The Way of the Wolf

A trilling call from ahead broke into his anxieties. Valentine raised his arm,halting the column. Garnett,one of his scouts,gestured to him.

"Water, sir, in that little holler," the scout reported as Valentine came up to take a look. "Looks safe enough."

"Good. We'll rest there for an hour, "Valentine said, loudly enough for the column to hear. "No more. We 're still too close to the road to camp."

The spirits of the Wolves and the farm families brightened in contrast to the deepening night as they drank from the spring trickling down the side of a shallow ravine. Some removed shoes and rubbed aching feet. Valentine unscrewed the cap on his plastic canteen, waiting until the families and his men had a chance to drink.

A faint yelping echoed from the south.Wolves dived for cover behind trees and fallen logs. The yellow-clad families, who lacked the ability to hear the baying,shrank together in alarm at the sudden movement.

Sergeant Patel, Valentine's senior noncommissioned officer, appeared at his elbow. "Dogs? Very bad luck,sir. Or..."

Valentine, careening along in his runaway train of thought, only half heard Patel's words. The families broke out in noisy consternation.

"Silence," Valentine rasped at the civilians, is voice cracking with unaccustomed harshness. "Sergeant,who knows this area best?"

Patel's eyes did not leave the woods to the south. "Maybe Lugger, sir. Or the scouts.Lugger pulled a lot of patrols in this area, I think her people lived westaways."

"Would you get her, please?"

Patel pointed to and brought up Lugger, a seasoned veteran whose limber, sparse frame belied her name. She held her rifle in hands with alabaster knuckles.

"Sir?" she breathed.

"Lugger, we may have to do some shooting soon, "Valentine said in an undertone, trying not to alarm the unsettled civilians. "Where's a good spot for it?"

Her eyes wandered skyward in thought. "There's an old barn we used to use on patrol.West of here,more like northwest. Concrete foundation, and the loft is in good shape."

"How long to get there?"

"Under an hour, sir,even with them," she said, jerking her chin toward the huddled families. Their yellow overalls now looked bluish in the darkness. Valentine nodded encouragement.

"Solid foundation," she repeated... "And a big water trough. We used to keep it filled with a rain catcher."

"Not the direction I wanted to go, but it will have to do. Mallow's more to the east," Valentine said. Mallow, the senior Lieutenant of Zulu Company, had remained in the borderlands with a cache of supplies to help them make it the rest of the way to the Ozark Free Territory. He considered something else. "Think you could find the rendezvous at night?"

"God willing, sir," she responded after a moment's cogitation.

"Then take your team and go. Ask Mallow to come with everything he can."

"Yes, sir. But I don't need my team to keep me company. I think you'll need every gun you got before morning," she said,, unslinging her rifle.

Valentine nodded. "Let's not waste time then. Tell Patel where to go, then run for our lives."

Lugger gave her rifle to the senior aspirant, spoke briefly to Patel and the scouts, then disappeared into the darkness. Valentine listened with hard ears to her fading footfalls, as fast as his beating heart, and thought, Please Mallow, for God's sake forget about the supplies and come quick.

As his men dusted the area around the spring with red pepper, Valentine approached the frightened families. "They found us?" asked Fred Brugen, the patriarch of the group. Valentine smiled into their dirty,tired faces. "We heard something behind us. Could be they cut our trail, could be a dog got the wrong end of a skunk. But as I said, we have to play it safe and move to a better place to sleep. Sorry to cut the halt short."