Why a Wolf Cries - Julie Steimle (read a book .TXT) 📗

deep. So if they stay clean, he might survive. But if they go septic, not a chance.”

“He?”

“Male wolf.” The young ranger huffed. “She says she knows the wolf. But… I get the impression she’d do anything for it.”

“So, that’s why you took it in for her?”

Chuckling, the ranger murmured dreamily, “Beautiful girl in distress? I dunno. There aren’t many women like that one. And the kind of passion she threw into her rescue work, I thought that was hot.”

“Uh huh? Help her out. She feels indebted. And maybe you get some sweet-sweet nookie of gratitude?”

The young ranger laughed. But Rick-the-wolf could detect some hope in that laughter.

He growled.

They looked to him, crouching over the cage.

“Oh. He really is a fighter. But he might also have rabies.”

What’s-His-Name ranger sighed heavily. “I was afraid of that.”

“Perhaps you should let it die.”

“She’s hate me if I did that,” the ranger exclaimed, his voice rising. And he walked away from the cage. “I made a promise. Besides, if it has rabies, I’m sure she’d have him inoculated. She seems that kind of person.”

The other ranger walked to the door. “So… are you going to stay here tonight in the love shack and babysit the wolf for her?”

“Very funny.” And they walked out, closing the door.

Love shack?

Rick painfully lifted his wolf head which felt heavy, and looked around his small cage. It was barely big enough for him to turn around in, not without pain at least.

Shaking his paw out into a human hand, Rick unlatched the buckle to his muzzle and pried it off his snout. His hand fell quickly into paw again, as the moon was up.

Dammit. He had been stuck as a wolf nearly twenty-four hours. Not that it hurt to be the wolf, but that he was tired of smelling like wolf. He wanted to lose the hot fur. He wanted to sleep in that soft bed in the room, and not on that wiry cage floor. He could still feel the lines had been pressing into his aching skin. The oily blanket they had put in with him was not folded up, but around him, a bit like a Navajo taco. It had been comfortable on the stretcher, but now it was just a thin skin between him and wiry pain.

With his paw then nose, he felt around at the cage door. And he saw the lock.

Dammit. Of course they would lock him in.

Rick eyed the quality of the wire. Could he could bite through it? He attempted to get a mouthful at one side, but as he pried at it with his teeth, tasting aluminum and steel in his mouth, one tooth throbbed with threat to loosen. It especially hurt after hanging onto cougar’s throat the night before. Releasing his bite, licking his chops, he peered at it the wire mesh. It was hardly bent at all.

Huffing, Rick-the-wolf flopped against the thinly covered cage floor.

All of him hurt.

He had to get out of the cage. He would have to talk to the ranger tomorrow and get him to open it for him. That was all there was to it.

Yes, it would scare the crap out of the guy—probably literally. But there was no way he was going to risk staying another night in some wire cage without getting real medical treatment. Who did Audry know in the west anyway? Rick knew a few people. So did his father. But she was an east coast gal.

Feeling the blood go from his face, Rick’s mind went straight to his father. Rick almost howled out. But before he could, another thought shot into his brain—that young, horny ranger who had his eyes on Audry might get in trouble for taking him in. If he did make noise, he would definitely be discovered. And then what? Those other rangers might actually shoot him. After all, if they thought he had rabies, even an inkling, they would not want him to spread it.

So… how else could he contact his father? His cellphone was in his campground food bin, locked up. There had to be another way.

But currently, Rick decided to at least make his cage more comfortable. He looked down to the blanket, then flexed his paw.

 

*

 

“Hi, I’m looking for my son.” The venerated gentleman camper stood at the main desk of the canyon sweat on his upper lip and forehead, His amber eyes raking over the area as his nose breathed in all the scents. He could smell traces of those people who had been in that camp. It was good sign.

“Name and age please?” the ranger at the desk asked, not quite looking up.

“Howard Richard Deacon the Third. He goes by the name of Rick. He’s in his twenties, but he projects himself as a little older than that.”

Immediately whipping his eyes up, the man paled. “Oh. Mr. Deacon. Uh. We heard you were here camping. Your son is missing?”

The respectable wolf-gray haired man nodded, looking rather harried. “Yes. And… for that matter, I was wondering if there were any reports of any wounded wolves in the area.”

“Wounded wolves?” The ranger flustered for a second. He peeked to the far doors. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Mr. Deacon tried to mask his desperation. “Yes… uh, my son takes great interest in the well-being of wolves. If he ran across a wounded wolf, he would, uh, how do I put it, make all efforts to rescue it. Have you run across any news about a wolf rescue?”

The ranger paled. “Uh. No. Um, actually it is park policy not to rescue animals such as wolves. Our focus is on sustaining viable populations of native wildlife species, rather than protecting individual animals. Actions like feeding, husbandry, and rehabilitation contradict the National Park Service mission by shielding animals from the forces of natural selection and creating a zoo-like atmosphere where animals require assistance or protection…”

Mr. Deacon’s cold stare shamed him into silence. It was like staring into the face of an angry wolf with zero tolerance for BS.

“If a wounded wolf were taken here, what would you have done about it?” the dignified man asked.

