The House of the Wolf

2

Returning to the point in the canyon where he had first spied the men, Hunter once more plunged into the river. Even in summer its water was cold as ice and made him shiver and gasp, but he persisted. Once safe on the far bank, he shook the water out of his thick coat and stood still a moment, filled with a deep foreboding. It persisted as he struggled on up the steep slope and hauled himself over the top. There fear smote him with full force, like a storm-blast. The desolate landscape of the Stone Plain stretched before him, with its long low ridges that could conceal any number of enemy wolves in their shadowed and secret folds. For all he knew he was being watched already. He felt utterly exposed and defenseless.

There was no sign of the men anywhere, and only the faintest traces of their scent. Around him the immense solitude of rock-strewn earth and dull overcast sky seemed altogether empty of life: he might have been all alone in the entire world. That in itself was a terrifying feeling for one born to run with a pack, living always in the company of his own kind. For an instant as he stood there in the forbidden territory he wrestled with himself. Perhaps Father Wolf would not expel him after all; if he returned and begged forgiveness for leaving the Pack without permission he might yet be forgiven... He struggled to quell these craven thoughts, but it became ever more difficult as he forced himself slowly onward, one paw after the other, head lowered as though walking into a wind.

He came across the tracks of the caribou, freshly trampled into the tundra: they had laid down a broad path leading south across the plateau. The scent-trail of the men also led in that direction. As Hunter stood there a flock of snow geese flew overhead, vast and clamorous, commencing their own long autumnal migration. The whole world seemed to be rushing precipitately southward. He loped on again, following the flock's flying shadows across the plain.

A wolf can travel fifty kilometres in a single day, and go for many days without feeding. But Hunter had not gorged of late, and after only a few hours he was so famished that he would have eaten anything that showed itself on the seemingly endless plateau. "I am a fool," he said to himself. "A sentimental fool. If that caribou calf were in front of me now I would eat it to the bone, and not care in the least what it suffered." Prey was scarce here, but he finally routed a couple of lemmings out of their burrows and snapped them up, bones and all, in his starving jaws. In a sheltered place underneath a glacial boulder he surprised a rock ptarmigan and killed her with one swift bite to the neck, mourning only that at this season she had no eggs or chicks for him to eat as well.

A little further on he found a shallow pond, and took a long drink of its ice-cold water. With a little food in his stomach and his thirst eased, he felt his morale improve. It is difficult for a wolf to tear himself free of his comrades and wander the wilderness alone. Loneliness and hunger and increased danger – from other wolves as well as other predators – are but a few of the consequences that await the lone wolf. Although younger wolves may choose to break away from the main pack and seek new hunting grounds, they usually do so in small groups or pairs. Lone wolves do not normally choose a life of solitude. It is thrust upon them, and they endure it because they have no other option. Hunter recalled well his relief on finding the Lake Pack as a young pup, submitting with humility to their occasional bites and blows as the price for inclusion. That even such treatment was preferable to lonely roaming was a lesson he could not easily forget.

Yet as he rested on the plain he was surprised to feel a sense of release. Perhaps before many days he would be overwhelmed by loneliness and uncertainty. For now, though, his new-found freedom made him feel almost giddy. "No more snarling and biting, no more turning up my belly to bullies," he said to himself as he lay again down for a brief rest. "I'm my own head-wolf now. My head leads, my body follows: I am a pack of one!"