Free The Wild by Christopher Golden Page A

the wind.
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    Later, Jack would say that Merritt and Jim saved his life, or—when he was feeling lyrical—that the fire breathedlife back into him, and that he felt like Prometheus bathed in heat for the first time. But in his heart he knew that his friends would have been too late had it not been for the gifts of warmth and blood brought to him by the wolf. Jim and Merritt knew it as well, but none of them liked to talk about it, even as the days passed by.
    The two men were devoted to their younger companion. Not only did they warm him by the fire and wrap him in dry clothes and blankets, but they massaged his extremities to get the circulation running again, and as though visited by a miracle, Jack’s frostbite cost him only the tip of one toe on his left foot, which Merritt removed with a small paring knife.
    They had questions, of course, some of them spoken—and answered by Jack in simple terms, including the brief story of the fall that had first knocked him unconscious and stranded him in the cold—and others unspoken. Merritt and Jim often glanced at each other when the subject came up, as though each was wary that the other might venture too far in the conversation and then not be able to retreat.
    Finally, after several days’ recuperation, subsisting mostly on dried beef stores and canned beans, supplemented by the meat of a small hare Jim had found outside the cabin, limping from a fight with some predator orother, Jack asked the question they could not escape.
    â€œHow did you find me?”
    His voice remained a low rasp and his teeth hurt. They were all suffering from the beginnings of scurvy, he knew, and half the winter still stretched out in front of them.
    Jim smiled and glanced uneasily at Merritt. His glasses shone in the firelight. He could wear them only indoors. Outside, the cold would make the metal stick to his skin and turn the glass brittle, and he couldn’t risk the only pair of spectacles he had remaining to him. He’d broken his spare glasses on board the Umatilla during the voyage from San Francisco.
    The men sat in the front room of the cabin on rough-hewn chairs, close enough to the Klondike stove that their faces were flushed. Merritt licked his lips in that way that Jack knew meant he craved a dash of whiskey, but they had none. They melted snow for water and managed tea or coffee every few days, rationing out the little pleasures to give themselves something to look forward to. But no whiskey.
    â€œI nearly shot it, Jack,” Jim said, eyes haunted as he gazed into the middle distance at some piece of memory. “If my rifle hadn’t frozen, I might’ve killed it.”
    But Merritt shook his head. “No. You couldn’t have. Not that one.”
    Jim shuddered but sat up a bit straighter, his expressiongrowing stern. Superstition seemed to offend him, and he looked around, hands fidgeting as though searching for something. Jack knew he wanted his Bible, but it must be in the other room by his bedroll, where he kept it most often to have it close to hand. Close to his heart.
    â€œDon’t be a fool. A wolf is a wolf,” Jim said, straining his usually amiable rapport with his friend.
    â€œNot this one,” Merritt replied darkly, a challenge in his eyes. When Jim did not debate him, he turned to Jack. “It sat out there on the edge of the clearing, half hidden in the trees, and it stared at this cabin—at me—like my mother used to wait for me at the front door when I was late for dinner. That wolf wanted our attention.”
    Jim nodded. “On that we can agree. Big damn thing, too.”
    â€œEventually we reckoned we had to check it out,” Merritt went on. “I took the rifle, and we went over to the spot in the trees where it had been standing for hours, only when we got there, the wolf wasn’t there—”
    â€œVanished deeper into the woods,” Jim interrupted.
    Merritt glanced