The Legend of Black Wolf - Sully's Journey Home

Chapter Eighteen

        The morning dawned cold and raining. A hole in the cover of Sully's quick shelter from the night before brought him out of his sleep when drops of water started hitting his back. The rain wasn't hard, and by the time he had closed the hole, it had stopped. The shower brought out the fresh smells all around him. Fresh pine and clear morning air beckoned him to walk, to discover more of the land around him. Checking the coals he had banked in the night, he started out intending to just follow the ridge and come back with some sort of breakfast to cook over the fire before putting it out for good and heading back down to the Cheyenne camp.  

        Once he got started, however, his curiosity got the better of him and he found himself rambling far longer than he had intended. He knew these woods and areas were the Cheyenne hunting grounds, but he still had the strange thought that he might be the first white man to ever see these rocks and trees, might be the first one to really discover these secret little places and enjoy them after an early morning rain. Keeping west as the sun rose, he tried to keep his bearings, thinking that, when he came to a landmark he'd be able to remember, he'd turn back. But the sights kept him entranced, and he walked on without picking one certain spot at which to turn around.

        When it was around noon, Sully came to a clearing. Before him was the ripped up carcass of a kill that had been dead a few days. The bones had been picked mostly clean, and what was left had turned black in the heat. He stopped and tried to listen for any animals that might be nearby, but heard nothing but hawks in the distance. Walking through the clearing, there was nothing more remarkable about the area, and he decided that the kill had been a deer. Just before he got to the tree line on the opposite side, Sully heard what he thought to be a squeak of something behind him.

        Frozen in his tracks, he turned slowly to see a wolf cub sitting up against a rock. He had been hidden behind it when Sully had approached, but now that the two saw each other, the cub made the small noise again. Searching the trees and everything around him for a sign of white or gray, Sully held very still as he tried to pinpoint the mother. Getting between the mother and the cub of any animal was a very dangerous thing to do. Sully knew wolves traveled in packs and feared that he would not only have to contend with the mother of this cub, but the entire cub's family. The grisly white bones of the dead deer leered there in the clearing, ominously white in the hot sun of noon. They were a harbinger of what could happen out here to those who weren't careful.

        The wolf cub barked this time, and Sully stopped scanning the area to look at the cub. The two regarded each other a long, tense minute. Then, Sully slowly started inching backwards toward the trees. As he took a few hesitant steps back, the wolf cub barked and squeaked a few times, coming to it's feet. Taking an unsure step away from the rock, the cub fell, and slowly righted itself. Sully froze again, and scanned, sure the mother would come now. He tried to focus on downwind, as he'd be easier to smell from that direction. The cub fell again, but Sully was too nervous about being attacked to really watch what was happening. Long minutes of Sully slowly backing away from the cub's cries were dominated by the hammering of his heart.

        As nothing continued to happen, Sully finally looked down and watched the cub that was so earnestly trying to make it into the clearing. It was holding up its one hind paw, which was throwing it off balance. Touching it on the ground seemed to make it cry out, and when it did stand, it seemed a little thin to Sully, though he had never seen a living wolf in his life.

        Crouching, yet continuing to expect an attack at any second, he watched the cub. After considerable effort, the little wolf made it to the bones of the kill and stopped. It sniffed what was left of the meal from days ago, then looked around, forlornly. Sully's tender heart went out to the cub, and the strange thought came to him that it might have been abandoned by the mother. It laid there, completely exposed in the clearing, tired out from it's stumbling walk, and there was no adult wolf there to take it back to the den or protect it. The den. Sully wondered if the cub had been lost but was now trying to crawl back to its den. The cub had been coming in Sully's direction. What if he was backing up right into a wolf den?