Wolverine Attack by Moss Springmeyer

Wolverine Attack by Moss Springmeyer

Jack’s contempt for the ghost-fear Shoulders had shown last night separated them on the toboggan like a lump of ice. At the curve, they leaned awkwardly.

Something hurtled off the granite boulder. Its forelegs swung and clutched as it slammed into the men on the toboggan and nearly stunned them with its twenty-skunk stench.  It landed biting, biting, and crunching with jaws that could have crushed stone. As it was, they crushed the snowshoe Shoulders shoved into its maw and crushed to smithereens the embarrassment he’d been feeling about the fear of ghosts he’d shown last night.

Wrestling, shoulders and the wolverine tumbled off; The beast tore itself free of the snowshoe, snarling and wheezing. Eyes burning with its stink, Shoulders seized a fallen branch, He struggled to get past the snapping teeth and the blood gushing from its mouth, striving to stuff the branch sideways between those pulverizing jaws.

At last, the wolverine eased for a deeper breath. Shoulders clenched both ends of the branch, smashing it downwards, all the way behind the wolverine’s rear molars. That pinned the head down and neutralized the jaws. Stunned, its body went slack.

Seizing that second, and now inured to the stink, Shoulders released the branch and knelt beside the wolverine’s left shoulder. Swift as an eagle striking its prey, his left hand swept his knife from its sheath on his belt to stab as hard and fast as he could. His right hand snatched his tomahawk out of its holster. A near frenzy of plunging and bashing, but more rhythmic, a barbaric dance of power and speed.

Suddenly, the wolverine’s powerful legs were battering him, its terrible claws were slashing, and it struggled to arise. He stabbed it with huge force again and again with his left while smashing it down with the tomahawk in the right, each split-second movement feeling like it took an age of the earth. No “I,” just action.

Finally, he stabbed his knife through its eye. The blade sank deep with nauseating ease, plunging into the brain, twisting, and ripping out again. Blood and brains spurted. Then the tomahawk smashed between the eyes. More blood and brains. The beast went slack and stayed that way. Shoulders collapsed backwards.

Shoulders’s thoughts began to form. Pain blanketed his face, quieter pains bloomed elsewhere.  He raised his head and groaned, lifting himself onto his elbows.

Jack dragged the toboggan back up from where he’d managed to stop.  As he drew near, he gagged at the stink, but then ate some snow and carried on to join Shoulders. “Glad you’re still with us! I was afeared I’d be takin’ a corpse down the mountain. You’re a sorry mess, but, bless you! Every soul in the valley will thank you in their hearts.” 

Shoulders blushed. “I’m thankin’ the animals what lent me their hides!” Thanks to those hides, almost all the blood was the wolverine’s.

“And this monster’s given us some very fine fur, and meat for the dogs, to boot!” said Jack.

“I want the paws!” muttered Shoulders. His nose was bent flat to his right cheek and still bled profusely. He breathed through his mouth only.

Jack checked Shoulders over carefully. Great rips disfigured Shoulders’s buffalo-hide coat, its sleeves shredded. But with the cattail jacket padding and the deerskin shirt beneath, he had no cuts on his body. He would be a mass of bruises on the morrow, but the specter of infection would have to wait another day. And no broken bones.

“Gonna be sore but solid,” said Jack. “But you’ll need to hold hard while we reset that beak.” He wiped Shoulders’s face with rags from the medicine bag, dipped in the snow. “No scratches on your face, so it must uv been a head butt broke it.”  He sat Shoulders up to slow the bleeding, and handed him a rag full of snow to fight the pain and swelling. Giving that a moment to work, he bundled the wolverine’s remains onto the toboggan, shaping them into a back rest for Shoulders.

“A throne with a stink that’ll scare the buzzards away!” laughed Jack. Trying to avoid the sorest places, he hefted Shoulders onto the toboggan.

Jack said, “Hold on tight, pardner!”

Shoulders was panting and gripping the edges of the toboggan, white knuckled, feet flexed and whole body taut. He foiled a flinch as Jack fitted the cartilage back in and gently placed the snowpack.

Jack ran pushing the toboggan and hopped on as it gathered speed. They leaned into the curves together as they flew down the mountain.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Moss Springmeyer 2025