Spirit Wolf by Gary D. Svee Page B

let his listeners wait a moment.
    â€œOut back behind the cabin was the cage, but the door was open and the wolf was gone. I almost walked past it without noticing, but something pulled me back, and then I saw them. There was another set of tracks, going up to the cage and then leaving again. I knew they weren’t Charley’s boots. They didn’t even really look like boot tracks, more like somebody had walked out there in his stocking feet or something like that. Somebody had let the wolf out. When Charley found out about it, he got his rifle and lit out after the wolf.
    â€œI figured he’d catch the wolf, too, as sick as it likely was by then. But I followed Charley just to be sure. The trail led down a ridge for quite a while, and I knew that wolf was sick. Only sick animals run downhill like that. About a half mile from the cabin, the tracks led up to the edge of this little sandstone rim over the creek bottom. The wolf had walked up to the edge and slipped off. You could see where he’d bounced off the rocks on the way down, and then Charley’s tracks, going down right after him.
    â€œI wasn’t as eager as ol’ Charley was. There was a lot of heavy cedar down there along the creek. Sick or not, that wolf wasn’t something I wanted to meet up with in cover like that, so I started to walk downstream along that rim. Well, it wasn’t but a little while before I picked up their tracks down below the creek. I was going along as quiet as I could, watching for Charley or the wolf.
    â€œIt was then that I saw what had happened. The trail dipped into some really heavy juniper and then popped out into a clearing on the other side. Charley was laying there. I don’t know how he did it, but he had dragged himself all the way across the clearing.”
    Flynn stopped, and a shudder ran through his body. He took a long pull on the bottle, and then another.
    â€œMaybe it was just the meanness in him. I don’t know what else would explain it. Anybody else would have just laid down and died, but Charley pulled himself across that clearing, dragging his guts behind him. He had stepped into the juniper, and the wolf had gutted him just as clean as he had the killer dog.”
    Flynn paused waiting for the murmur that ran through the crowd to die before he continued.
    â€œWhen I got there, the wolf was still there, just sitting, watching. He’d been there all that time, watching Charley die. He looked up at me, and all I could see was those emerald eyes. I thought, Oh my God, I’m dead, too. But the wolf just looked at me and disappeared. He just disappeared. I went down to Charley, but he was cold by then, so I got his wagon and took him back to the cabin and buried him.”
    He stopped and looked into the fire for what seemed to be a long time, light and shadow playing across his face. “Ain’t anybody out there got a bottle of whiskey? This one died on me,” Flynn said, turning and flinging it as far as he could. “Anyhow, that’s the last time I saw that beautiful beast. There’s others that say they’ve seen his shadow going through the trees. To hear tell, everybody who has seen the wolf since then has put a mortal slug into the animal. I know that cats are supposed to have nine lives, but if all those people are telling the truth, that wolf surely puts a cat to shame.
    â€œPeople say that the wolf has killed men since Charley. That could be. I don’t know. A man can break a leg in this country and never be found. It’s easy to blame an animal for fate. On the other hand, I can tell you that wolf took a fearsome joy in killing ol’ Charley. He’s killed more cattle than he could eat in a dozen lifetimes. It’s the only animal I’ve ever seen that will kill a calf and just walk away, leaving it for the magpies.
    â€œSome of you have asked how you’ll know this wolf. But you don’t have to worry about that. He