Spirit Wolf

  Spirit Wolf

  Gary D. Svee

  This book is dedicated to Diane, Darren, Nathan, and Beatrice Svee, to Diane’s family, and to my own.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There was a hunt for the killer wolf of the Pryor Mountains early in this century. My father, Sigvart Oluf Svee, was one of the men who gathered to stalk that elusive beast.

  This book does not describe that hunt. It is rather an adventure of the mind and spirit.

  None of the people who abide within these pages live within the memories or memorabilia of men. But walk the streets of Montana and you will see them, bits and pieces, in the faces of the people you pass.

  Step beyond the interstate highways that weave their way under the Big Sky and wait. The blocks of stone, the grass, the trees, and the wind in this book will reveal themselves to you. Perhaps then you will see Spirit Wolf.

  Gary Svee

  1

  The voices were muffled through the cracks of the door that led to his parents’ bedroom. He heard his father’s deep voice, an unintelligible rumble, punctuated by his mother’s alto. He had been awakened by the sound of his own name, Nashua, and he knew it must have been his mother speaking because only she called him that. He had long since become Nash to his father.

  They were the focus of his twelve-year-old world, and they were talking about him.

  He swung his legs out from under the quilt, patched together from bits and pieces of worn-out shirts and pants, and dropped his feet to the ice-cold wooden floor. Even in the darkness, he could see the cloud his breath made wafting through the cold air toward the broken window at the front of the cabin.

  The fire in the big Majestic range had been banked for the night, and it did little more than take the edge off the cold. By morning the bucket of water by the stove would be caked with ice.

  Nash felt a shiver course through his body, and he wrapped his arms around himself as he walked over to the bedroom door to listen.

  “Mary, we don’t have any choice,” his father said. “You know how dry it was last year. We didn’t get enough wheat for seed. If we don’t have a mild winter, we’ll run out of hay, and we can’t afford to buy any. We don’t have any choice. I know it isn’t much, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  And then his mother’s protest. “What if a blizzard comes up? What if one of you gets hurt? Losing the place is one thing, but it isn’t as important as keeping you and Nash safe. Surely you can see that.”

  “We don’t have any choice. I’m sorry, but it has to be.”

  Nash heard a little stir in his parents’ bed and then silence, and he walked back to his own already cold blankets.

  The boy lay wide-eyed for some time, watching light from the hunter’s moon outside skip off the breast of the snow and bounce into the cabin. The light was too soft to reveal much, but there wasn’t much to see anyway.

  A piano, Mary Brue’s only heirloom, stood against the windowless back wall of the room. When the Brues left Minnesota bound for the homestead in Montana, Mary’s mother had given the ornate old upright to her. The gift was an unstated acknowledgment that neither would see the other again.

  Mary played beautifully. In Minnesota, the minister of the local Lutheran church had been fond of saying that if he could learn to keep his mouth shut and let Mary praise God with her music, the church would be filled to overflowing each Sunday. He was probably right, but he was too much in love with the sound of his own voice to ever put his theory to the test.

  But now Mary’s hands were cracked and calloused with the hard labor of homesteading. One summer afternoon, Nash had surprised his mother at the piano, wringing her hands and weeping. She made Nash promise never to tell Uriah.

  The rest of the furnishings were rough-hewn, to fit the rough-hewn home. The house had been a line cabin once, years ago, when Montana was still an open range. Nash remembered the look on his mother’s face when she first saw the cabin, and the apology in his father’s voice as he said, “I know it isn’t much, but we’ll fix it up, and it will serve until I can build you something better.”

  That had been five years ago, and still it was the same cabin, still the rough plank floor, worn smooth by the door and by the stove, and splintered elsewhere. Only the muslin draped from the rafters to catch the dirt that dropped through from the sod roof was new.

  There was still laughter in the house, but not as often as there had been at first.

  The boy’s shivering stopped. Only his nose, poked out from under the blankets, was cold. The warmth drew him into sleep, still wondering what his mother and father had been talking about.

