Firstborn Read online

  “I have to get home,” he said.

  “Where’s that?”

  He pointed his snout to the north.

  “Canada?” I said. “Then how’d you get to Yellowstone?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “One minute I was hunting with my brother. The next, we’re locked in a pen.”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “Don’t talk to me about that miserable cur.”

  “Well, what’s so great about Canada?”

  “I have five pups to feed.”

  “In that case, your best bet would probably be to go back to the Beartooth Mountains,” I said, pointing south. “You could follow them to the west. There’s another range over that way, in Idaho. I saw it with my own eyes. You might be able to follow those mountains into Canada.”

  He looked doubtful and headed off to the north again. Another volley of rifle shots brought him racing back. But he was nothing if not stubborn. He kept going back again and again all morning, till finally an all-terrain-vehicle with a pair of hunters in it came bouncing along in his wake. When the shooting started, I lit out of the creek bed, afraid the humans, who didn’t seem very accurate with their bullets, would hit me by mistake.

  As I neared the gate to the Triple Bar T, I heard something and glanced back to see the wolf sprinting after me. A ways behind him was a dust cloud: the ATV, no doubt. Since I owed the wolf my life, the least I could do was try to help him, so I squawked and veered west. He followed. I led him to the ravine I’d flown over when I’d gone after Trilby.

  The ravine was too rugged and thickly wooded for the humans’ vehicle, but the wolf had no trouble negotiating the rocks and trees. He worked his way south. When he came to the end of the ravine, I warned him that there were ranches between there and the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains.

  “Catch a nap,” I suggested, “and head out after dark.”

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “But thanks for the help.”

  He sloped off into the ravine, and I headed back to the Triple Bar T. Only when the barn and silos came into view did it occur to me that there was nothing for me there. Jackson was gone, and I’d alienated Dan and the kids. Perched on the split-rail fence, I stared bleakly at the weather vane, remembering what Jackson had said about being loyal to your own nature. I had a foreboding that it was my nature to go through life without a family, alone in the world.

  A few minutes later a guttural, blood-chilling cry at my back awakened another foreboding. The wolf must have ventured out of the ravine, must be in his death throes—though I hadn’t heard any more rifle shots. I flew back to check and spotted the wolf on the east side of the ravine.

  He wasn’t dying. In fact, he was moving at a speed that impressed even me. He didn’t make a sound as he zigzagged through the scrub pines on the trail of a ten-point buck. Then he made an astonishing leap and landed on the deer’s shoulder. Before I could beat my wings three more times, he’d brought the buck to his knees and ripped out his windpipe.

  I sat in one of the stubby pines watching the wolf tear into the deer. His ravenousness was terrifying. But I have to admit the speed and ferocity with which he’d made his kill had been breathtaking. I’d never seen anything like it. Soulless and earthbound though he was, he inspired a bit of awe in me.

  Once he’d gorged himself, he sat back and started cleaning the blood off his snout with his long tongue. Most of the buck’s carcass remained. It smelled delicious.

  “You’re quite the hunter,” I said.

  He lifted his head, looking surprised to see me. “We do better in packs,” he said.

  “Would you mind . . .”

  “Help yourself,” he grunted.

  He was within striking distance of the remains, but I felt only mild nervousness about hopping down and digging in. Why would he want a mouthful of feathers with all that lovely meat around? And the fresh venison truly was delicious.

  As I pecked away, the wolf yawned and looked up. The ravine had gotten dark, but there was still light in the sky.

  “Maybe I will catch that nap,” he said.

  He circled a couple of times and lay down in the pine needles. It didn’t take him long to fall asleep—hardly surprising after his skirmishes with the humans and chasing down a deer. After eating my fill, I returned to the stubby pine and looked down drowsily at the sleeping wolf, trying to think why I shouldn’t accompany this amazing meal ticket on his journey.

  4

  THE SKY WAS AS BLACK as my tail feathers when the wolf and I woke from our after-dinner naps. He climbed out of the ravine and headed due south. As we skirted a ranch, a herd of cattle kicked up a fuss, but he left them alone, and no humans appeared.

