He was rewarded when the biggest sumbitchin moose he‘d seen in ten years strolled out like the king of the forest. Lordy, was he beautiful, a thick shining brown hide, a graceful, evenly balanced rack richly covered in velvet that was only now beginning to fray and peel, moving with a princely stride on haunches that would feed a family of four for six months.

Old Sam smiled, blew out a long quiet breath, and centered the front sight on one big brown eye.

It was an hour later, when he‘d gutted the bull and pulled the skin halfway down the carcass, that he found the bullet hole.

Now, this wasn‘t necessarily unheard of. Plenty of clueless assholes wandering around the Park with too much gun and no idea how to use it. Not to mention a lack of backbone to go after one they‘d wounded, as was right and proper, hell, in Old Sam‘s book a moral obligation.

Old Sam hated bad shots.

The hide had closed up over the hole the bullet had made going in, which was why he didn‘t see it until he pulled the skin down. The flesh had closed up after it, too, which told him the shot wasn‘t recent. It took a bit of finesse to extract the bullet without ruining the surrounding meat, and when he had it he sat back on his haunches and looked at the piece of metal he was holding between a bloodstained thumb and forefinger.

It was a little bullet. Damn little, a .22 if Old Sam was any judge, and he was. Who the hell went up against a moose with a .22?

He remembered the pistol Jim had found in the clearing, which wasn‘t more than half a mile from this very spot. It had tripped up Jim, and it had probably tripped him up a month before that.

He remembered Kate talking about the two guys tarryhooting off into the woods, one a suicide until he changed his mind and the other with a gun so he could change it back again. He remembered mention of a hoofprint in the skull that had been found. He examined the four hoofs on his moose. He didn‘t find anything except grass stains and pine needles.

He sat back and gave thought. Well, now, he was in something of a pickle, wasn‘t he. The moose was illegal, no doubt about that. If he took the bullet in and handed it over to the authorities, he‘d have to say where he got it, and that illegality would become clear. There could be consequences, which could affect his barbecue. But the bullet might be evidence of some kind in this crazy-ass case of Kate and Jim‘s, where there didn‘t seem to be any crime committed other than spying on a gold mine. It was difficult to get himself worked up over that.

Old Sam hated being a responsible citizen.

He cut the feet off at the first joint and put them in a game bag. The bullet he tucked into the pocket of his shirt and buttoned the flap after it just to be sure. And then he went back to butchering out the moose.