Firstborn Read online

  When the three healthy wolves got ready to go hunting that night, Blue Boy astonished me by jumping up and saying he was joining them.

  “You mustn’t,” Alberta said. “You need another day’s rest, at least.”

  Blue Boy went anyway. This left me completely vulnerable, a sitting duck for any passing fox or bobcat or wolverine. But what could you expect from a wolf? I hunkered down in a rotted-out pit in the stump and tried not to move a feather. After first light a hawk drifted by high overhead, but luckily he didn’t notice me. When the wolves finally returned, Blue Boy astonished me again—by depositing a nice hunk of venison by the stump. It was enough to last me a month!

  Judging by how quickly Lupa and Frick curled up together and conked out, I figured they must have feasted at the kill site. Alberta lay down too but didn’t close her eyes. The way she watched Blue Boy made me think he must have displayed his hunting prowess. After a while he met her gaze and said quietly:

  “Will you do me another favor?”

  “Another?” she said.

  “You already saved my life. I was hoping you’d look after Maggie.”

  “Well, sure. But—”

  “Thanks. I hope I can repay you someday.”

  Before Alberta could get out another word, Blue Boy turned and trotted up the mountainside. She sat there, stunned. I was stunned too. I couldn’t fly after him, and by the time I thought of calling out good-bye, he was out of sight.

  “Where’s he going?” Alberta asked.

  “He has a mate and pups up in Canada somewhere,” I said quietly, feeling more doomed than ever. There was no reason in the world for Alberta to watch out for me while my wing healed. What was I to her?

  We stared up the mountain for a long while. When Alberta eventually lay back down, she kept shifting positions, as if she couldn’t get comfortable.

  In time the other two wolves woke up. After giving her lustrous gray fur a thorough licking, Lupa looked around.

  “This mountain’s for the birds,” she said, using a turn of phrase I detested. “There’s no water. Let’s go back where we were.”

  “It’s nice up here,” Alberta said. “Don’t you think so, Frick?”

  Lupa gave Frick a sharp look, and he murmured that maybe going back south was the best plan.

  When he and Lupa headed down into the woods, Alberta came and stood by my stump.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “You can’t fly, right? I’ll give you a ride.”

  Landing on the back of a steer was one thing. Cattle are torpid, slow-moving creatures with flat molars for chewing grass. Wolves, on the other hand, are fast as lightning, with fangs designed for ripping flesh—or feathers. I’d even kept a safe distance from Blue Boy.

  “I’ll be fine here,” I said. “Blue Boy left me food.”

  “Don’t be a birdbrain,” Alberta said, using another of my least favorite expressions. “You’re defenseless if you can’t fly. Somebody’s bound to come along and eat you.”

  And you won’t? I thought.

  “Listen, I can’t split up the pack, and I can’t break my word to Blue Boy either,” she said. “So you have no choice.”

  She was right about my not lasting long on my own. And if she intended to eat me, at least it would be over quickly. But even so I would have balked if not for the look in her eyes. I know it’s a strange thing to say about a wolf, but there was a real warmth in them.

  Conquering every instinct in my body, I hopped onto her back. I clenched my beak, ready for the worst, but Alberta just trotted down into the trees.

  I clung to her coat for dear life. When we caught up to the other two wolves, Lupa gave a snort at the sight of us, and I couldn’t help thinking Trilby would have done the same. He’d considered a magpie and a bluebird a weird combination—what would he have made of a magpie and a wolf? But to my surprise Frick shot me a smile when Lupa wasn’t looking.

  The ride didn’t get easier as the day wore on. We traversed countless ridges and several mountains. Late in the afternoon we arrived at what had evidently been their previous rendezvous site on a wooded hillside. Lupa gave me a hungry look when I hopped down off Alberta’s back—none of us had eaten all day—but Alberta warned her sister off with a low snarl. The wolves napped a while and went off to hunt. I scrounged up a few seeds and berries and dragged myself under a bush.

  When I woke at daybreak, the wolves were still gone. I hopped out into the open and tested my bum wing. It was no better. But when the wolves returned, both Frick and Alberta had brought back small chunks of meat for me.

