The Winter Wolf (3 page)
Authors: Holly Webb
18th October, 1873
Well, Mr Wright and Joshua weren’t imagining it, after all. I’ve seen the wolf. Ma sent me to fetch water from the spring, and I was on my way back with the bucket when I saw it. Just standing there, looking at me! I wanted to scream and run, but Pa’s always said that wolves are like dogs. They like to chase, and if you run, they’ll run after you, except they go lickety-split. So I just stood there and stared back at him.
That’s when I realized – it was a pup. I’ve seen wolves, full-grown ones, and they’re bigger than our dogs, even if they can be skinny sometimes. They’re big at
the shoulders, and the old dog wolves have great ruffs of fur round their necks. This wolf watching me was just a pup. And he was more scared than I was, I reckoned, after we’d stood there staring at each other for a full minute.
The more I looked at him, the more I thought he couldn’t be the wolf that Joshua took a shot at. He’s only a pup and he’s not been hurt at all – Joshua said he saw blood. He didn’t look fierce, either. He was like a big gangly puppy – all paws.
Slowly, I crouched down, waiting and watching in case he decided to spring. But he didn’t – he just looked, shuffling his fat paws in the snow like he was nervous. So I clapped my mittens on my knees and called to him, like he was one of the dogs. I know I should have gone home straight
away and called Pa and told him to get his gun, but I couldn’t.
Maybe Pa wouldn’t have shot him, anyway. He never hunts deer in the springtime, when the does are looking after their young. So he wouldn’t shoot a wolf pup, would he?
Except, he’d probably say that the pup would grow up to be a danger. He’d be right, too. A young wolf like that can’t know how to hunt properly yet, and if it’s all on its own, there’s no one to teach it. So all it can do is go after people, and our livestock, the horses and the cow. If Grace was still with us, it wouldn’t be long before that wolf could eat her up, even if it is only a pup.
So I shouldn’t have done what I did.
But he came to me. As friendly as our dogs, Sammy and Ned. He let me rub his ears and he sniffed at my coat, which probably
smelled of rabbits. And then he licked my face. When I went to walk away – Ma was still waiting for that water – he followed me.
Well, I stopped then, of course. I couldn’t take a wolf pup back home, no matter how friendly he was. But I had to do something about him. Was he lost? I couldn’t work it out. He shouldn’t have been on his own, a pup like that.
I crouched there, petting his ears, and that was when I worked it out. He wasn’t the wolf Joshua shot – that was his mother. It makes sense, I’m sure of it. She came hunting, and Joshua wounded her, so now she’s run off, or she’s hiding out somewhere till she’s better. Or she died, I suppose, but Joshua’s the worst shot I’ve ever seen, so I reckon not. Meanwhile, her pup’s come
looking for her. We’re not that far away from the Wrights’ place. He’s tried to track his mother and got himself lost and found me instead.
So now I’ve got myself a wolf pup.
A
melia woke up, breathing fast in the darkness. She had been dreaming about that dog again, the one in the park, and it had left her so scared that she was shaking.
She peered out at her room, but she couldn’t see anything at all. At home, even in the darkest part of the night, there was a dull orange glow from the streetlamp outside her window. Here there were no lights at all, and the darkness was so thick Amelia felt like she could touch it.
She fished around on the bedside table for her torch and flicked it on. The glowing amber beam danced over the walls, and Amelia caught her breath at last. Freddie was downstairs, shut in. It had only been a dream. But she didn’t want to go back to sleep, in case she dreamed it all over
again. She shone the torch over the floor, wondering where her book had got to – under the bed, maybe? She wished she hadn’t left the diary upstairs. She wanted to know more about the person writing it, and the snowy winter, and the wolf pup.
Her torch beam flickered upwards over the window, and Amelia gave a little excited gasp, sitting up straight in bed and forgetting about the dark, and the dog.
It was snowing! At last! She scrambled out of bed, pulling the duvet with her, and went over to kneel up on the window seat and look.
The flakes were swirling down thickly, but it was hard to see if it was settling or not, with the torch reflecting off the black glass. She undid the window catch to peer
out for a moment and sighed delightedly. Already the trees outside the window had a thin, crisp coating of white, like icing sugar. And the sky was heavy with fat, yellowish-tinged snow clouds. It looked as though the snow could go on falling for a while. She huddled the duvet closer around her and stared at the whirling whiteness.
Real, proper snow. Maybe Christmas would be a little bit Christmassy after all.
“Don’t you want to come out on the sledge?” Bella asked coaxingly, putting her arm round Amelia. Bella had her big fluffy jacket on, and a sweater and a hoodie underneath, and her cheeks were pink. They’d hardly finished breakfast, and already everyone was out in the snow. Tom had been out in it as soon as it got light.
