As Dieter and Molly sank into it she mumbled, “You’d think that steel barrel was extension of his dong,”
Dieter leaned back into an orange and black afghan, his rear end too close to the floor for comfort. Through a window at the back wall, he watched a herd of llamas cavorting and marveled at all the shades and patterns of black, white, brown, and gray. No two animals appeared to have the same mix.
Molly said, “Doc here delivered a colt early this morning over at the Loudermilk farm. Would’ve been breech if he hadn’t straightened out the little thing before it popped out.”
“Loudermilks, huh?” Josh replied. “Now that old man has something going there, don’t he?”
Dieter had no idea what he was hinting at, but it didn’t feel like the right time to get into a deep discussion about the Loudermilks. In fact, he’d rather avoid the subject and the family altogether. Josh walked into the open kitchen where he could work and still take part in the conversation. “I’ll fix us up some seng tea while Molly fills you in on what’s been going on.”
She leaned back into the sofa and looked over at Dieter with a wrinkled brow. “The number of livestock kills reported around our area is frightening. I hardly know where to begin. I mean, there’s the Henderson ranch down on Aspen Loop. They had two sheep killed just like Josh’s llama. Then there’s the heifer on the Jennings’ spread, down by Cougar Creek.”
“I didn’t know about that one,” Josh shouted from the kitchen.
“Do you want to let me talk?” she asked. “Or you gonna come in here and tell the stories?”
When there was no reply, Molly leaned over to Dieter and whispered. “Lonely son-of-a-pistol.” She sat up straight and spoke louder. “The Stewarts live next to our property and they lost two calves in a way that looked darn similar to me. That’s only the ones we know about. I keep getting reports of wolf kills above old Route thirty-six and even down near West Yellowstone.” She shrugged as if it was all beyond mortal comprehension.
The teakettle whistled and Dieter watched Josh pull a mason jar with dried root from a cabinet. While the tea brewed, Josh commented on how much harder it had become over the years to find a good ginseng crop. Damn stuff was so popular with the herbal crowd, everybody and his brother was harvesting it. When he poked around with his stick last time out looking for seng, he ran into a diamondback coiled up right there in the underbrush. Thicker than his forearm.
“Six feet long if it was an inch,” Josh added. He dribbled honey into each mug and served both before settling opposite them into his overstuffed easy chair with a coffee stain on the arm the size of a silver dollar. Josh lifted his cup and tilted it so the steaming tea rolled over the rim and down into the saucer. After swishing the puddle around, he brought the saucer to his mouth while he blew across it. He then perched his lips against the tilted saucer and slurped.
Molly turned to Dieter. “We go back a few years with Jack Corey.” She said they’d become acquainted with the chief ranger when Washington started talking about bringing wolves back to Yellowstone, of all the crazy ideas.
Josh shook an index finger at Dieter. “And you know why the wolf population had dwindled to zero in the Park?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because the feds killed every last one of ‘em decades ago.”
“The National Park Service in Washington was determined to return the wolves to Yellowstone,” Molly said. “They couldn’t have cared less what the ranchers and people who lived here thought about it. What with the terrible winters, the number of stillborn, disease, mountain lions, and now they were talking wolves?”
“Did they hold any public hearings?” Dieter asked.
“A slew of them,” Molly said. “Josh even spoke at one.” She nodded his way.
“I told ‘em that I never worried about wolf packs troubling us,” Josh said. He slurped the last puddle of tea from his saucer. “They’d have plenty to feed on in the Park, what with all the elk and deer. What you can’t guard against is the wolf that strays. The wolf forced out of the pack and becomes a loner left to fend for itself. The history of the West is filled with the tales of renegades like that… and the hell they raised.”
SEVEN
It was all news to Dieter, he thought as he drove back to his cabin. He had no idea what he’d stepped into with Molly’s call that morning. He only knew that he was going to have to find a diplomatic way to back out of getting involved. It was all too risky for a new veterinarian in town to take sides on an issue as big as that—wolves from a National Park attacking livestock of local ranchers. Best to stay low key and just perform the service he had come there to do and do that well. That would take up enough of his time, especially with two young kids to raise by himself.
A horse trail in the distance meandered through an open meadow.
He’d grown up riding horseback on weekends at a small farm in the Amish country west of Philadelphia. And during summers in Idaho he’d learned to ride with confidence from Uncle Cleve, the same man who had taught him to love and care for animals. He could recite from long-buried memories the stories of the West that Uncle Cleve used to tell as they rode Appaloosas along stony trails beneath vast blue skies that spanned heaven and Idaho. Each summer he’d listen to the same accounts again. They would come alive with new twists, like hamburgers served up with different trimmings. He often wondered if Uncle Cleve just made up the stories as they traveled but it didn’t matter diddlysquat. Even before he knew cars or girls, those brief summers of his youth with Uncle Cleve shaped his love for nature, God and creatures of the earth.
Dieter wasn’t going to make it home before emptying his bladder. After crossing the bridge over the Madison, he pulled off to the roadside. Usually he’d see a fisherman or two that time of day but none was in sight, although an SUV was parked ahead. Leaving Rusty in the truck, he dashed out and hid behind a stand of aspen to relieve himself. When he headed back, his side vision caught an object bobbing downstream.
He stopped to get a better look. A glob of green camouflage had drifted into a shallow eddy where the swifter water foamed. He strolled down to the bank and hopped onto a flat boulder, stooping to pick up a canvas hat. It was green camouflage and well-worn with artificial flies hooked into the soft cloth above the brim. Any angler would appreciate getting it back. If he placed it up high near the bridge, it would be easily seen. He flipped the hat over, revealing a dark red stain.
Blood?
He began to hike upstream along the shoreline and squeezed the hat as he trampled through heavy brush and thicket, pausing every few steps to search ahead. A well-traveled footpath ran close to the opposite bank but there was no part of the wide stream he could easily cross. He turned to head back to the truck before second thoughts came on. Someone could be in trouble. Something might have happened only a short time before. He had to press on at a faster pace. Rounding a bend, he startled a flock of ravens along the shore. As they took flight, his eyes locked onto a strange feature across the river—a large object partly submerged in the water.
A body?
Ravens fluttered about it, tearing shreds of flesh from a carcass. A human body was seeping blood that the crystalline water captured in swirls. Although less than twenty yards across, the narrow stream was too deep to wade. He walked upstream where more shallow rapids riffled over rocks. Deeper pockets of water were scattered among the rapids and would make for a tricky wade. When he stepped into the river, the frigid water soaked his boots and his trousers up to his knees.