Free The Trap by John Smelcer

fast as his snowshoes could carry him across the deep snow.
    The wolves did not follow, and he never saw them again.
    But on this day, on this wintered field, five wolves were only steps away. The old man stood up and shouted, holding his spear tight in both hands, his legs apart. He yelled and waved the sharp-pointed spear while the wolves growled and bared their fangs and took quick snapping bites out of the cold air, making terrible clicking sounds with their teeth. Their ears were pulled back flat against their dark shaggy heads, and their eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight.
    But no matter how loudly the man shouted and no matter how he waved the long spear, they did not retreat. The man’s presence might have frightened a lone wolf, or even two, but he did not intimidate a pack of wolves.
    Still shouting and holding the spear and without once moving his eyes from the pack, the old man bent over slowly and reached for one of the long, thick spruce boughs he used for his bed. When he found one, he stood up and eased the bushy end into the fire. Within seconds the entire end was engulfed in flames and seemed to light up the whole world. He waved the firebrand, and the wolves, fearing fire more than the old man, turned and ran back into the night, into the trees and on into the far hills.
    When he could no longer see them, he placed the burning bough on the fire and stood for a long time, catching his breath and calming his nerves. Somewhere nearby, in a tree across the field, an owl was calling to him. Some Indians thought that the hoot of an owl outside your window at night was a harbinger of death.
    But Albert Least-Weasel sat down and did not listen to the owl.
    â€œGo away!” he shouted to the darkness. “Tonight is not my time to die.”
    His mind began to wander to warm places. He thought about the small sauna behind his cabin. Once a week, he and his wife went out to the sauna and sat inside it until the sweat flowed from their bodies. Every so often, they would step outside to cool down beneath the stars, steam rising off their naked brown bodies.
    He wished he could be in the sauna with his wife now.
    But there was no warmth here, and no companionship, only a dry wind singing over the snow.
    For the rest of the night, the old man did not sleep. He sat with his back to the tree, his arms folded across his chest and his knees tucked up close against his folded arms. He waited like that, watching for shadows to come down from the hill on the other side of the wide moonlit field.
    But nothing came.
    The hours dragged on, and the night dragged on. Sometime long past midnight, the owl flew away, and the great white world was quiet and empty again, so quiet the old man imagined he could hear starfall as he sat waiting for the onrush of sleep.

THE THIRD DAY

 
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    The next day, when the other men approached the tree, the very first one was able to wrench it from the ground. They all shouted, “We are ready!” and they ran off to their war canoes. Blackskin asked if he could go, especially since the chief was his uncle. They let him go, but only to bail water from the back of one of the long canoes.
    J OHNNY L EAST -W EASEL HARDLY SLEPT . The cabin was warm enough. He even got up in the middle of the night to toss a few logs onto the fire, but his mind was full of thoughts about his grandfather. After lying in bed for hours, he got “Jimmy-legs,” a sensation in which his legs felt the need to run, and he tossed all night trying to make it go away. Johnny was restless.
    When he finally decided to get out of bed in the morning, it was still dark outside, since the sun didn’t come up in winter until almost ten o’clock. It was strange. In the winter, the sun never came up at all in some places, never showed its face even once for more than a month or two at a time. But in the summer, around late June and most of July, it never went down. No wonder they called this place the