Placing the Hawken’s stock on the ground, Evelyn leaned on the rifle and bowed her head. Her emotions were making a mess of her head. She must keep them under a tight rein and work out what she would say to Chases Rabbits.
Evelyn had decided enough was enough. While it was flattering that Chases Rabbits and Niwot wanted her for their woman, she was much too young to even think about marriage. Sure, some girls her age took husbands, but she had absolutely no interest in tying herself to someone for the rest of her life. Not at—
A strange feeling came over her. Twisting, Evelyn stared toward the trees. She would swear she was being watched; she could practically feel unseen eyes on her. Her mother had advised her never to discount her intuition, as it might save her life, but although she gazed long and hard into the shadowed timber, she saw nothing to account for her feeling.
Nerves, Evelyn reasoned, after her mother’s talk about grizzlies and painters and such. Chuckling at her silliness, she faced the azure lake and placed the Hawken across her lap.
Now where was she? Evelyn mused. Oh, yes; Chases Rabbits. He would be there in a few days, and she must be ready. She must be firm. She must make her wishes clear and insist he respect them.
Evelyn liked him. She truly did. But as a friend, not a potential husband. She had no interest in courting or being courted, and would sooner kiss her horse than a male. It was—
Again that strange feeling of being watched came over her. Shifting, Evelyn scanned the tree line, with the same result as before. Not so much as a bird stirred. That in itself was unusual. It struck her how silent the forest had become. Puzzled, she stood and moved toward it, the Hawken level at her waist, her thumb on the hammer. A tiny voice deep in her mind told her she was being ridiculous, that there was no cause to be concerned, that it was nerves and only nerves.
Evelyn halted twenty feet out. She did not care to get too close in case something rushed her. Mountain lions—and grizzlies, for that matter—were incredibly swift when they had a need to be. She probed every swatch of shade, every bush and under every tree, and did not spot so much as a butterfly.
Yet the sensation of being watched would not go away.
Her unease growing, Evelyn debated whether to enter the woods and root whatever it was out. She started to but changed her mind. Her Hawken was powerful enough to bring down a man or a big cat, but it would barely slow a griz. Caution dictated she not overstep herself.
Evelyn backed toward the lake. She was so intent on the forest that when something clutched at her arm, she shrieked and whirled, prepared to sell her life as dearly as a King should.
“What in blazes has you so spooked, sis?”
“Zach!” Evelyn blurted.
Zachary King was nine years her senior. Of the two of them, he most bore the stamp of their mother’s heritage, both in his features and his swarthy cast, and in the Shoshone-style buckskins and style of hair he affected. Like her, he had ink-black hair and emerald green eyes. Like her, he was armed with a rifle and pistol. He also, like his father, did not go anywhere without a bowie strapped to one hip and a tomahawk on the other. “Who did you think it was? One of those handsome suitors of yours?”
Evelyn forgot about the thing in the trees. “Quit teasing me. I didn’t ask them to come courting, you know.”
“Females are scarce in these parts,” Zach grinned, “which makes you as valuable as gold. Warts and all.”
“They can’t be all that scarce,” Evelyn rejoined. “Even you found a wife.”
Zach’s grin evaporated and he squared his broad shoulders. “I’ll have you know she finds me right handsome.”
“Did she ever get those spectacles she needs?”
“Why, you little scamp,” Zach said, and burst out laughing. “You sure can hold your own.”
“I had a good teacher,” Evelyn said with genuine affection. For all the barbs they traded, she adored her brother, adored him dearly. He had forever enshrined himself in her heart by saving her from her kidnapper.
“So what are you up to?” Zach asked. “I saw you over by the trees and figured you were looking to shoot some poor defenseless squirrel.”
Evelyn’s lips pinched together. “I won’t shoot anything unless I have to. You know that. I thought I was being watched, but it was my imagination.”
“Oh?” Zach’s eyes narrowed. “How about we have a look-see?” He assumed she would agree and made for the greenery, his movements as lithe as a panther’s. “It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it, sis?”
“What does?”
“Our new valley. It’s not like the old one. We were fairly safe there. Pa and me had killed off all the predators.” Zach paused, and frowned. “It beats me why he’s become so dead set against killing. Sometimes it has to be done.”
“He’s sick of it, is all,” Evelyn repeated her father’s justification. “You can’t blame him after all the critters he’s done in.” She had never much liked killing, herself, but if they did not shoot game, they did not eat meat. It was that simple.
“I hope to God I don’t get like him,” Zach said. “A person has to do what they have to do. That’s all there is to it.”
Evelyn suddenly touched his arm, and stopped. “There. Do you feel that?” Her skin prickled as if she had a heat rash.
“Feel what?”
“We’re being watched.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Zach said, but he did not discount it out of hand. Experience had taught him not to. He surveyed the woodland, and his brow furrowed. “That’s funny. It’s as quiet as a burial ground.”
“I noticed that, too.”
