“Do you know how to use that thing?” Prescott asked over his shoulder. Like her, he kept both his pistols pointed out toward the circling wolves, ready to fire.
“Of course,” she growled back. “My brothers taught me. I’ve been hunting with them hundreds of times.”
“Don’t fire until you absolutely have to,” Prescott ordered. “The minute one of these guns goes off, the whole pack will charge and we’re finished.”
“I know,” she answered.
“I sure wish you weren’t here,” he muttered. “I wish you were up in the house with Maggie and Melody. You shouldn’t be here.”
“And I wish you’d stop saying that,” she replied. “I’m here, and I’m staying.”
“It’s too late for you to leave now,” he pointed out. “You’re trapped.”
“We’re trapped,” she corrected. “And since I’m your wife and you’re my husband, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here.”
“You can’t keep defying me like this,” Prescott grumbled. “I won’t have it.”
“We might get lucky,” she told him. “Once we start shooting, the boys will come. They might get here before the pack tears us to pieces.”
“Maybe,” he replied.
At that moment, the big wolf wheeled out of the circle and lunged straight for Marion. At his signal, all the others pressed in upon the pair, too. Marion brought her rifle around and fired. The bullet tore through the big wolf’s neck. It didn’t stop him, but he cried out in pain in mid-air. The pain distracted him from making the dreaded leap he planned. Marion stepped out of his way and he sailed past her.
Marion levered the action on her rifle to chamber another bullet and fired at the nearest wolf to her. It crumpled to the ground at her feet. In the back of her mind, she heard Prescott shooting. The area around the deer carcass filled with the smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder.
“Here come the rest of ‘em,” Prescott shouted over the explosions of gunfire.
Marion glanced up from the sights of her rifle only just long enough to see the rest of the wolf pack bursting out of the trees to take up the charge. They jumped right over the bodies of their fallen comrades without hesitating.
So this is it, Marion thought. This is how I die. In these finally moments, she was glad she chose to stay with Prescott and they could face the end together. The prospect seemed much more noble and endearing than spending eternity wondering what might have been with Parker.
The next moments slowed and distorted, and Marion watched the scene through some disembodied lens. She saw herself through a prism of shimmering water, almost as though she was sitting on the bottom of a pond and observing events happening on the bank above the water. Yet she wasn’t looking down on the scene from above or up from below, but directly at it.
With infinite slowness, she aimed and fired at another wolf. Then she aimed at another. She covered his chest with the end of her rifle barrel. He spun and jumped toward her. When he reached the mid-point between his starting place and her, Marion pulled the trigger.
But the report of the cartridge exploding in the chamber didn’t sound in her ears, and the butt stock didn’t kick against her shoulder. She didn’t have time to open the chamber to check, but she didn’t need to. The dull click of her finger against the trigger told her the gun was empty.
She didn’t even have time to drop the gun before the wolf hit her with its full force. Its weight knocked her over onto her back and knocked the rifle out of her hands. In doing so, the wolf saved Marion’s life. She now had her hands free to defend herself just enough to prevent the animal sinking its jaws into her throat.
Marion instinctively raised her arms to protect her face and head, but she got her hands only as high as the wolf’s shoulders. With every scrap of strength in her arms, she pushed him away from her, but succeeded only in keeping his snapping teeth a few inches away from her face.
Growling and snapping, the wolf lunged again and again against the splitting muscles of Marion’s arms. The animal’s saliva dripped into her face and she closed her eyes to the watery vision.
In the depths of her heart, Marion sighed peacefully. She let go of all her care and concern for Prescott and Melody and the others. Their fate no longer bothered her. mind. Only one face hung before her eyes: Parker. In spite of what she told Prescott about their being husband and wife, she would die with Parker’s name on her lips and with love for him in her heart.
Somewhere miles away, gun shots still sounded, but less frequently. Prescott must be out of bullets, too. She couldn’t hold this wolf off much longer. He had all the advantage of weight and strength over her. Besides, she could already feel her arms weakening. One more powerful lunge and the wolf would close its jaws around her neck.