  The next day was much the same, and the next. As days turned to weeks, I tried not to dwell on the thought that my wing might be permanently out of commission, but I couldn’t help resenting the wolf who’d turned me into a pathetic, earthbound creature. Still I had to give Lupa credit for looking good. When she wasn’t sleeping or on the hunt, she was grooming herself.

  At first Frick and I didn’t talk much. But I came to realize he knew about more than healing herbs. He even paid attention to birds. He could tell a black vulture from a turkey vulture, and a Canada goose from a snow goose. One windy day he gave me a tip about putting pine sap on my feet to keep a better grip on my branch. Another day he showed me how the seeds in a Douglas fir cone look just like rats diving into a hole. Lupa rolled her eyes when he went off on one of his “silly tangents,” but I took to chatting with him while she was busy grooming or napping. He was no Jackson, of course, but for a creature who’d been stuck on the ground all his life, he’d picked up a lot of information.

  As for Alberta, she was so honest and dependable, I couldn’t help liking her. She had a cheerful disposition, too. But one night—we’d been at the new rendezvous site almost a month by then—she woke me with a wrenchingly sad howl. I crept out from under my bush. There was no moon, but she was howling anyway.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I said when she took a break.

  “Sorry if I woke you,” she said.

  “What are you thinking about when you howl like that?”

  “Well, I suppose I was thinking about Blue Boy.”

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised. “He’s quite a wolf,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen one like him. I don’t think the humans had either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we were in that compound, they put us on machines to weigh us.”

  “What did you weigh?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you remember the sounds the humans made when they read the scale?”

  She gave an approximation. Thanks to my experience with cattle weighing, I was able to inform her that she weighed 120 pounds. It sounded as if Lupa weighed 115.

  “When they put Frick on the scale, the needle went to the same place as with me,” she said. “Most of the wolves were about the same. But with Blue Boy all the humans came to look. They weighed him twice.”

  She approximated the number, which sounded like 152.

  “Isn’t that amazing?” she said.

  This probably explained what Blue Boy had said about the interest he and his brother had aroused in the humans. But I wasn’t sure what to say. Size is a great paradox to me. Earthbound creatures all dream of flying, and flying requires lightness. I weigh less than half a pound myself. But these same earthbound creatures have an innate respect for bigness.

  “I think Blue Boy liked you,” I told her.

  “He was just grateful I got the bullet out of him.”

  “I have a feeling it was more than that.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m not pretty, like Lupa.”

  Lupa’s fur was shinier, and she had more sway in her walk, but Alberta was bigger and stronger. Frankly, I couldn’t see that much difference between them—except for their dispositions. Maybe you had to be a wolf.

  “I know it’s silly to think about him,” Alberta said. “But for some reason I couldn’t help
myself tonight.”

  Later that night, she and the others went off to hunt. They were still gone at sunrise, when a red-tailed hawk landed on a lightning-struck tree not ten feet away. His head swiveled toward me. He fixed me with his cold eyes and pushed off to grab me.

  Next thing I knew, I was zooming away between two high-waisted firs. I zigged to the left, then soared up over the top of the forest. Hawks are fast, but they can’t maneuver like a magpie—a healthy one, anyway. And I seemed to be back in the pink, my wing working perfectly.

  I spent a gleeful hour doing aerial acrobatics. When the wolves returned from the hunt, I buzzed down into the same lightning-struck tree the hawk had used.

  “You can fly again!” Alberta said.

  “Good as new, thanks to you,” I said. “All that fresh meat must have done it.”

  “Bravo,” Frick said. “And now you don’t have to feel bad, Lupa.”

  “I didn’t feel bad,” Lupa said. “She’s just a bird.”

  But not even Lupa could put a damper on my spirits. I was actually grateful to her. I would never take flying for granted again. You have to lose something to appreciate its true value.

  I was feeling so good that when Alberta’s sad howl woke me again late that night, I wished I could have shared some of my happiness with her. But she didn’t need it. For there soon came an answering howl from far off to the north—a howl stirringly familiar to us both.

