Joe turned to the foreman, who suddenly smelled odd. “You can call me Joe.”

Tobias nodded. “Why is Wyatt...?” He pointed discreetly.

Joe followed the finger to where the Grizzly, who had shifted his hands to accommodate the useful claws, was moving among the carcasses, tearing open the bellies of a few bison. “That’s the second reason why other animals wait for their share of a bison kill. Wolves and Grizzlies can open up the body and get to the meat. Makes it easier for everyone else to grab a bit for themselves and their young.”

They filled the hauler’s bed with as much as the vehicle could carry, then sent the vehicle back to Prairie Gold, where it would be unloaded in order to return as quickly as possible.

The Wolves and Coyotes wandered among the downed bison, searching for the younger meat. Some carcasses were roped for the horses to haul to the road. The smallest meat was hauled by men pulling together—or Wyatt pulling alone.

Then, while they waited for the hauler to return and the men were watering the horses, Truman Skye, one of the ranch hands, blanched and whispered, “Gods above and below, what is that?”

A half-grown bison seemed to float above the grass, its back hooves brushing the ground as it moved away from them. The air shimmered like heat rising, but the shimmer also had the vague shape of something very large.

“You didn’t see that,” Joe said, his voice dangerously quiet.

Tobias swallowed hard. “What could lift several hundred pounds like it was nothing more than a deer fawn?”

Joe glanced at the Wolves and Coyotes. Half of them were paying attention to the Intuits. The rest were keeping careful watch over what now moved among the carcasses, selecting a meal.

Grabbing Truman’s and Tobias’s arms, he turned them toward the road and growled, “If you want the people in your town to remain safe, you didn’t see that.”

Tobias met Joe’s eyes—almost, but not quite, a challenge for dominance. “We tend the ranch’s livestock; we camp out away from the ranch when we need to. A lot of times, one of us is riding out alone. If the Intuits and the terra indigene are going to work together now, we should be allowed to know some of the things you know. Like what’s out there.”

The man had a point. One of the reasons Intuits and Others began these agreements generations ago was because they recognized a common enemy: the other kind of human.

“What’s out there has been out there long before your people asked to settle around these hills,” Joe said. “This is wild country with little pockets of land that have been... altered... by human presence. The ones who come down from the hills to hunt bison... Their kind of terra indigene have been around a long time.”