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WOLFBLOOD: A Northwestern by Brian Alan Burhoe
An Animal Story of the Great Northwoods...
Hi there. Welcome. After I put my story SOMEDAY THERE WILL BE CENTAURS online, there's been a lot of requests for more of my fiction. (Many thanks and God bless all of you!) For you, here's a Western story online to read for free, a story of the Great White North, a yarn of a timber wolf, a husky sled dog and a trapper -- and of Mounties (more on Mountie Fiction below)and the forevergreen forest:
Dedicated to the Memory of my father, Albert Chester Burhoe, avid backwoodsman -- rifleman in the Algonquin Regiment, Canadian Army in Holland -- and POW in Stalag XIB, Fallingbostel, Northern Germany -- he served King and Country, asking no reward. He taught me the value of Freedom. NE-KAH-NE-TAH.
WOLFBLOOD
A Northwestern by Brian Alan Burhoe
The lone gray wolf padded through the firwoods. He stopped to sniff at a patch of icy snow in the long shadows, or rather the pellets that speckled it. His stomach gurgled. Rabbit! He had eaten well of rabbit since he had entered this valley. Soon he would eat again.
Good hunting and the discovering of new territory hid much of the young wolf's loneliness. He missed his pack, especially his littermates. It wasn't that he had been singled out for exile. The many new pups born this spring had made the pack too big. Discord had driven him out -- perhaps to create a new pack.
Marking the patch with a squirt of urine, he searched about for fresher spoor. The only sounds were the patter of his paws on the leafmould, the whisper of a faint wind in the evergreens, the slowly moving river off to his side. He sniffed the air then dipped his head to muzzle the moist ground. He cast about through the rich aromas of rotting vegetation, mushrooms, sprouting greenery. Foosh! He had caught the hot scent of bigger game -- deer!
The wolf scurried about, snuffing noisily. He stopped and stood rock-still, ears cocked for deer-sound, eyes searching the darkening forest, sensitive footpads feeling the ground for the solid thump of hoof. Deer! He was shaking with excitement. He dropped a scat, sniffed its rabbity odor. Deer! His mouth watered.
And then a new scent struck him. He almost fell back on his haunches. A new scent -- a strange scent that made the savage wolf whimper.
*
Johnny Akumi saw the wolf enter the moonlit clearing and smiled. Johnny was a patient man, being of the Tikah people. He had not moved much in his cramped tree shack and did not move now. His old HBC musket was already in place and pointing down.
Ah, it was a big animal. Tall at the shoulder. A broad, intelligent face. Coat thick, dense and pure gray. Young, three years old, maybe. It carried itself with the mixed arrogance and uncertainty of youth.
The wolf entered the clearing stiff-legged. Its slanted gold eyes swept the area, looked up at the tree shack, looked straight into Johnny's eyes. But it was only instinct that made the wolf gaze his way. Johnny was hidden in shadow. When the night breezes stirred, they wandered in from the river beyond the animal: it couldn't catch fresh man-scent. It had been three days since Johnny had been on the ground in the clearing. And the fresh sap-smell from the fir and spruce of his rough hut would mask his scent now.
The wolf lost its caution. And turned its attention to Shossa. Shossa was Johnny's best lead dog. A powerful Ungava husky, cunning, cruel, her master's dog. At two and a half years of age, she was almost as big as the wolf. She had forelegs heavily boned and muscled. Powerful thighs and hind legs. Her head was as broad as a wolfs, with a white face and black mask around her bright blue eyes. She was chained now in the middle of the clearing. She had been there three days and the ground around her was strong with the blood-spotted urine of a bitch in heat.
Shossa didn't cringe. She growled, her hackles raised. Good. A wolf would have killed a terrified dog outright. When the wolf crept closer, she growled savagely. At that moment she would have gone for its throat.
The trapper moved his musket just a fraction to cover the wolf.
Grinning, the timber wolf sat down.
The husky approached the stranger until she came to the end of her chain. She curled her white plumed tail over her back and wagged it. She barked once, whined.
The wolf stood up and when they sniffed noses, Johnny relaxed and watched the courtship. He had done this before. It was common practice among the People. To tie out a bitch in heat and add wolfblood to their dog teams. Shossa, he would keep this spring in the village. Maybe the Sergeant would like that. The Mounted Police complained every summer when the Tikah put their sled dogs on river islands to fend for themselves. What was wrong with that? Come winter, the toughest were always alive to pull the sleds.
And they would be all the stronger with new wolfblood in the pups.
