“All right,” Joe said. “Won’t the humans returning on horseback need food and water? Should we purchase some here?” They’d carried food and water in the pickup, but most of it was gone now. He wanted to get away from this place as soon as possible, and he knew the other Wolves felt the same way, but humans were part of his pack for this trip and they weren’t as hardy as the terra indigene, who could do without food and water until they reached Prairie Gold.

“I’ll call Jesse, tell her we’re on our way back. She can send up another truck with supplies to meet us,” Tobias said. “We can make camp in the same place we did last night—on terra indigene land.”

<He wants to be away from here,> Tolya said.

<Let’s help him check for deliveries and get out,> Joe replied.

They carried out two boxes of books from Howling Good Reads, and eight boxes of goods from different parts of Thaisia, all addressed to Walker’s General Store. And all around them, humans who should have left the station by now stood around and stared, their hatred pulsing in the air.

Why so much anger, so much hate? Joe wondered. He looked at Tobias, whose hands were tight on the steering wheel as the pickup followed the Wolves and ranch hands on horseback out of town. “Has it always been like this between you and the other humans?”

“Not like this,” Tobias replied.

“Is it because of us? Because some of the terra indigene came into town with you?” Trains couldn’t go from one place to another without the tracks that ran through the wild country, and that right-of-way was predicated on the terra indigene’s being able to travel by train. So the Others had to come to town once in a while to pick up guests or packages. But they didn’t need to go beyond the train station. Even when Tolya asked to see the town during the last visit, Tolya and Jackson—and Tobias, for that matter—never got out of the pickup.

“There have been stories lately that the creek beds in those hills are filled with gold nuggets,” Tobias said. “That you can scoop them up by the handful.”

Wasn’t that easy, but he’d been told by the Wolves who had been living in the terra indigene settlement for a while that there were some places where the yellow pebbles were fairly easy to collect—a gift from the Elders that allowed the Others to trade with the Intuits.

But if humans invaded those hills...

Joe shuddered.

“You okay?” Tobias asked.

“Yes. I will be glad to get back to our own territory.”

“You and me both.”