Part 3
Grant’s boots scraped above the overhang, then passed. Evan stayed where the rock concealed them until rain began to strike the river hard enough to blur its surface. Silver lay across his knees, the pup wedged against her belly. The bullet had crossed her shoulder; the bleeding slowed beneath the cloth he pressed there, but she was cold and barely lifted her head.
The rain damped the fire upstream. Over its retreating roar Evan heard a helicopter. He edged out far enough to see a small news aircraft settling on a gravel bar beyond the bend, outside the active fire line. A woman climbed out with a camera operator. She pointed back toward the charred slope, then toward the river. Evan recognized Kay Nolan, whose local reports had once been the only place anyone asked why the logging roads kept expanding. His live camera must have held a signal long enough for her to see the flames and Grant on the ledge.
Kay had once stopped Evan at the post office to ask whether the new haul road crossed a protected creek. He had drawn the boundary on the back of her receipt. The story ran that night; a week later the county said the road was temporary and allowed it to remain. Evan had kept the clipping in a folder with his maps. Seeing her now did not make him certain she could help, but it meant one person outside Grant’s circle had followed the line he drew.
Evan tried to call. The syllable vanished in his throat. Before he could try again, Grant appeared across the gravel with Mike beside him. Both carried fuel cans. Grant stopped at the waterline and bent to pick something from the sand: Evan’s cap, lost in the whirlpool. He felt along the lining, pulled out the tiny card, and held it up to Mike.
The card was the clearest record of the envelope, the machinery, and the mayor at the claim markers. Evan had no safe way to cross the open stones. He looked at Silver. Her eyes were open; when he rose, she shifted as if to keep the pup in sight. He lifted the pup onto a dry fold of his coat and helped Silver stand, careful of her shoulder.
Grant raised his boot over the card. A wolf emerged from the mist behind him. Then another crossed the creek, and several more shapes took form among the trees. Evan had seen this pack on the ridge before. Silver had never belonged to him; the animals had their own territory and their own reason to move away from the fire.
Yet at that moment their path cut off Grant’s route to the truck.
Kay’s camera operator rounded the rock with his camera running. Grant brought up his rifle. Silver moved ahead of Evan, unsteady but determined to put herself between the gun and the pup. Evan left his gun lowered. He had seen what a shot could do, and Kay stood within the line of fire.
“Put it down, Grant,” he called. The words were rough, but Kay heard them. Grant glanced toward her lens. “You have the card. They can see you.”
Grant pulled the trigger. A dry click carried across the gravel. In his hurry through mud and ash he had failed to seat the next round. He stared at the gun, then at the wolves, and let it fall. Evan held out his hand. Grant gave up the card because the camera was close and every other way off the bar had closed. Mike stepped away from him. Kay’s operator kept filming the fuel cans and the card as Evan put it into a pocket.
Mike watched the movement of the card with an expression Evan could not read. They had known each other since before the old fire. Mike had measured the trees Evan photographed, signed the maps he challenged, and occasionally brought him fish from the river. Now he stood beside a can of fuel and said nothing. Evan did not have breath enough to ask which of those versions was real.
Kay spoke into her microphone, giving the name of the river and the two men she could see. Her crew’s live uplink reached people well beyond Cedar Reach. Evan wanted to tell her about Daniel, about the den, about the second pup. Instead he knelt beside Silver. She had reached her limit. One of the larger wolves approached, touched its nose briefly to her ear, and retreated when she did not follow. Coal, as Evan had begun to think of the dark surviving pup, pressed against her flank.
A second rotor beat came from behind the ridge, then a third. The aircraft that landed wore the logo of Gray Resource Holdings, the firm pursuing the lithium claim. Conrad Gray stepped out in a clean field coat with private guards behind him. He took in the news camera, Grant, the wolves, and Evan’s hand over his pocket.
One of his men knocked the camera onto the stones. Its lens shattered. Kay shouted that the feed had been live; Gray told her it was over and turned to Evan. “The card belongs to my company,” he said.
Evan could hear another camera still running somewhere near Kay’s helicopter, but he could not see it. Gray’s guards spread out.
The pack had withdrawn to the trees.
Silver lowered her muzzle to the stones, and Coal crawled beneath Evan’s coat. Gray held out an open palm, certain that Evan would choose the card over the wolf.
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