The male and female courted through the night and when dawn was a scarlet belt beyond the coal-black conifers, the wolf made to leave. When Shossa came once more to the end of her chain, the wolf sniffed at the iron links. He pawed the chain. Bit at it. Shook it violently in his muzzle. And when he understood that Shossa was a prisoner in the clearing, the wolf was gone.
*
The gray wolf came back next evening. He carried something in his mouth -- two limp rabbits -- and dropped them at Shossa's feet. The husky fell on them with ravenous ferocity while the wolf sat watching, grinning.
The courtship continued.
Ever the patient man, Johnny scarcely stirred in his tree shack. He watched until dawn came and the wolf again tore uselessly at the chains. You want her to go with you, Gray One, thought Johnny. But Shossa is her master's dog.
The trapper watched the wolf leave. He would let them mate one last time tonight. He allowed three couplings to ensure pregnancy.
Dogs, of course, were promiscuous. She would leave with her master and not pine for the male.
Wolves, however, mated for life. The Gray One would not give up Shossa. He would search her out.
After they had coupled tonight, Johnny would kill the wolf.
*
The wolf brought a meal to her again. Just a ground squirrel this time. Game was getting scarcer.
Johnny waited. Despite some cautious exercise through the day, and tending to food and elimination, his legs were beginning to cramp on him. And sleep touched him once or twice. Pagh! He was becoming an old man.
But the whelps that he would get from Shossa would make him the envy of the village. Those whelps would be big, inquisitive. And stubborn, of course. The wolfblood would make them that. Beatings with chain and club would finish that, too. The North-West Mounted Police would chastise him again. Do not treat your animals so cruelly, they would say. Hah! What did they know? He had beaten Shossa until her coat was red with blood. Yet she was his best dog.
The trapper jumped, realized that sleep had caught him, that dawn had snuck up on him. And -- the wolf was gone.
Shossa lay alone in the misty clearing. Her head rested forlornly on her paws.
Johnny cursed in the white man's tongue. The wolf should not have left so soon. He waited. But the wolf didn't return. When the sun was up, he stretched in the shack and climbed down to the ground.
Shossa cocked her ears at him. Otherwise she didn't stir.
"Hai, Shossa, get up." He rolled up the damp chain and unclipped it from around her neck. She didn't move, only whined. Johnny grabbed the thick hair at the back of her neck. "Wicewin!" He kicked her sharply in the ribs. Reluctantly, she rose.
He would have to use the chain as a leash, then. She would be staked outside his cabin and when the Gray One came to claim his mate, the trapper would be waiting with his musket. He flung the chain over her back and reached down with his empty hand to clip it together to make a collar...
*
The smell of freshly killed rabbit filled the wolf's nostrils as he rushed for the clearing. The memory of the feel and smell of his mate's starvation tormented him and he wanted to bring her more than this. He couldn't understand why she was trapped in the clearing. He hated the hard snake-thing that held her there.
He was in the clearing and on them before he realized that she was not alone. A strange creature stood over her. The creature had the putrid smell he had detected faintly on his mate and on the snake-thing that tied her to the ground.
The wolf dropped the rabbit and snarled at the figure that held his mate. This creature -- he sensed that this was what had been watching them from the big nest in the tree. The creature made startled growlings and let go of his mate to swing up something in its other paw. With a yelp, his mate jumped away from the creature and joined the wolf.
The creature was saying something. The sounds meant nothing to him. His mate whined. She cocked her head and looked at the creature as if it were a packmate. When it spoke again, sharply, she left the wolf's side and walked over to it, tail down.
The wolf felt alone. The creature lifted the long stick-like thing in its arms and pointed it at him. He looked into the dark hole at the end of the thing and shivered.
His mate was frightened. She barked loudly at the creature and butted its leg with her muzzle. The creature was knocked sideways. Snarling, it kicked at her. The wolf raged. He sprang at the creature. He wanted to tear out its throat. They fell to the earth together. There was a sudden great thunder and flash of fire.
"Yiii!" The wolf jumped away.
The strange thunder hopped away through the trees. There was a hissing in his ears.
His mate barked, took a nip at his shoulder, then ran past him. She was free! The snake-thing that kept her tied to the clearing lay dead on the ground. The putrid-smelling creature was sitting up, making sharp sounds at him.
Spinning, the wolf followed her.
They ran in terror, in freedom, eyes wide, tails out behind them.
They ran together, side by side, until they came to the river.
They stopped, lapped the water noisily, sniffed one another, licked one another. For a moment, they fell to the dank ground and panted happily.
Then the gray wolf and his mate stood up, stretched, yawned, and loped off into the firwoods.
THE END
WOLFBLOOD
For more of my writing, check out ORNITHANTHROPUS. It's a tribute page to Freedom, in memory of editor Ejler Jakobsson. And it contains the complete version of my popular online science-fantasy fiction SOMEDAY THERE WILL BE CENTAURS.