  By daybreak we were in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains. Once we got to a good elevation, he did his circling routine and settled down to sleep on the shady side of a boulder. Late in the afternoon he got up and chased down a hare. We agreed that it was a lot stringier than deer, but edible. While we were relaxing after the meal, I asked his name.

  “Blue Boy,” he said. “You?”

  I told him, realizing a second too late that I’d missed a golden opportunity. I could have turned myself into something wonderful like a Miranda, or a Rosalind, or an Evangeline. Who could he have checked with? But at least he didn’t snigger and say “Maggie the magpie.”

  For the next few days we made our way west through the mountains. It turned out I was good at spotting prey, and with him such a deadly predator, we had plenty of chances for after-dinner conversation. He wasn’t very talkative, but I pumped him with questions, and using a little imagination, I managed to piece together his story.

  The mountainous terrain gave him no problems because he’d grown up in the Canadian Rockies. He’d been the firstborn in his litter. This, it turns out, is a big deal to wolves. The firstborn grabs the nipple with the richest milk supply, giving that pup a big advantage over the others, turning him or her into a sort of heir apparent. But the life of a young wolf, firstborn or last, sounded even more hazardous than a young magpie’s. Blue Boy’s litter was six, and by the end of his first summer only two were left. All three of his sisters were killed—one by drowning in a stream, one courtesy of an eagle, one mysteriously—and one of his brothers wandered too close to the territory of a neighboring pack and got torn to shreds.

  “My other brother nearly bit the dust too,” he told me.

  “How?” I asked.

  “An owl.”

  “But he got away?”

  “Almost wish he hadn’t,” Blue Boy said with a sniff.

  This brother’s name was Sully. When Blue Boy dispersed from his pack—his third summer—Sully came along with him. That next spring Blue Boy mated with a wolf named Bess, who whelped the five pups he’d mentioned. His last memory of home was going out to get them some food with his brother.

  What happened, I now realize, was they were shot with tranquilizing darts and transported hundreds of miles south to a compound in Yellowstone Park. Coming to, they found themselves in a pen with collars around their necks. There were other Canadian wolves in other pens, but Blue Boy and his brother attracted the most attention from the humans. Perhaps it was their color. They both had the curious bluish tinge to their coats.

  The first thing Blue Boy did when the tranquilizer wore off was to try to rid himself of the annoying collar. He couldn’t scrape it off on the chain-link fence, however, and Sully wasn’t able to gnaw it off.

  “Maybe Bess’ll do better,” Blue Boy muttered. “Let’s go home.”

  But when Blue Boy crouched to attack the fence Sully pointed out wolves in other pens who were doing just that, losing fur and teeth in the process.

  “You have such great teeth, Blue. Why sacrifice them when you don’t have to?” Sully nodded at a woodpile in a corner of the pen. “We can tunnel out under that.”

  Blue Boy had helped Bess dig a whelping den, but only because they’d been unable to find a pre-dug one. He considered
digging to be for badgers. But he saw his brother’s point.

  They started tunneling after dark. The ground was marbled with roots and volcanic rock, but they kept at it night after night, trading shifts. Just before sunrise on the sixth night Blue Boy poked his head up between two pines outside the pen. He scrambled out, shook the dirt off his fur, and hissed at his brother, who’d conked out by the woodpile.

  “Move it, Sull! The humans’ll be up soon.”

  Sully stood and ambled over to the fence. “You go,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m fine here.”

  “But don’t you want to escape?” Blue Boy said incredulously.

  “They bring us food every morning. And by the look and smell of this place we’re an awful long way from home. It would be a killer trip. We’d probably get shot.”

  “But we have to get back to Bess and the pups! That pack across the river’ll move in and slaughter them.”

  I later learned that the humans were about to release the wolves anyway. But, of course, Sully didn’t know that. Like most of us at decisive moments, he had only his character to fall back on. He wavered a bit when Blue Boy’s look of disbelief turned to contempt. Then the door of one of the humans’ trailers slammed, and the moment was gone.

