Medicine Road Read Online Free PDF

the death.
    For a matter of seconds the great wolf stood alone
in the trail, watching the last of his pack mates follow old Sukon obediently northward. Then Loki
turned his broad head southward. His stumpy ears
flicked erect and for another moment he paused, as
though taken with some last questioning thought of
his decision. Then, swiftly, he was gone, leaving the emptiness of the halting place to the lonely sweep of
the Arctic wind. Only the deep impressions of his
giant pad prints remained to mark the direction of
his return to the Hemlock Wood, and even those
soon disappeared beneath the shifting snows.

    When the king wolf reentered the southern woodland, he loped directly toward the cedar tangle
where he had left the entrapped moose calf. He
found it precisely as it had been, save for one small
detail. The calf was gone.
    The story of his going, although nearly five days
old, read very clearly to Loki. The double line of
cloven-hoofed tracks, one set large, the other tiny,
stitched its way neatly out of the windfall and across
the snows of the meadow beyond it. The king wolf's
delicate nose told him even more. The big tracks
were those of a caribou doe, and the smaller tracks
belonged to the moose calf orphaned by One Ear,
Bakut, and Scarface. And that particular moose calf
was the one for which Loki was looking. Swiftly and
silently the huge white wolf took the trail of Awklet
and his foster mother.
    It was full dusk when Loki came to the outskirts
of the abandoned caribou yard. Belly down, he
sneaked forward through the heavy snow, his keen
ears pricked for the first sounds of his quarry.
Presently he heard them-the coughing, stomping,
and grunting of caribou moving restlessly about.
Warily as a monster cat he halted on the crest of a
snowbank overhanging the yard.
    Below him a dozen old stags wandered in lonely
misery. Headed by Bartok, a grizzled elder jealous
that the herd leadership had gone to such a young
doe as Neetcha, the twelve old stags had stubbornly
refused to follow the new queen. But in the whole snow-packed confines of the yard nothing else
moved. The main herd-and with it the doe and the
moose calf-was gone. Loki lifted his lips in a
soundless snarl of disappointment and turned back
to his quest.

    The moon was good, the trail of the departed herd
broad and clear. Following its deep-rutted snow
track was cub's play for an old warrior like Loki.
Once away from the yard, he settled into the tireless,
mile-eating lope of the wolf that knows where he is
going and is in grim haste to get there.
    Meanwhile, Neetcha had been in luck. What had
started out discouragingly with Bartok's refusal to
follow the herd had wound up nicely. The young
doe had succeeded in finding a fine new yard only a
few miles from the old one. Now, from the vantage
point of a ledge of rock in the center of that new
yard, she studied it carefully and grunted, soft and
deep, with satisfaction.
    It was an excellent hiding place and the herd was
well placed within it. The does with early fawns
were bedded in its center, just beneath Neetcha's
look-out. Beyond them were the does due to fawn
shortly, and beyond them in turn the old stags, yearling stags, and the aging, barren does without
fawns. Within this outer ring of seasoned veterans,
the young mothers and their newborn infants rested
peacefully. For most of them it was the first time
they had known what it meant to bed down and
drowse and feel safe doing so. Yes, Neetcha had
good reason for satisfaction. And the herd had equal
reason to reflect her feeling. It had found a real
leader at last.
    To the watchful young doe on the look-out rock, this new faith was rewardingly evident. It could be
felt. It arose from the herd in a continuous murmur of
subdued night gruntings. It made itself known in the
lack of moving about and place shifting among the
ordinarily nervous animals. And indeed this confidence did not appear