Hunter by James Byron Huggins Read Free Book Online

Hunter elected to travel in the cargo hold with what he knew was his closest and most loyal friend.
    He remembered when he had found Ghost. The wolf was only three weeks old, and his sire, an enormous gray wolf, had been killed by poachers, along with the mother and siblings.
    Though wounded by a bullet graze, Ghost had survived by hiding beneath a deadfall, buried deep beneath tons of logs. Starving, sick and wounded, the cub would have died within days but Hunter coaxed him out with a piece of raw meat and carried him back to the cabin.
    It was a month before the malnourished cub could clamber around the three-room structure, but after that he grew rapidly, eventually surpassing the strength and size of his gigantic father. Yet it was his spirit that caught Hunter's early attention and made him laugh; something he rarely did.
    Hunter had never attempted to train him, but the wolf's keen intelligence was evident from the first moments. Without being taught, Ghost knew where to find food, how to communicate his needs, when he wanted to go outside. And his curiosity was endless, as was his unconcealed joy every time Hunter returned from a trip.
    When he was six months old Hunter let him sleep on the porch, sheltered by a fairly luxurious doghouse that Hunter built from spare lumber. Hunter filled the bottom with a thick layer of straw and an old blanket and installed a heat lamp for cold nights, but he never leashed the wolf. If Ghost wished to leave, he was free to go.
    For endless nights Hunter went to bed knowing Ghost was staring and listening to the calls of the wild, summoned by the wolf packs that surrounded the cabin. And then when Ghost was two years old, near full size, he began disappearing for days at a time, often returning with bloody wounds—slash marks of other wolves.
    Hunter suspected that during the nocturnal forays, Ghost had declared his own dominion over a part of the forest—of which the cabin was the heart. And after those nights, Hunter distinctly noticed, the surrounding howls of wolf packs came from a far greater distance. Ghost had, alone, won his territory.
    His relationship with Ghost had not so much developed as it seemed to flourish full-born. And Hunter suspected it was because he himself had never been close to anyone or anything, except perhaps the old trapper who half-raised him. Just as Ghost had never really had a family. So it came naturally and easily that each had simply accepted the other, each of them needing someone.
    In fact, Hunter had mostly raised himself, spending long endless days trapping and tracking, living more like an animal than a child. Before he was ten years old he could see a single track and identify the species, the size, how old it was, and where it was going. He could lift his head and find the scent of what had passed this way hours ago, or make shelters that would keep him warm in frigid winter nights. At twelve he could snatch fish from a stream with his hand, or silently sneak up on a deer so that he could touch its flank before it could sense his presence. Yet it was not until he was sixteen that he did what every true tracker considers the ultimate challenge. It had been a misty summer night, and he had come upon a slumbering grizzly, laid his hand softly on its massive side, and then stolen away, having never awakened it.
    Sometimes, lying in the somber light of the cabin with Ghost beside him, Hunter remembered the days when he would spend more time in the wild, alone and living—truly living—than among people. He remembered how, as a child, the white look of bone would catch his eye in the bright light of day, and even now the fascination felt fresh. He could still feel the coarseness of red dirt as he sifted it from the white pitted relic of bear or elk or wolverine.
    He remembered how he would craft barbaric ornaments and necklaces of bear claws or wolverine fangs, looking not unlike a long-haired ten-year-old wild child of prehistoric Homo sapiens