  “He was always lazy,” Blue Boy said. “That’s why he stuck with me after we dispersed instead of starting a family of his own. But I never thought he was a coward and a traitor.”

  Blue Boy was definitely neither lazy nor cowardly. When we came to the end of the Beartooth Mountains, we faced a long stretch of open country before the next mountain range started, and ranchers took potshots at him as we made our way across it. But he rarely broke stride, his eyes trained on the mountains that would lead him home.

  We were just coming into the foothills when a bullet caught Blue Boy in the neck. To my surprise, he didn’t fall to the ground. All that fell was the aggravating collar. Amazingly, the bullet had severed it. The collar must have blunted the bullet’s impact, for Blue Boy barely slowed down.

  I’m pretty sure I crossed my first state line that day, passing from Montana into Idaho. Blue Boy picked up a scent and made short work of a deer. After dinner we both had a good sleep, and before sunrise Blue Boy got up and headed due north. But he moved less briskly than usual and left behind speckles of blood. The bullet must have penetrated his neck after all. Toward the end of the day he slumped down under a white pine without doing his usual circling.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked from the lowest limb.

  “Not much,” he said.

  The next morning I woke before he did. His wound was festering. I flew back to the deer carcass. Other creatures had been at it, and insects, too, but there was still some flesh hanging from the bones. I pulled off the biggest piece I could manage and flew it back to the white pine. Blue Boy was awake but hadn’t moved. When I dropped the bit of venison by his muzzle, he sniffed it.

  “Thanks,” he said, and he ate it.

  It wasn’t much of a breakfast for him, but he licked his lips and rose to his feet and continued north. Around midday we reached the base of a steep, snowcapped peak. For me this wasn’t a major hurdle, but most wingless creatures, even ones without festering bullet wounds, would have avoided such a grueling climb. To the east and west the terrain was considerably more hospitable. But Blue Boy was determined to keep on his northerly route, and he headed straight up the mountainside.

  His powerful hind legs started to wobble and shake, but he struggled on. About halfway to the summit he collapsed. To keep his spirits up, I asked him about his home, but as dusk closed in around us his voice seemed to give out. My spirits sank. I’d thrown in my lot with this wolf, actually grown to admire him, and now he was going to die and leave me all alone in this craggy place.

  But I was wrong about his voice. As a nearly full moon appeared between two peaks to the east, Blue Boy sat up and lifted his snout and let out a sound that made my neck feathers stand up. I’ve heard many wolf howls since, and they’re always spine-tingling, but this one was so haunting, so melancholy, so soul-stirring that I swear the moon quivered in the sky.

  It was only a matter of seconds before I heard my next howl: a small chorus of them, coming from far off to the south. I realized Blue Boy must have been calling for help. The howling went on for some time, back and forth, the other howls gradually growing louder, closer. The moon was near its zenith when it picked out three pairs of eyes on the edge of a pinewood downhill from us.

  The glint of wolves’ eyes in the night is a chilling sight. If I’d been wingless, I would have been terrified. Three wolves stepped out into the moonlight. Two were females who looked as if they might be related. The smaller, curvier one had a more lustrous gray coat and more flirtatious eyes. She walked by the side of the male, while the larger, sturdier female lagged a little behind. I liked the look of the male right off, for he had my color scheme: black and white, including a white blaze on his face. He was good-sized and probably would have impressed me if I hadn’t seen Blue Boy first. As he approached, he growled, pulling his lips back to expose his fangs, and it occurred to me then that Blue Boy had howled not for help but as a way of putting himself out of his misery.

  From my fox experience I knew there’s a big difference between dreaming of ending things and actually facing death. But, unlike me, Blue Boy didn’t shake or try to hide. He didn’t as much as flinch. He just held the other male’s gaze steadily.

  “Ever seen such a big wolf?” the male said.

  “Never,” said his consort. “He’s in bad shape, though. Look at his neck. Let’s finish him.”

