Wild Country

by Anne Bishop

  Judd came around the table to stand beside him. “Not a lot of choices.”

  “Not a lot,” Parlan agreed. Some he already knew weren’t more than the station with a few houses and a couple of stores for the railroad employees. And some didn’t have even the employees anymore, despite the hazard pay that went with manning such a place. “Here.” He pointed to a town that had been of modest size before the war and might still be. Not every human place had been decimated, and there was something about that town . . . “We’ll meet up here.”

  “Why?”

  “It has an east-west connection right across this half of the Midwest. A northern line begins there as well and looks like it runs all the way to the east-west line we’re on now, near the High North border. That kind of loop could be useful to us. And it has roads that will give us even more access to any towns around the area.” Parlan ran his finger along the westbound track to the town located at the northern end of the Elder Hills. “I have a feeling this is where our luck will change.” He tapped the town’s name.

  Bennett.

  CHAPTER 21

  Moonsday, Messis 20

  Jana stared at the ceiling, then looked at the clock on her bedside table. Stared at the ceiling. Looked at the clock.

  Too early to get up. Humans weren’t being held to a dark-to-dawn curfew within the boundaries of the town, although no one was guaranteeing their safety if they went out when it was dark. As a deputy, she didn’t have to heed any curfew when she was on duty. But those howls she’d heard yesterday had come from beings that were way too close to her house, and she had no desire to cross paths with one of them just because she couldn’t sleep.

  “If you’re not going to sleep, do something useful.” Patting the bedside table until she found the scrunchie she’d left there, she pulled her hair back into a tail, shoved her feet into the sandals she was using in lieu of slippers, and headed for the office/workroom she and Barb were still setting up. But a whine from the living room had her changing direction.

  “Hey, girl,” Jana said softly. “Quiet, now. We don’t want to wake up Barb.”

  Rusty whined again.

  Would she rather let the dog pee on the pad in the crate and then have to wash it or accompany Rusty outside—in the dark—and let the pup do her business in the backyard?

  It’s our darn yard, she thought as she opened the crate and reached for the leash.

  Nope. No leash. Rusty rushed past her to the back door.

  Jana followed, flipped on the kitchen light over the sink and the back door light that lit part of the yard. She unlocked the back door and pushed the screen door open. Rusty bolted outside and squatted just beyond the steps, which meant the dog hadn’t yet learned what part of the yard was meant to be her lavatory or she just couldn’t hold it anymore.

  Snagging the big flashlight they were leaving on the kitchen counter, Jana went outside. The light at the back door didn’t reach the farthest end of the yard, and she didn’t want to step on something that might object when she took the dog back there in case Rusty needed to do more than piddle.

  The pup found something of interest back there, and whatever it was it didn’t slither or crawl away from the flashlight beam. Then Rusty looked toward the house and wagged her tail.

  Something in the dark, moving toward them. Must have climbed over the fence. Or jumped over the fence.

  Gods, was this one of the fighting dogs she’d been told to watch for because they were a danger to the children in town as well as to pets?

  She reached for the gun she wasn’t carrying as she aimed the flashlight beam toward a big shape that was just a little darker now than the yard—and got an annoyed growl in response as she shined the light right into Virgil’s eyes.

  She jerked her wrist to shine the light down. “Sorry. Didn’t know it was you.” Now she felt foolish for thinking the dogs would come to a settled street that had Wolves living in the house at the corner. But better to think about the dogs than to think about the fact that she was wearing nothing but her tank top and boxer pajamas since she hadn’t expected to be seen by anyone except, maybe, her housemate.

  Virgil gave Rusty a quick sniff and lick, which must have been enough reassurance, because the pup went back to exploring the yard. Then he stood on his hind legs and shifted.

  Jana looked away but not before she’d seen more of her boss than she wanted to see. Did he think her clothes were some kind of invitation? Or . . .

  “What?” Virgil sounded like his usual gruff self.

  Act like you’re both in uniform. Act like you’re not in your pj’s and he’s not naked. “I wasn’t expecting to see anyone. You startled me.”

  “You said you wanted to talk. You were outside with Rusty and awake.” He cocked his head and studied her with those amber Wolf eyes. “Maybe awake.”

  Oh, she was plenty awake now. Plleeeennnnty.

  “You wanted to talk,” Virgil repeated.

  Yes, she did. But not in her backyard in the dark when she was and he was . . . Gods.

  “Why are you up so early?” she asked, changing the subject because she couldn’t remember what she’d wanted to talk to him about. Not looking at him but knowing what she’d see if she did look was darn distracting.

  Virgil focused on her house. “Some humans who settled a few streets from here took cats to be part of their packs.”

  “Adopting the animals left behind is good.” She knew Barb was planning to approach Evan and Kenneth about giving one of the available parakeets to Maddie since the girl had been so taken with Buddy the day Barb had looked after the children.

  “The bad dogs found the cat who went outside. Cats are fast, but it wasn’t fast enough. Not against that pack.”

