,” he said between chews. “Delicious.”

  “I know how you feel about wolverines. They are the only animal that makes you bite your nails.”

  “If that was your polite way of saying I’m yellow,” Shakespeare said defensively, “then a pox on you and your insinuations.”

  “You are many things but never that,” Blue Water Woman mimicked him. “Why are you behaving this way? Have we not always been honest with one another?”

  Shakespeare sighed and set down his fork. “I won’t be allowed to eat in peace until we hash this out, will I?”

  “I care about you. I do not want anything to happen to you. I have become used to your quirks and would rather not spend the rest of my days alone.”

  “Someone has to scout around,” Shakespeare said. “Zach is younger and loves to hunt,” Blue Water Woman noted, “and Nate does not have as much at stake as you do. Ask them to do it.”

  “They’ll say I’m fretting over nothing. That I’m making a mountain out of an ant hill. But I’ve always been partial to better safe than gone under.”

  “Then ask one or both of them to go along,” Blue Water Woman suggested. “I will not worry quite as much.”

  “They’re busy. Nate has to finish Evelyn’s bedroom and Zach mentioned something about Lou being so moody of late because he’s been gone so much, he’s decided to stay home for a few days.”

  “I do not want you to go alone,” Blue Water Woman insisted. “I will come along to keep you company.” Shakespeare quickly said, “You will do no such thing. I can’t watch my back and yours, both.”

  “Who asked you to? I can watch my own.”

  Smiling, Shakespeare reached over and patted her thigh, “It’s really not necessary, heart of my heart. I am only going on a scout, not a hunt.” He disliked lying to her. He could count the number of times he had done so over the cou
rse of their wonderfully happy years together on one hand and have fingers left over.

  “You promise?”

  “The truth appears so naked on my side, that any purblind eye may find it out,” Shakespeare quoted with a lightheartedness he had to force.

  “One of the things I have always liked most about you is that you have never lied to me. I will take you at your word.”

  Shakespeare wanted to kick himself.

  “So we will consider the matter dropped,” Blue Water Woman begrudged him, “but you must be back before the sun goes down.” She lovingly kissed him on the cheek and went to bring her food over. “Promise me that you will or I am going with you whether you want me to or not.”

  “I promise.” Shakespeare glumly poked at his flapjacks, his appetite gone. He would sooner chop off an arm or leg than deceive her. But someone had to make sure the wolverines did not pose a threat, and it might as well be him. He had the most experience. But he would not fool himself. The forest, the mountains, were a wolverine’s natural element. He would be lucky if he made it back alive.

  Five

  Louisa King could not believe her ears. But then, she was dealing with one of them, and they could be the most pigheaded, stubborn, and unbelievably inconsiderate beings on God’s green earth. Mad as a kicked cat, she glared at the brute she had taken as her husband and reminded him in her iciest tone, “You promised.”

  Zach King inwardly squirmed. When his wife got like this, nothing short of a miracle would change her mind, and it had been his experience miracles were mighty scarce. “But that wolverine could cause trouble. Someone has to go after it.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Louisa said. She was shorter than he was and a lot slighter of build, but when her dander was up she seemed to grow two or three feet. Her flashing blue eyes contrasted with her sandy hair. Today she wore a homespun dress, although she was not as partial to dresses as her in-laws. She would just as soon wear a buckskin shirt and pants. “You’re not concocting some flimsy excuse to break your word to me, Zach King.” She stepped up to him and poked him hard in the chest. “You swore that you would stay home with me for three whole days and I am holding you to it come hell or high water.”