Short Stories with a Long Tail (Short Story Theater)

Hello, I'm Basil Nightingale, the host of Bill Russo's 
Short Story Theater and the Ghosts of Cape Cod Podcast.

Join us on I-Tunes, YouTube, I-Heart Radio, Spreaker, and every other major audio-video site on the World Wide Web.

Our tales are short, but they have a long tail which may keep you thinking about them for some time.  Whether you like your audio beverage shaken or stirred, you'll like our servings because every glass has a twist mixed in.

Here's a link to one of our plays, ably performed by the Mighty Allen Art Players. 

  Let me give you a brief synopsis of 

'Murder in the North End". 

A 'Contractor' from the North Shore (about 20 miles from the Massachusetts Capital) takes a piece of work in the North End of Boston, reputed to be the center of  organized crime in America.  The target is sitting at a table by herself, in the Victory Casa - an authentic Italian restaurant on Hanover Street, the heart of Little Italy. 

She's calmly eating Gnoccis and GiGis. (These 'Paisan' delights will be explained for you in the story)

The contractor is in a hurry to get the job done because he told his wife he'd pick up groceries for dinner at the Gloria Chain Store in Beverly, but it's getting late. Suddenly the target waves him over to her table, where a surprise awaits.  Click the link: https://www.spreaker.com/user/11578348/murder-in-the-north-end

'Buon Appetito'

W.C. Fields: Good Guy or Dirty Rat?

Good Guy or Dirty Rat?

Was W.C. Fields the meanest scoundrel on the planet ... or merely a loveable rascal?

 

Despite his personality, or maybe because of it, he became one of the wealthiest and most famous entertainers of the early 1900s.

After you read the Fields Philosophy of life, in his own words - you decide.

WOMEN.....

“People say I hate women. It’s not true. I owe everything I have to a woman. She drove me to drink. I didn’t even bother to thank her. Women are like elephants. They are fun to look at but I wouldn't want to own one."

MARRIAGE.........

"Marriage is a fine institution, although who in their right mind wants to live in an institution. But marriage is better than leprosy - because it’s easier to get rid of. Marriage often leads to children and I never met a kid I liked. In fact, anybody who hates kids and dogs can't be all bad. But I really do like children, provided they are cooked properly".

PREJUDICE - POLITICS.....

"I am often accused of prejudice. It's not true. I hate everyone equally. As for politics...I never vote FOR anyone. I just vote AGAINST someone".

OUTER SPACE....

"With all the talk of space travel, I'm often queried if I think there is intelligent life on other planets. All I can tell you is ... I hope so because there certainly isn't any on this planet!"

NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK!....

"A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for....but I am not a crook. It's just the opposite, because it is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money. Never give a sucker an even break. Smarten up a chump....and by the way, you cannot cheat an honest man". 

BOOZE....

"They say you can't swear off drinking. It's a lie. Why Godfrey Daniels, I've done it a thousand times.

I do drink at work, but I disguise it by putting my whiskey in a lemonade container. One time a smartass took out my booze and substituted lemonade for it. I took a swig and almost choked to death. I screamed out...what damn fool put lemonade in my lemonade?

Once I was on safari in the deepest part of Africa. Some idiot forgot to bring a corkscrew. For days I had to exist on nothing but food and water.

I would drink water except for the disgusting things fish do in it. Another bad thing I heard about water is that it could become habit forming.

I always keep a flask of whiskey around in case of snakebite and I always keep a little snake around too.

A man has to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink.. It’s my nerves you see. I think the best thing for a case of nerves is a case of Scotch.

When I got back to America after my trip overseas, the first thing I did was turn into a bar. Oh that I could! What a great trick that would be. Yes Indeed. Turn into a bar! If I could live my life over....I would live over a saloon.

When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, I brought a hand truck to a liquor store and bought 6 cases of gin. When a friend saw me returning, he asked why I bought 6 cases.I replied. "I think it's going to be a short war."

PHILADELPHIA....

I spent a year in Philadelphia one weekend. That's not true. I was not able to stay there because I went to Philadelphia once but it was closed."

