Spirit Wolf Read Free

wouldn’t work. They dragged uselessly behind her like anchors. As Nash neared, she stopped struggling and turned to look at this man-creature who was killing her. Nash lifted the rifle to fire a bullet through her brain, to close those eyes that looked at him with such fear and wonder, but Uriah pushed the rifle aside. Bullets, like everything else, were too precious to waste.
    The doe struggled again as Uriah approached. He straddled her, cradling her neck almost gently in his left arm. Then he began sawing at her throat with a knife honed to razor sharpness. Nash watched and listened to the doe bleat as the knife sought her lifeblood. Then the knife found her windpipe, and the only sound was her gasping breath, until the life drained out of her and her head sank to the ground.
    And Uriah looked at Nash then, handing him the bloodied knife.
    â€œTime you learned.”
    Uriah grabbed a hind leg and held the deer open to Nash. The knife cut through hide and tissue to the body cavity below, and the smell came then, the smell of life and death emanating from the deer’s guts and rising into the cold air. Nash cut the anus free and then sliced around the diaphragm, as he had seen his father do dozens of times. Then, holding his breath against the stench, he reached his arm deep into the deer’s body and grasped her esophagus with his hand. He braced his legs and tugged until the windpipe tore free and the deer’s guts spilled on the ground.
    Nash ate meat from that deer, but never without seeing in his mind’s eye that river of guts spilling on the ground. And he never again pointed a gun at game without seeing the look in that doe’s eyes as his father cut her throat.
    The horses were plowing through drifts caught in the lee of a little rise and their breath plumed up like smoke from a locomotive laboring up a hill.
    Nash had been on only one train trip in his life, but he would never forget it. All the family’s possessions—furniture, stock, tools—were loaded into a single “immigrant” car, the Brues into a hard-riding, smoke-filled passenger car. His mother had packed food to eat on the way, and the Brue family jolted, lurched, and jerked along for a thousand miles, passing the time at each stop feeding the stock and cleaning out their car. His father spent most of his time in the stockcar, peering out the crack in the door when he wasn’t busy.
    It was spring then, and emerald grass painted the prairies a pale green. Fields of wildflowers fled past the windows in startling bursts of color. The family thought the prairie was paradise then. Land that didn’t have to be cleared to be plowed. Grass knee high stretched as far as the eye could see. They were playing a part in a story of high adventure and their excitement grew with each passing mile.
    And then there was Billings, a little town walled between massive rimrocks overlooking the Yellowstone River. Uriah bought a newspaper there. The city was destined to grow, “far-sighted” businessmen said. It was blessed with good water, good land, and good people. An Indian had been cut to pieces under the wheels of a train. A hue and cry from the city’s saloon owners followed the sheriff’s conjecture that the Indian was drunk. No white man would serve an Indian liquor. No sir!
    They switched trains in Laurel, heading south toward Wyoming. Finally they were in Bridger, unloading the immigrant car, free of the smoky confines of the train. Then came the ride to the homestead in the rattly, rough-riding wagon. Nash had never been so excited.
    A few weeks later the family discovered that green was a rare and fleeting thing on the Montana prairie. The land scorched brown, mottled only by the color clinging to springs, creeks, and rivers.
    Nell was laboring by the time they reached the top of the hill, and his father reined his roan to a stop.
    â€œNot good to get them heated in weather like this.”
    Nash