  Nash awakened to the sound of the door on the stove firebox rasping open. He watched as his father took sticks from the kindling bucket by the stove and laid them on the few coals left from the night.

  Uriah spoke without looking up.

  “Better be getting up, boy. I heard Bess calling from the barn a few minutes ago. She’s ready for milking.”

  Nash reached out from the bed and grabbed his shirt and pants from where they lay on the floor. He slipped his clothes under the covers, hoping to warm them a bit before dressing.

  “I’ll be right there, Dad. Don’t let her start without me.”

  Uriah chuckled at the private joke, which was a daily ritual between the two of them. He chucked a few more sticks on the fire and stepped to the peg on the wall where his coat and hat were hanging.

  “You won’t be going to school Monday, maybe all week. I want you to split some more wood for your mother. I’m going to hitch up the wagon and haul some hay for the sheep.”

  Uriah opened the door and stepped into the darkness.

  No school! Ordinarily Nash would have been elated to spend a day home, even if it meant work. But now he was vaguely apprehensive. School was important business, and missing it wasn’t taken lightly.

  Putting on his boots was like plunging his feet into creek water, and Nash wriggled his toes to give them a little breathing room. Then he lighted the brass kerosene lantern, grabbed the galvanized milk bucket, and stepped outside into a cold that took his breath away. It was unseasonably cold, as though someone had left the door to the Arctic open, letting the icy winds loose to play on the Montana prairie. Uriah was fond of saying that the only thing between the North Pole and Montana was a barbed-wire fence, and it blew down two or three times a year.

  But it was warmer away from the wind in the log barn where Bess had spent the night. The Guernsey’s body heat and the insulation provided by the hay overhead in the loft kept the barn warmer than the house at night.

  “Easy, Bess,” Nash said to the milk cow. “And I’ll trade you some hay for a bucket of milk.”

  Nash scrambled up the ladder leading to the loft, talking all the while. Uriah said the sound of a man’s voice quieted a cow, and Nash would have recited the Gettysburg Address to the cantankerous beast if it made the milking easier. Nash dropped a couple of forkfuls of hay, then descended and closed the stanchion on the cow’s neck when she reached out to take it.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Bess. I’m not going to school today, so it must be important. Mom doesn’t want me to go because it’s dangerous.”

  He let dangerous roll off his tongue, savoring the taste of it. Then he sat down, gripping the bucket between his knees, and went to work. Swish, swish, the milk streamed into the bucket, leaving a layer of froth on the top. Nash shot a couple of streams of milk at the cats waiting expectantly nearby, and stood, hanging his stool back on the wall. He released the stanchion and turned Bess out into the cold.

  The bucket was heavy with Bess’s milk, and Nash took on a considerable list as he struggled across the yard, milk sloshing at every step. He dropped the bucket off at the little building that house
d the separator. Later, before it froze, Mary would separate the cream, which would be hauled to the Miller place to be put on the milk train for town. Cream and eggs were the family’s only cash crops during the winter, and it wouldn’t be long before the hens stopped laying and Bess dried up.

  The sun was touching the sky in the east, and Nash saw his father in the half-light, pitching hay from the stack by the creek into the family’s broad-wheeled grain wagon. Then Nash stumped up on the porch and into the house.

  “Call your father. It’s time for breakfast.”

  The cabin was warm now, almost hot, and his mother’s face was flushed from standing over the stove.

  The color in her cheeks brought out her natural prettiness. She was of about medium height, with straw-colored hair and eyes the color of a cloudless summer sky. Her face was fine-featured, ending in a chin that Uriah always thought should be higher in the air than it was generally carried.

  Uriah was taller than average and rangy, with a face too craggy to be handsome topped by a shock of hair about the color of the bunchgrass beneath the snow outside. His blue eyes were flecked with brown and never seemed to rest. Uriah would go unnoticed in a crowd but for his straight back and level, appraising eyes; generally one glance at him would draw a second.

  Nash walked to the door, savoring the scents of sidepork, potatoes, eggs, and pancakes as he opened the door a crack and shouted to his father.

  “Breakfast is ready.”

