Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“I brought the rope. There’s an easier way back if we need it, though.” He pulls a pair of wire cutters from his pocket. “The Callaghan place has a blacktop running up from their main gate along the tree line we’re headed for.”

“Fuck, man!” Andrews takes his eyes off the twin ruts to glare at Manny. “Why the hell aren’t we on it now?

Manny shrugs, replacing the clippers. “You don’t cut somebody’s fence unless you have to. Hell, there was a time you could get arrested just for carrying a pair of cutters off your own property.”

“For a pair of pliers? Damn, I always knew you Westerners were weird.”

“Not for ‘a pair of pliers.’” Manny makes quote marks in the air with his right hand. “For what you were likely to do with ‘em. They’re rustler’s tools.”

“Yeesh.” Andrews’ breath hisses out between his teeth. “We’re getting major bones dislocated, just because of some antiquated law? Is there even anybody still on this Callaghan place to give a shit?”

“Well, bro, if there is, I don’t wanna get shot just to please your greenhorn butt. Mind that—oh shit.”

The right front tire comes down in a deeper than usual rut filled with snowmelt, spins and sinks to a halt. Andrews guns the motor, which only digs the wheel deeper and sends mud spattering out into the dry grasses on either side. Abruptly he cuts the engine. “Okay. You steer. I’ll get out and push.”

Manny shakes his head. “Turn it back on. Just don’t run over me when I say ‘go.’”

Not giving Andrews time to argue, he slides out his side of the truck and makes his way to the back, grinning. A city boy like Andrews might need a freeway to get from home to the corner store, but this is old hat to the ranch-bred Rivers clan. Leaning over the side of the truck bed, he extracts a three-foot length of two-by-eight. To the muffled sound of Andrews’ swearing, he wedges one end under the offending tire. “Okay!” he yells, hopping out from in front of the grille. “Go!”

With a grinding of gears, the truck surges out of the rut and onto level ground beyond. Manny tosses the board back into the truck bed and climbs into the passenger seat, steadying himself with his good hand. “Damn,” says Andrews, “I thought you said this thing was four-wheel-drive.”

“I did,” Manny agrees equably. “And it was. Been a little too occupied to fix the old rustbucket, if you know what I mean.”

A few hundred yards further up the rut, Manny surveys the line of bare trees along the top of a ridge. A vein of exposed limestone , broken and tumbled in spots, runs under it, here and there making a shallow overhang where a denning wolf might shelter. From what Koda has said, from what Tacoma has said she said, the place where she had found the dead pups ought to be just about—“Pull over at the next level spot,” he says. “The rockpile under that ledge doesn’t look natural.”

As the truck comes to a halt, he studies it more carefully. The pale spring light, standing down from noon, lays long shadows along the top of the rise, throwing cracks and gouges in the stone into sharp relief. In several places, blocks broken off from the rock face have fallen to the soft clay soil below, to be half hidden by rain-borne earth and winter-dry vegetation. Under the ledge, though, the ragged chunks of stone are all relatively small and massed together. Exposed rock above them shows dark and weathered above the outcropping, rootlets forcing their way through fissures where the rock will one day split but has not yet. Manny runs his hand over the stone, noting the rounded edges of old breaks, the grit where soil has discolored its creamy whiteness. He points to the cairn beneath the jutting rock layer. “Those rocks didn’t fall there. This has to be the lair.”

“The male should be somewhere around here, then,” says Andrews.

“Somewhere fairly close. You can bet the bastard put the trap near here because he thought there was a den in the area.” Turning back to the truck, he takes a 30.06 Winchester surmounted by a massive scope from the gun rack behind the seats. Carefully he loads a dart into the chamber and hands the weapon to Andrews. “You’re going to have to do the shooting if we need this; my left arm still won’t support any kind of weight.”

Andrews slips the rifle strap over his shoulder. “Just tell me when and what at.”

“Watch where you step,” says Manny, and heads toward an open glade to the east.

The snow still lies on the ground in patches, slick around its melting edges. As they mount the ridge and approach the small stand of trees, Manny can see what appears to be a mound still heaped beneath the bare canopy. The recent fall has drifted nowhere else, though, and here on the north side of the ridge it lies clean, marked only by the rippling wind. Andrews, at his shoulder, says softly, “That’s him, isn’t it?”

Manny nods grimly. “Likely. We need to make sure, though. Don’t put your feet down anywhere you can’t see. We don’t know how many of the damned things there are.”

A moment later, he kneels beside the mound, lightly brushing powder away from fur that still shows red where the blood of the terrible wounds has frozen. Very gently Manny clears the head and throat, still showing the puncture marks of teeth, works his way down the torn limbs and belly to the mangled leg. Rage rises within him, burning its way up from a spot just beneath his solar plexus, tightening his throat, clenching his fists into knots around the ice-hard flesh beneath his hands. From behind him he hears Andrews swearing softly and incessantly, biting off the words with the cold precision of an automatic weapon stitching a line of metal-jacketed rounds along an enemy front. “God. Damned. Son. Of. A. Mother. Fucking. Bitch!”

“You got it,” Manny says, levering himself up. He pulls a small camera from his pocket and pops off half a dozen shots, the flash bouncing glare off the snow. “Be sure you don’t step anyplace you can’t see the ground; there’s gonna be more of these fuckers.”

“How do we know where to look? They could be anywhere.”

“Not quite. See that chain?” Manny points to the base of the tree where the open trap lies half-buried in snow. “Gotta have something to anchor to, tree or fence post. We walk this line of woods first. Then we try Callaghan’s fence.”

The second trap has been set less than a hundred feet away, secured to the base of a slender birch. Andrews spots its chain, still new and glinting in the sun that filters through the branches. Carefully Manny brushes fallen leaves away from the tether, following it to the open jaws of the trap itself. A sharp jab at the center with a fallen branch snaps it shut with a sickening crunch. A third has been sprung, but nothing remains of its victim except a tuft of hair and a red-brown smudge along the jagged line of the teeth. Manny bends to rub the soft, stippled fur between his fingers, noting its length and silky texture. “Rabbit,” he says. “Somebody beat the bastard to it, coyote maybe.”

“Where now?”

“Let’s try—down!” Manny throws himself flat as a bullet whines past just millimeters over his head and buries itself in the trunk of the tree behind him. Andrews sprawls in the wet leaf mould beside him, tugging at the holstered pistol riding at the small of his back under his jacket. A second shot streaks past, and a third. “It’s coming from the fence line over there!”

“Who the hell—?” Andrews falls abruptly silent. From the north side of the line of woods comes the snap of a twig, then another. Someone moving carelessly, confident enough not to be concerned about giving away his position.

Manny pulls his own sidearm and pumps a round into the chamber. The footsteps are clearly audible now, moving along a line perhaps fifty yards to the east of them. Pushing up on his good elbow, Manny can just make out a ripple of movement in the thicker underbrush, a shadow darting from tree trunk to shadow to tree trunk again. Andrews shoots him a questioning look, raising his pistol; Manny waves it down again.