UPDATE:
WOLFBLOOD has garnered a lot of E-mails. I'm very pleased, I admit, to find that many of you still share my love of Canadian history, Mountie Fiction and the wild Northwoods -- the animals and people who live there -- and history and fiction of the Mounties (originally the North-West Mounted Police, now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police). New Canadian Mountie Fiction is a rarity. Ian Anderson's (an Australian who served in the RCMP) Scarlet Riders series of Western novels, written in the 1980's, is the last serious addition to the genre. Ian has since written an excellent study of James Walsh of the NWMP entitled SITTING BULL'S BOSS -- look for it!
Mountie Fiction (Northwesterns or Northerns) is a personal lifetime love.
As with so many of you, it started for me with Jack London's THE CALL OF THE WILD and WHITE FANG. Sir Charles G D Roberts, who invented the realistic animal story, was still having his marvelous fiction of the Great Northwoods reprinted, at least in his native Canada. James Oliver Curwood's KAZAN is, for me, the best dog story ever written. Although Max Brand's CHINOOK is a great read!
And there were the movies. Cecil B. DeMille's NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE hasn't stood the test of time, but to a small boy watching it for his first time in the old Paramount Theatre in foggy old Saint John, it was a wonder-filled presentation of real Northwestern history. And THE WILD NORTH, with Wendell Corey as Constable Pedley HAS stood the test of time!
From John Mackie's "A North-West Police Party" to James Oliver Curwood's "The Law Versus the Man" -- from Murray Leinster's powerful "The Driving Force" to Lawrence Mott's "A Day's Work in the Mounted Police" -- from Zane Grey's King of the Royal Mounted to Ian Anderson's Cavanaugh and Sergeant O'Reilly -- Canadian Mountie Fiction survives.
"More Mountie Fiction to come..."
*RECOMMENDED SITES*RECOMMENDED SITES*RECOMMENDED SITES*
PUPPY DOGS INFO. "The first place to go for dog info." Here's the place to start to answer your canine questions. DOG BREEDS: The 5 most popular "Country Dogs." How to find the best dog breeders to buy a puppy or adopt a grown dog. Guides to some of the most common breeds, big and small, toy and working & hunting breeds. Find dogs for sale or for adoption. DOG CARE: Essential information on properly feeding your dog. Health Care info -- an article on the simple human remedies that can be given to your dogs. Where to get the most trusted info on veterinarian science. THE 5 MOST COMMON PUPPY AILMENTS and how to cure them. PET SITTERS: "Where do I find a dog sitter?" "How can I become a pet sitter?" FAMOUS DOGS IN LITERATURE & HOLLYWOOD -- a great source for dog names. See PUPPY DOGS INFO! www.puppy-dogs.info
Western Writers of America---www.westernwriters.org
NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE Canadian Mounties in Literature & History -- A Complete study of the historical Mounties. Originally called the North-West Mounted Police, the Force gained fame in its battles against outlaws and whiskey traders, its fair handling of the Native peoples, and its control of the wild Klondike Gold Rush -- Mounties in Literature: from Ian Anderson's Scarlet Rider series, through Ralph Connor's classic novel of Mounted Police literature, CORPORAL CAMERON OF THE NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE -- to James B Hendryx, who gave us Northwesterns of the outlaws of Halfaday Creek and timeless Mountie Fiction featuring Corporal Downey -- and to American Bill Pronzini's best western, STARVATION CAMP... www.mounted-police.00books.com
RECOMMENDED READING... NORTHWESTERNS... MOUNTIE FICTION...
Ian Anderson
The SCARLET RIDER Series
James Oliver Curwood
KAZAN THE WOLF DOG
PHILIP STEELE OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED
Jack London
THE CALL OF THE WILD
WHITE FANG
Harwood Steele
TO EFFECT AN ARREST: Adventures of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
For more on Mountie Fiction and Northwestern Literature -- Go to NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE Canadian Mounties in Literature & History...
ORNITHANTROPUS & SOMEDAY THERE WILL BE CENTAURS -- Online Fiction
PUPPY DOGS INFO Breeds Training Care Literature -- 'My favorite dog site!'
NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE Canadian Mounties in Literature & History
StoryMania.com -- Check 'em out! -- www.storymania.com
Fiction ebooks, magazines and links to fiction sites from ROB HOPCOTT
DOGS IN LITERATURE AND HOLLYWOOD -- From Yukon King to EIGHT BELOW
Send E-Mail to: brianburhoe@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2007 Brian Alan Burhoe. All Rights Reserved