Once wolves led happy, well fed lives on the plains. They feasted joyfully on jackrabbits and ferrets and field mice and prairie dogs and an occasional young buffalo or antelope. When the settlers came they hunted out the land and the wolves grew hungry.
A settler's wife was sick. Her husband had to go to town to sign up his claim. Before he left he cooked down some beef to make a tea for his wife to drink. The meat smell floated down the wind to the wolves in the cottonwoods. The wolves approached the cabin. One pushed at the door and the latch slipped open. The sick woman attacked the wolf with her chamber pot. She reached her gun and shot at them. Hearing the shots her husband raced back and found his wife dying. The wolves had acquired a taste for humans.
Some settlers left. Most stayed. The Burtons stayed. One late winter evening Mrs Burton was waiting out her labor pains. Wolves were outside the cabin. Mr. Burton was trying to pour more shot. His hands shook so badly that the hot lead spilled on the table.
``Idiot!'' shouted Mrs Burton, and she took the ladle and poured with a steady hand. The two cabin windows had only canvas stretched across them. It was the oldest boy who first saw the wolf nose pushing through the slashed canvas. Mrs Burton grabbed an axe and brought it down on the wolf's head with enough energy to expel the child from her body. She let out a yell as this happened that curdled the blood of every mammal within earshot and brought Mr. Burton swiftly to his senses. He shot two wolves dead and the rest slunk back into the darkness. The one that Mrs Burton hit with the axe lived on a few weeks, maimed and suffering. They named the boy born that night Wolf, and he lived many years and tirelessly told this story until people stopped listening.