The four animals were now in single file, running flat out, pounding the snow into a fine powdery spray, like the dust under a racehorse’s hooves. It was only five hundred yards or so from the base of the butte to the river, but once the chase reached level ground, the wolves began to close the gap. Nate Blakeslee’s “American Wolf” will be the subject of the Northwest Passages Book Club event in December. Perhaps she didn’t know that, or perhaps in her panic she could think of nowhere else to go. The refuge the cow sought was the Lamar River, not far from where it joined the Yellowstone, and on this winter morning it was frozen solid. Chases often ended in stalemate this way, with an elk standing in hip-deep water, warily eyeing a pack of wolves lounging on the nearby bank as they patiently waited to see if the frigid water would force the elk back onto dry land. The deep water offered long-legged animals an advantage: a swimming wolf has no leverage for biting and pulling. The cow headed for the river, as her kind often did when the wolves came. Her chocolate ears laid back against her head, her bouncing, ovoid rump the same shade of buff as the sedge poking up through the snow, she seemed an impossible quarry. For such an enormous animal-at least five times heavier than any of her pursuers-she was surprisingly fast and nimble. It was early winter, and the snow was not yet deep, offering the kind of footing that favored the elk. The elk had been one of many cows atop the butte now she was alone, hurtling pell-mell toward the broad valley below, dodging the lichen-covered glacial erratics-some the size of small cabins-that dotted the hillside, leaping over what she could, and exploding straight through the sage and juniper. Several yards back and struggling to keep up was a mature black male, his snout and withers gone silver with age. She was followed closely by her sister, a good-size gray. The one in the lead was almost pure white. The wolves drove an elk down the side of a steep, snow-covered butte under a sky close and gray. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter One of “American Wolf,” a community read of the Northwest Passages Book Club.
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