The trees leaned drunkenly against one another around the frozen lake. Snow lay over their boughs like tattered blankets, occasionally crashing to the ground with a thud for no reason. To the east and west of the lake stood high craggy mountains lost behind a veil of clouds, and to the north and south ran the valley

Quiet. It was the sound of an icebound land locked into a deep winter. No birds sang in the trees or from the empty berry bushes. Foxes, weasels, ermine, and bobcats didn't hunt each other in the shallow snows at the base of the trees or in the brown cattails of the lake edge. No moose hid in the woods. Even the wind held it's breath for fear of making the trees rustle. Nothing moved, nothing spoke, and nothing breathed.

Sounds faintly came into focus in the distance, first dogs barking, their voices growing and shrinking as they moved over the contours of the lands and through the trees. Then a man's voice followed. "Come on boys, git `er, git up and git going. Come on we almos` got `er." It came quiet and distant and full of breathless toil, but moving ever closer to the lake edge.

Suddenly the black she-wolf broke through the cattails on the edge of the lake and stood looking ahead. She rested and panted and breathed hard as fog lifted from her breath and carried over her head. The hair on her muzzle and ears were white with a thin layer of frost

She looked behind her and could hear the dogs in the darkness of the trees where her trail came from. It had only been luck she made it this far without them catching her. The trees had been a great help.

She looked along the edge of the lake and knew she wouldn't be able to keep ahead of them if she went that way, especially if they weren't afraid of the ice. She hated lakes, she hated ice, and she hated dogs. She had to make a choice before they caught up with her.

But she had no more time as two dogs rushed from the trees behind her and bolted for her barking. She ran out on the ice and pushed with everything she had. She fortunately had a new boost of energy from her short rest and quickly put thirty feet between her and the two dogs running. She dared not look back as she ran for fear she would discover her poor performance. She made it halfway across the little lake and took a glance over her shoulder. The two dogs with ice on their muzzles still followed. But they loped along nearly a hundred feet behind and looked tired and frustrated at their own performance. At the far edge of the lake four more dogs came out onto the ice.

Suddenly a crack sliced through the air. A pain shot into her left hip. Her thigh and back exploded in pain and she dropped forwards on the ice and cried out as she rolled and cried and yelped and stood and fell again in pain and despair. She lay in the snow on her side with her left hip in the air gasping. Slowly she raised her head and looked back at her hip. Blood oozed out of a tattered hole where the white bones of her shattered leg twisted around in a grotesque way.

She knew her hip had been hit by a rifle bullet. It had happened long ago to her father. She remembered all to well watching him slowly die at the mouth of the den when she had been a pup. She knew she didn't have a chance to make it any further, especially if she had to outrun six dogs on three legs. All she could do now was wait for them to get her.

Suddenly the two dogs jumped on her snarling and nipping. One of them bit and tugged on her back left paw. The pain sent her lurching up at him and snapping her teeth as he leapt away fearfully. The other dog quickly seized her neck from behind. He bit until his teeth broke her black fur and blood moistened his jaws.

"Don't move an inch lobo." The dog which had her by the neck snarled. He let her go. "You lost and we win."

The wolf turned her head around to see the dog speaking to her. He was a dark rust colored dog with a white face and white socks on his front and back paws. "There are no winners, only losers." She said defiantly.

"Shut it." The other dog snarled. He sounded younger than the first dog and was colored mostly brown with some black on his face. "You know what's going to happen to you." He smiled and spoke with a childish thrill. "You're going to have your skin cut off and you'll be hung up on a wall as a triumph of our chasing skills. I'll look at you every day and smile … but you'll never look at me, because you'll be dead and without eyes. You'll be in darkness." He smiled and growled, pacing back and forth as if on guard. "Just you wait."

"We will all die eventually." The she-wolf responded calmly.

"Not scared to die huh? You wolves think you're so tough. You think nothing will scare you" The young dog growled.