And with that line, so closes a few quotes from the mouth of William Claude Dukenfield...better known in film and Vaudeville, on network radio and Broadway...as W.C. Fields.

YOU BE THE JUDGE........

Were his caustic words proof of his sour nature? Or were they just for entertainment?

His last days may provide some clue to his real nature. He had been ill for several months and was confined to a hospital. Friends visiting would find him reading a Bible. This was totally out of character for the lifelong atheist. When questioned about his study of the Bible, he always answered...."I'm just looking for loopholes!"

Another thing he did shortly before he died was to toss a little bit of an Olive Branch to Philadelphia, the city he had scorned so many times. Fields told friends that he wanted his tombstone to read..."All things considered, I'd rather be living in Philadelphia."

 

On the top rated Charlie McCarthy radio show, fields got so mad at Charlie he forgot that he was arguing with a wooden dummy!

WC & Mae West made one great film-but she disapproved of his drinking and would never work with him again.

THE VERDICT?......

Here are a couple comments from when I ran this article on a website some time ago:

"I read two different articles about him from two different authors. One painted him as a mean s,o,b. The other painted him as a really nice man. He was probably somewhere in between."

"I loved the Pearl Harbor comment, he thought it was going to be a short war. Too funny... I come from a well-poluted Catholic family. May I pass this along to them. They'd get a big kick out of too. Thanks for publishing such a funny, insightful and very well written article!!

Bravo!"

As for me, Bill Russo, the author of this piece, I think that Bill Fields was probably was a pretty good guy, but I suspect he did have a bit of a mean streak.  

Thanks for reading this post on Adventures in Type and Space, and please do pass along a generous slug of Fields and chase it with another!  

From the first time I saw him, I was a fan and cannot imagine anyone not being enchanted by the screen work of the rogue. 

I don't understand how Mae West could have been so much against him.  

She was so steamy that she got banned from radio by doing the Adam and Eve sketch: she was arrested and sent to jail for one of her theatrical productions dealing with sex; she was an early advocate of gay rights; was tolerant of all forms of lifestyles......except the those who have a fondness of taking a few too many drinks and being funny about it. 

No matter, I think here's what 'Bill Fields' might have said,

"Well, well.  Mae West doesn't want to work with me anymore because of my drinking...ok... I won't drink any more.......or any less!"

-0-

Comments, complaints, or W.C. jokes as always, are welcome.  Comment here or contact me by email, Billrrrrr@yahoo.com

If you like dramatized short stories, visit my tales on iHeart Radio, iTunes, Spreaker, YouTube and all other major audio-video sites.  Here's a link to a ten minute tale from Boston, "Murder in the North End" https://www.spreaker.com/user/11578348/murder-in-the-north-end

In Sign Stealing, the Dodgers Always Lose!

Why is it always the Dodgers involved in the sign stealing games and on the losing end? 

SIGN STEALING IS NOTHING NEW, 

Read on to learn about how the New York Baseball Giants took the Pennant from the Brooklyn Dodgers way back in the 1950s with The “Shot Heard ’Round the World.” 

It took only 50 years for the secret to come out, ten years ago, in 2000, it was revealed that the New York Giants took sign stealing to a new level. 

It involved Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run against Ralph Branca, the famous “Shot Heard ’Round the World” that won the pennant for the Giants in the last game of a three-game playoff against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

After decades of silence, some of the ’51 Giants admitted that their team was using a telescope from center field and a buzzer in the dugout to signal pitches to coaches, who’d then signal the batter.

Sign stealing is as old as the good old game, which stays pretty much the same, except somebody's always coming up with a better mousetrap/sign stealing thing.

Ah-soo, the Golden Throat

The old aphorism 'One thing leads to another' proved true for me some years ago during the time I wandered up and down the 64 miles of the island/peninsula of Cape Cod in search of myths, monsters, legends, and spirits that would come together in a book called "Ghosts of Cape Cod".