The deep sigh in her soul spread through her body. She prepared to relax her arms one final time and close her eyes forever.
Then, at the limit of her strength, she felt the wolf rear backwards. Marion heard a sickening grunt from its lungs, and a shiver ran through its body. Every fiber of muscle and sinew stretched taut, and the animal quivered violently. Its limbs shot out straight from its body in one last deathly contortion. Then it slumped over her and its great weight crushed her body underneath it. Its shaggy head nestled into the crook of her neck.
Marion opened her eyes and peered through her prism. The idea that the wolf wasn’t lunging anymore didn’t quite register in her brain. Her fingers still threaded through the animal’s wiry coat. But her arms weren’t working properly, and she couldn’t open her fingers no matter how hard she tried.
Over the wolf’s shoulder, she saw Paul and Parker running down the hill toward the barn with their guns in their hands. Paul fired once into the trees, but the wolves retreated before the arrival of reinforcements.
Marion couldn’t see Prescott on the other side of the wolf’s body. Parker ran up to her and leaned over her. His bearded face resembled the vision of him she saw from the bottom of her pool. “Are you okay, Marion?” he asked. His voice bubbled into her ear as if from a great distance away. The watery pool of her trance lapped against her ears.
Then she realized the noise was her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
“I’m okay,” she answered. “Just help me get him off me. He weighs too much for me to get him off by myself.”
Parker’s concerned face broke into a grin. He grabbed the wolf by the tail and the dead body rolled off into the dirt with a hollow thud. Then Parker offered her his hand and pulled her up onto her feet.
Only when she stood up did her vision start to clear. The first thing she noticed was the pain. Scratch marks from the wolf’s claws scored her arms, and the skirt of her dress hung in shreds. She hadn’t even felt the animal scratching her while he was on top of her.
Then she and Parker turned toward Prescott. Like Marion, he lay on his back on the ground with a dead wolf draped over him. But this wolf died with its fangs sunk deep into Prescott’s shoulder. In death, its jaws locked shut and Paul, who stooped over his brother, could not pry them apart with all the strength of his hands.
“I’ll have to get the axe from the house,” Paul remarked. He glanced at Prescott’s face. “He’s unconscious. You two stay here and keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back.” He holstered his pistol and ran up the hill to the house.
Marion’s knees almost buckled when she stepped toward Prescott. She knelt down by his side and laid her hand on his forehead. “Prescott,” she said.
In his vulnerable state, she couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him. She would rather take the secret of her love for Parker to her grave. She would happily marry Prescott to shelter him from any pain.
Parker came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You saved his life.”
“If he lives, that is,” she replied. “He didn’t want me to stay with him. He wanted me to run for the house. We got into another argument when I picked up the rifle.”
Marion stroked the hair back from his face. Her hands trembled from the fatigue of her fight with the wolf. “He looks so frail and delicate like this. I didn’t realize he could be so fragile.”
“He’s my baby brother.” Marion heard a tremor in Parker’s voice. She covered the hand on her shoulder with her own.
Another image rose up in her mind. She saw herself bringing these two brothers together. She turned herself into a glue to seal them together. She obliterated herself in the process but left their bond intact. That was as it should be, as it was before she ever came between them.
But that was just a daydream in the mind of a woman narrowly escaped from death. In reality, she would have to choose between them. The only alternative was to find a way to convince one of them to give her up. In essence, Parker did exactly that when he agreed to marry Melody and leave Marion to Prescott. Could she really stand by and abide by that decision? Could she really give up Parker for good?
Paul came back with the axe and Maggie and Melody. He wedged the handle of the axe between the wolf’s jaws and twisted. The wolf’s head moved and Prescott groaned in his delirium. “No,” Paul muttered. “We’ll tear the flesh out doing it that way.”
He stood up and propped the heel of his boot against the side of the wolf’s head. Holding the animal still with his foot, he pried again at the axe handle. This time, the jaws creaked apart just enough to free Prescott’s shoulder from their grip. Paul kicked the animal over into a heap.
Marion looked around her and, for the first time, saw the piles of dead wolves littering the ground. The deer carcass hung from its tree, untouched.
