Matteo ran fiercely at first, but the raw and simple fact was, that he didn't have a lot of strength. The pads of flesh on his sides and flanks were wasted, and his ribs and hip bones were visible even through his thick reddish coat. The wind cut through his thick fur and froze his weakened body.
The woods was alien to him. All of the scents were strange and new, and the cold bit into his sensitive nose. All of the humanity on this continent was clustered in small villages, some were filled with the white-skinned humans that Matteo had been familiar with his entire life, and he nearly ran headlong into a small hunting party of his first Native Americans.
For a moment, Matteo froze, watching them. A massive red wolf with honey-colored eyes and a ruff that was sticking strait up from fear and apprehension.
Three men. They wore strange footwear made from heavy hide that Matteo did not recognize with the fur inside (it was moose). They wore light-colored leggings and dangling breechclouts between their legs. Two had rough fur robes, and one was bare chested except for a sash. Their skin was a deep and weathered red the color of sandstone and their eyes were black and shocked.
Matteo whimpered softly, and ran away. Each one of the braves had been holding heavy flint-tipped arrows and heavier bows. To his surprise, he could hear them speaking in a language heavy with guttural syllables, and they didn't seem fearful or surprised, but annoyed.
The wolf was nothing but an overgrown puppy, and he felt exhausted and alone. He scrambled clumsily onto a bare knuckle of rock and howled at the cruel sickle of the moon. The night was slipping away from him faster then ever before, and Matteo was hungry and cold and scared. He knew that if the night slipped away he would freeze without some kind of shelter.
He came to an icy stream that was still open despite the frigid air. It gushed and gurgled over the rocks. Matteo loped forward, thirsty and excited, knowing that other animals would come to the stream, and maybe he could hunt.
If it hadn't been so cold he would have smelled the smoked steel, smelled the traces of man in the air.
The trap was covered by about an inch of granulated snow, and the pressure of Matteo's large puppyish paw triggered it.
Matteo screamed. His voice was high-pitched and panicked and agonized. He struggled and cried and ki'yi'd while struggling to free his foot from the smoked steel jaws of the cruel trap. After about a minute Matteo stopped moving, crying and panting, standing on three trembling legs. His left forefoot was red and oozing and pierced deeply by half a dozen steel teeth to and bottom.
He whined and cried and struggled for the better part of an hour, then he dropped to his side on the trampled and bloodied snow, wheezing and whimpering with his furry side heaving like a massive bellows.
Matteo's head jerked up, his eyes glowed in the moonlight. He could hear the three men, hear their guttural speech, smell the scent of their skin and sweat and furs. He mewed with pain and licked his foot, struggling weakly. The circle of snow around the deep buried peg was thrashed up and bloodied.
The youngest man, no more then sixteen or so saw him first and cried out a warning to the other two men. Matteo looked up at them with glazed eyes and growled feebly. If not for his size and teeth, it would have been pitiful. He was obviously very weak and bloody. His ears were drooping and trembling, his tail pressed between his legs. He was crying and licking his wounded paw.
He tried to stay on his uninjured legs, tried to face all three of the men at once as they spread out. His lips lifted to expose his white teeth, his eyes wide and frantic. He saw their bows, and he remembered how his own pack had fallen, weak and human and screaming as bolts from crossbows found their vulnerable bodies.
The man wearing the sash was the oldest. His wiry black hair was streaked with pure white and his face was as wrinkled and shrunken as a piece of very old soft leather. He spoke to the other men in a harsh commanding tone and they obediently put their arrows back in their quivers, but the youngest one continued to touch the red-dyed feathers with his fingertips.
The man neared until he was only about thirty feet from the huge bleeding wolf-puppy. Matteo made a low groaning sound and his good front leg collapsed again. He ki'yi'd loudly and just lay in the bloodied snow, panting and making those low groaning sounds.
The grey-haired man began to murmur softly. The guttural words softened and became a crooning sort of chant. Matteo growled softly, but the growl turned into a whimper halfway through.
The man inched closer, murmuring softly the entire time. Matteo watched him, noiseless except for his strained breath.
The man halted again about ten feet beyond the reach of the short chain and he spoke softly to the trapped puppy. Matteo didn't understand the words, but he understood the compassion in them, the gentleness. His tail wagged feebly and went limp.
The man fearlessly went up to Matteo, ignoring the way his fellows stiffened and called out panicky warnings. Matteo rolled onto his side and whined in what he hoped was a friendly way, wagging his tail a little.
The man's hands touched the trap with utmost care and released the mechanism. He slowly pried the steel teeth from Matteo's chewed and bloody paw. Matteo gave the man's brown shriveled hand a small lick before gingerly attending to his own paw.
The other braves moved in closer, and the hair on Matteo's shoulders stood up and he growled a little. The old man backed away as the red puppy slowly crawled onto his three good legs, holding his wounded paw in the air. He limped away, terribly weak and wounded and more frightened then ever.
---
Matteo's progress was slow and halting. He was looking for shelter, any kind of shelter. A rotten log, a huddle of dead branches filled with leaves, a bank of earth that would provide some shelter from the wind. He had his clothes, and a thick heavy cloak. Maybe if he could find a sheltered place he could make a nest, and wolves healed more quickly than humans.
Matteo licked his throbbing paw. He would still limp for weeks.
Matteo sniffed under a pine tree. The sky was turning gray. The earth around the massive tree's knotted roots was still soft and sandy. He began to dig clumsily with his good paw. He managed to dig a three-foot deep shallow pit before hitting frost.
He limped away and dragged back as many dry pine branches as he could find, preferably with needles still on them. When the sun peered up over the horizon, the change happened.
He cried out with agony as his bones crackled and shrunk. the hair retreated under his skin with a massive itch over every inch of his body. His skin shrunk and felt too tight. His injured paw needled fiercely with pain.
Matteo cringed on the dry freezing sand under the pine tree, naked and freezing. He got to work. He used the cloak to line the shallow pit and he fumbled on the trousers and shirt as fast as he could. He curled up inside the pit and wrapped the cloak around him in a tight nest, and then reached for the pile of branches near the entrance of the pit. He put as many as he could over the opening, shielding him a little more from the harsh elements.
