Big Salmon Lake daring

He had felt the rumbling in the earth and felt it wise to flee. His paws had brought him south, then north again, aimless wandering the only thing he knew these days — hardly more than a weary traveler looking for ample place to rest his head each night and enough food to fill his belly each night. Even in the frosty weather of late autumn, he found scraps of bear kills and scrawny rabbits that kept his hunger pangs dim, a quiet gnaw that he could shove into the corner of his mind with ease. He’d grown accustomed to going to bed hungry.

Water lapped at pebbled shores and he watched as sparing sunlight reflected on windswept waves. He’d spent a few days at the lake, wondering if perhaps he should stay here til the whether warmed again. There was ample enough prey and he had yet to encounter another wolf. Lonely as he was, he dreaded a run-in with another canine. Baltasar was weak, scrawny, nowhere near his normal bulk. Surely, he would lose any fight that might come his way.

The black wolf, fur peppered with grey and brown, leaned his head to the water and drank.