  When Uriah waved, Nash shut the door and walked over to the stove. He took the teakettle full of boiling water to the washstand and mixed it half and half with cold water dipped from a bucket his mother had just gotten from the well. He washed his face and hands and sat down at the table.

  Uriah stepped in a minute later, stamping snow from his boots. He washed, and the family sat down to breakfast. They ate in silence, trying to get around as much food as possible before more chores pulled them away. Then Uriah stopped, waiting a moment for the meal to sift into the nooks and crannies of his stomach.

  “When I was in town yesterday,” Uriah said, “I heard some talk about a bounty hunt in the Pryors. Cattlemen got a bee in their bonnet about killing the last Pryor wolf, and they’re willing to pay a five-hundred-dollar bounty to the man who kills him. Your mother and I talked it over last night, and you’re coming along with me.”

  Nash tried hard to keep from grinning, but he lost the fight. “When do we leave?”

  “This afternoon. We have to get a couple loads of hay up by the sheep pen so your mother can feed them while we’re gone.”

  The rest of the meal passed in silence, but Nash could swear that the sound of his heart was booming through the room. He was a little scared and a lot excited all at the same time.

  Nash floated through the morning. Everything was so easy, it seemed to be magic. Pitchforks full of hay danced to his touch, and the wagon filled twice with so little effort Nash felt like sprinting over to the creek and back just to take the edge off his excitement.

  By noon, the chores were done.

  His mother had packed a bag with sidepork, bread, flour, coffee, some leftover stew, and a little penny candy she’d had hidden since the family’s last trip to town.

  “Get Nell saddled and we’ll pack the gear,” Uriah told the boy.

  Nash’s excitement soared again. Nell was a workhorse, no doubt about that. She had feet as big as dinner plates and a roman nose that would bring a snicker from any quarter-horse pwist, but she was a good horse. Most important, as long as he was astride her, he was on his own. That was important to Nash.

  Pulling the hay wagon had taken the edge off Nell, and she stood patiently while Nash set the bit between her teeth and dropped the old Miles City saddle over her back. Then, more from reflex than malice, Nell sucked in a deep breath when Nash tried to cinch the saddle tight. And more from habit than malice, Nash stepped back and kicked her as hard as he could in the belly. The breath went out of the mare with a woof, and Nash pulled the cinch up to the worn spot and buckled it.

  By the time Nash was finished, Uriah was tying a burlap bag behind the boy’s saddle. They walked together to the house, each leading his horse.

  Mary looked up from the stove as the door opened. She stood there, motionless, as though to prolong the moment, to postpone the goodbye.

  Uriah busied himself, putting together the final bits and pieces of the supplies he and Nash would need. He seemed very intent on his tasks, too intent to speak, too intent to look into Mary’s eyes.

  Then, with his pockets stuffed with another handful of matches, more candles, and a few more pieces of jerky, Uriah reached up on the wall and took down the rifle and the shotgun, handing the shotgun to Nash.

  Suddenly, Mary was beside Uriah holding his arms, speaking to him so rapidly and softly Nash could barely hear.

  “Uriah, the Lazy KT is close to the reservation. You’re as apt to bump into Indians as not.…”

  Her voice hung there, saying nothing, saying everything.

  Uriah’s face went flat, like a washed-out photograph.

  “The best thing for those Indians on the reservation is to stay on the reservation.”

  “But what if they don’t?” she asked, apprehension hanging on her voice like frost on a window.

  “That’s their lookout.” Uriah’s voice was low and hard.

  Mary stepped into Uriah’s arms, holding him to her tightly, protectively. She stood there until the stiffness in Uriah’s back and face eased, and then she looked into his eyes.

  “Leave it be, Uriah, before it tears you apart.”

  Uriah shook his head. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

  There was a catch in Mary’s voice as she said, “No matter what happens, you come back, and bring Nashua with you.”

  Then Mary turned to Nash. “You take care of yourself,” she said. “Do what your dad tells you. Stay warm and don’t get too tired. The wolf isn’t as important as you are. Remember that.”