  6

  I DON’T MUCH LIKE FLYING at night. But how could I resist?

  There was only a light breeze, and a hazy moon silvered the tops of the gently swaying firs. After traveling several miles to the north, I spotted a pair of glinting yellow eyes moving along a ridge line. The ridge had clearly been logged, for the trees there were all saplings.

  I must have gotten used to the other three wolves, for when I landed in Blue Boy’s path, the size of this 152-pounder startled me. I don’t know if I was scared or choked up at seeing him again, but when his fierce eyes fixed on me I lost my voice for a moment.

  “I see your wing’s healed,” he said.

  I bobbed my head up and down. “Thanks to Alberta,” I said. “Did you find Bess and the kids?”

  “Bits and pieces of them.”

  “Oh no! What happened?”

  He clenched his jaw, not saying a word. They must have been slaughtered by the neighboring pack he’d mentioned, but he never spoke about it.

  It was still dark when we reached the rendezvous site. The other three wolves hadn’t gone hunting yet, and I think their initial reaction to seeing Blue Boy again was the same as mine. He couldn’t have grown while he was in Canada, but he really was imposing. Alberta averted her eyes, but Frick held Blue Boy’s gaze.

  “It’s good to see you,” Frick said. “As Alberta’s said, four’s a better pack than three.”

  “Don’t forget Maggie,” Alberta said.

  “Five is better than four,” Frick corrected himself.

  Lupa scoffed, but again she couldn’t deflate me. I could fly again, and Blue Boy was back.

  There was an awkward moment as to who was going to lead the hunt, but Frick quickly stepped back.

  “He doesn’t even know the territory,” Lupa hissed.

  Yet even she must have realized it would be a joke for Blue Boy not to go first. And it was Blue Boy who caught the scent and gave the cry of the chase: the same bone-chilling cry I’d first heard on that split-rail fence back on the Triple Bar T. He may have been up for days, but he easily outstripped the other three. By the time they caught up to him, he was standing over a deer stretched out on a platter of blood-soaked pine straw.

  After the feast Blue Boy led the way back to the rendezvous site as if he’d known this part of Idaho his whole life. While the other three lay down in their usual spots to rest and digest, Blue Boy sniffed around. Lupa shifted petulantly away from Frick, but when he moved next to her again she stayed put. As for Alberta, she didn’t play games, didn’t try to pique Blue Boy’s interest by ignoring him. She watched his every move. And when he came over and lay down beside her, she let out a little yelp of pleasure.

  They nuzzled and talked in low voices. Perched atop the bush I’d previously hidden under, I couldn’t catch everything they said, but I did hear Blue Boy thank her for watching out for me. I felt a strange fluttering in my chest.

  And so we made a pack of four wolves and one magpie. As winter approached, the wolves’ fur got thicker and shaggier. Game became scarcer, and as soon as they’d hunted out one area, they would migrate east to a new camp. The wolves liked to hunt by night, but once they realized that if they waited till daybreak I could scope out quarry for them, they changed their habits. We began to sleep at night and head off at first light, with me leading the way.

  I’ve since learned that in most wolf packs only the “alpha pair” mates. And no matter what Lupa may have thought, there was no question that her sister and Blue Boy were the alpha pair. But again our little pack made its own rules. When mating season came, both couples mated. In late April they chose a den site on the side of a mountain above a river, where both pregnant females dug dens. Having been stuck in a hooded nest for weeks on end, I sympathized with Alberta, and even with Lupa, for being cooped up. Blue Boy and Frick left food offerings on the thresholds. A week after the females disappeared, little squeaks came out of Lupa’s den. I’d never seen Frick so happy. But even then he didn’t venture inside to see the newborns with his own eyes. The very next day similar squeaks came from Alberta’s den. Though Blue Boy had sired a litter before, he howled joyfully for half the night.

  I have to admit I was curious to see what hatchling wolves looked like. But another week went by, and then another, and still none appeared.

  “They’ve been out of their eggs a long time now, haven’t they?” I said one day.

