Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

“Some of them survived, of course; we now call them jackals. Others, I am certain, interbred with the coyotes and, I suspect, with the actual wolves. I just don’t see any way that an almost extinct species of predator could have sprung back so quickly in so comparatively short a time period unless a good many of the larger dog breeds—those called German shepherd, collie, chow, Malamute, Samoyed, Rotiweiler, boxer, Doberman, mastiff, great Dane and several other of the so called working and coursing breeds—had joined and interbred with the few widely scattered wolves.

“Over the years. I’ve seen enough to strongly reinforce these beliefs of mine, moreover. I have seen wolves—both living and dead—who possessed dark-purple tongues—an unquestioned mark of the ancient breed of dog called chow. I know that Dik here, like many another hunter, has run into wolves with long, silky coats, or with the hair tightly curled, like that of a sheep.”

The ailing chief nodded his agreement. “Yes, Uncle Milo, and then there are the short-jawed wolves, the ones that some folk call ‘round-headed wolves.’ I have for long heard it attested that they are not pure wolf.”

“Most likely they are not,” agreed Milo. “I’d say that such creatures are throwbacks to the dog breeds that the ancients called mastiffs.”

“Sacred Sun be thanked for the alliance of Kindred and the cats,” said Mairee feelingly. “Were it not for the Wind-sent abilities of the prairiecats, abilities which Wind did not grant to mankind, we never could hope to survive very many of these wolf winters.”

Milo smiled. “And yet, it was because of a winter wolf pack that certain Kindred and I first chanced across prairiecats, many years ago and very far west of this place.”

“Oh, Uncle Milo, tell us of it, please.” The request was almost a chorus from all of those assembled, young and old, and Bettylou’s own voice was added to the others.

Milo took out his pipe and bladder of tobacco and began to stuff the one with the contents of the other. “Well, it was some four or five generations back. There were far fewer Kindred then, and we still were mostly confined to the high plains and the western mountains, not being numerous or strong enough to come down to and conquer for ourselves these prairies. As you know—most of you, at least—winters are usually harder, harsher on the high plains. with deeper snows that lie for longer … and, as I recall it, this winter of which I now speak was a bad one even for those elevations.

Although five clans were camping together for the winter, there were fewer people in that camp than in this one. We had slaughtered the last of the cattle for food and were again running perilously low, so two hunting parties went out, all of us resolved not to come back without enough meat to sustain our folk for a while. I led a group of young men from Clan Esmith and Clan Linszee, while a renowned hunter whose name I now forget led a similar group from Clan Aduhmz, Clan Makfee and Clan Djohnz: they set out toward the southeast, we set out in the direction of the southwest.

“The fourth day out, riding through deep snows in territory completely unfamiliar to us, we lucked across a deer yard in a patch of forest. There were four of the bigger, western deer in that yard, and the archers of Clan Esmith dropped them all, only to have one dragged away by some unknown, unseen predator while they were hard at work cleaning the big buck to be certain that the meat would not be tainted.

“Now in our straits, we could not spare the loss of even one of those deer, so it was decided to pack the three carcasses we still had in our possession back to camp along with the most of our party, while I and a smaller party pursued the cat, for such a consummate tracker—one Djim Linszee. he who later in his life was Chief Linszee of Linszee—and I had both determined it must be, And this we did.

“Because of the anticipated terrain in the direction that that feline had taken, we broke down squawwood, built a big fire and left two of our number there in the deer yard with the horses, going on afoot in pursuit of the thief and our deer. The way was long, and the canny cat did not make it an easy trail to follow. Once, in fact, she doubled back and leaped out of a trailside copse full onto my back and broke my neck. Had I been as are most Kindred, I would have died then and there.”

Bettylou glanced around at the faces of the others, lightly flitted through the surface thoughts of the relaxed, unshielded minds with her still-new powers, but she could find no one who doubted a word that Chief Milo had said. She did not publicly question him as she had questioned Djahn Staiklee, but she resolved to find him alone somewhere and satisfy herself as to his supposedly immense age and vaunted ability to survive death-dealing injuries.

“As it was,” Milo continued, “I was some hours recovering from that attack and the attendant injuries and it was while I was doing so that we all became aware that a huge pack of wolves was racing upon our trail. Keeping but a few minutes ahead of those relentless, shaggy pursuers, we sped on as fast as our legs would bear us, our faces all astream with sweat despite the frigid air and the tearing bite of the wind, which had increased in strength through the day. At length, we found ourselves at the foot of a low plateau and climbed up it with the pack leaders actually snapping at our heels, to behold it completely treeless but with a jumble of a complex of ruined buildings centered upon it a few hundred yards away from us.

“It was a very near, a frighteningly near thing, but all of us made it to the ruins, to the top of a crumbling tower of ancient brickwork. The top of that ruined tower was too high for any of the wolves to jump, although almost all of them essayed it at one time or another, so we were safe from them as long as we did not try to climb down.

“But we were confronted there on our perch by another and no less deadly menace, for it was clear to any creature that a blizzard was fast approaching that plateau. And with no more shelter than that offered us by foot-high walls about the edges of that tower top, we would have surely frozen to death in very short order.

“I had not been willing to allow the party to spend their arrows and darts on the wolves as long as we were in a place where the beasts could not get at us and were not truly a life threat to us, preferring to save the weapons for a more desperate occasion. Therefore, they had spent their time in throwing loose chunks of bricks at the nearer wolves—killing a couple outright, injuring several others and at least hurting the rest at whom they aimed.

“But they exhausted the supply of brick chunks after a while, and the wolves gradually circled closer and closer to the base of our perch again as no more hurtful missiles flew at them from its apex. There was more brick rubble atop that tower, but it was sunk in a mixture of old brick dust, bird droppings and windblown debris that over the years had become soil; moreover, there was a layer of ice over everything.

“But none of this fazed our Kindred. As soon as one of them had proved that pieces of this brick rubble could be freed for use against the encroaching wolves, they all were at it, prying up the encrusted, frozen brick chunks with their dirks and, with them, causing anew many cases of lupine agony and consternation.

“But here, this recountal could easily take all night, and we sorely need rest, at least, I do. So I will open my memories and you all can enter my mind and see those archaic events as did I and those others—human and cat—with whom I later conversed.

The night spent atop the mined tower was terrible for Milo and the nomads. Rolling pebbles in their mouths to allay somewhat their raging thirst, they laced their quilted and fur-trimmed hoods tightly and drew the thick woolen blizzard masks up over lips and vulnerable noses. In the very center of the concavity, they huddled together for warmth like so many puppies or kittens, frequently changing position on the hard, uneven surface so that all might have equal time in the warmer centermost spot.