Part 3
Daniel ran after the pup and lost him in less than twenty seconds.
The little wolf moved through brush as if fear had burned every weakness out of him. Daniel was still human, still heavy with gear, still fighting a slope that grabbed at his boots and threw wet branches into his face. He could hear the pup ahead, a soft crash through dead fern and snow crust. Then he heard another sound—one sharp yelp, cut short.
He stopped.
The first gunshot had come from the north, somewhere near the old firebreak. The yelp had come from lower ground, toward North Fork Draw, where the terrain folded into a narrow ravine full of blowdown and hidden water. Daniel touched the radio at his shoulder.
“Dispatch, Mercer. Shot fired in upper Daugherty, north of my position. I’m moving toward North Fork Draw. Possible active poaching.”
Static chewed through the answer.
He caught only part of it. Backup delayed. Road washout. Maintain distance.
Daniel almost laughed once, without humor. Maintaining distance was good advice if the danger stayed where it was told.
He moved.
The woods opened into a burn scar from a fire older than the one that had marked his face. Black trunks stood like broken posts across the slope, and young lodgepole pines grew waist-high between them. Fresh snow had survived in the shade, thin enough to show everything that had crossed it.
Daniel saw wolf tracks first. Many of them.
Then he saw boot tracks.
There were at least three men. One heavy, one with a bad heel, and one long-strided with narrow tread. They had moved fast, then slowed near the mouth of the draw. Drag marks crossed the ground. So did paw prints, sliding and doubled back over themselves in a pattern Daniel hated.
An animal had been fighting to get free.
He found the first trap near a stump, sprung and empty. The second had been covered with pine needles beside a game trail. Daniel marked it, photographed it, and disabled it with practiced caution, saying nothing as anger settled in him like a hot stone.
Near the third set, he found blood on white hair.
Not much. Enough.
A memory came at him then, unwanted and sharp: Clint Harrow in the sheriff’s parking lot two winters earlier, face flushed, telling anyone who would listen that wolves were government pets and every one of them ought to be handled “the old way.” Daniel remembered the laughter from a few men near the trucks. He remembered not laughing. He remembered Clint looking straight at him and saying, “You’ll pick the wrong side one day, Mercer.”
Daniel had not answered then.
He wished he had.
The ravine narrowed, the sides dropping away into a chute of wet stone and old snow. Meltwater ran unseen beneath the surface, hollowing out pockets that could swallow a boot to the knee. Daniel slowed because rushing in blind would help no one.
Voices floated up from below.
“Keep pressure on that line.”
That was Clint.
Another voice answered, lower and rougher. “She’s not done.”
Mason Reeves, Daniel thought. Former Army, part-time guide, full-time shadow behind Clint when money was involved. Mason had once been steady, at least in the way men with combat behind them sometimes tried very hard to be steady. But he had lost work, then a marriage, then most of the patience that kept him from following worse men into worse choices.
A third voice spoke last.
“Then end it before the others circle back.”
Daniel did not recognize that one. It was calm in a way that chilled him more than anger would have.
He dropped to one knee behind a deadfall and looked down.
At the bottom of the draw, fog lay thick above the melting creek bed. Three men stood in a muddy clearing between the rocks. Clint Harrow was easy to recognize even from above: barrel chest, gray beard, battered cap pulled low, his old canvas coat dark with moisture. Mason stood beside him with a limp in his stance and a long gun held low.
The third man was tall and spare, dressed too cleanly for a local and too comfortably for an amateur. He had a narrow face, a trimmed dark beard, and a pale line of scar tissue running along one cheek. He stood apart from the others, watching the ground as if he owned the decision of what lived and what didn’t.
At their feet lay the mother wolf.
She was on her side, breathing hard, one leg tangled in a line Daniel couldn’t fully see. Blood darkened the white fur along her ribs. She lifted her head once and tried to rise, but Mason stepped closer and she sank back with a sound that was more exhaustion than surrender.
The pup was not visible.
Daniel’s stomach tightened.
He eased backward, planning to radio coordinates before he moved in. Then something white flashed at the far edge of the clearing.
The pup.
He had circled down through a side chute and stood behind a rock no bigger than a suitcase, trembling but focused on his mother. Daniel saw the little body gather itself.
“No,” Daniel whispered.
The pup sprang.
He made it three desperate bounds before Clint saw him.
“Well, look at that,” Clint said, and lifted his weapon.
Daniel came down the slope before he could think better of it. He slid more than climbed, grabbing brush, knocking loose snow and gravel. Halfway down, he shouted the only thing that might stop a man with his finger already committed.
“Clint!”
All three men turned.
The pup froze.
Daniel landed hard at the bottom of the draw, one hand braced in the mud. His knee jarred, pain flashing up his leg, but he forced himself upright and stepped between Clint and the pup.
“Put it down,” Daniel said.
Clint stared at him, first surprised, then irritated, then pleased in a way that made Daniel’s skin crawl. “Mercer,” he said. “I figured that cabin smoke was yours.”
Mason’s eyes moved from Daniel’s badge to the radio on his shoulder. He did not raise his weapon, but he didn’t lower it either.
The third man studied Daniel like he was a problem of distance and timing.
“This drainage is closed,” Daniel said. His voice came out calmer than he felt. “You’ve got illegal sets on state-managed ground, an injured protected animal, and discharged firearms in a closed corridor. Drop the guns and step away from the wolf.”
Clint’s mouth twisted. “Protected,” he said. “That what we’re calling them now?”
“That’s what the law calls this area.”
“The law doesn’t come up here unless men like you drag it by the leash.”
The mother wolf lifted her head again. Her amber eyes found Daniel. The pup crouched beside a rock, shaking so hard his ears trembled.
Daniel did not look away from the men.
“Last warning,” he said. “Step back.”
The third man smiled faintly. “You alone?”
Daniel said nothing.
That answered the question more clearly than he wanted.
The man with the scar raised his weapon—not hurried, not dramatic, simply efficient—and aimed it at Daniel’s chest.
“Then you should’ve stayed on your ridge,” he said. – Behind Daniel, from somewhere in the fog above the ravine, a wolf began to growl…
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