"I'll show you how to scare them." The rust colored dog said from behind the she-wolf. He moved around her and put his face close to hers and growled. "It will be a pleasure to watch you die. I hate running after wolves. I especially hate running after mother wolves who try to cover their tracks." He sat down just far enough away he could jump from an attack. "You probably think you're pretty sneaky." He looked at her eyes, they had changed to a sullen frustration, and he knew he was hitting on the right cords. "You probably think you made it away from you're den without us noticing."

Suddenly the she-wolf snarled and leapt with teeth towards his throat. He jumped back. The other dog moved around and bit down on her broken leg. The she wolf snarled at the young dog as he leapt away. Then she laid whimpering in pain in the snow. "You stay away from them!" She growled at the older dog.

"Oh? Who?" The older dog said circling around her. She kept her eyes firmly locked on him as he circled. "Maybe you're referring to you're white mate we cornered in the den?"

The she-wolf growled and kept her eyes on him as he continued walking around her.

"We backed him down in that hole you call a home, and our master burned wood until he came running out with tears in his eyes. Then my master shot him dead, just like you will be."

"Shut up!" The she-wolf growled. "Do not speak to me these lies!"

"Then you're pups." The older dog grinned and licked his chops as he circled around in front of the she-wolf again. "I never tasted something as good and filling as wolf pups. Just a little snack to keep me running after you." He whispered seductively at her.

The she-wolf leapt to her feet and bolted at him on her three good legs snarling and snapping her teeth, using the pain to propel her on to kill this dog. The older dog bolted away. The younger dog tried to catch the she-wolf's broken leg. But the she wolf turned before he could catch her and ripped into the young dog's muzzle, leaving a wound about six inches long. She then fell in the snow, to exhausted to try catching the older dog again. The young dog bolted away from them across the ice to the man coming with snowshoes and a rifle.

The she-wolf looked at the man with the dogs at his feet running across the ice for her. She turned and looked into the older dog's eyes. "Let me tell you something Benson. With my last breath I take on this earth I vow to come down and have a personal paw in your death. It may not be today, or tomorrow, but one of these days I will come down from the happy hunting ground to be your killer." She looked into him and burned his image into her eyes so she would recognize him when the time came.

Benson looked into her eyes with a terrible fear spread across his face. "How did you know my name?"

Before she drew another breath the crack of the master's gun broke through the silence. The bullet ripped through the she-wolf's neck and she slumped forwards into the snow amid a quickly growing pool of blood. She was dead.

Benson's friends and master surrounded him and the dead she-wolf with congratulations and yips of excitement. But Benson didn't feel rejoice in his heart. He instead had a deep inquisition, 'how did she know my name?' The thought resounded in his skull as the excitement went on around him like a distant drumming. And for the first time as the hunt ended, Benson felt cold and afraid.

The she-wolf's warning ate at Benson for several days. For those first few days he refused to sleep, and he rarely ate. His mind went around and around, replaying the scene in his mind to see if he could find something he missed. Had Morse said his name? He felt pretty sure he hadn't. Then how did she know his name?

After a few days - and nothing have yet happened to cause caution - Benson found himself to exhausted to continue being afraid of the she-wolf's warning. He slipped into a deep sleep and didn't wake until the sun rose the next day. He ate his food and licked his bowl clean. Fortunately nobody noticed his perturbed behavior, or at least didn't mention it, so he didn't have to explain it away. Time went on and soon Benson forgot about the she-wolf.

Winter turned to spring and when the first warm breeze blew from the south Benson's master, William Diond, hooked them up and piled the furs into the sled and moved out of the mountains into the town of Mukluk. Mukluk was mostly a native community on the shore of the Bearing Sea, but several white families called it home as well. There they fell into the summer habits of sleeping, eating, keeping away from the sun, and looking around for mates.

It didn't take two days before Benson made himself known to a beautiful rust colored purebred husky named Cleo. Her master lived next door to Benson's master. Cleo's master was an older woman with graying hair who came to Alaska because she had seen beautiful pictures in some magazine. She had bought Cleo in the south as company for the trip and brought her to Mukluk on a steamer in the spring.

It didn't take William long to notice his attractive neighbor named Susan and begin hanging around her house doing small chores and taking her to the picture show in town.

