Spirit of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst Read Free Book Online Page B

never have had the courage to be so aggressive.
    â€œOne night and half a day,” Lallna countered. Pell looked at me and dipped his head slightly.
    â€œYes,” I said. “We’ll meet you back here.”
    Without another word, the five Sentinel wolves turned tail and dashed down the hill, kicking up mud behind them.

5
    T he humans were awake and waiting for us when we returned to them near dawn. They took down their shelter and tied up their packs, then set out some firemeat and tartberries for their morning meal. Again, I couldn’t help staring at them as they ate. We still hadn’t been able to hunt. Again, they fed us from their supplies. There were wolves who said that the humans were so different from us that we could never fully trust them, but TaLi and MikLan fed us just as packmates would, with no hesitation. I knew wolves who were not so generous. Ázzuen, Marra, and I devoured what they gave us. Pell stood off to the side, refusing the humans’ food. He smelled of voles he must have caught on our way back to the humans, but a few voles weren’t enough to keep a wolf healthy. If he was anything like the wolves of Swift River, he’d be irritable and difficult to deal with if he didn’t eat.
    â€œWould you just take some?” I said, annoyed. “If I’d wanted a pup along I would have brought one.”
    He snarled at me. “I hunt my own prey.”
    â€œWe need every wolf strong,” Marra said, “and you’re our best fighter.”
    He looked at her and then at the humans. He licked Marra on the top of her head and stared at MikLan. Again, the boy seemed to understand us better than other humans did. He dug into his pack and held out some firemeat on the flat of his hand. Pell kept staring at him until the boy dropped the meat on the ground and stepped away. Pell gobbled it.
    â€œThank you for sharing your prey,” Pell said formally. MikLan swallowed a few times and then lifted his pack onto his shoulders. TaLi hefted her own pack. It was more important than ever to hurry them along. I was certain that Milsindra was close by, and even if the Sentinel wolves honored their word and gave us a night and a day to come to them, we had no time to waste. To my relief, the humans set off at a brisk pace across the plain.
    Getting them to follow us to the Crossed Pines was not so easy. Humans could be as stubborn as ravens, and they kept looking at their map, then at their surroundings, and then walking away from the quickest route to the woods where Tlitoo had told us the pines were. Ordinarily, I would have let them go the long way, but if Milsindra was stalking us, I needed to get TaLi to safety as soon as possible. And the sooner the humans reached the human village, the sooner I could find my mother. When TaLi stopped at a tree with a strangely bent branch and frowned at the hide again, I grabbed it from her hand.
    â€œSilvermoon!” In her annoyance, TaLi used her old name for me. “Bring it back!” She stopped, planted her feet, and put her hands to her hips.
    I trotted over to her, just close enough so it looked like she might be able to grab the hide. Both she and MikLan lunged for it. I dodged away. They lunged again and I dodged again. Marra and Ázzuen ran between their legs and bumped their hips, making them stumble. I let them chase me and almost catch me several times. Then I began to run, slowly enough that they could keep up, in the direction of Crossed Pines. They followed.
    NiaLi was wrong. We communicated just fine when we needed to.
    The humans were angry and tired by the time we reached the stream two hours later. I waited for them to stop gasping, then walked up one of the two fallen pines that crossed over one another. I set down the hide and panted at TaLi. She had clambered halfway up one of the fallen trees when she stopped and really looked at where I was sitting.
    â€œTwo pines crossed over one another at a