“Stay close, little one,” Zach admonished, and made for a gap in the trees. He hoped they would flush something. He loved to hunt, almost as much as he enjoyed counting coup on an enemy.
“Stop calling me that.” Evelyn raised her rifle to her shoulder. She did not doubt for a moment that her brother could handle anything they encountered short of a grizzly, and her father had slain the silver-tip that once roamed the valley.
Shadows dappled the vegetation. Above, cottonwood leaves fluttered in the breeze. A patch of weeds rustled.
“Too bad one of your suitors isn’t here,” Zach jousted. “We could stake him out as bait.”
Evelyn almost kicked him. But a loud commotion broke out in a nearby thicket, and a female grouse took wing like a feathered cannonball.
Instantly Zach pivoted, tracking the bird with his cheek tucked to his Hawken. His finger curled around the trigger.
“Don’t,” Evelyn said.
For a few seconds Zach did not move or speak. The grouse disappeared among a cluster of pines, and he reluctantly lowered his rifle. “If Lou and I go hungry tonight, it’s your fault. That was a mighty plump bird.”
“You have plenty of venison left from that buck you shot two days ago,” Evelyn reminded him.
Zach studied the ground for sign. It was covered by a carpet of leaves and pine needles, and the only tracks that would show clearly were those of heavy animals like elk and deer and bear. He moved past a maple. In its shade grew a shooting star, as some called it, and there, stuck to the long, slender leaves at the base of the stalk, was a clump of short, fine, dark brown hairs. Stooping, he pulled the cluster off and held it in the palm of his hand.
“What do you have there?” Evelyn asked.
Zach sniffed the clump, scowled, and held his hand out to her. “It wasn’t your imagination.”
Evelyn bent and sniffed. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Try again, lunkhead,” Zach said, and practically shoved the hairs up her nose.
Evelyn recoiled. The foul musk was faint but potent. “Is this what I think it is?”
Zach grimly nodded. “You were being watched, all right, little sister. By a wolverine.”
Three
Four of the five were bewildered by their mother’s death. They had seen many animals die; they had killed many themselves. But it never occurred to them o
n the almost purely instinctual level on which they functioned, that their mother would suffer the same fate.
Only the largest male was unaffected. Like the rest, he watched from concealment as the strange creature pointed a long stick at his mother. He heard a mysterious blast and witnessed his mother’s skull erupt in a shower of fur, bone and brains. He saw the strange creature climb down off the four-legged elk-like animal, and with an effort lift his mother’s body and throw it over the four-leg, which shied and would have run off had the strange creature not held on to a vine that dangled from the four-leg’s neck.
No sooner were his mother’s killers out of sight than the male padded to where his mother had lain and sniffed at the pool of blood. She was gone, gone forever. He knew that as surely as he knew anything. The five of them were on their own.
The others came out of hiding and gathered around. The biggest female brushed against him and the big male growled. He did not like them so close. They were his sisters and brothers but he suddenly felt an urge to be by himself.
The big female was staring at him. The male met her stare, then turned and melted into the forest. He never glanced back. He did not have a special destination in mind. He wanted only to get away from the others.
Unthinkingly, the male headed down the mountain instead of up. The lights far below reminded him of the strange slayers, and he grew hot despite the chill of the night air. The male did not know what he would do when he got there. He just needed to go.
The den in which he had been raised was not far above, but the male would never visit it again. With his mother gone there was no need.
The lights went out long before he came to the valley floor. He prowled near the pile of logs his mother had visited but he did not go as close as she had. He had learned from her mistake. The strange ones were dangerous. They had long sticks that killed. He must avoid them. He must keep on going and leave the valley and find another of his own.
Instead, the male stood and stared at one of the log dens in which the strange ones lived. He would like to sink his teeth into one of them, to rip and rend until the strange one was no more, like his mother. Until the strange one was dead, dead, dead.
The big male looped wide of the log den and went into the vegetation to the west of the water. For the rest of the night he hunted, flushing a rabbit at one point and a small doe later. He killed both. The rabbit he devoured in a few great bites but the doe was more than he could consume so he marked the remains by spraying it with musk and kicking a few leaves and sticks over it. Then he went into the undergrowth near the water and curled up in a thicket to sleep.
The male did not awaken until the sun was high in the sky. He stretched and started to rise then flattened and slunk to where he had a better view of a strange one tramping north at the water’s edge. Apparently the noisy ones came in all sizes. This one was smaller than the others.
The male studied it and was considerably taken aback when it unexpectedly stopped and gazed in his direction.
The male was well hidden. He could not fathom how the strange creature knew he was there. He tensed when it came toward him and pointed a long stick. But the stick did not make thunder. Before long the strange creature was close enough that the male’s sensitive nose registered its scent.
Something about the smell impressed on the male that this particular strange one was female. He fought down an impulse to burst from the forest and rip her to pieces. Not so long as she held a long stick.
Presently a second strange one appeared, and they chattered. Surprise nearly cost the young male his life, for when the pair came toward the woods, he lay frozen in place until they were much too close. As it was, he snuck away unnoticed but it required all the stealth he possessed. With every step, he was tensed for the blast of a long stick and the searing explosion of his skull.
