Let’s go,” Chuck said to his family, fighting to keep his voice calm. “Clarence, you first.”
Clarence entered the forest, moving quickly. Janelle and the girls hastened after him. Chuck swung his pack to his shoulders and looked back before entering the trees. The wolves held their steady lope, already past the grassy indentation where the carcass of their pack mate had lain.
Chuck hustled to catch up with Janelle, who turned to him, searching his eyes.
“This isn’t normal,” Chuck admitted in answer to her unvoiced question.
“Will pepper spray work against them?” she asked.
“No one’s ever had wolves come close enough to find out, as far as I know.”
“Good.” She gave a firm nod, her pony tail bouncing.
Chuck glanced back. Everyone else trailed close behind—except Toby. The lead wolf researcher stood at the edge of the trees facing the meadow, a palm-sized video camera held out before him.
Lex, following Chuck’s gaze, came to a stop. “Toby,” he barked. “Put that thing away and come on.”
“This is incredible,” Toby said. “Wolves don’t do this. They don’t do this.” He didn’t move.
Lex strode to the edge of the meadow and ripped the camera from Toby’s hands. “Come,” Lex commanded. “Now.”
Toby nodded, his eyes on the wolves, the carcass of the dead wolf at his feet.
The wolves continued across the mile-wide clearing, still in hunting formation, equidistant from one another. They were close enough now for Chuck to see that two of the six wore white tracking collars around their necks.
“I don’t believe it,” Toby said. “Stander Pack. All the way from Little Firehole. They crossed two passes to get here, including the Continental Divide.”
With obvious reluctance, he shouldered his pack. He hefted the carcass and settled it around the back of his neck. Holding the dead wolf in place by its legs, he made his way past Lex into the trees. Lex shoved Toby’s camera in his jacket pocket and followed.
A second round of thunder rumbled from the approaching clouds as everyone hastened down the slope toward the riverbank. A lone wolf howl sounded from the meadow followed by answering yips. The chorus sent a shiver down Chuck’s spine. Clarence increased his pace at the front of the line. Janelle and the girls hurried in silence behind him.
At the river, Janelle, Carmelita, and Rosie climbed into the downstream raft. Janelle fastened PFDs around the girls’ chests.
Chuck cast a wary glance up the slope. The trees blocked much of his view. The forest filled with shadow as the clouds rolled across the sky, covering the sun. An arc of lightning pulsed through the clouds, the flash obliterating the shadows for an instant. Thunder rumbled from the clouds two seconds later—the heart of the advancing storm was two miles away. A gust of wind swept through the forest, whipping the treetops. The gale-force wind carried with it the singed odor of spent lightning and the scent of moisture from the lowering clouds.
Chuck motioned for Clarence to join Janelle and the girls in the raft. “I need you to run the traverse from the other bank.”
Clarence hesitated.
“Go,” Chuck said.
“Hurry, Uncle Clarence,” Rosie cried.
Clarence climbed into the raft.
“Wait on the far side,” Chuck told Janelle. “We’ll head back together.”
Keith and Chance reached the riverbank, Kaifong, Randall, and Sarah close behind them. Lex and Toby trailed, still descending through the trees.
“Keith,” Chuck said. “You and Chance hop in. The rest of us will come with the second run.”
Keith tugged the dog into the lead raft and settled next to Clarence as Lex arrived, out of breath, at the river’s edge.
“Help me pull,” Chuck told him.
They reared back on the looped nine-millimeter line, putting their combined weight into initiating the traverse. The rafts surged into the river, their bows aimed upstream, the current parting around them.
A second flash of lightning ripped through the clouds. The roll of thunder followed less than a second later. Thin tendrils of water rode the gusting wind, signaling the approach of heavy rain.
Upon reaching the far side, Clarence helped the girls and Janelle to shore and jumped to the bank with Keith and Chance. Clarence, Keith, and Janelle pulled on the looped rope, teaming with Chuck and Lex to speed the rafts back across the river.
