THE WHITE WOLF by Franklin Gregory

year old, was asleep in his crib in his room. His room faced the creek-side of the lawn and the window was open wide; the night, for December, was warm.
     
    Mary Heath heard little Dan whimper. And then she heard him cry out in fright. She wiped her hands on her red-checked apron and went into the dining room, and into the living room. She went to the nursery door and she opened it quietly. She looked. And she froze—
     
    For in the subdued light from the living- room floor lamp she saw a huge white snout framed in the open window. Its jaws hung open and its sharp teeth glittered. Saliva dripped from its limp red tongue and its eyes glared hungrily across the room at the crib where little Dan lay crying. On the sill rested two big white hairy paws.

    Mary Heath screamed.
     
    She raced across the room and slammed down the window. The window caught for an instant on a toe of one paw. The beast yelped. Then, tugging free, it shot—a white streak—across the yard and disappeared in the shadows of the brush.
     
    Dan Heath found his wife unconscious by the window, his son sobbing. And when he had bathed her head in water and she had opened her eyes, she began trembling as though chilled to the bone.
     
    “Is he all right? Is he all right?” she kept asking.
     
    Slowly, incoherently, she told what happened. And she kept saying:
     
    “Its eyes. I never saw an animal’s eyes like that! Everything about it was vicious—except those eyes. They seemed almost human. They seemed to plead.”
     
    And still later when she had gained some measure of composure—”I know a wolf when I see one. They can say what they want about dogs, but I wasn't born and brought up in Alberta for nothing.”
     
    That night, about the village of Melton Crossing, the hunt was intensified under a full moon.
     
    There is a point on the boundary between the de Camp-d’Avesnes and Trent estates, in the north sections, where the Neshaminy crosses from the tatter ground to Pierre's. And there is a path along the south bank. And there, that night, David Trent walked alone.
     
    The moon’s white light filtered through the bare branches of the trees and spread a crazy lace upon the earth. David absorbed the beauty and walked in solemn loneliness. What an insane thing life was, he thought. And his thoughts returned insistently to Sara. It seemed ages since he had seen her—but, at most, it must have been only three weeks. He tried to count the days.
     
    Lord! he’d been so happy before. He wondered if the wreckage might, in much part, be blamed upon himself. Certainly, as a lover, he had been unromantic enough; had spent too much time with the farm; had fought shy when Sara wanted him to join in some youthful deviltry. Had he been afraid of life, afraid of her, or afraid of his own emotions? He remembered telling her:
     
    “Life’s well enough—to watch. The trouble is a fellow feels once in a while like sticking his fingers into the machinery. But he can’t do that. He’s liable to pinch ’em.”
     
    Sara had said, “But if everybody felt that way, there would be nothing in life to watch.”

    “I suppose so,” he answered glumly.
     
    Now he wondered: Was it that shyness that made him lose her? Was that why she became so cold? Or was it his suspicions in a mad moment? His maniacal outbreak that night on the lawn? But how could David possibly know what went on in her mind?
     
    He tramped moodily along the path. He thought of his Ayrshires. Something wrong with them, that was definite. They hadn’t been producing as they should, even for the winter months. The vet had been over, had found nothing wrong—physically. They ate well enough, but they didn't give. Suddenly David knew that they made no difference.
     
    The path forked and one branch went through the wood onto higher ground and one ran down close to the creek, and David paused in indecision. And pausing, he thought he heard a quiet splash in the waters. And then he saw Sara