  “Oh gods.” She’d have to tell Barb.

  Virgil growled. Rusty immediately stopped exploring and returned to Jana, pressing against her leg.

  “Barbara Ellen wants to believe they are not bad dogs,” he said, the growl still under the words. “But they are. They don’t hunt to eat. They hunt to kill because they like to kill. Do you see the difference?”

  “Yes.”

  “Big dogs. Big pack. They can take down bigger prey—or prey with weapons.”

  Suddenly Jana understood what Virgil was doing in her backyard. The pack was out there, close enough to be a possible threat. And she and Rusty, who were now members of his pack, were outside in the dark. Vulnerable.

  “Rusty is young,” he said, “and your teeth would do no good in a fight.”

  If she and Rusty were vulnerable, what would happen if the dogs attacked someone like Maddie? “We have to find them and kill them.”

  “Yes.”

  That simple. Driving the dogs away hadn’t been enough. They were dangerous adversaries who had returned to his territory and now had to be eliminated.

  “I’ll head over to the office as soon as I can.” As he turned away, she said, “Virgil? Are you okay with me bringing Rusty to the station?”

  The sky had lightened enough that she could see his bafflement. “When we hunt, she needs to be in the den where it is safe. When we are not hunting, she should be with her pack. How else will she learn?”

  That, too, was simple for him.

  Jana petted her dog. “Come on, girl. Time for breakfast. Breakfast?”

  Virgil snorted a laugh. “Do you expect her to know all these words?”

  “Not all of them,” she said defensively. “But she’s smart enough to learn words.”

  “Food. It is one word that means the same thing whether it’s morning or night. That one she will learn quickly.”

  He walked with them. Walked into the light from the back door just as Barb opened the screen door.

  Jana recognized shock—and was certain her friend was blushing when Barb squeaked out, “Morning, Sheriff.”

&nb
sp; “Barbara Ellen.” He paused a moment, as if trying to figure out why she was acting . . . odd. Then he shifted to his Wolf form, jumped the fence, and disappeared.

  “Coffee’s ready.” Barb filled two mugs as soon as Jana came inside.

  Jana busied herself with giving Rusty a scoop of kibble and didn’t look at her housemate.

  “Okay,” Barb said. “I’m not an expert or anything, but Sheriff Wolfgard . . . He’s pretty . . . manly. Don’t you think?”

  “I guess.” Really didn’t want to think about it. Really didn’t.

  “Do you wonder . . .” Barb set her mug on the counter. “I mean, the Others can shift, right? So . . . do you think they can . . . adjust . . . parts?”

  Jana spit a mouthful of coffee on the counter. “Gods, Barb!”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered?”

  “Not until now!”

  “Oh. Well, I’ve wondered, and it’s not like you can ask any of them.”

  Jana mopped up the coffee with a dishrag. She rinsed it out and hung it to dry before grabbing what was left of her coffee. “I have to head in early.”

  “Can I catch a ride? I wanted to sort some books before I take care of the animals.” She paused before adding, “Joshua is meeting me. He sent a message that he has news.”

  “Sure. I just need a quick shower since I cleaned up last night.”

  Grabbing her robe from the back of her bedroom door, she spotted the note she’d written to Tobias last night. Had to mail that this morning.

  It had been a long while since she’d met anyone as nice as Tobias who also made her hormones flutter, and he filled out his jeans quite well, thank you very much. But she hadn’t seen him, so it wasn’t her fault that, while she took a cool shower that bordered on cold, she kept picturing Tobias’s head on top of Virgil Wolfgard’s body.

  * * *

  * * *

  Virgil continued his inspection of the front of the wolverine’s house—the inspection that had been interrupted when he’d heard her and Rusty outside in the yard. In the dark. The bad dogs should be denned somewhere since some of the Elders who lived in the hills were nocturnal hunters and very good at taking prey that had bedded down for the night. Like bison and deer . . . and humans.

  No scent of dog except for Rusty. That was good. Choosing the large rock near the front step—a rock, he’d been told, that was decorative, although he couldn’t see the difference between it and all the other rocks outside the town—he lifted a leg and marked it to warn off the bad dogs and to inform the Elders who prowled these streets that the Wolves paid particular attention to the beings in this house.

  Kane joined him a minute later.

  Kane said.

  Virgil replied.

  From the back of the house, Virgil heard the wolverine make a sound that was close to a yelp. Words, yes, but . . . yelp.

  They listened, but there were no other sounds of possible distress. What they did hear was water. Someone in the shower.

  Kane said.

 

  Kane trotted up the street, a dark, silent shape. Virgil stayed and listened to the water.

  The bad dogs had retreated from the Wolfgard territory, but now they were returning. There had been more than two dozen dogs in the pack, but Virgil doubted there were that many left. The dogs might have stayed around houses outside the new town boundaries forever, hunting prey or scavenging what food they could find in the houses that had the little animal doors without fighting the Wolfgard. But they had drawn the attention of the Elders, and now the dogs were being hunted instead of being the hunters. Now they were being driven back into Wolfgard territory, squeezed between two kinds of terra indigene. They would try to take the Wolfgard territory. It was the only place they could go, but it would make no difference. One way or another, the bad dogs had to die so that the Elders would tolerate the dogs that were useful . . . or not a threat to anyone. Like Rusty.

