Professor Dekker seemed undaunted by Svend's translation of the villager's concerns. He simply asked the guide to continue with the group's reconnaissance of the village and the planned trek up into the forest above the small settlement.
Julie came closer to Crissa as they walked silently toward what appeared to be the last few homes skirting the tree line and the river.
"So. What do you think about that little revelation?" she asked her in a whisper.
"I don't know, Julie. I've always felt something is just not right about this trip. We're just too remote out here. To exposed. And now we learn something totally creepy like this."
"The others have always expected Professor Dekker was onto something . . . mysterious. He's known all along these wolves up here are super-different than those we know back home. I'm sure he just wants to document them for science. Proffs are like that. It's all about the reputation they're building.
"Maybe. But why would he put us all so much at risk up here, if he knew this?"
"Couldn't do it alone, I guess."
As the stone path came to an end, it eventually morphed into a simple dirt trail passing under a canopy of tall pines. There were other, deciduous trees as well, and a thick underbrush that looked to Crissa like the wild berry vines she knew in British Columbia.
Soon the team was moving slowly and quietly behind Svend, who from time to time would hold up a hand for everyone, warning to remain still. He was obviously moving them into the wolves more common territory. At one point as they began to climb higher on the mountain, their guide stopped and gathered everyone around a set of fresh footprints in the damp earth of the trail.
"A female," he whispered. "If we follow them they will take us to her den."
Crissa knew the females of a clan would dig out a deep den in the earth for her young. There she would guard them from birth and nurse them until they were old enough to clumsily follow her out and learn to hunt. Measurements of these footprints were taken by Mary and Josh, and Brad photographed them.
Before long, moving ever eastward, the trail became difficult to make out in the tight brush, It also began to spread out with forks in different directions. More tracks were soon discovered—larger, of a male. Svend told them it appeared a hunting pack had been in the area recently. Taking a fork in the path, he led them for some distance into a wide meadow.
"There used to be bears in this clearing," he said. "Many. They would sun themselves here and sometimes sleep."
The participants looked over the now-empty clearing.
"Since three years now . . . they have not been seen," he concluded. The guide then slid his strapped rifle back further on his shoulder and sniffed the air.
"Come this way," he said.
They followed him to a place in the tall grass where there was, rotting in the sun, the gruesome remains of a large animal. The group gathered around it.
"It's a cow," he said, reaching down with a knife and penetrating a piece of the carcass with its point. "Stolen from one of the farmers."
He then smelled the knife blade.
"No more than two days old," he reported.
"Look there. At the animal's backbone," Dr. Dekker directed the group. "You see? How each of the vertebrae have been crushed open by powerful jaws?"
Crissa moved forward with Julie and looked down at the bloody mass.
"The teeth and jaws of these wolves can break through any bones of the largest animals. They do this to drink the marrow," he said. "It's a nutritious part of their diet, particularly for their young."
"This large cow was killed inside a fenced pen and dragged here by several large wolves for their clan to share," Svend concluded, while wiping the knife tip on his military fatigues.
Mary and Josh had already taken out their sample kits and were swabbing blood and tissue remnants."
"Make sure you get some possible saliva samples," the professor directed. That's very key to our research here." He then walked around the kill area in a spiraling perimeter, looking for other specific signs.
"Here it is," he finally said, "Excrement."
Josh joined him with a sample container.
"I can't believe they're even going to study the shit of these wolves," Crissa whispered disgustedly to Julie."
"Are you kidding? It's the Holy Grail for determining an organisms specific diet," she replied.
"OK, I get it."
When the samples were taken and photos finished near the area of the wolves feeding ground, the group was led on by Svend. He took them beyond the meadow northeastward, deeper into the surrounding forest.
"From here . . . up into those mountains, you'll find the wolves' dens," he said. "And some hidden places where they let their young play. If we are quiet and move along carefully, we might see a wolf today taking a nap." He laughed.
"Don't count on it," Dr. Dekker said. "These animals know where we are . . . long before we can even detect them."
At that moment, as they moved single file between a narrow passage between trees, Crissa looked off to her left into the dense undergrowth.
There it was. The beautiful and lethal face of a large canis lupus, only two to three meters from her, peering back immovably and silently while perfectly camouflaged by its mottled markings.
She was simply too terrified to move or speak. For those intense few seconds she and the wolf made direct eye contact. The instant took her back immediately to her anxiety dream, where she faced a large wolf while being trapped.
Before she could call out to the others, or even had the self-control to do so, the deadly attractive animal backed out of its position and simply disappeared soundlessly into the foliage. None of the others even had a clue this wolf had remained there, so close, while half of them passed by it. They had been oblivious to its large, bluish-gray eyes. Eyes that seemed to have some uncanny power to freeze an observer in their path. Something Crissa felt long after the frightful incident. She inexplicably, even to herself, chose not to tell the others of the brief encounter, even after they had returned to the lodge from the long day of hiking.
* * *