A Wolf Called Wander Read online

  Dedication

  To all who wander

  in search of a home

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Pack

  Watch

  Rival

  Fight

  Elk

  Pain

  Raven

  Found

  Lightning

  Canyon

  Almost

  Food

  Fear

  Water

  Mountain

  Hunt

  Track

  Run

  Howl

  Pack

  The Real Wolf Behind the Story

  Map of OR-7’s Journey

  About Wolves

  Wolf Tracks

  Wolf Packs

  Wolf Behavior

  The Habitats of the Pacific Northwest

  Author’s Note

  Resources for Young Readers

  General Resources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Pack

  I begin in darkness, and my nose tells me everything I know.

  I have a brother. Sharp. Bigger than me, and all growl. I have sisters. Pounce, who loves to wrestle, and Wag, who talks with her tail. And best of all, my brother Warm, who likes to curl up under my chin, the only pup smaller than me.

  I nose each one of them and the damp dirt above and the dry grass below. I circle the den while the others drowse. I take test runs up the tunnel. They call me Swift because I was the first to stand up and walk. Wherever my legs take me, I always circle back to the empty hollow spot in the center of the den that smells like home, like the thing I can never smell enough. And then she comes in out of the wind, the best of all smells: Mother.

  She turns around once, nose-touching each of us in turn, and then lies down in her hollow. Sharp, Pounce, and Wag dive for her belly to drink. I could have been first, but Mother’s fur is full of smells. From her hip to her shoulder to her warm growly breath, she holds smells with no name. Smells that make me want to push beyond the place at the mouth of the tunnel where Mother has said, “Do not pass,” and put my nose where the light comes from.

  I am late for lunch. Warm creeps toward the last drinking spot. I lunge for it. And then—ahhh—drinking fast and strong, drinking gulps and dribbles and gasps. Mother sings to us as we drink, about the wide world beyond our den and the story of our life in the mountains. I take in her song like air, like milk—pack, mountains, elk, stars, wind, rain, howl, hunt, mountains, pack.

  As always, Warm squirms under me in his low-to-the-ground way. He whimpers and pushes his head under my chin. Pop! My drinking spot is gone. Belly half full, I move on. I do not even try Sharp. He is big, and there is a bite behind all that loudmouth yowling. I nudge Pounce, but she steps on my head. Wag gives up her drinking spot when I push her away. Wag pushes Pounce, who pushes Sharp, and then he turns to Warm, teeth bared, and growls the one word we all know.

  “Mine!”

  Warm creeps away and curls up in the back of the den alone. One by one we slide full-bellied into dreams. Before I do, I catch a sweet smell that gives me no peace. I yawn, lift my nose, and . . . yes. Yes, there is more milk. And I can claim it. More, and if I drink it, I will grow to be even bigger than Sharp. I find just one swallow in every drinking spot. And now I know one thing my brothers and sisters do not: hind milk is the sweetest of all. I lick the last drops from my chin and curl my body around Warm so they will not step on him in the dark.

  “Tell me again,” I say to Mother. I point my nose to the tunnel. “When can I go outside?”

  “It’s wild and hungry out there on the home ground,” Mother says. “And you are tender and tasty, my wolfling, my own. Wait until you are bigger.”

  She sighs at the soft pool of light that has spilled through the Do Not Pass onto the den floor.

  “Wait until you have a fighting chance.”

  I stretch my nose toward the light and stifle the yawn that comes with the stretch. I don’t want to wait. My sisters and brothers breathe the slow, deep breaths of sleep. My head bobs, but I fight.

  “Tell me more.”

  “The pack belongs to the mountains and the mountains belong to the pack,” she begins. “And the wolf star shines on us all.”

  I listen, but the long and winding slide into dreams carries me away.

  And so I sleep and wake and eat and sleep, until the time when I wake and Mother is gone. A cool white glow shines in from the Do Not Pass. I check on all five smells of us and the dirt and the dry grass and the echo of Mother’s smell in her hollow. Everything is here. Everything is right.