Shuddering, the ranger’s mouth felt dry. “Uh… send it back out into the wild.”

“No one would cage it?” Mr. Deacon asked.

But the ranger shook his head, coloring. “It’s against the rules. Our mission is preservation, not rescue and rehabilitation.”

Mr. Deacon swore under his breath. Another rote response from a robotic thinker. “Look. I know my son would chase down and help anyone trying to save a wolf. If you saw someone doing that yesterday, you need to let me know. Who, when, and where?”

Pale, the ranger said, “A woman came yesterday afternoon dragging in a near dead wolf, claiming to be a licensed animal rescue worker. She wanted us to fetch a vet for—”

“What happened to the wolf?”

“It was mauled by a cougar.” The ranger shrugged, as if that was that.

“Was it dead?” Mr. Deacon demanded.

Shaking his head, the ranger replied, “I… It was extremely bloody. I doubted it would have lived much longer.”

“Where is the wolf now?” Mr. Deacon nearly growled it.

The ranger shrugged, backing away. “We sent her away. We could do nothing for her.”

Yet in that was a lie. Mr. Deacon knew it. It did not match with what he had overheard on the range. “Where did she go?”

 “To the Lake Clinic,” the ranger said, regaining composure. “Her niece had been attacked by the cougar. They were getting her treated there.”

Lurching against the counter, Mr. Deacon grabbed the man’s shoulder. “Hold on! You said the wolf was mauled by the cougar. How did the girl get attacked?”

“The cougar was after the girl,” the ranger explained, pulling away. “The woman claimed the wolf had saved her life.”

Heaving a breath, Mr. Deacon nodded. That was his son, alright. Only Rick would do something so stupidly brave as take on a cougar to save a little girl.

He marched out of the visitor’s center to find the girl and that woman. And though something about that ranger’s story most definitely did not add up, he had to follow this lead. That woman who had rescued his son and brought him to the rangers would know where he was now.

Rushing to his car, starting it and pulling out of the parking lot, Mr. Deacon did everything he could not to speed to down the highway to the Lake Clinic.

Unfortunately, his engagement there was another fiasco at the Lake Clinic. Yes, the staff saw the girl bitten by the cougar. No, the family was no longer there, but at the Cody Regional Hospital. And no, they never saw the woman with the wolf. She had never arrived.

So, Mr. Deacon had to drive eastward to Cody Wyoming next, hoping to heaven he would get there before nightfall. Luckily, it really wasn’t that far. He made it around lunch time. 

The Cody Regional Hospital on the outside did not look like a hospital to Mr. Deacon—except for the emergency entrance sign. It had more of a warm old-folks community center look to it. When he rushed in, he went straight to the counter and asked, “Excuse me, but was there a child brought here yesterday to be treated for an animal attack—a cougar attack?”

 The nurse looked into her computer and asked, “Are you family?”

“A friend,” Mr. Deacon said. “They’re… they’re connected to my son. I am searching particularly for a young woman who may have come in with a wolf?”

The nurse stare at him. “We don’t treat wild animals—”

“I know,” he said, nodding. “I know but—” His eyes rested on a boy down the hall wearing a tee-shirt with his son-as-the-wolf on the front. The boy was playing a small videogame, perhaps not allowed as he was hiding it. Mr. Deacon rushed from the desk (with the nurse calling after him), down the hall straight to him. “Excuse me! Sorry. Uh, that shirt. Where did you get it?”

Startled, the boy, who had to have been somewhere near thirteen, pulled back, yet pointed into the hospital room across the way. “My Aunt Audry makes them and sells them. It’s for her research.”

“She’s an animal rescue worker?” Mr. Deacon’s heart thumped heavily in his chest. As the boy nodded, Mr. Deacon looked into the room, then stepped in. Inside, he saw a family talking with a doctor around a bed where there was a little dark haired girl asleep, consulting them over a procedure he was about to do. Something about surgery and the healing process. They all looked pale.

“… Grandpa Bruchenhaus would pay for it,” the older woman said to the older man. All of them looked like they had not slept or changed out of their hiking clothes.

But the young woman with the bushy brown hair, tied back to keep it out of her blue-green eyes looked up as if instinctively knowing they were being spied on. She saw Mr. Deacon and immediately marched to the door.

“Excuse me, but what are you doing here?” Her eyes were savage and accusatory. She apparently knew him on sight.

“Hello,” He said, extending his hand for a shake. “I am Howard Richard Deacon the Second. I’d like to know what happened to—”

She pushed him out into the hallway. “I know who you are. What you have done to that wolf is—”

“I haven’t done a single thing to that wolf except let him run free,” Mr. Deacon snapped in protest. “But what I want to know is what you did with him. I heard a rumor that wolf was attacked by a cougar and some woman dragged it to the canyon village. I assume it was you.” He pointed to the tee shirt on the teen boy.

Audry peeked at it, then rolled her eyes. “Where did you get that?”

The boy hid the video game behind his back.

She rolled her eyes. “Not the game. The shirt.”

“What?” Her nephew threw up his hands and resumed his game. “I needed a clean shirt. It was in your bag.”

“You’re wearing my shirt,” she said.

Mr. Deacon cleared his throat,