Amelia shook her head. Through the window she could see Tom and Freddie racing around outside. Tom was throwing snowballs, and Freddie was chasing after them. It was quite funny, really – Freddie kept trying to pick up the collapsed snowballs in his mouth. The mush of snow got all over his long nose and every time he’d shake his head and give Tom a
confused sort of look.
But even when he was confused and funny, Freddie was still huge. And his teeth were almost as white as the snowballs. Amelia didn’t want him chasing her.
“No. It’s too cold. And my nose is all blocked up – I don’t want to make it worse,” she told Bella. She was pretty sure Bella didn’t believe her, but her big sister just sighed, and went out to join Anya and Lara, who were pulling the sledge up the hill.
Amelia watched them for a few minutes, and then she padded quietly along the hallway to the stairs. Dad was making lunch, and Mum, Aunt Laura and Uncle Pete were going for a walk in the snow. No one was around to see where she was going. Amelia hurried up the stairs, trying not to let them creak. Hopefully Dad would
think she was playing outside, too.
She tiptoed along the passageway and opened the little wooden door. Shining the torch beam ahead of her, she crept up the stairway to the attic. The coat was still there, draped over the armchair, and she could see the diary sticking out of the pocket. She’d left the blanket there, too, and Amelia wrapped it round her before she settled herself in the chair and drew out the diary, opening it eagerly to the first page.
She had thought about the diary all yesterday afternoon, and when she’d gone to write in her own diary last night, she’d flicked through it, thinking how different the two little books looked. Her diary had a pretty silver padlock, and a flowered cover, and a page at the front for her name and address. But that had made her think – wouldn’t the boy still have written his name on the first page, even if his diary was just a worn cloth-bound notebook? And there it was – written on the inside of the cover:
Noah Allan
Wisconsin, 1873
The painter! This boy had grown up to paint that amazing campfire scene downstairs. And this had been his house.
Amelia stroked the pages gently and
began to read. The spelling was odd in places, and there were some words she just didn’t know. Was a creek a river, maybe? And what was a snare? But even with the spiky, difficult writing, it felt amazing to be reading something written over a century before her own time. And the more of the diary she read, the easier it was to work out the words, and the strange phrases didn’t seem so strange after a while. Noah’s life in the woods sounded so interesting – so different to hers.
It was probably just that she was sleepy, Amelia thought, after waking in the middle of the night, but she could almost hear Noah’s voice. As though he was talking to her. As though he was telling the story himself…
19th October, 1873
Pa called to me to put the lantern out, so I couldn’t finish writing this last night.
I had some dried blackberries in my coat pocket so I spread them out on the snow for the pup, and dashed home while he was snuffling around eating them up. I told Ma I was going back out because I’d forgotten my muffler, and she was baking so she didn’t really pay attention. I took an old blanket from the store chest up in my loft room, and got it out of the cabin without her seeing. Then I went to the lean-to and cut off a little bit of frozen pork. I reckoned we could spare it.
The pup danced up to me when I came back. He’d eaten all the dried berries, and
there was a pattern of little paw prints in the snow where he’d trotted round looking for more. I’d known he’d eat them all, of course I had. But seeing him so eager and hungry-looking still, it made me worry about how much he needed to eat. I couldn’t keep stealing food for him from the cabin. It wouldn’t be fair on Ma. And besides, she’d soon notice. I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t see I took the pork.
The pup got a surprise when he tried to bite into it. He’s never had frozen meat before, I guess. We depend on it, in the winter. Pa only kills the pig when the weather’s cold enough to freeze the meat. This year he killed a bear, too, so we’ve got plenty of meat for the winter. But not enough to feed a wolf as well.
Unless I can find his mother and give
him back, the pup’s going to have to learn to hunt for himself.
I went back to see him early this morning, and he was just where I’d left him, tucked up and snoozing in that old hollow tree I found last summer, not far off the path to the spring. I reckon it should be safe – it’s always me that fetches the water. I’ve made him a little nest out of that old blanket, and he looked snug as anything. He let me walk right up to the tree before he awoke and growled a little.
The more I watch him, the more I can see he’s too young to be by himself. All he wants to do is play and have someone bring him his food. I trapped a rabbit for him today. Had to tell Ma that a fox or something had torn up one of the snares. She said it was just bad luck I hadn’t
caught anything, but I hate lying to her.
Ma and Pa thought I’d gone out to do some drawing this morning, when I’d sneaked off to see the pup. I was supposed to be helping with the stable work. Tonight Pa lectured me on sticking to my chores and taking better care of Russet and Ruby and Lucy, and how we all had to depend on each other, so now I feel really guilty.
That’s not what sticks in my mind, though. I just keep thinking of the pup, and the way his ears pricked forward when he saw it was me and he bounded out of that hollow tree to lick my fingers. Grace would have loved to play with him. I can’t let him starve, can I?