Maggie hummed in appreciation. “You must be a pretty good shot with that rifle.”
“I’m okay,” Marion replied.
“Now the question is,” Paul interrupted, “how are we going to get him up to the barn?”
“We won’t put him in the barn,” Marion decided. “We’ll put him in the house.”
“We can’t,” Parker interjected.
“We can and we will,” Marion retorted. “He can sleep in my bed—I mean, your bed—and I’ll sleep on the floor. He’ll have to stay warm until he recovers. We can’t put him in the barn. He could die out there.”
Paul and Parker looked at each other.
“That still leaves the problem of getting him up there,” Paul remarked. “We probably can’t carry him without injuring him further.”
“No,” Marion declared. “Maggie, run up to the house and bring back two of those wool blankets. Paul, take your axe and cut two long poles. There are a bunch of willow saplings just up the creek beyond the first bend. They’ll be perfect. Parker, get a handful of nails from the shed. We’ll make a stretcher to carry him up.”
The brothers and Maggie ran off to execute her orders. As soon as they left, Melody stepped to Marion’s side and took her hand. Marion would have given her a squeeze of appreciation, but she couldn’t move her fingers.
“Look, he’s bleeding.” Marion untied her apron and knelt down again by Prescott’s side. “Give me a hand, Melody. We can tear my apron into strips for bandages, but you’ll have to do it for me. I can’t use my hands.”
Melody took the apron from Marion’s shaking fingers. The apron already hung in tatters. Melody pulled the strips of cloth the rest of the way apart and folded them into pads. Marion packed them into the wounds on Prescott’s shoulder and the flow of blood stopped.
“He might start bleeding again when we move him,” Marion considered. “And the dressings will need to be changed regularly. We’ll need a supply of cotton.” Marion looked around her and thought the matter over.
Then her eye fell on her dress. “We’ll tear up this dress,” she reasoned to herself. “It’s is ruined, anyway, and I have two other work dresses in my trunk, besides the one Maggie’s wearing. I told Maggie we’d buy some cloth in Boise and I’d teach her how to make dresses for herself. I can show her by making some more for myself at the same time.”
These words only just passed her lips when a black cloud crossed in front of Marion’s eyes. She reeled and almost fell, but Melody caught her by the arm. She righted herself just in time before Maggie hurried up with the blankets. Marion took them from her, grateful that Melody couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell anyone about her momentary swoon.
Under Marion’s direction, the brothers constructed a makeshift stretcher by nailing the blankets across the poles. Then they rolled Prescott onto it as gently as they could and carried him up to the house. No one argued any more with Marion when she told them to put Prescott in her own bed.
Marion covered Prescott with her quilt. She felt his forehead again. “He’s started sweating. We have to get his wound cleaned out. Maggie, get a kettle of water boiling on the stove. Melody, you go up the creek until you come to a little waterfall. You’ll find some alder saplings there. Do you know what they look like?”
Melody nodded.
“Of course, you do,” Marion replied. “Bring down about three of them. And pull them up by the roots. Bring the whole plant, roots and all.”
“What are you going to with that?” Paul asked.
“We can make the bark and the roots into poultices to draw any impurity out of the wound,” Marion replied. “We can also make a cleansing wash out of the leaves. Later on, when he wakes up, we can give him a tea made out of the leaves as a pain killer.”
The two women went out together to complete their assigned chores. Marion turned the two brothers, who stared down at their stricken younger brother. Her heart went out to both of them. But for the propriety of being an unmarried woman alone with three unmarried men, she would have taken both of them in her arms.
“Now,” Marion told them, “you boys have to get out of here so I can change my dress. Let us look after Prescott. I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do to help. And we’ll call you at suppertime.”
Parker gazed down at Prescott face. Then he let out a heavy sigh. He stepped up to Marion and laid his burly hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Marion,” he said. Then he walked out of the room to hide his tears from Paul.
Paul stayed a moment longer, his brows knit in a frown. He frowned at Marion and then followed Parker out of the house. He closed and latched the door behind him.