  Except my empty belly. I feel the sway of it side to side as I pace the den floor. There is less room now. No new smells to smell, only longer bodies to trip over, and Sharp is still the biggest of us all.

  Mother has never left us so long. Warm whimpers and rubs his head along my shoulder.

  “The pack belongs to the mountains. The mountains belong to the pack,” Wag says.

  “And the wolf star shines on us all,” Warm chimes in.

  They go on, the two of them, telling each other the story.

  Sharp pretends not to care that Mother is gone, but he puts his teeth on Pounce, just in case she might taste good. She wrestle-stomps him to the ground. I take my nose to the Do Not Pass to learn what a pup can know.

  Warm shivers at the dare I am taking. I don’t care. I am only a paw length over the line. Two paws over. Three! Three paws over the line and I can smell new things. The dark den of the sky has a soft white circle that glows. Smaller white sparks flicker all around it. So many of them. More than tails, more than paws, more even than claws, paws, and tails together. I cannot stop watching them.

  The cool air carries news of faraway things I have only heard about in stories: pine, mouse, owl, fir, huckleberry, water. There is more in the air than I can name. I inch forward against Warm’s nudge of warning.

  “Do not pass!”

  Crouch. Freeze. It is a new wolf.

  Sniff. Freeze. It is a not-Mother smell.

  Sniff. Wag. Freeze.

  I’ve smelled him on Mother’s fur. He is kin. I creep forward.

  “Do not pass!”

  Warm is long gone to the back of the den, but I can’t keep the wag out of my tail. It thwaps on the den roof and rains down dirt.

  “Hush!”

  Nose to ground. I do not mean to bow down. His voice pulls me down.

  “Listen,” he says, not so harsh this time.

  My ears turn. The wind brings sound along with smell.

  Whoosh, creak, pop from the wind in the trees nearby. Hoot and scurry from farther off. And then howl.

  Hoooooowl. My fur goes up all over. It is a sound from my dreams. I feel an answering howl deep inside, but not so deep that the pup-watcher can’t see it about to come out.

  “Hush,” he says. “Hush!”

  I swallow my howl and sit on my wag. I wait, hunger forgotten, in the wash of new sounds. The pup-watcher waits too. He paces slowly, a gray shape in a circle of trees.

  I hear water running far away, buzz and chirp-chirp from nearby. The heartbeat sound of running feet from medium far. And then nearer. And nearer still. And now I can smell them: Mother and our kin.

  Sharp, Wag, and Pounce are all at my heels now. They crowd in beside me, stepping over Warm and making hungry whimpers. And then Mother comes over the ridge. Running. With the pack all around her.

  Mother! She is silver-gray, and tall with black ears and a black tail tip. Her kin rub shoulders with her. They bow their heads and sing her name. I can smell her sweet-wild, milk-wind smell.

  “Come,” she says.

  I am all wag. “Outside?” I want to be sure.

  “Come,” she says. “Come out.”

  I spring up, but Sharp shoulders past me, and Pounce steps on my hind end. I roll her off, and we burst out of the den together, raining dirt on Wag and Warm behind us.

  I am out. Out! The bigness of it, this new den with the black roof no jump could reach. I jump anyway, just to try. Wind runs through my fur. My kin nose me from head to tail. I breathe in each one of them: golden-furred Song, the hunter, and the pup-watcher Growl, who walks slowly and with a limp. I cannot stop the wag. I lick the ground of our gathering place: salt, iron, ash. Home.

  Father stands above the rest, gray face, black ears, and tall, tall, tall. His scent-mark is on the doorway of our den. His is the howl the pack follows. I know I should go to him and share smells, but he is silent and tall.

  Sharp beats me to it. He brushes past. He is a head taller than me, and he looks down on me just to show that he can. His tail is up as always, but it goes down when he gets close to Father. He ducks his head and slows to a creep. Father gives him two sniffs and a growl and nudges him away. Sharp turns to the rest of us, teeth snapping, a growl in his throat, warning us that he is the one to smell-share with Father, not us. Warm cries a little. Wag says nothing, but the hopeful lift of her tail droops. Pounce takes the bait and wrestles Sharp to the ground, losing twice before she pins him.

