Wolf face paw print tattoo

The storm took the trail markers on Tuesday, all twelve of them, and I've stopped pretending I knew where the lake was. Grey had the team stopped in a hollow of spruce with the wind going over us like a freight train, and I sat in the sled with my hands jammed under my arms, thinking this is how the Mackenzie men must have felt when they lost the river. Then the blue-eyed pup, Juniper, started pulling at her harness. She's the runt of Bess's last litter, the one you said would never make a leader. She went off to the left, nose down, and kept stopping to look back at me as though I were slow.

I followed her because there was nothing else to do. Half a mile on, the drift had smoothed everything but her tracks, and those were deep and clean, each one filled with blue shadow. The pads had a crease at the heel like a thumbprint pressed into dough, and they led us straight to the fish camp on the ice shelf. I'd have walked right past it in the dark.

Ruth made me unwrap the pup's left forepaw, split on the crust. Under the frost in the fur the pads were grey and soft, and when she turned them to the lamp I swore each toe had a small sleepy face in it, with two blue eyes looking up at me. Ruth only laughed and said the pup was earning her name.

Come up in the spring. I'll show you the tracks and you can tell me I'm daft. Bring the good flour.

Your brother, Hal