Tobias pulled over and stopped the pickup. Joe got out and lowered the tailgate for the three Wolves who had been riding in the back. They jumped out and immediately began checking the area for scents. So did the Coyotes who were in the back of the second pickup. Their third vehicle was the town’s hauler because it had a winch and could carry heavy loads—like big carcasses. And the last truck had a two-horse trailer attached to it, carrying the horses that would help them drag some of the meat to the hauler.

“Damn,” Tobias said when he and Joe studied the dead bison. “Has to be a hundred of them. That much meat would have fed the town and settlement for a year or more.”

“More,” Wyatt Beargard said, joining them. “Even with someone like me feeding off the available meat now.”

The Grizzly was also a newcomer to the settlement. His scent was enough to dissuade human-owned cattle from “getting lost” on the Others’ land, and his presence was now a fair warning to the human ranchers that any cattle that “escaped” through a break in the fence and were found grazing on land not leased to humans were considered edible game.

Of course, the Grizzly wasn’t the largest predator in the area who held that opinion. Despite the handful of human-controlled ranches in the area and the human-controlled town of Bennett, which was a way station for trains bringing supplies, this was the wild country, and shifters like Joe were the liaisons between anything human and the primal Elders whose size and appetite helped maintain the number of animals grazing on the grasslands. They were also the guardians of the water that flowed through the hills and provided a constant source for Prairie Gold’s residents and crops.

Sure, the human ranchers had some water on their land, but the water that supplied Prairie Gold flowed with a surety that the ranchers envied. And as the HFL movement became more strident about what humans were entitled to claim, the ranchers weren’t bothering to hide that envy anymore—an observation Jesse had shared yesterday when Joe went to the general store.

Blowing out a breath, Joe looked at the Wolves who were still sniffing around the bison carcasses nearest the road. <Anything?>

<Most of the scents are old and new, and match the humans milling around on the other side of the road,> they said. <Three scents we don’t recognize. Maybe from town, maybe strangers.>

Could three hunters have done so much killing? Why hadn’t more bison run after the first couple of shots?

Humans aren’t allowed to hunt on our land without permission, so the bison didn’t recognize them as a predator and wouldn’t have been alarmed by a two-legged animal holding a stick—at least not until some of the bison started dying.