Spirit Wolf by Gary D. Svee Read Free Book Online Page A

himself of the stink of that. Maybe that’s why he always lived alone.
    â€œHe had a cabin up here. Some of you will likely run across it. It wasn’t much more than a lean-to, but it suited Charley just fine. Anyhow, Charley took hides in winter and collected bounty for coyotes and wolves during the summer. He didn’t make much money, but then he didn’t need much. There were plenty of deer and antelope around, and he wasn’t above butchering a calf now and then for a change of diet, even if it didn’t belong to him. He made enough to keep himself in flour, salt, and tobacco, and that’s about all he needed.
    â€œHe was running a trapline, and one morning he set out to check it. He was coming downwind into one of the sets when he heard what he thought was a snarl. He didn’t want the animal to chew off its foot before he got there, so he picked up his pace a little.
    â€œAnyway, he came up to the clearing where the trap was, and he saw this wolf. It was a beautiful animal, white as snow with dark bands around the eyes and tapering off to gray at the tail. At first he couldn’t tell how really big the animal was. It was crouching at the far end of the chain, hidden a little behind a rock. Well, as soon as Charley saw it, it had his complete attention. Those eyes. There was something about those big green eyes. Charley was staring at the wolf, kind of mesmerized when it leapt at him. All teeth and claws and eyes, like a messenger from hell, it was, and coming across that clearing on the fly. But before it got to Charley, the chain fetched up against its leg and it hit the ground with a thump.
    â€œBy then Charley knew what he was doing again, and he took his gun butt and clubbed it alongside the head, and it crumpled to the ground. Even then with it laying there in a heap, Charley knew he had something special, something no one else had ever seen before. So he rigged up a muzzle for it and tied all four feet together. Then he hitched it up to a tree so it was hanging upside down about four feet off the ground.
    â€œWell, ol’ Charley went back to his cabin and hitched up his horse to the wagon and came back where the wolf was. He had a hard time getting his horse to go anywhere near that clearing. She could smell that wolf a mile off and hear him thrashing against those ropes. If it had been anybody but Charley, the horse wouldn’t have gone, but he was never a man to spare an animal. He got out his whip and worked her over something awful. It was a shame what he would do to that mare, but he finally got the rig backed underneath the wolf. He let the rope go, and the wolf hit the bed of that wagon like a boulder.
    â€œThat animal stood waist high to a tall man, and probably outweighed Charley by twenty pounds, and he was a long way from being little.
    â€œIt was an incredible animal … and those green eyes.”
    A shudder went through Flynn, and he stood there for a moment staring at something none of them could see, something he could never forget. The wolf’s eyes were captivating, pulling the viewer into their depths until he felt as though he were suspended alone—oh God, how alone—in a sea of green.
    He shuddered again, took a healthy swig of whiskey and continued. “That wolf was scrambling around the wagon box, trying to get up, so Charley tied its feet to the tailgate and dropped a slipknot over its head. Then he headed for Billings. Every time the wolf moved, Charley would pull that slipknot till the animal started wheezing and its eyes bugged out. I know, because I met him on the trail going in, and he was showing off a little. I told him he should kill it, that was the only thing to do. But he wouldn’t have none of that. He was having too much fun, he said.”
    Flynn paused a moment, remembering.
    â€œFirst thing he did when he got to town was to go to the blacksmith. The smithy rigged up a little cage for Charley out of some