Behind Chuck, Sarah cried, “There! Behind that tree. Wolf.”
Chuck didn’t turn to look. The wolves meant no harm, he assured himself, trying to focus on the rafts.
“Should they be doing this?” Sarah asked Toby.
“It’s been two years since the packs have seen anyone away from roads,” he said. “They’re just checking us out, wondering what’s going on, that’s all.”
Chuck gave Toby’s theory a mental thumbs-up. But from the corner of his eye, he saw Sarah point at the dead wolf draped over Toby’s shoulders.
“That’s what they want,” she said. “You shouldn’t have taken it.”
“We have to do a necropsy,” Toby said. “The grizzly must have—”
“Another one!” Sarah broke in, peering up the slope.
Chuck spotted a blur of gray darting through the trees. “Everybody,” he said as the boats bumped against the shore. “Get in.”
A dog-like growl came from beyond a stand of brush several yards up the hillside. The growl ended in a sharp yip.
“I don’t like this,” Kaifong said as she clambered aboard. “Not one bit.”
Chuck clung to the rope, pinning the rafts to the riverbank, and scanned the forest and shoreline. A second flash of movement caught his eye, this one at the river’s edge a hundred feet downstream. The black wolf extended its head around the trunk of a stream-side tree. The wolf stared at Chuck, its yellow eyes unblinking in its dark face, its ears standing straight up.
“Another,” Chuck said. The wolf withdrew its head, disappearing from view. “They’re surrounding us, pressing us against the river.”
“The carcass,” Sarah said to Toby. “Leave it for them.”
“Sorry. Not gonna happen,” Toby said.
Another growl came from up the slope.
Randall leaned the drone against the downstream raft’s side and hopped in after it. Toby slung the dead wolf onto the rubber floor of the upstream raft.
The wind whistled through the trees as another crack of lightning lit the sky, this one directly overhead. An instantaneous boom of thunder accompanied the lightning, shaking the ground beneath Chuck’s feet. The first drops of rain fell from the clouds, striking the brim of his cap and wetting his face.
A wolf howled from behind a low stand of willows at the edge of the river upstream. More howls answered from the surrounding forest, riding the wind.
“Hey, wolves,” Sarah called out to the creatures from where she stood on the riverbank. “I’ve got a message for you. We don’t mean you any harm. We just want to learn what happened to your pack mate.”
A large wolf, its fur slate gray, emerged from a thick stand of trees fifty feet up the slope. Its mouth hung open, revealing pointed teeth. The wolf barked, a single, sharp yip.
The five other wolves of Stander Pack stepped from the trees, spaced to form a semi-circle fifty feet in diameter around the researchers. The first wolf bunched its shoulders and growled, the sound emanating from deep in its chest. A curtain of heavy rain swept through the forest to the river, large drops drumming the river bank. The wolf snarled a second time.
“Into the boats,” Chuck said. Rain pelted his shoulders and head.
Rather than climb aboard one of the rafts, Sarah raised a hand to the wolves, palm out, her back to the river. “Stay where you are,” she said.
The lead wolf edged toward her. The other five wolves moved forward as well, tightening the semi-circle.
“I said stop,” Sarah said.
Beside her, Toby swung his pack to the ground, unzipped it, and groped inside. The wolves approached, moving in unison, closing the half-circle to forty feet. Their eyes, aglow in the shadowed forest, pierced the rain. Toby pulled a length of polished black plastic a foot long and a few inches wide from his pack as Lex climbed into the upstream raft.
“Sarah,” Chuck urged, gripping the haul rope to steady the boats.
She climbed into the downstream raft next to Kaifong and Randall.
Toby rooted inside his pack a second time and brought out another length of black plastic, this one with a black metal tube attached.
“Toby, come on,” Chuck demanded. “Don’t—”
The six wolves charged.