Chapter Four

    I stayed awake until the middle of the night, thinking about what the wolves meant for my survival chances. I had nightmares about wolves ripping me to bits, snarling and growling as they dismembered me bit by painful bit. When I jolted awake, sweating and dazed, it was barely light out. I grabbed my crossbow and arrows, deciding some good clean air might refresh my mind from wolves. I couldn't have been more wrong. When I unlatched and opened the door, I froze. There were wolf tracks everywhere. My cabin was surrounded by them. The wolves knew where I lived! They surely followed me back following my footprints, just as I had found their home by following theirs. If the pack of wolves knew where I lived, then I had to be even more careful than I expected. Crossbow on hand at all times, definitely. Repairs would have to be shorter and more efficient. Everything in my life had to be carefully monitored and checked for any faults and fixed. 

    Hunting would be another problem if the wolves knew my place of residence. If I hunted in the same spot every day, they would follow and soon take over that hunting spot from me. I would lose my major source of food if I continued my old ways. I had to become more like the wolf. I would have to search in the forest for individual prey in the trees, stalk it, and finally kill it to get my meat for the day. Also, no more legs. I would have to bring the carcass to my house and store the meat somehow. I didn't have any boxes, no salt to preserve it, and if I tried to bury it, the wolves would dig it up, or I would get grubs in the meat. And if the wolves dug up the meat, then they would be eating their dinner a stone's throw away from my porch! That wouldn't work. I certainly couldn't eat an entire deer in one day, I would burst. If I left it, the wolves would get to it and reduce it to bones.

    Since I couldn't do anything about the wolf problem, I decided to do what I usually did on any other day. I foraged for berries and brought them back home, then went out to hunt. I waited and waited for a deer to show up at the usual spot, but they never came. Frustrated, I set out into the underbrush of the forest to try and hunt deer that way. I managed to kill a fawn in the dense brush and cut off two of its legs for cooking.

    At night, I quietly opened my door and crept outside. A pile of thin wood boards was stacked near the side wall of the cabin, and I went to work with a lantern to illuminate the holes. I sneakily nailed the boards into the cracks, dusting off the snow on the boards before tapping them into place. 

    Suddenly, I heard a sharp, piercing howl from the direction of the forest. It was unlike anything I had heard before. Long and loud, the sound stopped me in my tracks as I turned to listen. As it was dying down, I saw four sets of eyes staring at me through the bushes, like the night before. I whipped around and snatched up my crossbow. But when I turned back, the eyes were gone. I noticed that the howl had completely stopped, so I settled down some, finished my repairs, and went to bed, still thinking about the howl I had heard.