  I slip by them all and go to meet my father, tall-tailed and nose up. But as I get close, my tail drops like a stone. I almost turn back to bring Warm along, for courage, but some things a pup has to do on his own.

  Up close, Father is not just gray and black but golden on the chest and silvered over the shoulders. Dark red r
uns around his mouth.

  “Son,” he growls to me. “Mine.”

  I sit on my wag, but it will not hold still. I breathe in the smell of him, deeper and longer until his scent holds a spot in my memory right next to Mother. I will do anything for him! I jump-spin, hoping he will like it. I yip-wag.

  “Father! Mine!”

  I cannot stop smelling the red on him. It makes me hungry like the smell of Mother’s milk, but this is a new smell. A richer smell. I can’t resist it. I nose his chin. I lick his face. He leans toward me and opens his mouth wide.

  A great red and runny lump comes out of his mouth. It steams. It is nothing I have ever smelled before. But Father gave it to me.

  Sniff? Sniff!

  The more I smell it, the more I like it. I push my nose into the pile and rub it into my fur. Mother calls the other pups and lowers her mouth to their licking. She pushes another red lump of something out of her mouth. She nudges Wag and Pounce to try it. Aunt Song does the same for Sharp and Warm. I turn back to Father’s gift.

  Lick-lick-lick.

  It tastes smooth and rich. Not so sweet as milk but tail-wagging good all the same.

  Nibble? Nibble.

  The lumps are thick and chewy.

  Bite-bite-gobble-gobble-gobble-gulp. Ahhhhhhh!

  The rest of the pups join in, hind ends all a-wag. I eat until I am dizzy-full and curl up in Father’s shadow as sleep stalks me. Father noses me into place at his feet.

  “Elk,” he says. “Life of the pack.”

  Watch

  All summer the pack hunts. Growl watches us while they are gone. When the pack comes home, there are steaming piles of elk meat for everyone and then, best of all, howling. Father begins and then Mother and then Song. The sound of it makes my fur stand up and my tail wave. We pups howl together, each trying to be the loudest, stretching our necks out and up like Father does. We draw in deep breaths to win the longest howl or the loudest. But loud or soft, long or short, our howling makes us a pack. All of us, one pack, and this our home ground. Our voices bounce off the mountains. They reach for the wolf star. The sound fills me up like fresh water.

  Growl sounds his low, mournful wails last of all. He is the following wolf, our wrestling coach, and the peacemaker of the pack. By the time the meadow turns late-summer gold I can outrun him, and by the first frost I can make him drop his tail when I beat the ground with my front paws and raise the fur on my shoulders.

  Sharp never drops his tail to me, no matter how hard I try. I wrestle him every day, but he slips out of my paws. I run farther than him. I howl longer. I gulp down more meat than anyone, but he is still taller and heavier, louder and stronger. I can run faster than him, but that is my only victory. Mother sees me try and gives me extra licks at sleep time.

  “A lead wolf feeds his pack,” she says. “No other trick matters.”

  So when the first snow falls, instead of snapping at snowflakes and skidding over frozen puddles with the rest of the pups, I run with Father to the game-watching place. It takes all my strength to keep up, but I am stronger every day. When we arrive at the flat stone by the home stream, I sit at his feet. He studies the mountainside. And I watch him watching.

  He hears the yowl of cougars and the yip of coyotes and the rattling call of ravens. He hears running water, the splash, grunt, huff of the bear, and the split, splat of the salmon hitting the stones on the side of the river. And then the long, contented tear and chew of a bear eating fish. I listen to him listening.

  An orange-bellied squirrel runs from the base of one tree to another. It is fast, but I am faster.

  “Can I hunt it, Father?” I get in my crouch, ready to spring.

  “Can you?”

  I am all leap. In a flicker the squirrel is around the back of the tree and I have crashed into the front. I slide down the trunk as the squirrel goes higher and higher, springing from branch to branch like a bird. I shake the bark bits out of my fur.

  Father does not laugh at me. But he wags a little.

