Suddenly, Argus felt silly for venturing out into the forest in pursuit of some wild idea about living in the woods. He would be lost out there on his own, especially after he’d been raised in the comfort of the Brocks’ world.

“I do understand,” he said at last.

“Good. Then go back to your pack and use the human world to help your kind survive.”

Argus nodded. “I will, but…”

“Yes?”

“Can we come back and visit?”

“Anytime.”

“Where will we find you?”

“Just look for me, and I will find you.” He turned then, and bounded off into the forest. Argus watched him for several moments and then lost him between the trees. Gone.

With a sigh, Argus turned and started walking.

It was a long trek through the woods, and it seemed even longer after his meeting with Phelan, but when he arrived at Ranger Brock’s house at least he’d know he was home.

Where he belonged.

* * *

“I’m outta here,” said Bill Droine, jamming his clothes into a duffel bag. His face was white and his hands trembled noticeably as he gathered together his belongings. He’d been working for the company for more than ten years and his bailing out didn’t bode well for the fate of the project. There were four other men standing around inside the trailer and it looked as if at least two of them were contemplating doing the same thing.

“It couldn’t have been that bad,” said Grant Willem, number two man on the site, who’d worked with Droine on countless logging operations. But unlike Droine, Willem was a big man—well over three hundred pounds—who had slept like, well, like a log, through the night and had missed all of the excitement.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Droine said, picking up his toothbrush, shaver, and comb and tossing them into his travel bag. “It’s one thing for that crazy Manchoka to be talkin’ about angry spirits, but it’s a whole other thing to be staring up at a hairy seven-foot beast that’s got claws the length of my fingers and teeth sharper than a ripsaw.”

“You got to get off the bottle,” Willem said. “There hasn’t been a Bigfoot sighting around here in years.”

The rest of the men in the trailer laughed.

Droine glared at them with contempt, knowing full well that they’d all been just as afraid as he had been, and were putting up a brave face only now because Willem was teasing him.

“Laugh all you want, big man,” Droine said, “but you’ve got a wife, right?”

Willem nodded.

“Well, you think about her living out the rest of her days on her own because you decided to make jokes about something that’s dead serious.”

The laughter stopped.