Lone Wolves Read Online Free PDF Page B

front of the cabin—a gift.
    Denny read for another hour or so and worked on one of the many puzzles stacked on a shelf before she finally climbed into the bed in the loft, which was much warmer than the downstairs. She lay in the dark, listening to the sound of wood popping, hoping to hear the wolf outside, and wondering if it could get inside the cabin.
    In the morning, after she rebuilt a fire in the wood stove and added snow to the pot for coffee, Denny looked out the frosted window and saw that the rabbit was gone. Fresh wolf tracks littered the snow where it had been.
    She smiled.
    After a breakfast of bacon, biscuits, and two cups of tea, Denny swept the floor, made the bed, carried in an armful of firewood for the next visit, closed the damper on the wood stove, and while the cabin cooled, she wrote in her diary.

    Dear Diary,
    I just LOVE Anne Frank’s diary! From now on, I’m going to address you as Nellie, the way Anne called her diary Kitty. It’s a girl’s name that means black bear. It’s normally spelled nel’ii. It makes me feel like I’m writing to someone real, like someone really cares and understands. Anne wrote a lot about trying to get along with her parents, especially her mother, who didn’t seem to understand her at all. That’s exactly how I feel. Sometimes I don’t think my mother loves me at all. She’s always saying, “Why can’t you be more like the other girls in the village?” But if she knew even half of the bad things they do, she wouldn’t say that. Grandpa says I’m fine the way I am. I wrote this poem at the cabin after seeing a wolf outside. I used a little poetic license with some stuff. So sue me! I think it’s the prettiest little poem I ever wrote.
    Yours,
    Denny

    On Feet of Clouds

    A cloud arrives
    quiet and gray
    as the wolf
    hunting field mice
    in the frosted meadow
    outside my cabin door.

    Yanlaey Kae

    Yanlaey lunatatez’aan
    ghaetl’ ‘eł baa
    k’e tikaani
    c’ukatezyaa dluuni
    yii cen zogh
    â€˜an hwnax hwdatnetaani

4
    Ceyiige’ gha tene
    Spirit of the Trail
    A s Deneena walked through the village on her way home from the cabin in the hills, her pack and rifle slung over a shoulder, which was not an unusual sight in a village, she saw a man approaching. A dog dashed out from its little yard and barked at the man, who kicked it hard. The dog yelped and scuttled home, favoring one leg, with its tail tucked between its legs. When the man was close, Denny recognized him as her father. It was the first time she had seen him in almost a year.
    When they passed, her father looked away, as if something else caught his attention, and continued without stopping or without saying a word. Denny limped home feeling a lot like that wounded dog.
    She had barely walked through the door of her house when Sampson got up from the small table and put on his hat and parka and gloves.
    â€œWanna go run the dogs with me?”
    â€œI just walked seven miles,” replied Denny. “I’m tired and hungry.”
    The old man shrugged his shoulders.
    â€œHow hard is it to stand on the back of a sled?”
    Denny smiled.
    â€œCan’t beat that kind of logic, Grandpa,” she said.
    â€œTell you what,” said Sampson, “you get yourself a little something to eat and a cup of hot coffee while I hook up the team. That should take a while.”
    Denny agreed.
    While the old man hooked the dogs to the sled, she made a sandwich and drank two cups of coffee, occasionally looking out the window to make sure her grandfather was okay. She worried about him exerting himself too much. Not long after that, both dog team and snowmobile were following the frozen river, the tiny village behind them. In a picket-fenced cemetery on a hill above the huddled village, ghosts watched from their little painted houses or from behind Russian Orthodox crosses.

    Two hours later, the dogs were