In 1915 a cowhand found an iron wolf breathing in his trap at 31 below.
The ranchers chained it at their camp. The wolves kept coming.

Winter of 1915, the Sunlight Basin in northwest Wyoming, a day's ride from Yellowstone. On the Rafter P ranch, wolves have killed 163 calves in a single year, and the bank in Billings is waiting for its money. Checking his trap line on Pilot Creek, cowhand Clell Whitlow finds the chain pulled tight across untouched snow. In the jaws lies a riveted iron wolf with a jaw of cogs and eyes of cloudy glass, ticking softly inside its chest.

Within one season the calves stop dying, and every night real wolves walk out of the timber to the thing on the chain and are never seen again. A young government hunter starts weighing it every Sunday and measuring the willows along the creek, and his numbers begin to disagree with the success. What was the iron wolf really eating?

Tell us in one word in the comments: the one fear you would destroy tomorrow, if you could.
Subscribe for more stories from the archive.

This story is a work of fiction. Real places and historical periods serve as the backdrop; the characters and events are invented. Images are illustrative.

#history #wildwest #unexplained