Spirit Wolf Read Online Free

this wolf, stories I wouldn’t tell the children. Stories I wish I hadn’t heard.”
    â€œI’ve heard those stories, too, but you know as well as I do that if you get a bunch around a campfire, there’ll be more stories than smoke in the air. Ghost wolf! Grown men pass that story around like it was gospel. This wolf is something special, all right, but he’s no more ghost than I am.”
    Then Uriah slapped the table, but nobody jumped, nobody laughed.
    Lars leaned forward, into the ball of yellow light cast by the kerosene lamp. “Uriah, I saw Zeke Campbell’s little herd of cattle after that wolf finished with them. They were all bunched up against a fence in a spring storm, cows and calves. That wolf killed them all. I won’t tell you how he killed them. I don’t want that on my kids’ minds like it is on mine, some nights when I’m out in the dark and I hear the dogs barking and I don’t know why. But I’ll tell you there was something evil got into those cattle that night, something I wouldn’t ever want to meet.”
    Uriah was silent, but Nash probably wouldn’t have heard him if he had spoken. His thoughts were racing through what he had heard at the table tonight.
    Ghost wolf! Nash pretended that it made no difference to him whether he was hunting a ghost or not, but his effort was sickly at best. He picked at his food through dinner, hearing only snatches of conversation at the table.
    When the last plate was empty and the last stomach filled, Ettie and Edna began clearing the table. Lars, stretching in his kitchen chair, said to Uriah, “Let’s get a breath of fresh air. It’s a little stuffy in here.”
    Uriah nodded, and the two men stepped outside. If they were really looking for fresh air, they found it. The temperature had dropped with the sun, and the wind was picking up. Little drifts of snow were marching across the pasture, growing and shrinking under the artistry of the wind. It was cold, and the men’s ears popped in the occasional gusts.
    â€œYou’re looking a little peaked, Uriah,” Lars said. “I’ve got just the thing for you.” Uriah laughed and followed Lars to the barn.
    Inside the cabin, Nash offered to help with the dishes, but he was turned down. He had grown in stature during dinner, during the talk about the wolf hunt. Ettie’s younger brother and sisters stood back from him, as though some magic had transformed him into someone they didn’t know and it was not proper to ask him to help with the dishes.
    After the dishes were done, Ettie brought out a limp deck of cards, and the children played rummy to a background of hoots and jeers. Edna Anderson sewed, mending socks and stitching patches over patches on the knees of the younger children’s denim pants in the light of the kerosene lamp. At about nine thirty she dropped her work into a wicker sewing basket.
    â€œTime for bed” brought a chorus of protest, but that was only a matter of form, part of the nightly ritual of the family.
    â€œNash, I’ll make up a bed for you by the fire. You might throw a stick or two into the stove during the night if you get cold.”
    The ritual of going to bed, undressing, donning nightshirts, and saying prayers and a parade of good nights took nearly half an hour. After the latch closed on the door to the family’s bed rooms, Nash stripped off his clothes and climbed into the pile of quilts stacked on the floor. The bed was comfortable, the room warm, and Nash near exhaustion. It was a matter of moments before he was asleep, and it seemed only moments had passed, too, before he was awakened.
    Nash didn’t know if it was the sound of the two men whispering or the blast of cold air following them through the open door that awakened him. They were whispering together and twittering. Nash was intrigued and embarrassed at the same time. Imagine grown men—imagine his