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A meal slips away

One day, Silverspot flew down the ravine carrying a large piece of bread. Below him, the stream ran toward a new brick tunnel. He was passing over the open water when the bread slipped from his bill. The current caught it and carried it straight into the dark.

Nothing to see

Silverspot flew down to the opening and peered inside. The bread had vanished. This was no short arch: two hundred yards of the stream had already been covered in brick. The water kept going where he could no longer see it. For a moment, his meal was out of reach.

The other end

Then Silverspot rose from the bank. He did not follow the bread into the tunnel. He flew to its other end, farther down the ravine. There, beyond the long covered stretch, the stream emerged into daylight again. Silverspot had gone ahead of the thing he had lost.

Waiting for the water

At the downstream opening, he waited. Water spilled from the tunnel into the open stream, carrying along whatever had entered upstream. And then the pale piece of bread appeared. It had never stopped moving. While Silverspot had taken the air, his lost meal had travelled beneath the brick.

Bread, found again

Silverspot seized the bread and carried it away. Behind him, water kept running out of the tunnel, just as it had run in at the other end. His meal had disappeared into darkness and come back into daylight. All he had needed was a different place to wait.

The trail in the dust

Then another hunter came. He hid traps along the wolves’ trails, but the tracks in the dust told a different story each morning. Lobo had uncovered the danger and gone around it. Once, he backed away so carefully that each paw returned to its own footprint.

Blanca’s last call

The hunter changed his plan. Blanca sometimes ran ahead of the pack, and this time she stepped into a trap. She called across the canyon. From the distant mesa, Lobo answered. The hunters killed her. Afterward, his voice continued to travel over the open country, searching for a reply.

Following her trail

Lobo followed Blanca’s trail toward the ranch. The hunter used her scent to lead him past more hidden traps. This time, the wolf that had escaped so often was caught. When the hunter reached him, Lobo raised his voice once more. No answering howl came from the scattered pack.

The country beyond the gate

They took Lobo alive to the ranch. Food and water were set beside him, but he left them untouched. He lay facing the gateway, his yellow eyes turned toward the plains. The hunter, who had worked so hard to defeat him, watched the great wolf grow quiet as evening fell.

Together again

At dawn, Lobo was dead. The hunter carried him to the shed where Blanca lay and placed him beside her. The chase was finished. Yet the wolf who had once seemed only an enemy had become something harder to dismiss: a creature whose life, and loss, the hunter could finally see.