  “We don’t have eggs,” said Frick. “They come out as pups.”

  “Then where are they?”

  “Suckling,” Blue Boy said.

  Another week went by, and then, on the first really warm day of spring, everything happened at once. Lupa proudly ushered three pups out of her den—two males and a female—and barely a minute later Alberta came out of hers with two males and two females. One of Alberta’s girls wasn’t even half the size of the others, but in spite of having a runt, Blue Boy looked every bit as elated as Frick. The little fuzz balls were pretty cute, I have to admit, yapping and rolling in the dirt and spanking the ground with their forepaws. They didn’t pay much attention to their happy fathers till Frick and Blue Boy knelt down. Blue Boy’s litter toddled up to him one by one and touched the bottom of his snout with theirs. It seemed like some sort of sign of respect. When the other three pups went up to Blue Boy too, Lupa growled her disapproval, but Frick just laughed.

  “Who can blame them?” he said.

  Then another funny thing happened. The little runt went over and lifted her snout to Frick’s.

  “Poor thing,” Frick said. “She won’t last a week.”

  Even if they were wingless and soulless, these wolves showed more imagination in naming their offspring than my parents had. They named their firstborns first. Lupa and Frick’s was a girl: Lucy. Alberta and Blue Boy’s was a boy: Prince. Lupa and Frick called their other two Frank and Heather. Alberta and Blue Boy called their other boy Buster, and their girl Rosie. They didn’t bother naming the poor, doomed runt.

  The next morning was cooler and blustery. It was tempting to stay home with Alberta and Lupa to watch the pups cavort, but Blue Boy and Frick had pretty well depleted the game in the area and might need my help, so I went with them. After swimming the river and climbing a saddleback between two peaks, they still hadn’t caught a scent. Flying on ahead, I spotted a pronghorn and zipped back to let them know. Pronghorn are elusive, so I flew above this one to give them a marker. But just as Blue Boy and Frick were closing in, I noticed a billowing cloud of smoke back to the west. I dive-bombed the two hunters, letting out a piercing s
hriek.

  “You spooked him,” Blue Boy said angrily.

  “Get back to your dens!” I squawked.

  Blue Boy and Frick raced across to the saddleback. From there they should have had a view of their dens, but the entire mountainside across the river was engulfed in smoke. They sprinted down to the river, leaped in, and churned across. I lost sight of them as they climbed out and dashed into the forest fire. I was beside myself. The wind was fanning the flames, and from overhead all I could hear was crackling tinder and snapping pinesap. Just as I was sure that all my wolves had been incinerated, one of them jumped out of the fire into the river. It figured it would be Lupa. But Alberta soon jumped in after her. And then, thank goodness, Blue Boy shot out too, leaping in farther upstream. The three of them swam to the other bank, and as they threw themselves onto dry land, I fluttered down beside them.

  “Where are the pups?” Blue Boy gasped.

  “I don’t know,” Alberta wailed. “They were with me—then everything was just smoke and fire.”

  “Mine, too!” Lupa cried. “And my beautiful fur, singed!”

  “Where’s Frick?” said Alberta.

  We all stared across at the inferno.

  “I’ll go back,” Blue Boy said grimly.

  “It’s hopeless,” Lupa howled.

  Before the howl died in her throat, Frick came catapulting out of the flames, his fur on fire. He splashed into the river and thrashed across and dragged himself onto the bank a ways down from the rest of us. Lupa let out a strangled screech of joy when she saw a pup drop out of his mouth onto the ground. But when we reached him we saw it wasn’t one of hers. It was Alberta’s runt.

  7

  THE RUNT WAS STILL ALIVE. So was Frick, though he was barely recognizable. The white blaze on his face was black, and his hindquarters reminded me of things I’d seen rotating on spits at barbecues back on the ranch.

  He didn’t seem to have any recollection of how he’d gotten so charred.

  “I remember sprinting for the den and losing my way in the smoke,” he said between gasps. “The heat was overpowering me when I heard a whimper through the crackling. The rest is a blur.”