Steele's Surprise Part Three - Only Son

Muffled voices, dim in the late gloom, were murmuring...the husky standing outside the door edged closer, his heart roaring in his small black ears, his claws itching to their cores.  With bated breath, he waited.  And waited.  And waited...

"She's gonna be okay."  The husky heard the masculine voice just in time, temporarily forgetting his trepidation.  As the door sprang open, he leapt out of the way, dodging behind a large, rusted trash can.  "Only managed one pup, but at least she's okay," the voice repeated.  The man speaking waved briefly at the mother and the little girl before turning to trudge down the hill to his night shift.  It was early December; it got dark quite early.  With his jet-black fur, the canine behind the front door remained concealed.

The permeating stillness that had lasted several seconds was broken by the sweet voice of a young girl.  "C'mon, Mom, let's go see the puppy!"  Grinning eagerly, she tugged on her mother's sleeve.  Smiling tolerantly at her daughter, the woman turned to close the door first, nodding reassuringly.  With a slow, groaning creak, the door swung shut.  One second...two seconds...all was still.

With a huge sigh of relief, Steele jumped out of hiding.  He felt like howling to the whole wide world, I have kids!

Then he stopped as swiftly as he had been about to celebrate.  I have one kid.  The thought was a curious one.  It crept up to his head and ran in rivulets down the length of his spine, preventing him any motion or emotion.  Somehow, in all the excitement caused by being a father-to-be, he hadn't given a single thought to the number of offspring he would have.  All that mattered was that his beloved mate, Treble, was pregnant with their pups...

Suddenly, Steele braced himself.  He could feel his strong limbs vibrating slightly and thought that he must be going mad.  He was devoid of thought or feeling, except for that one fact: I have one kid.

Sleeping outside for a week, Steele became restless.  He was used to the conditions by now; that wasn't what was bothering him.  It irked him that these stupid humans never seemed to leave their house all at the same time, even for brief periods.  The father left at night; the next morning the girl was off to school.  Then the father was back while the mother went to run errands.  Then the girl was home again.  The entire process drove him crazy--watching them leave their house, always one or two at a time, but never all of them.  It was good that Treble had someone to help her, Steele thought grudgingly on a particularly frustrating day, but why did these humans have to find her?!  Could've gotten someone who leaves the house more often.  Finally he decided to take his chances with them.  How hard can it be?  He thought with a smirk.  They have no decent sense of smell or hearing.  I'll only have to risk them seeing me, and goodness knows the father needs those glasses-things he always wears.

And so on a day when the mother wasn't back yet to see the girl home from school and the father was asleep after his shift (Steele had grown atrociously familiarized with their daily routines), the husky slipped in through the back door, which was relatively easy to claw open.  Can't even shut their doors properly, he thought with a mental snicker.  Then with a light tread Steele alighted on the threshhold and (with a soft, irritated growl) picked his way around the various, cumbersome items scattered about the house. 

Half an hour later, with doubts swimming between his sharply pricked ears, the big husky finally tried the shed as a last-ditch effort.  The possibility that Treble had left on her own haunted him...but surely not?  He tore himself away from his inner conflict and focused all his attention on the door ahead.  (He did his best to, anyway.)

What he saw made his heart beat painfully in relief...and joy.  There was Treble, her slender wolfdog form stretched out in a little basket, with a single, blue-black pup nursing at her side.  "Treble!"  Steele choked.  "How are you?"  he said, steadying his voice.

"Fine, now that you're here."  The hybrid's soft voice soothed his fragmented nerves and stilled his shaking frame.  She looked him over carefully, smiled gently, and began to lick the top of the newborn's head.  "You've been worried."

"How do you know?"  Steele shot back, suddenly on the defensive.

"You've been worried," Treble repeated as if she had not heard, "About me...and our pup."

"Our pup."  Steele gazed at the tiny form among the soft fur.

"That's right.  A boy."  Treble nodded as if he had answered a difficult question correctly.  "You've also been fed-up with the humans who found me," she continued, grooming her shoulder mildly.