In the town of Mashpee, which has deep connections to the Wampanoag tribe, whose leader Massasoit saved the 1620 'Pilgrims' from ruin, I found an abandoned section of roadway.  

Vines and brush undertook the job of masking the former highway from the view of the thousands of motor vehicles using the new rotary (roundabout) that was the reason for the old section being orphaned and fenced off. 

Over time, the few joggers and walkers who made use of the former thoroughfare began reporting the presence of spirit figures - and it became known as a ghost highway.  

A walk on the pavement of the Old Ghost Road, which is still in relatively good condition in the 2020s after a few decades in dis-use, is surreal due to the incongruity of strolling through the stillness of a modern paved road with no cars on it, surrounded by a forest that resembles the 18th century more than the 21st.

Though my excursion on the road of ghosts failed to yield any contact with spectral beings, it did lead me to the story of a spirit - a little known figure from the oral legends of the Mashpee Native Americans.

A few of the sturdy hikers along the Old Ghost Road, told tales of hearing in the distance, beautiful love songs being sung by a Native American woman with a golden throat.

Though I never uncovered any published stories about this mystery woman, I gathered pieces from a number of sources and combined them to produce a story about 'Ah-soo'.  She lived many hundreds of years ago, long before the European invaders arrived and pushed the Wampanoag people almost into extinction.

It is said that Ah-soo had a golden voice that made angels hark, but she had a face like ragged wooden bark.  So beautiful was her singing that all the animals of the forest would gather around her to listen while she sang.  Blood enemies momentarily forgot their battles and sat side by side while she warbled.

As beautiful as her voice was, her face was the complete opposite.  Sadly for her, not a single man would even speak to her.  They ran from the unhappy young woman.  Not one brave would consider taking her to his wigwam.

She did find true love, however, from a most unusual source.

The story of Ah-soo is in my book Ghosts of Cape Cod.  It's on Kindle, as well as all major online retailers.  The Audible-iTunes version is narrated by one of NPR's top announcers, Scott R. Pollak. 

Her ironic tale, with samples of her singing, is now available for free on the Ghosts of Cape Cod Podcast.  Here's the link -  https://www.spreaker.com/user/11578348/ah-soo-the-ugly-and-talented

The Full Story - Joubert the Wolf Catcher

I am happy to note that Joubert the Wolf Catcher, recently released as a podcast episode of Short Story Theater, and as a brief film on YouTube, has met with some approval. Since I've had a request for the written version of it, and have never published the 3800 word story before, here is the full text of the tale, with a few pictures.

Bill Russo
January, 2020

Jobert, the Wolf Catcher

by Bill Russo (C) 2020

As late September became early October the last, vast wilderness in the 48 United States began dressing for winter.  Bulky pines, a hundred feet tall, held strong against the cold; but the Maples, Elms, Oaks and such, quickly surrendered their motley colored leaves to the icy rip of autumn’s frosty fingers.  

The raging Allagash and St. John rivers, swollen from late summer rains and further gorged by melting early snow from Quebec Province, two hundred miles due southwest; formed an impassable border between Northern Maine and Canada’s Maritime Province, New Brunswick.

Few people live in this mainly deserted area the locals call simply ‘The County’ - Aroostook County, the upper-most part of Maine.  It’s not just the biggest county in the State of Maine it’s one of the largest in all the ‘48’.

How big is it?  It’s so massive that you could tuck all of Rhode Island and Connecticut inside it and still have room left over for a couple of ‘Indian’ Reservations.  

Francois Joubert knew about the reservations from stories his mother told. She was half Wompanoag, a Native American tribe best known for helping the “Pilgrims” of the Plymouth Colony survive their first winter in what the invaders called the “New World”.  

In little more than a generation, most of the men, women, and children of the tribe were killed off or sold into slavery by the Europeans during the expansion of their settlements from Plymouth into Boston and beyond.  

Some few fortunate strays, including his mother’s ancestors made it safely to Maine, which at the time was a distant outpost of Massachusetts.

