Wade Timber's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Wade Timber walked the treeline at dawn, counting pines he could not cut. He had staked his claim here to build the finest cabin on the frontier, a solid home to outlast the winters. But his saddlebag held no felling axe and no saw. The old man who sold him the plot had cheated him. Wade owned a hundred straight trees and no way to drop a single one. He knelt and opened the scuffed leather bag. Inside lay one tool his hands still trusted. A heavy iron wedge, thick as a fist, its chisel edge ground sharp along one side. His father had split rails with it for thirty years. It was made to force wood apart, not to bite a standing trunk. Wade set the edge against the base of the nearest pine and struck it with a river stone. The wedge skipped and bruised his knuckles. He tried again. The bark chipped but the trunk held. An axe swung; a wedge only spread what was already cut. He had the wrong half of the job. His dog watched from the shade, a sturdy brown ranch dog with a red collar. The dog rose and trotted to the far edge of the clearing, then stopped and barked once. Wade followed. A tall pine leaned there, half-dead, its roots torn loose by some past storm. The trunk had split near the ground years ago. A dark seam ran up the wood. Wade pressed the wedge into that seam. This time the tree fought him honestly. He hammered the wedge deep with the stone, then wrestled a fallen branch under it for leverage. The seam widened. Wood groaned. He drove the wedge again and threw his weight on the lever. The old trunk cracked, tipped, and crashed into the brush. He stood over his first log, breathing hard, hands raw. The wedge had worked, but only on wood already dying and split. Every healthy pine on his claim still stood untouched. One log would not raise a wall. He needed dozens, and the sound woods refused to open for a splitting wedge. The dog's ears snapped forward. It faced the deep timber and dropped low, a growl building in its chest. Wade turned. Between the trunks, a black wolf stood watching him. Its coat swallowed the morning light. It did not run. It studied the fallen tree, the man, and the dog, as if measuring the new thing in its woods. Wade gripped the wedge tighter. He had felled one log and drawn a hunter to his clearing. Now he needed proper tools and a way to keep his dog and his claim from those yellow eyes.