Cleo was funny, smart, always poking fun at Benson and herself. She had dreams of being a sled dog and running trails in the winter and being out in the land. But she had the mind of a realist and knew she didn't have the brawn or grit to be a sled dog. She also didn't have a great fondness of extreme cold. She spoke rarely of her dream and always tried to pretend it didn't bother her that she would never do it, or at least she didn't show it bothered her.

Benson, on the other paw, was very egotistical, but he also had the ability to laugh at himself when Cleo poked fun at him. He didn't tell her much about his wolf hunting because she pressed on him that she disliked the killing of wolves. He only told her of his being a sled dog on a trap line and that they did get wolves sometimes. Although the house full of wolf skins told otherwise.

Cleo often tried to get Benson to regale her with stories about the woods and running on a team, and Benson had a few stories to tell.

They spent most of their days together strolling around and chatting about nothing really. They went down to the edge of the ocean and watched the icebergs floating on the sea. They took walks together up the nearby river, and for two days became trapped on the opposite shore as the ice broke up and the river flooded. During those two days away from home Cleo first became pregnant.

As spring rolled steadily into summer Cleo's belly began to bulge with puppies. Cleo and Benson took fewer long walks together and opted instead to stay around town in case Cleo went into labor and needed to get near her bed.

Then on the third of July Cleo went into labor in the small doghouse behind her masters house. She had six puppies, but one came out a stillbirth. Cleo fell into a heartbroken depression about the dead pup and remained silent for several days no matter what Benson said to try and cheer her up. Eventually she came around and forgot about the one pup and began working to raise her other pups the best she could.

They started out by naming them. There were four boys and one girl who was much smaller than the boys and looked more sickly. The boys they named; Quin, Rolf, Spear, and Storr. But Benson already had a name for his daughter. He wanted to name her after his sister.

When Benson had been a pup his sister was attacked by a wolf when they were playing in the woods near the cabin. Benson, even though just a pup himself, managed to chase the wolf away, sustaining some scrapes and bruises himself. His sister lived for five brutal days. She only awoke once and weakly thanked Benson for what he did. But for most of the time she lay on her stomach and struggled to breath. Finally she passed away and her breathing stopped. William Diod buried her out behind the cabin unceremoniously.

So the decision came with tears in Benson's eyes, his daughter would be named Jenna.

The pups grew fast, especially the boys. But to Bensons surprise his little girl Jenna, even though she was the runt of the liter and smaller than her brothers, seemed to be growing a better head on her shoulders. Benson felt happy his daughter was becoming a natural leader, especially when she began to take walks around town without telling anybody. She also began leading her brothers on nature hikes to explore the world. But Benson had to scold her for this and warn her about evil things which hunted in the night. It didn't help because Jenna still did what she wanted. Benson smiled inwardly and had high hopes for his little girl.

More than once Benson took Jenna on all day walks, just the two of them. Benson would tell story after story and show her the world she found herself in. He felt, in a way, as though he discovered his long lost sister in the form of his daughter and he didn't want to lie to her or ever say an evil word in her presence. He even thanked her on one occasion. Jenna felt mystified. Benson had tears in his eyes.

It came time in the early fall when Benson's master and Cleo's master tied the knot in the town church. It was also decided Cleo's master would stay in town with Cleo to open a post office. And Benson's master would go out in the woods to provide money for them. Cleo's master didn't want to be away from people or the church. Benson's master enjoyed his solitude. But he promised he would come into town at least once a week to see her.

Also in this time a steamer arrived with William Diond's baby brother on it. He brought his wife and young daughter named Rosy. They were on their way to Nome Alaska to open a general store. It also came time to give the pups away to homes before they grew too old to be cute to the humans. Rosy fell in love with Jenna, and Jenna fell in love with Rosy. Together they romped and played like two halves of the same soul. Benson knew his daughter would be in good hands with this girl.

After a week and a wedding Rosy put a bandana on Jenna, took her up in her arms, and they jumped on the steamer bound for Nome. Benson watched from the shore as his daughter went up the gangplank and the boat vanished over the horizon. He wasn't sure if he would see her again, but he hoped one day he would.