Weekend of the Wolf

CHAPTER 1-2

The men did not see Paul, and as far as he could tell, they did not suspect his presence. Both men held lights in their left hands, but only the leader’s was actually turned on. They each held their right hands tucked beneath their raincoats.

They indeed followed the path, which wound its way past the crouching Paul. He could see their breath steaming up as they kept their heads pointed downward to the trail. Paul began to relax. They were too intent on their footing to stray a look in his direction.

Suddenly they stopped. The second man flipped on his flashlight as both men stared at the ground. They were a scant three paces from Paul, who lowered his head and held his breath.

“Now who the hell would be out here this late?” asked the follower. “On a night like this?”

“Pretty fresh, too,” observed the leader.

Boot prints. Paul had crossed the trail twice. He slowly angled his face back toward the men for another look, half expecting the light to meet his eyes at any moment. The two men no longer concealed their right hands beneath their raincoats. They were instead held down along their sides, each holding a pistol.

“Probably from the wolf tracker van we saw,” said the leader.

“Those people don’t know squat about wolves,” snorted the other.

“Wish they’d stay the hell out of our way.”

“Ya wanna look around just to make sure?” asked the second man.

Both flashlights were simultaneously extinguished. The instant blackness was only interrupted by greenish streaks the two lights had burned into Paul’s eyes. He hoped the night vision of the other two men was equally destroyed.

No one moved. The two men held their ground, intently listening for any sound which might betray the presence of another person. If possible, Paul would have crouched even deeper into the wet shrubbery.

Paul carefully controlled his breathing for what seemed like an hour, desperately trying to avoid a sound in the suffocating silence of the early morning wood. His right leg began to tingle with the fire of lack of circulation. He dug his fingernails into the trunk of the cedar and closed his eyes.

He wondered what they were waiting for. If they were indeed looking around, they were doing so from a stationary position. Paul expected them to follow his boot prints at any moment, but they held their ground.

One of the men finally moved. A slow, careful step. This was it. Paul thought they would trip right over him.

“False alarm,” said the man who was moving.

The man stopped after two brief steps. Only the broad-based cedar in Paul’s grasp separated the two of them. Paul was certain he had been spotted. A moment later the sound of water on bark brought Paul to roll his eyes. The man was urinating on the tree.

“It’s better this way,” the man said as he drained his bladder. “Real wolves are never seen, remember?”

“True enough,” said the follower. “Let’s get outa here.”

“Gimme a minute. Too damn much coffee tonight.”

“Hey, you heard anything about some special deal supposedly going down?”

“I’m always hearing s**t. Rumors, God knows what. I just do my job.”

The waterfall drained to a trickle, then finally stopped. The sound of a zipper followed within moments. The path to Paul’s right lit up from the beam of a flashlight, and the two men stepped forward in the opposite direction of the research van, leaving Paul behind them.

“I hear it’s supposedly some pretty. . ..”

The words faded into the footfalls on underbrush, and Paul could understand nothing more. He pulled his phone from his pocket and was surprised to see the entire ordeal had lasted but five minutes, far less than it had seemed. He remained in place for another five, afraid to move in case the men returned. But finally, his other leg was beginning to cramp and his lower torso completely soaked from squatting in the brick w**d, he pushed himself up and turned back toward the van.

Allison was already doing a coordinates check when Paul returned. He shook his head as he slid the van door closed behind him. He had been gone for fifteen minutes.

“Thought you might’ve fallen in or something,” said Allison, glancing at Paul through the darkness.

Paul sat down and stared at the two tiny lights while Allison turned the antenna. She was obviously waiting for a response, but he wasn’t quite sure what to say.

“The princess hasn’t moved,” said Allison. “She’s holding up in some dry niche somewhere.”

Paul couldn’t blame her. He almost wished he hadn’t gone outside at all. He pulled off his raincoat and dropped it on the floor, then shivered slightly as he felt his soggy jeans.

While trying to warm up and dry out, Paul spent the next few minutes trying to decide whether or not to tell Allison about the encounter in the woods. He liked Allison. She seemed very tolerant of his endless questions, and her responses often expressed imagination along with facts. She also possessed unnerving insight, which Paul found intriguing. When she reached for a protractor to chart the wolf’s course, Paul decided to take a calculated risk.

“Actually, I saw a couple of men out there,” he said.

“You did?” asked Allison, quite surprised. “Who were they?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul. “They didn’t seem like the type who were up for conversation.”

“Did they say anything to you?” asked Allison.

“They didn’t see me,” said Paul.

Still shivering, Paul leaned back onto the long back seat and explained the situation as best he could, without mentioning the part about guns. He decided it was best to leave it out until further investigation, so as not to instill panic into the research group. They would become understandably jittery about being in the woods all night while armed men—probably poachers of some sort—skulked by, only a few paces away.

He instead referred to the fear he had experienced when they stopped, which was genuine enough before he had seen the guns. Allison had proven very perceptive during previous conversations. Paul left it for her to figure out.

“We’ve seen them before,” said Allison. “Usually in winter, when there are no leaves on the trees and we do aerial tracking. It’s easy to follow wolf tracks in the snow.” “So, you know these guys?” asked Paul.

“No,” said Allison. “We don’t know anything about them, other than they usually travel in pairs. They’ve been around for years. At first, we thought they were poachers because they always try to avoid us. But we’ve never seen them with game of any kind. No carcasses, nothing. Since they don’t appear to be doing anything wrong and they stay out of our way, we just tend to ignore them.”

Paul looked out into the darkness. They had in fact made it a point to stay out of the van’s way. They didn’t want to be seen under any circumstances. And while they technically had done nothing wrong, except for perhaps trespass, it was still a suspicious venture to be walking through the woods at three in the morning.

Especially since they had drawn guns the instant they suspected the presence of another person.

“Is this where you always see them?” asked Paul.

“No,” said Allison. “All over this place. I saw them several miles north of here, and then on the other side of Bear Island Lake. They’ve even been seen canoeing through the Boundary Waters.”

“Do you always see them at night?” asked Paul.

“The ones I saw were in daylight,” said Allison. “I’d imagine most sightings were in daylight.”

Without even thinking, Paul had already picked up his tablet and was jotting down notes. The brightness of the screen seared his eyes after hours of near total darkness.

“Do they ever carry guns?” Paul asked casually.

“I’m not sure,” said Allison. “The ones I saw weren’t carrying rifles, but who knows? With all the good ol’ boys around here, practically everyone carries something.”

“So, none of the other researchers have seen them with guns?” asked Paul.

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” commented Allison.

Paul laughed. “So I’ve been told. It’s my job, I can’t help it. Anyway, I’d love to find out about these guys, and the only way I can is by asking.”

“I’d love to know, too,” said Allison. “They give me the creeps.”