The Hunting Grounds

Chapter four

  The night dragged on, threatening the men with eternal darkness. It seemed as if even the stars had been driven off by the wolves, leaving behind a blank canvas sky.

 Sheriff Yale was sitting by the fire, staring at the badge that Alexander had taken from deputy Smith's remains. What he was seeing, Alexander couldn't tell, but he knew the old man was starting to crack. The porcelain mask he wore to hide his emotions had a chink in it.

  Deputy Miller looked lost too. His eyes were glassed over and it looked as if he had no mind in his head, as if he were an empty shell. He and deputy Smith had been close and the loss of latter had been particularly hard on him.

 As for Alexander, he hadn't known deputy Smith that well. His loss was tragic, but Alexander had seen plenty of good men die. It was numbing, but not altogether hard to swallow.

   Instead of dwelling on the man's death, Alexander was curious about the events just before it. Deputy Smith had gone into the outhouse and the wolf had come out. There had been no damage to the exterior of the building and Alexander didn't believe there had been enough time for the wolf to get inside to devour Smith. So another theory had been forming. One that made him shudder at the thought. The wolf was deputy Smith.

  Even just thinking it made him feel stupid. There had to be another possibility. It was craziness to think a man would turn into a wolf, and yet he was certain that was the case. But the matter of how he had turned into a wolf, that was the most troubling part. It had to have been the bite. There was no other explanation.

 That meant that if any of them were bitten, they would become a wolf.

   Alexander kept this realization to himself for fear of being dismissed. Neither Yale, nor Miller would likely listen to him right now anyway. In their eyes, deputy Smith was dead. They'd seen it happen, even if they hadn't actually laid eyes on him when the wolf tore into his flesh. So the night dragged on with sheriff Yale and deputy Miller mourning the loss of their comrade.

  The fire had started to wither as it starved for more wood to fuel its hunger, but there was no more wood in the house and nobody dared brave the outside to get more. Soon it became little more than a flickering candle, then extinguished altogether. So they sat in the dark, their teeth chattering as they pulled their jackets tighter around their frozen bodies. It seemed that if the wolves didn't get them, the cold would.

 When the bite of the freezing cold finally became too unbearable, the men huddled together for warmth. They put aside their discontent with one another and did what had to be done for survival. There would be time to argue the points of blame later.

  Morning came. It was well after nine when the sun had finally crept far enough into the sky that the men felt comfortable enough to break from their huddle and begin to move. There were no words exchanged. The only sound was the ruckus produced by three men collecting their equipment for a long ride that lay ahead of them.

  Alexander was the first to step out the door, and he had his rifle shouldered with his finger over the guard. The yard was still. Nothing moved.

  They crept across the yard, their eyes darting toward the edges of the woods where shadows still pooled. Each of the men imagined eyes were staring at them from those shadows.

  When they reached the stable, Alexander went to the door and cut loose the rope they had used to keep it closed. Inside, their horses were still in their stalls; alive and unharmed.

  The ride back to Cedar Creek was long and tense, but otherwise uneventful. They had set a fast pace at the start of the ride, only to slow a few miles out from the homestead. The terrain posed as much of a threat to a careless rider as the wolves did. Besides, the horses couldn't run all day. Their hearts would explode from the overexertion.