"You would've been perfectly all right by yourself," Steele rebuffed.  Fighting to control his temper, he took a shaky breath and added, "They at least don't need to be around quite so often."  'Quite' was accentuated by a low growl.

Treble only chuckled, lifting her head from her soft fur.  "They're good people, hon.  Besides, I think it's time I was up and away before long, anyhow."

"How soon is 'before long'?"

Steele's mate laughed at the look of longing on his face.  "Two or three days.  Until our pup gets stronger."

"He's not weak, is he?"

"No, Steele, he's a newborn."

Rolling his eyes, the husky nudged the subject away from his lack of puppy knowledge.  "Have you thought about names?"

"Yes."

"Well...?"

Treble frowned at Steele's impatience.  "I was thinking of 'Keenan'.  Do you like-"

All of a sudden a slammed door brought both canines' attentions to the humans of the household once more.  "Gotta go," Steele murmured, "take care of yourselves."  He bent briefly to lick the heads of his mate and son, then slid around the shed door and was gone.

Five months later...

It was a gorgeous spring day, perfect for sunning one's self.  The gentle zephyr stirred the fur of the husky and the wolfdog far below on the shaggy outcroppings of rock, the ocean lending its salty tang to the breeze.

"Papa!  Look what I can do!"

Steele rolled over on the sparse sea grass, trying to reach a troublesome itch.  "Not now, Keenan..."

"Dad!"  The pup screeched to a halt, crouched, and shot off in the opposite direction in a split second, sending a sheet of spray sparkling in either direction.  He glared impatiently at his father. 

Steele glanced up at his son and grinned.  Young Keenan was like a bolt of lightning - just as good as he, Steele, had been at that age.  With a movement nearly as swift as his son's, Steele crouched and sprang down on the sand.  It acted as a cushion, absorbing the impact of seventy-pounds' muscle and enabling Steele to race after the pup.  Beyond, the boy's mother only smiled and continued to preen herself.  They're perfect for each other, she thought contentedly to herself.

Meanwhile, farther up on a rockier part of the beach, the legendary Balto was romping with his daughter Dingo, or Wunder as her humans called her.  She was by far the most rough-and-tumble of his children, and he was proud of her.  Wunder, like Keenan, was part wolf, but only one-fourth, while Keenan was one-half.  

Steele and Balto grew tired of the rambunctious play and began to drift away from their pups.  Their offspring were completely unaware of their father's earlier rivalries.  Nonetheless, at first they pretended not to notice one another, sniffing among the damp, salty stones by the shore.  When they were merely several feet apart, however, Wunder seemed to make an inward decision.  With an impulsive leap she launched herself high into the air and landed, grinning, inches from the tip of Keenan's nose, wagging her tail in play.  When she glanced up and saw the affronted look on the other pup's face, however, her eyes widened and she backed away.  

"Um...hello," Wunder said in an odd voice.  She sounded half-amused, half-offended at the other's behavior.  No one had ever rejected her like that before.  She opened her muzzle to try again. 

"Hi," said Keenan shortly, his own muzzle already half-turned in the opposite direction.  The little female was making him extremely nervous, for the very reason that she was so obviously not soft-spoken, like most of the dogs that he had talked to in his five months of life.

"Oh, OK."  Wunder's voice had a sarcastic edge to it.  "Be that way."  Offended, she did an about-face in the sand and nearly fell over her own paws, which ruined the dramatic gesture.  Keenan stifled a snicker. 

Wunder's eyes kindled in brief anger, and she sprang again, abruptly toppling the bigger pup.  Keenan rolled under her and bounced to his feet in one fluid motion, wagging his tail and grinning broadly in spite of himself. 

The red pup's glare quirked, and her muzzle twitched in the shade of a smile.  "So that's how you wanna play, huh?" she demanded devilishly, and dove under Keenan's belly, driving him off his paws.  Yelping in mock pain, Keenan tumbled to the ground.  When Wunder rushed to his side in guilty horror, he grinned and dragged her down with him.  Together they laughed and splashed in the tide, which was rising rapidly.  

