This is the first part in the Admirable's trilogy.
A boy, lost in dense bush during sub-zero temperatures, is kept warm by a black wolf missing a leg plus a gold medallion around his neck. This wolf some time back was caught in a trap, somebody else than the trapper saved him from this jaw of steel. When his leg was heal, the animal was release back in nature. This wolf was saving this boy's life to paid back his debt to manhood. The moment the kid was found, he said he was kept warm by a black dog with three legs. Everybody though he was delirious.
A few weeks later, while poaching at night, the boy's father shot this moving target from a distance. When he got close, it was a black wolf with three legs. He remembered his boy's story about a black dog missing a limb... he had kill his boy's savior.
That same night an ex-hunter gently rocks his child to sleep, fingering the gold medallion around the child's neck, and with both sorrow and respect, remembers this "Admirable Violent"