  I sit down again and watch my father watch the mountains. The wind blows. Birds talk to each other.

  “There, Father! Right there!”

  A short-legged weasel thing walks across the stream below us. It is black as night with a broad white stripe from neck to tail and a narrow white stripe down the nose. It is plump. It will be delicious.

  “I could hunt it. I know I could.”

  My spring is ready to go. Two jumps and I will have him. Father slaps a paw down on my shoulder and presses me flat to the ground.

  “What has your mother said about eating white things?”

  “White berries,” I say, trying to squirm out of his grasp. “White mushrooms. Never touch them, not even a lick.”

  I tug and turn, but he will not let me up. He watches me struggle. I am not even making him tired. I huff and puff and pull and strain and finally roll over and lift my chin to surrender.

  He lets me go.

  I spring to my feet, nose pointing at my prey. “That is not a berry. It is not a mushroom. It is walking!”

  “Yes, walking. In plain sight. Showing us a white stripe—and no fear. What is that animal telling you?”

  I lower my nose and tail.

  “Poison?”

  “Worse than poison.”

  I flop back down in the dust and drop my chin to my paws.

  “I could catch it, though. I could get it all by myself.”

  “Not. Even. A. Lick.”

  I look up at my father. He is not laughing at me, except for that little wag. I go over to the weasel thing’s tracks and learn their five-toed shape. Not-Lunch waddles slowly, almost teasing, off into the forest. I feel like whimpering, but then I remember to hold it in and sit up tall. Who needs to eat? Not me.

  I sit beside my father. More watching. The shadows go long, and he is still watching. The rest of the pups have been playing all day, but Father is still watching. My wag is long gone, but I am with him, still watching.

  A scuffle of noise at the edge of the waterfall catches my eye. A black nose peeks out, followed by the most wild-haired weasel ever. Its hairs are long and stiff and wave out in all directions. It is even slower than the last one. I could catch that thing. I look at Father. He is not crouching to stalk it. He is looking at me.

  “Is it delicious?” I nose-point to the weasel.

  “Probably.”

  The thing goes to a pine tree and nibbles at the bark. The stiff thick hairs are silver-gray at the tips and black at the base.

  “Is it poisonous?”

  “No.” He wags—just a little.

  I make a little yip in case it hasn’t smelled us watching so nearby. It turns and doesn’t back away. Badgers and wolverines are not big, but Mother has warned us about them.

  “Does that thing hunt us?”

  “Nothing hunts a grown wolf but men.”

  “He is so small. Why is he not afraid?”

  “The porcupine fears no one and fights no one.”

  “But I could get him in one pounce. He is so slow.”

  “Anyone who tangles with a porcupine bows to him forever after.”

  No way am I bowing to that thing. I watch it slowly and clumsily climbing the pine tree. There is nothing sleek or strong or shrewd about it. I will get Sharp to tangle with it. Then I will know, and Sharp will have to do the bowing.

  The wind dies down and the sun sinks even lower. Ravens come. They circle Father and go out toward the prairie. They circle back, and Father woofs to them as though they can talk. They swoop around him again, so close their long black wing tips stir the fur on his shoulders. Off they go again, back to the prairie.

  “There!” Father says, nose-pointing to open ground below, where the prairie grasses meet up with the trees and ferns of the mountainside. I look and see nothing. Father calls for Mother and Song. I lift my head to smell and faintly it comes to me—a deer and her pup. Mother and Song run to Father’s side.

  I watch it all: the quick and silent approach, the line of attack, the direction of the wind, the way my father circles around the front, turning the deer back into the jaws of Mother and Song. In my head I’m there with them, chasing, circling, springing. I will feed my pack. I will. Better than all of them.

  I watch Father hunt every day. Even after I grow from a pup to a yearling. I learn. I remember. I run. Run just to feel the wind in my fur and the pound of my feet on the sweet grass and soft needles of my home ground. Sometimes Warm runs behind me, and sometimes I practice-hunt him. We work on my stalk, my chase, my spring. He is the perfect following wolf, far better than I could ever be. I will be a lead wolf; I can feel it.