His father was a mix of French Canadian and Maine Arcadian – part of a small band of people who lived on either side of the border between Canada and the U.S.  They were dual citizens who really didn’t consider themselves residents of either nation, but simply habitants of their own unique area – the region surrounding the St. John River. 

As a young man, Joubert spent time in the Canadian cities of Montreal, Edmundston, and Halifax before drifting back into Maine.  He journeyed all the way down to Bangor, before heading back North, skirting the border in the towns of Madawaska and Fort Kent. 

He was drawn to the solitude of the dense wilderness of the Allagash country. It’s a massive unincorporated area south and west of Fort Kent, the last town before the area gives way to untouched forests that look the same as they did the year Columbus stumbled into America.  The region, devoid of a single village, is inhabited only by trappers, hunters, fishermen, loggers, and a handful of farmers.  

Joubert claimed and cleared a few acres of land near a small pond, built a sturdy log home, and began farming the one crop that loves the frigid Maine climate and its rocky soil, potatoes.

To augment his income as well as his larder, he began hunting and trapping.  Moose, deer, bear and smaller animals were plentiful.  He never really got commercially involved in these pursuits, mostly just taking what his own needs dictated. 

With his first harvest loaded on a horse-drawn wagon, Francois Joubert made his way to Madawaska, the Northern most city in the United States. A pretty village consisting of one main street and a dozen smaller side streets, it’s  perched on the American side of the St. John River at the peak of the state across from the Canadian city of Edmundston, New Brunswick.

A cooperative bought his harvested spuds and put them on a train with those of other farmers and railed them 500 miles down to Boston where they’d find fame on grocer’s shelves all around the nation as “Maine Potatoes”.

During the winter season with its short days of sub-zero temperatures and snowfalls often counted in yards instead of feet and inches, the young farmer concentrated on improving his holdings. He finished construction of a barn that he framed and roofed before the first ice and snow. Inside the cabin, he laid a wooden floor and crafted shelving for his walls, a bureau with four large and two small drawers, and even a bookcase. 

Inside the log house, a warm fired burned steadily 24 hours a day, with wood taken from the mountain of logs laboriously cut and split in the odd moments between the various other jobs the farm required.  Nights after supper were also reserved for chopping and splitting. 

In an area where the temperature in January and February can easily drop to ten, twenty, or even 30 below zero, having an ample supply of firewood is the difference between life and death.

Joubert started stacking the firewood against the side of the house to the left of his front door.  He made a pile of split logs six feet high and four feet wide.  Within a week the stack resembled a railroad boxcar built entirely of logs.  In a month, the thick pile had the appearance of a wooden train snaking around the front of the house and hugging the side and rear walls until it nearly reached the back door. 

By the end of August the whole cabin was surrounded by a stack of split logs that ended up being six feet wide as well as six feet high.  You could barely see the cabin for the great wall of wood.

In mid-September the fireplace had eaten its way through the entire section from the front door to the East side of the cabin.  The supply on the left side lasted until Columbus Day when the first big snowfall came. 

Joubert was concerned.  About one fourth of his firewood was gone with four months to go until March.  When the weather allowed, he gathered and split as much additional wood as he could. 

As he crossed the weeks off the calendar the wooden wall of firewood became increasingly smaller, yet when March came, he happily found he still had about ten feet of fuel left.

By May or June every spring, Joubert set out for town to trade hides for supplies.  It was on one of these trips, just before his fourth harvest, he met Jolene Bouvier. 

A tiny lady of slightly less than five feet, she had shiny black hair that curled around her face like a beautiful onyx frame. She was light skinned but had enormous black eyes that hinted at an American Indian heritage similar to Joubert’s. Her frame was generously filled but not overly so.

Just eighteen, she recently left an orphanage where she spent most of her life and hired on as a clerk in Madawaska at Daigle’s General Store on Main, across from Fifth Street. 
  

She wore a frilly white blouse with a black skirt of the length dictated by the times – a few inches below the knee.  Skirt hemlines had been going up rapidly in recent decades, rising from the floor to their present height in just 30 years.