  Nash couldn’t remember the last time his mother had hugged him. She’d stopped doing it, he thought, in a tacit recognition that he was growing up, but she hugged him now, bending only a little to reach him.

  Mary followed Uriah and Nash to the door.

  “Be careful,” she said as they stepped outside to the horses, hesitating a moment before mounting.

  Nash looked back minutes later just before he nudged Nell into the creek ford. His mother was still standing in the doorway, a touch of color against the drabness that was the cabin.

  Uriah stopped on the other side of the creek. “We’ll stay at the Andersons’ tonight. We should get there about dark.”

  It was cold enough to paint breath against air as clear as a prism. Anything dark stood out so sharply against the snow it appeared etched on the mind.

  As the two passed, the only sounds were the caws of magpies perched in the cottonwoods and the singing of the snow underfoot.

  Uriah had slipped his rifle into the scabbard that hugged his horse’s side. Nash balanced the family’s twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun with Damascus barrels over Nell’s neck. Nash had hunted rabbits and birds with the shotgun before, but only halfheartedly. The weapon had a wicked kick and the knife-edged stock dropped so sharply the shooter knew he put his cheekbone in jeopardy every time he squeezed the trigger. Nash’s respect for the double-barrel was so great he fired it only when, in his excitement, he forgot the consequences of squeezing the trigger. The gun was empty. His father carried the shells, double-ought buckshot, in his saddlebags.

  “Not many people are accidentally shot with an empty gun,” he explained.

  Uriah’s rifle was a lever-action Winchester, a deer killer. Antelope and deer. Staples. Nature’s meat market.

  Nash remembered beefsteak from family meals in Minnesota. But there was no beefsteak in Montana. Deer steak hammered tender and coated with flour to take away the taste of sage and willow and wont. Beef, if you had beef, was for market. Venison was for th
e table.

  Nash had killed his first deer that fall after the weather cooled enough to keep the meat until it aged. It was a dry doe. The rifle put her down, backbroken.

  Nash walked toward the stricken deer. She was struggling to pull herself to safety, but her back legs wouldn’t work. They dragged uselessly behind her like anchors. As Nash neared, she stopped struggling and turned to look at this man-creature who was killing her. Nash lifted the rifle to fire a bullet through her brain, to close those eyes that looked at him with such fear and wonder, but Uriah pushed the rifle aside. Bullets, like everything else, were too precious to waste.

  The doe struggled again as Uriah approached. He straddled her, cradling her neck almost gently in his left arm. Then he began sawing at her throat with a knife honed to razor sharpness. Nash watched and listened to the doe bleat as the knife sought her lifeblood. Then the knife found her windpipe, and the only sound was her gasping breath, until the life drained out of her and her head sank to the ground.

  And Uriah looked at Nash then, handing him the bloodied knife.

  “Time you learned.”

  Uriah grabbed a hind leg and held the deer open to Nash. The knife cut through hide and tissue to the body cavity below, and the smell came then, the smell of life and death emanating from the deer’s guts and rising into the cold air. Nash cut the anus free and then sliced around the diaphragm, as he had seen his father do dozens of times. Then, holding his breath against the stench, he reached his arm deep into the deer’s body and grasped her esophagus with his hand. He braced his legs and tugged until the windpipe tore free and the deer’s guts spilled on the ground.

  Nash ate meat from that deer, but never without seeing in his mind’s eye that river of guts spilling on the ground. And he never again pointed a gun at game without seeing the look in that doe’s eyes as his father cut her throat.

  The horses were plowing through drifts caught in the lee of a little rise and their breath plumed up like smoke from a locomotive laboring up a hill.

  Nash had been on only one train trip in his life, but he would never forget it. All the family’s possessions—furniture, stock, tools—were loaded into a single “immigrant” car, the Brues into a hard-riding, smoke-filled passenger car. His mother had packed food to eat on the way, and the Brue family jolted, lurched, and jerked along for a thousand miles, passing the time at each stop feeding the stock and cleaning out their car. His father spent most of his time in the stockcar, peering out the crack in the door when he wasn’t busy.