And that was how their friendship began.

Presently Steele ambled along, expecting to find his son alone, maybe playing in the bubbling backwash of the tide.  Instead he halted abruptly, half aghast, half in wonder, to see his only son splashing lazily in the knee-deep water alongside a bright crimson pup.  For a fraction of an instant, two totally different canines flashed before Steele's vision - himself and his former love, Jenna.  Shaking his head to clear it, the husky stepped closer.

"Son...what have you been doing?"

"Nothin', Dad."  Despite his nonchalant tone, Keenan was cautious.  That hard voice gave the impression that Steele was keeping his emotions strongly in check, but that they could (and would) all come spilling out at any moment.

"Time to go home, son," said Steele.  His voice was hoarse with shock; his nose was pointing halfway to the rocks where Treble was resting when a familiar gray-brown wolfdog slid around the corner of a nearby dune.  "Steele," the hybrid breathed, resent and caution plain in every line of his long, low-slung body.  The black husky could see the wolfdog's chest rising up and down rapidly, preparing for conflict.  He was ready to defend his daughter.

"Balto."  Steele nodded curtly, shoving Keenan forward with a heavy paw.  He would not fight with that mutt in front of the children - his child, anyway.

Balto seemed to be thinking the same thing.  "C'mon, Dingo," the hybrid murmured.  "Time to go home."  He nudged his little auburn daughter away from the beach cove, his paws making loud slapping sounds in the salty water as they departed. 

"See ya around sometime?" Keenan muttered to Wunder, slightly embarrassed.  She nodded in a muted fashion, blinking the water from her eyes.  Her head hung low as she plodded through the sparkling shallows.

The walk back to Treble seemed to go on forever, it appeared to both father and son.  So many thoughts were swirling inside Steele's head - thoughts of reproof, of disappointment and regret - that he didn't know which ones to pluck from his head and say to his son first.  "I wouldn't count on it," he growled.

"Count on what?"  Keenan's subdued voice was low, but curious.

With a start Steele glanced down at his only son.  He hadn't realized that his train of thought had only made sense inside his head.  "You're not going to be seeing them anytime soon.  So don't count on it.  That's what I meant."

"Oh."

There was an uncomfortable silence all the way back to Keenan's mother's sunning spot.  When at last they reached her, she grinned in typical Treble fashion and stretched.  "So, did you have a good time?" she asked lazily, as if fully expecting the answer to be 'yes'.

"Uhhh..."  Steele cleared his throat. 

Treble looked up sharply.  "What's wrong?" she asked in her soft voice.  It was the one she used when her full attention was focused on something.

"We...had a run-in with somebody," Steele said.  Keenan cleared his throat loudly and shuffled his paws in the sand.

Treble raised her eyebrowns questioningly.  Then all of a sudden she understood.  Groaning, she sank to the sand.  "Not..."

"Yes," Steele nodded.  "Balto.  And his daughter."

"Steele," his mate said, almost in a whisper.  "Have you told him?"

Keenan looked up.  "Who, me?  Told me what?" 

His father groaned.  "No, I haven't," he admitted.

"Then please do."  Picking herself up abruptly, Treble left the two alone, heading resolutely in the direction of the town.

An awkward silence fell for several moments after she left.  Steele looked disgruntled.  Finally Keenan got up the courage to ask, "Dad...what were you supposed to tell me?"

The big black-and-white husky sighed, knowing that this talk would be humiliating and uncomfortable for both of them.  Nonetheless, it was important.  After settling himself on the sand and motioning for his son to do the same, he opened his muzzle for a long time without speaking.  "Son," Steele began, "A year or so ago, in 1925, there was an epidemic..."

To Be Continued...

Steele, Balto, Jenna (c) Universal

Treble, Keenan, Wunder, human family (c) Iditarod