Free Medicine Road by Will Henry

was being carried out.
    Loki's huge pack leaped forward, snarling. Awklet and the caribou fought back desperately until
Horsa and Kajak, with their excited band, raced in
from the south, fresh from their encounter with
Boron's wolf pack in the forest. Momentarily confused and for the first time shaken in his confidence,
Awklet began to retreat. Encouraged, Loki's pack redoubled its slashing attack, thinking that the old
panic had begun to break up the herd. It had not.
Nor had Awklet's confusion been more than momentary. As he saw the caribou hold firmly in their
determination to defend themselves, his own resolution returned twofold. Slowly and skillfully the
big herd, following its moose leader, continued its
retreat, the old does and stags keeping the outer circle closed up and unbroken. As the daylight hours
wore along, still with no hint of Boron's whereabouts, Loki again slowed the attack. He was now
content to follow the herd, meanwhile trying to determine where its young moose leader was headed.
    At dusk that night, he found out. At first his lone eye lit up wickedly. Awklet had led the herd
squarely into one of the two entrances to Half Moon
Valley, and the old wolf thought that the herd was
now trapped. This valley was a steep-sided place
flanked on one side by Sleeping Bear Lake and on
the other by the impassable granite cliffs of the
Boulder Hills. The two outlets were Bear Tail Pass to
the south and, to the north, Ice Rock Canon,
through which Awklet and the herd were presently
crowding. It looked as though the wolves had only
to seal Bear Tail Pass at the other end and drive the
caribou in through Ice Rock Canon, bottling them
up in Half Moon Valley. Once this was done, the
pack could either cut them down or starve them out,
with no chance for escape either way.

    But Loki was no inexperienced yearling cub. Suddenly the gleam of eagerness died out of his lone
eye. He knew he did not dare divide the pack and
send one part to seal up Bear Tail Pass. Instead, he
must keep the pack together, surrounding and holding the caribou right where they were. They could
not get away and the longer they hesitated, the more
surely they were lost. In the Arctic, it was the wolf
that always won the waiting game.
    Loki was rounding up his pack with Sukon when
from the forest to the west came a sound that made
the old king's savage heart leap-the eerie, longdrawn howling of a trailing wolf pack. It was Boron.
The rascally scavenger had at last caught up. Now
everything was different. Now Boron and his
mangy ones could go south and watch Bear Tail
Pass while Loki and his full pack drove the herd on
into Half Moon Valley.
    When Boron and his pack limped up out of the
darkness, Loki at once fell to snarling and growling at him. Boron was tired and his wolves were bruised
and footsore, but they were killers by trade, and this
was just the sort of hunting made to order for murderous outlaws. After a short exchange of growls
and snarls with Loki and Sukon, Boron led his pack
quickly off into the southern darkness.

    The king wolf watched them go. When the robber
pack had disappeared, he flattened his stumpy little
ears, narrowed his cold yellow eye, and curled his
lip at old Sukon in a soundless snarl of cruel pleasure. Now, surely, the end of the orphan bull moose
was very near.

     

Shortly before dawn a mysterious movement began
in the caribou herd. Loki and Sukon, crouched and
waiting on the outer edge of the herd circle, could
not believe their eyes. The moose was leading the
caribou into Half Moon Valley, and without being
driven to it! But surely there was something wrong
here. Could it be as simple as it looked?
    Cautiously Loki led the pack into Ice Rock Canon,
following closely in the tracks of the last bunch of
old stags guarding the withdrawal. There was no
need for hurry now. Boron would be coming up
from Bear Tail Pass, trapping the herd between his
pack and Loki's.