The Shadow of the Wolf (4 page)

We were laughing at how foolish we
looked when we heard a strange sound, like a child whining. We stood perfectly still. The cry came again, this time like a howl. It sounded close by. We looked all around us. Then we saw, almost hidden by leaves, a struggling animal. Its leg was caught in the steel jaws of a trap.

“It’s a dog!” I said.

“No,” Fawn said. “It is a wolf. And the trap has my father’s trap mark on it. We must find a log and kill the wolf.”

I was horrified. “You can’t do that! We have to let it go.”

Fawn looked at me as though I had lost my mind. “Why should I let it go? There will be money from the wolf’s fur and a bounty as well. We need the money to buy seeds for next spring’s planting.”

I paid no attention to Fawn. I was on my knees trying to figure out how I could release the wolf. At first I had been afraid that the wolf would bite me with its sharp white teeth, but it seemed to know I wanted to
help it. “Fawn,” I begged, “please do something. You know how this trap works.”

Fawn only shook her head. “If I let the wolf get away my father will be angry with me. We trap animals because the white man gives us money for the skins. Our land has been taken away. The animals are all that are left to us.”

Fawn’s words made me angry. “I didn’t take your land,” I snapped. “My papa is helping to get it back.”

The wolf lay very still, looking up at us with its green eyes. There was dried blood where the trap dug into its leg. I began to cry. Fawn picked up a dead branch. I covered my eyes so that I would not see her kill the wolf. When I opened them, I saw that she was using the branch to pry apart the trap. Gently, she released the wolf’s leg. “You must tell no one what I have done,” she said to me.

Eagerly I promised. Together we watched the wolf. At first it just lay there licking its foot. I had never seen a wolf that close
before. Warily; I reached my hand out and ran it over the wolf’s soft coat. The wolf licked my hand. I was not sure I liked my hand being that close to the wolf’s sharp teeth, but nothing happened. Still, there was something frightening and mysterious in being so close to a wild animal.

We watched as the wolf gathered its strength and struggled to its feet. It stood for several minutes, holding up its injured foot. Slowly, the wolf hobbled away into the woods. Twice it stopped and looked back at us. Soon it was lost among the trees and tall grasses.

I was careful not to give away our secret. But that night I had a question for Papa. “How can the Indians use cruel traps with steel teeth?”

“Once the Indians used a different kind of trap,” Papa said. “Poles were pounded into the ground to make a circle. In the middle was an opening. When the animal walked into the opening and began to eat the bait, a board was released that closed off the entrance. But now the traders sell traps with steel teeth to the Indians.”

That night I dreamed of the wolf. In my dream the wolf had no injured foot. It bounded through the woods, nimble and happy and free.

Winter rushed in across Lake Michigan. An angry wind blew off the lake day and night. It shook the house and rattled the windows. When I went down to the lake for a pail of water, I had to hang on to the trees to keep from being blown away. Snow hid everything. The trail to our house had disappeared.

Papa had to put runners on our wagon so that we could go to La Croix for supplies. At the cooper’s shop you could buy not only barrels but flour and salt and potatoes. The cooper, Mr. Rouge; even had a few lengths of cloth. Papa placed me in the sleigh between
him and Mama. William was wrapped so tightly in a blanket that all you could see of him was his nose.

Our horses, Ned and Dan, stepped through the snow. Their breath came out in clouds of steam. The trees wore armfuls of snow on their branches. As we brushed against the branches, the snow tumbled down on us. Snow birds fluttered up, white and quick, like the flakes that flew around us.

As we passed the Indian village, I thought of Fawn. I had not seen her since we had let the wolf go. If it weren’t for the smoke escaping through the holes in the wigwams, you would think the Indian village deserted. The men were out hunting and minding their trap lines. Fishing had all but stopped. When the nets were pulled up, the fish froze right in the mesh. The women were in their wigwams, preparing the few animal skins that the men had been able to bring home. Game was becoming scarce. I thought of how welcome the wolfskin would have been. Sanatua
had told Papa that soon the Indians would have to make their living as farmers. It was more important than ever that Papa help them to buy back their land.

At last we reached Mr. Rouge’s cooper’s shop, a small log cabin near La Croix’s great cross and church.
Rouge
means “red” in French, and the name fit the cooper very well. He was a great hunk of a man with a ruddy complexion and a red nose shaped like the beak of a hawk. He made us very welcome, urging us to take the seats next to the stove. He bustled about, taking our wraps and handing out mugs of hot cider.