They did not spot him, though.
The larger of the two found some of his hair, and after more chattering, the pair headed for the log den to the south. The male let them go. He would bide his time. All creatures let their vigilance lapse, and the male would very much like to be within pouncing distance of a strange one when the strange one did not have a long stick.
Careful not to be seen, the male kept them in sight. Patience was called for, a trait for which his kind were noted. Eventually he would have his way; eventually he would feast on one of the strange creatures as he would on any other animal.
His mouth watered in anticipation.
The big female did not try to stop the biggest male from leaving. She felt no special tie to him. He had been a den mate and her brother but now that their mother was gone, they were on their own. She turned to go up the mountain and only went a short way when she realized the other three were following her.
Stopping, she glanced back. They stopped, too. They were looking at her with the same eager expectance they had shown toward their mother, and she divined in some indefinable manner that she had taken her mother’s place. She bared her teeth to snarl and drive them off but on an impulse she made the same soft low cry her mother always made to reassure them, and resumed climbing. They trotted close behind.
The female was hungry, but food could wait. She was making for their den. Only there would she and the others be safe.
Their mother had chosen well. The den was in a crevice above the tree line. It was barely wide enough for them to slip inside, and much too narrow for a grizzly or a black bear. On one side was an overhang that sheltered them from rain and snow and the worst of the wind. Mountain lions and wolves could get at them, but only from the front, and only by lunging under the overhang, thereby exposing their necks.
The female lay on her belly in the spot her mother always occupied. Her siblings sprawled nearby, the small male mewing over their loss. He was the only male left. The other two were females. They were bigger than he was, although not as big as the biggest female, and nearly identical in appearance; one had a lighter band of hair in front of her ears.
The three of them slept but the biggest female could not. She lay with her muzzle on her forepaws and closed her eyes, but rest eluded her. Conflicting urges tore at her like rapids in a mountain stream. She wanted to leave. She wanted to stay. She wanted to be by herself. She wanted to be with the others. Most of all, she wanted her mother, and somehow it comforted her to be lying where her mother had so often lain and to smell her mother’s lingering scent.
Time crawled on a snail’s back. Dawn was not far off when the female stirred, rose on all fours and grunted as her mother always grunted to awaken the others. She was out of the crevice and padding toward the forest before they caught up.
Hunger dominated her. Her kind needed to eat, and eat frequently.
She repeatedly tested the air. More than her eyes or even her ears, she relied on her nose the most. She could smell prey from a long distance off. Much farther than a bear could, or a wolf or a coyote. Her nose was the sharpest of all the creatures that roamed the mountains. To her the world was a complex mosaic of odors her nose deciphered with ease.
Now the breeze brought the big female a familiar scent. Elk were below. Not one or two but a herd in dense timber bordering a meadow. The herd was composed entirely of cows. The bulls would not join them until rutting season.
The female had been to the meadow before and knew of a gully that would conceal her and her siblings until they were near enough to pounce.
As silently as gliding owls, the four hairy hunters slunk lower. The female stopped when she heard the soft call of a cow. Flattening, she stalked to the gully’s rim and peered over it.
Eight cows and four calves were drifting toward the meadow. Elk routinely grazed at dawn and dusk. Afterward, they always retired into the depths of the forest and slept the day away.
The female ignored the cows. They were too large and too strong to bring down. Calves, though, were weak and slow, and one was plodding along in its mother’s wake quite near the gully.
Suddenly the mother
raised her head, sniffed, and uttered a barking snort. The danger cry. Wheeling, she bolted to the south. The other cows and calves immediately did the same.
A long bound carried the big female out of the gully. She was not as fast as the elk but over a short distance she could overtake them before they gained enough speed to elude her.
The calf squealed as the female came alongside. Eyes wide in terror, it veered to escape, but she glued herself to it like a second shadow.
Another squeal caused the mother to slow. She began to turn to come to her offspring’s aid.
The female knew she must accomplish her goal before the cow reached her. She did not fear the cow, but neither did she care to risk broken bones from the cow’s flailing hoofs. Mouth agape, she sprang. Her teeth sheared through soft flesh, severing a vein, and warm blood moistened her head and neck as she clamped her iron jaws and wrenched with all her might.
Squawking hysterically, the calf tumbled head over tail. A bony leg caught the female hard across the ribs, but she did not slacken her hold.
Suddenly the cow was there. Snorting in fury, she sought to stomp the female with her heavy hooves, but the female twisted aside. Frantic, the cow kicked at the big female’s head and missed.
Other cows converged. The female was about to be stomped to death in a furious frenzy, but the next instant the wolverine’s sisters and brother were among the elk, snapping and snarling.
In desperation the mother lowered her head and butted at the big female, but her brother leaped between them, his claws raking the cow from her ear to her eyes. One of her sisters snapped at the cow’s legs. The cow had no recourse but to flee, bawling in misery.
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