  I have no idea what got into me. As the couple crouched, their ears tilting forward aggressively, I dropped onto the ground in front of Blue Boy and squawked at the top of my lungs. The male wolf looked surprised. The female curled her lip, stepped forward, and gave me a swipe.

  Her clawed foot knocked me sideways into a thorny bush. After a dazed moment I managed to extricate myself and aimed for a pine to gather my wits. I barely made the bottom-most branch.

  “You hurt my wing!” I screamed.

  It was horribly true. My left wing could barely flap. But the she-wolf wasn’t paying the slightest attention to me. Her eyes were locked on Blue Boy’s, as were those of the male at her side. The two of them snarled in unison.

  But their attack was thwarted again, this time by the other female stepping around and taking up the ground I’d held so briefly. She turned to Blue Boy, her whiskers quivering. Blue Boy bowed his head in resignation. Instead of sinking her fangs into his neck, however, she started licking it. As her tongue slathered the bullet wound, Blue Boy flopped down onto his side. She kept right on with her licking. Eventually she started nibbling at the wound. When she pulled her head back, a slug fell from between her teeth onto the ground.

  She swiveled around to her companions. “This is the one they made such a fuss about in the compound,” she said. “The one who dug his way out.”

  “So?” said the other two in unison.

  “Four makes a stronger pack than three.”

  The other two didn’t look convinced—though their ears had angled back a bit.

  “You should find him some of your herbs, Frick,” said the female who’d pulled out bullet.

  The male snorted dubiously. But after giving Blue Boy a long look he trotted off into the darkness. When he returned, he dropped an uprooted plant onto the ground. The female who’d extracted the bullet chewed the plant up and spat some onto Blue Boy’s wound. The rest she put by Blue Boy’s snout.

  “Eat,” she said.

  To my surprise, Blue Boy gave the green glop a sniff and ate it.

  “I’m Alberta,” she said. “This is Frick and my sister, Lupa.”

  “Blue Boy,” said Blue Boy. “That’s Maggie.”

  The three wolves followed his gaze up to me.

  “Maggie the magpie,” Lupa snickered.

  I wanted to kill her. But
she’d beat me to the punch. With a broken wing I knew I wouldn’t last a week.

  5

  ON CLOSER EXAMINATION I wasn’t so sure my wing was actually broken. But there were severely torn muscles. I could fly only a few feet at a time, and even on these short hops I veered disastrously to the left. With Blue Boy in equally dire straits I could only hope our ends wouldn’t be too drawn out.

  All that day Blue Boy barely moved, except for his heaving ribcage. The other wolves napped a lot, and at night they went off to hunt. At dawn Alberta brought Blue Boy back a chunk of deer meat. He lifted his head off the ground, took a few halfhearted bites, and passed out again.

  The one called Frick evidently had a nose for medicinal herbs, and Alberta kept after him till he fetched a bunch. She chewed them up and applied some to Blue Boy’s wound like a poultice.

  “Won’t help,” said her brutal sister, Lupa. “He’s lost too much blood.”

  Alberta spat out the rest of the herbs by his snout. “We’ll see,” she said.

  “Anyway, he’s not from the compound. He has no collar.”

  “It got shot off,” I said.

  “A likely tale,” Lupa said.

  She still had her collar—I wished it would shrink and strangle her—and so did Alberta and Frick. It seemed that, like Blue Boy, they’d been going about their business in the Canadian Rockies only to find themselves suddenly transported to pens in Yellowstone. After their release they’d left the park, too, migrating west into the mountains of Idaho.

  Around midday Blue Boy came around, and Alberta forced him to eat the remaining herbs along with a chunk of deer. Once he’d finished, she asked what had become of his collar.

  “Shot off,” he said.

  I gave Lupa a look, but she was preoccupied with her grooming—or pretending to be.

  That afternoon, while the wolves were napping, I made the mistake of dropping to the ground for a peck of leftover deer. Try as I might, I couldn’t get back up to my limb. The best I could do was scuttle onto a nearby stump.