Though Joubert loved the way the lady was dressed he had no idea of fashion.  He merely knew that he had fallen in love just like in the story books – at first sight.

As for the way he looked, it was typical Maine farmer consisting of   dungarees, battered slouch hat, and a dark cotton shirt, with beat up, ratty boots on his feet.  He was fairly large for the times, almost five foot nine inches tall, with a weight of about 160.  His face was handsome though his beard and mustache seriously needed looking after. The hair on his head was shaggy and unkempt.  But Jolene saw through the haystack on his face and head and spied the inside man.  She liked what she detected.  

For Joubert who had known few women and Jolene who had known even fewer men, it was indeed, love from the get-go.  They were married within six months of that first meeting and were happy in the wilderness cabin.  She worked hard inside to make it the very best house possible.  He labored hard outside to make the farm as bountiful as it could be.

Things were going well until he took Jolene along with him when he went trapping.  She wept at the agonizing sight of a wolf cub, desperately trying to free himself from the sharp steel teeth of a trap.  His leg bled profusely from the trap as well as from his trying to gnaw it off to gain freedom. 

Jolene pleaded with Francois to release the pup, giving it the name, ‘Little One’.   He did even better.  To her delight, he took the young wolf home and kept it in the house, treating it like a puppy dog while it healed and for some time afterwards until it got near its full growth. 

When Little One was almost an adult, Francois put a scarf-like expandable collar around its neck, which would grow as the animal did.  Joubert and Jolene released their four pawed pal in deep woods three miles from their log house.  

For months afterwards the wolf returned home every day or two. Upon spying him in the yard, happily the Jouberts dashed outside with their hands full of treats.  Little One, growing strong and bulky, came right up to them, ate from their hands, and played just like when he was a puppy.  Finally the wolf came no more and they were sad but speculated he probably found a mate and made a new life
.

Jolene pleaded with Francois to promise that he would never trap another animal.  He consented and did even more.  One day a week, usually on a Sunday, he tramped for miles to rescue unfortunate creatures caught in snares.  Many times he found and freed foxes, deer, and other animals. 

Whenever he came upon an entrapped young wolf, he put one of his flexible red and yellow scarf-collars on it, just like the one that Little One wore. Afterwards he’d bring the pup home to Jolene who was always excited to have a new ‘foster child’ to care for until it got big enough to be sent back to the forest.

The farm was prosperous and doing so well that a sizeable stack of currency accumulated in their account at the Aroostook County National Bank.  Their output was always the most spuds per acre of any farm in Maine and they received the highest prices at the potato co-op.

One thing marred their happiness, they didn’t have children.  The doctor in Madawaska tested them and confirmed what they already knew, they couldn’t have kids.  Francois was not capable of planting a child-seed and even if he were, Jolene would not have been able to grow it. 

Saddened but not bogged down by self pity, Jolene suggested that they adopt a child.  After being abandoned at age five by her mother, Jolene spent thirteen years in the orphanage.  She told Francois of the pain of ‘adoption showcase days’.

What’s ‘adoption showcase days’ Jolene?  

“It’s when prospective parents come to the home to look at the children who are paraded in front of them. The people ask questions.   All the kids hope to be the one selected for a new home, but only the funniest, cutest, or youngest get picked. 

“I went through this 50 times a year without ever being picked.  When I was thirteen and starting to become a woman, the men began to take an interest in me and I got scared.  It seemed like I was going to be adopted – but for the wrong reasons.  After a few of these uncomfortable interviews, I refused to participate in them anymore. 

“Did they try to force you?  Did the people at the orphanage threaten you?”

“Yes they tried punishment and that didn’t work.  I still refused.  Then they tried bribery.  They said they would give me things.  Dresses, special privileges, even money if I would agree to the presentation parade.  I still declined. As soon as I turned 18 and was legally able to do so, I left that horrid place.”

Francois and Jolene decided to adopt.  In the winter, a few weeks before they were scheduled for final approval Jolene came down with a fever.  She was dizzy and her face was sunburn red. The fever shot up higher.