Mr. Rouge’s two boys helped in the shop. They were twins, two years older than I. Their names were André and François. They were tall and slim, with faces still brown from the summer. Their black hair was slicked back with some sort of grease. They wore identical shirts and trousers. “Bet you can’t tell which of us is which,” André said to me. I looked very hard at them and could not.

The twins opened their mouths and gave me wide smiles. I thought that was odd, but I smiled back anyway.

“No,” François said. “That’s how you tell us apart.”

When I looked again, I saw that François had a gap between his front teeth. André did not. “What if you aren’t smiling?” I asked.

Mr. Rouge laughed. “Ah, but my boys are
happy creatures. They smile all the time.”

The twins appeared good-natured. Still, there was a great deal of snickering and poking between them. “You must excuse my boys’ manners,” Mr. Rouge said. “They don’t know how to behave in front of a young lady. You have the lads all aflutter.”

At this there was even more snickering and poking. I blushed. I had no wish to agitate the twins. In fact, I heartily wished that they would just disappear.

While we were talking, a hen ran into the room. Mrs. Rouge hurried after it. She was a small neat woman, as plump as her chicken. She apologized. “I keep the chickens in our storeroom in the winter.” After a chase, the hen was rounded up and closed in with the other chickens.

Before we left, Mama and Papa invited the Rouges to come and spend Christmas Day with us. A whole day with the twins! I did not see how I could stand it.

Because we were so busy preparing for winter there had been no time to see Fawn. I begged Papa to take me along with him on his next trip to the Indian village. Papa was helping the Indians petition the United States Government to allow them to become citizens of America. They wished to vote and to have the protection of the law. Papa and Chief Ke che oh caw were going to ask other chiefs to join the La Croix tribe in their petition.

“Do you think our government will listen to you and let the Indians vote, Papa?” I asked.

“Not this year, Libby but surely one day it must come about.”

Mama had a sly smile on her face. “When it does, Rob, you must also ask them to let women vote.”

Papa shook his head. “You can’t be serious, Vinnie. That day will never come.”

When we arrived at the Indian village, I ran to find Fawn. She was standing at the entrance of her wigwam wearing the snow-shoes we had made. “I am going to find some wood for the fire,” Fawn said. “Winter has come so early this year. Our wood may not last.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said.

Fawn went to borrow snowshoes for me. When she returned, she helped me strap them onto my boots. At first I stumbled with every step. But Fawn showed me how to lift one snowshoe over the other, and soon I was stepping lightly over the snowdrifts. It was a strange feeling, for I was walking over the tops of grasses and shrubs buried under the
snow. We each carried a basket on our backs to hold the wood.

There was so much snow on the ground that the only wood we could find was dead branches in the trees. Looking for branches we could reach, we kept walking farther into the woods. At last our baskets were full and we turned back toward the village.

We had been so busy that we had not noticed the sun disappearing and the snow starting up. Now the sky was a whirlwind of white. The snow got in my mouth and nose and eyes. My eyelashes were so fringed with flakes I could hardly see. Because the snow was wet, it formed clods and crusts on our snowshoes, making them heavy to lift. The snow covered our tracks as soon as we made them. We thought we were going in the direction of the village, but nothing looked as we remembered.

I turned to Fawn. She was so much at home in the woods, I was sure she would know the direction to the Indian village. But
Fawn only looked puzzled. “The snow has changed everything,” she said. In the few minutes we had been standing still, the snow had nearly covered us. I was warmly dressed, but Fawn had only a blanket wrapped over her thin calico shift to keep her warm. Her thick black hair was coated with snow. It looked as if she was wearing a white cap. Her hands were thrust inside the blanket to keep them warm. I wanted to give her my scarf and one of my mittens, but she would not take them.

We thought someone might be within calling distance. Together we shouted into the storm. Only the wind answered. “If I could see the sun, I could find my way,” said Fawn. But the sky was tumbled with dark clouds. And the farther we went, the more uncertain we became.

Just ahead, a gray shadow moved across the snow. It looked like the figure of a wolf! Papa said wolves did not attack human beings. Still, Papa might be wrong. I was
relieved to see the shadow turn and lope away in the opposite direction. But when we hurried away, the wolf ran back toward us. It had a limp.

“Fawn!” I exclaimed. “It’s
our
wolf! Why is it running back and forth?”

“I think it wants us to follow,” Fawn said. And indeed the wolf kept running toward us and turning back in the other direction. It seemed to be telling us to come with it. “I think we should do as the wolf wishes,” Fawn said.