Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner Read Free Book Online

lay beside his mug on the table. It had sounded heavy when he plunked it down. “You fellas have tat.” He nodded at the can of jam. “Cutuk, t’em mooses waiting. You gonna hunt?”
    I studied Abe’s face for a sign.

    â€œIt could be cold.” He sharpened his knife, three flicks on the pot, three flicks back. “Real cold.”
    â€œI’ll put my face under the tarp when it freezes.”
    â€œTat a boy!” Enuk said.
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    DOWN AT THE RIVER it was minus a lot. My nose kept freezing shut on one side. The dogs uncurled and shook frost off their faces. They stood on three legs, melting one pad at a time while the other three quickly froze. Abe’s leader, Farmer, stayed tight in a ball, melted into the packed snow. Her wide brown eyes peered out from under her tail. The hair on her feet was stained reddish brown. She was a gentle dog. I coaxed her to the front of the team where she shivered with her back arched, tail under her belly and pads freezing. Abe and Jerry harnessed the big, hard-to-handle dogs. The snaps were frozen. The harnesses were stiff and icy and hard to force into dog shapes. Our dogs weren’t accustomed to company; even cold, they showed off to Enuk’s dogs, tugging and barking, tangling the lines.
    A quarter mile downriver, Abe waved a big wave good-bye to Enuk. Abe geed the dogs north, up the bank below the mouth of Jesus Creek. The snow on the tundra was ice hard, scooped and gouged into waves by wind. It creaked under the runners. Morning twilight bruised the southern sky. Shivers wandered my skin. I yanked off a mitten and warmed frozen patches on my cheeks. The cold burnt inside my nose. My fingers started to freeze. I wondered what thoughts walked in Abe’s mind. I felt as cumbersome and alone as a moon traveler, peering out the fur tunnel of my caribou hood, beaver hat, and wolf ruff.
    Farmer led toward the Dog Die Mountains. They were steep mountains, the spawning grounds of brown bears, storms, and spirits. They beckoned like five giants, snowed in to their chins. Occasionally we crossed a line of willows that marked a buried slough or a pond shore, and a dog or two would heave against his neckline and mark a willow, claiming any stray females in the last ten thousand acres.
    â€œIs that a moose?” I said.

    The dogs glanced over their shoulders, faces frosty and alarmed at my shout.
    â€œMight be a tree,” Abe said softly.
    My moose mutated into one of the lone low dark trees that grip the tundra, hunkered like a troll, gnarled arms thrust downwind. Abe had more careful eyes than I did; they grabbed details, touched textures, took apart colors. I slumped, cold on my caribou skin, stabbed by love for my dad. He didn’t have to say “might be a tree” when he knew. Plenty of the dads in the village would holler, “Shudup. You try’na scare everything again?”
    On a ridge, Abe whoa’d the dogs. He took out tobacco and papers. His bared hands tightened and turned red. I looked away, pretending for him that they were brown. He was too naive to know that red fingers were not the kind to have. The smoke smelled sharp in the smell-robbed air, comforting. The southern horizon glowed pink and for a few minutes a chunk of the sun flamed red through a dent in the Shield Mountains, like a giant flashlight with dying batteries. The snow glowed incandescent. I sprinted back and forth, melting fingers and toes. Abe glassed the land.
    â€œHmm. There she is.”
    Through the binoculars the moose stood silhouetted, black as open water. We mushed closer. A deep moan floated on the air. Abe braked the sled. He shushed the dogs. They held their breath, listening. Then the pups yowled and tugged, the scent stirring their blood.
    â€œMust be that cow missing her calf,” Abe said.
    â€œThey can sound like that?” I’d heard loons laughing manically, the woman-screams of lynx, ghoulish whimpering from