Confused and barely conscious, she was losing ground fast. Francois bundled her up and took her by horse and buggy fifty miles to Fort Kent, the nearest settlement. He got her to the doctor’s office but there was nothing to be done.  Within a day she succumbed to some kind of a flu bug.  

Being that it was mid-winter in an area where the record low temperature is 41 degrees below zero, nobody could be buried until spring because of the frozen ground. The doctor informed Francois that he would put Jolene’s body in a barn that served as a morgue storage area. Already, there were four or five others inside who had died earlier that winter and who also were awaiting burial in the warm season.

“No. Never! My wife is not going to spend the winter in there.  I’ll take her back with me.”

He did it too.  He brought her home and gently placed her on the couch in the living room.  He wanted to keep her for a while longer so he didn’t build a fire.  

“It’s cold tonight dear,” he said to his lifeless wife. “Seventeen degrees in the house, but that’s good honey.  It means I can keep you here by my side.  I don’t want to let go.”

Though he was out of his mind with grief in a few days Francois realized that he had to put Jolene in the barn, until the passing of the cold season.  Reluctantly he dressed her in her prettiest outfit and kissed her lips one last time, before wrapping her in thick blankets.  Finally he added a few layers of canvas and lovingly placed his wife on a potato sorting table in the rear of the barn.  

Months later, on a warm day in June he buried her in the yard behind the cabin.  

At the head of her grave he set a headstone into the ground.  Purchased in Portland, the marker was engraved…

Here lies Jolene Bouvier Joubert

Born: Somewhere - Place and time unknown

Died: Right here before she was barely grown

Loved: By her husband and everyone else she met

Never:  Will I wed again. “Jolene, I’ll never forget”

Francois Joubert: 19--

 

He was now alone, but Francois still set a place for Jolene at dinner every night. Speaking across the table to her empty chair, he said…

“You’ll be very proud of me this year Jolene.  The new crop is coming along even better than the last one.  I pulled up a few sample potatoes today and each one is perfect.  It’s going to be a great harvest.”

It turned out even better.  At Madawaska he beat his old record, selling his entire harvest for the highest prices ever given to an Aroostook farmer.  After the sale, with little to do until spring, Francois devoted more time to animal rescue.

Winter always comes early in the Northern-most part of the United States, but the first winter after Jolene’s death, it came even sooner.  Francois knew from the clouds in the sky that snow was probable.  It’s not uncommon, even in September or October, for the ‘County’ to have a snowfall of a foot or more in just a few hours. 

Francois was twenty miles from home.  In his arms he held a newly rescued, badly wounded wolf pup.  It appeared that the animal resting in his arms had been in the trap for a long time.  Besides the blood loss, the pup was further weakened by having had neither food nor water.  It was barely alive.

In the far North, night comes quickly in October and Francois didn’t want to try to start the trek back to the cabin on a night with a strong possibility of a blizzard.  

He found shelter under the branches of a stout pine tree.  The lowest limbs were about four feet from the ground. The clear space beneath them afforded the best opportunity to wait out the weather.

The storm began at twilight and plunged the temperature to near zero.  The earsplitting, howling wind picked up and battered the sturdy pine.  Francois had his sleeping blankets, but fighting against the frigid temperatures and the gale force winds was a losing battle.

The snow raced down at the rate of an inch every fifteen minutes, blasted into the ground by gusts of up to sixty miles per hour.  By eleven p.m. more than a foot of snow had fallen.  Sculpted by the wind, it drifted up as high as five feet around the tree. Becoming a solid white wall around the old pine, the snow formed an igloo of sorts, surrounding the lower branches.

“We’re in luck Little One,” he said to the pup. “Nature has built us a snow fort.  We’re walled in and it will get warmer in here now that we’re not getting struck by that fierce wind.  We’ll be just fine. Let me get a bit of bacon out of my pack for you.  You can have a little midnight snack before we try to sleep till morning.”