  The bad dogs had to die before they killed more than cats. There were young among the humans living in Bennett—and if the adults weren’t vigilant, the young were always the easiest prey.

  The water stopped. How long did it take a human female to groom herself after washing? More to the point, how long did it take the wolverine?

  Figuring the answer was not long, Virgil ran back to the Wolfgard house. When he reached the front door, he almost shifted to human form to let himself in, but there were lights going on in some of the houses. Not in the houses closest to the one the Wolfgard now claimed, but some humans were awake and might open a door or look out a window and see his human form. Which shouldn’t matter since he was a Wolf regardless of form, but Barbara Ellen getting squeaky reminded him that looking human meant wearing human clothes because naked meant something to humans, who got strange about something that meant nothing except that humans couldn’t adequately communicate with terra indigene who weren’t in human form, so sometimes shifting to that form was required even if clothes weren’t available.

  The wolverine hadn’t squeaked about him shifting in order to talk to her. He approved. She had enough inadequacies, being human and all, but she was showing that she had potential to be a good working member of the enforcer pack. And she had enough bristly, puffed-up attitude most of the time that he wasn’t giving up on the idea that one of her ancestors had been a Wolverine, despite the possibility being impossible.

  Or . . . She said she’d been raised by foster parents. Maybe they had been Wolverines and she’d learned the attitude from them.

  Entertained by that thought, Virgil trotted around the house before shifting to human form and opening the back door. John and Kane were in the kitchen, pulling things out of the fridge and cupboards to make before-work food.

  “Kane, I’m going to pack one of those carryalls with clothes for both of us,” Virgil said. “John, when I’ve packed what we need, you run down to the wolverine’s house and put the carryall and our shoes in her vehicle. She will be going to work early.”

  “I’ll ride with her,” John said. “I want to start work early today too. Joshua Painter is going to work in the bookstore with me. He likes books and needs to learn a trade if he’s going to live around humans.”

  “Barbara Ellen likes books,” Kane said casually as he cut up a rare-cooked beef roast into slabs of meat for the three of them. “She spends more time helping to sort books than she needs to.”

  “Is Barbara Ellen receptive to mating?” John asked as he opened two cans of peach slices. The Wolfgard ate meat, but in human form, other foods were . . . tasty . . . and eating sweet fruit with the meat was surprisingly pleasant.

  “Don’t know,” Kane replied. “But Joshua isn’t. At least, not yet.”

  Not interested in discussing human mating rituals, Virgil walked out of the kitchen, pulled a small carryall out from under his bed, and filled it with two sets of clothes for him and two for Kane. He found another carryall that was big enough to hold the boots Kane wore when he was in human form and the shoes Virgil preferred. The boots were more like what the human males wore on ranches, but Virgil, being in human form most of the time when he was on duty, had decided he wanted a shoe that was comfortable to walk in and easy to remove if he had to shift to Wolf form quickly.

  He didn’t want to think about Barbara Ellen being receptive to mating—or the sex thing, which, from what he could figure out, wasn’t the same as mating. He was sure the wolverine would tell him it wasn’t any of his business, that humans were free to do the sex thing with anyone they pleased. But it was his business because Barbara Ellen had ties to Lakeside, and he and Tolya wanted to remain friends with the terra indigene who lived in Lakeside.

  Virgil closed the carryall but d
idn’t pick it up because another thought occurred to him.

  What about the wolverine? How close were her ties to the Lakeside Courtyard and the police pack that was connected to the Courtyard? And how receptive was she to a human male’s mating overtures?

  * * *

  * * *

  Tobias drove through the early morning light, wondering if he was acting like a fool. He was the foreman of Prairie Gold’s ranch, and he had work to do and responsibilities to meet. But, damn it, there was that spark he felt whenever he was around Jana, and he thought she felt some interest in him too—and not just as someone who could teach her to rope and ride. But even if she wasn’t interested in getting better acquainted on a personal level, even if the spark he felt fizzled, he wanted her to ride well and develop a partnership with Mel. Sure, she was supposed to be patrolling streets that were part of the town or had been part of the town, but anything could happen once you were in the wild country. And people being people, anything could happen within the town.

  He wasn’t a stranger to women. He liked their company and had accepted invitations over the years to participate in mutual pleasure. But some had never gotten past a kiss because, even though his mother was the one who could sense other people, he’d had the feeling some of those women had wanted him because they wanted to be a foreman’s wife in order to rule the house and the ranch’s bank account.

  And there hadn’t been this kind of spark, even with the women whose company he’d enjoyed in all manner of ways. An attraction, sure, but not the kind of spark that was pulling him back to Bennett when he should be putting in time on the ranch.