Free Brian's Return by Gary Paulsen

in to bed.
    He did not sleep at first but lay thinking of the wolf and the moonlight and the loon and when he closed his eyes and sleep started to come he thought he could see the wolf, or perhaps see
as
the wolf moving through the night, part of the night, the smells and sounds of the woods moving through the wolf like vapor, stopping to listen, moving on in a silent slide through the moonlight and forest, Brian and the wolf mixed, Brian-wolf, wolf-Brian.
    Then sleep.
    He awakened completely refreshed, having slept again past dawn. It was a clear morning and the side of the tent was warm from the sun and he rolled out and stretched and walked to the canoe to flip it over and slide it into the water when he saw the prints.
    Two wolves had come into camp. One good-size, the other slightly smaller, and from the look of the tracks around the tent in the drainage ditch, around the canoe in the soft earth and beneath the packs they had investigated everything. They had also peed on the canoe and the tent—not a great deal, but enough so he’d know they had, a calling card—and then moved on.
    Brian smiled. Either they were greeting him or, more likely, telling him he was a lousy singer. He finished packing the canoe and just before leaving went up and covered the two places where they’d left sign with his own. Hello to you too, he peed. Then he got into the canoe and slid off.
    He had not gone a mile when he was back beneath the canopy, in the green world, and wondered how far it was to the next lake. On the map that lake was long—almost eight miles before he would come to his first portage, about a half mile to the next lake, which was at least six miles long. He thought perhaps he would do the two of them today, which would bring the distance to Williams Lake down to about sixty-five miles.
    The canopy only lasted three or four miles and he came out onto the eight-mile lake. There was a slight breeze coming up, directly into his face, so he put on the life jacket and set to the paddle, heading right up the middle of the lake.
    The work felt good, solid somehow. The pain in his leg was nearly gone and he was just noodling along, paddling the canoe across small lakes and down the green corridors, not really working, and it felt good to stretch his arms and bite deep with the paddle and take the wind.
    He kept up a steady effort and seemed to be moving well—an illusion caused by the visual effect of the wind blowing small waves in the opposite direction that he was going—but it took him four hours to make the eight miles.
    “I guess the wind must be stronger than it looks,” he said, gliding into the calm area at the end of the lake where the portage started. “Half a day gone . . .”
    He pulled the canoe up on the bank and considered the situation. He had to carry everything half a mile and he couldn’t do it all at once.
    He tied the tent inside the canoe near the center, and under the cross-thwarts he tied the paddles, centering their weight, and the bow and the quiver of arrows. There was a yoke for portaging built into the canoe, shaped to fit around the neck and rest on the shoulders.
    He put one backpack up in a tree on a bearproof rope, and the other one he slipped onto his back.
    Then he moved to the canoe, flipped it belly-up and moved beneath it and took the weight of the yoke on his shoulders.
    At first it felt as if his legs would sink into the ground.
    But the canoe balanced well and when he started off he gained a momentum that kept him going. It only took him twenty minutes to walk the portage. There wasn’t a trail—the grass had grown up and covered any tracks—but there was a long clearing and in the dim past somebody had taken an ax and cut marks in the trees to show the direction.
    Probably, Brian thought, Native Americans when they trapped through here. The ax marks were very old, healed over and often nearly covered with bark, so some were just a dimple.
    Still, it meant people had been here