Francois watched the bright eyed pup happily munch the bacon and then close his eyes in a peaceful sleep.  There was a noise in the distance.  With a gloved hand he dug a small hole in the snow wall and pushed an opening through.  Clear sky and a glowing half-full moon lit up the area making it as bright as morning twilight. The snow glistened like icing on a candled cake, revealing a beautiful landscape of frosty white with green bumps where pines pushed through at irregular intervals

Francois heard a noise far off. Dim and muffled as it was, he wasn't sure.  Wolves?  No, probably the wind. 

. 

The racket was getting louder.  For a second or two, he thought it could be people, but soon he realized it was the din of desperate, baying wolves.  Half starved by the shortage of winter food, the always dangerous pack was made even more so by their ravenous hunger. 

The howling and growling of the approaching animals grew more intense.  He could hear the pack leader barking orders.  The pack noted the yelps of their commander and responded with eerie howls of their own that gained in volume as the beasts came within a hundred yards of Joubert’s hiding place.

“They smell us Little One,” he told the cub in his arms.  “They’re coming for us.  Back before I met Jolene I always travelled with my rifle and pistol.  I stopped using weapons when Jolene made me realize I don’t want to hurt any living creature ever again.  Little One, I still don’t.  But if I had a weapon I could fire it in the air when they try to close in on us and maybe that would scare them off.”  

The pack closed in for the kill.  The leader plowed his way through the snow surrounding the thick branches of the sheltering tree.  Once inside, the creature slowly advanced on Francois. The huge wolf opened its mouth revealing razor sharp teeth powered by a jaw strong enough to snap a two by four.  A ray of moonlight danced across the neck and head of the ravenous wolf.  Francois noticed something odd. He spotted a scarf-like collar around the wolf’s neck.  He couldn’t be sure but it looked like there were splashes of red and yellow.  

“Red and yellow?  Just like the colors on the collar I put on Little One.  Little One?  Is it you?  It can’t be.”

Ready to lunge, the wolf froze, looking closely at Francois. It got so close that he could feel the hot breath steaming out of the big animal’s mouth.  It sniffed him. 

Suddenly the wolf let out a squeal and a yelp and began licking Francois’ face.

“Little One it is you!  It’s so good to see you,” shouted a shocked and happy Francois.  He began patting the big wolf and scratching him under his chin just like when he was a puppy.

The rest of the pack jammed into that space between the ground and the lower most branches.  Under a signal from Little One they all huddled closely around Francois and the new Little One, keeping them warm and safe until morning when the sun lifted the temperature above freezing.

By the light of day, Francois could see that two other wolves, younger than the original Little One, also wore red and yellow collars.  They too were the product of his rescue efforts, and happily joined the original ‘Little One’ in a session of nuzzling and chin scratching with their old pal. 

Francois took his supply of ham and bacon from his pack and happily shared it with his friends.  After they ate, Francois said to the original Little One, “Take me home old friend”.

With Little One leading the way, the pack formed a column of two and began marching towards Francois’ cabin.  There were fifteen wolves in Little One’s pack and they acted like a plow pushing aside the heavy snow and making a clear path for Francois and the newest “Little One”, still cradled in his arms.

The long, furry column with Little One at the head and Francois at the tail moved quickly, reaching the farm shortly before dark.  Francois threw open the cabin door and invited the entire pack inside where he spread plates and cups all over the floor, filling them with food and water. The wolves ate heartily and much more civilly than might be expected.  After the meal he set a roaring blaze in the hearth and the entire pack, as well as Francois and the new ‘Little One’, stretched out in front of the fire and slept soundly through the night.

In the morning Francois fed the wolves again, heaping the dishes full of beef, ham, spuds, and bacon.  After the morning meal the original Little One got up on his back feet and put his front paws on Francois’ shoulder.  Stretched out like that, he was so large that he towered over Francois by nearly a foot.  Little One licked Francois’ face for several seconds then gave a short bark which brought the pack to attention. 

With a final nuzzle, the shaggy canine headed for the door.  Francois opened it and patted each and every wolf as they filed through and headed back to their range.   

“Come back in about six months Little One,” he shouted. “The new Little One will be big enough to join your pack by then.” 

The End