“That was from a fight a year ago with Neo, when he attempted to join their pack. Sad that Neo ended up alone.”

“Maybe he found another pack.”

Peyton handed her a bowl, and they sat at the tiny table. The one-room log cabin was stocked with a couple cots, a table, cookware, and a few condiments as well as snowshoes, shovels, and rudimentary tools to survive a sudden storm. Per her contract with the Fish and Game service, Echo made a point of maintaining all the cabins on her route every fall.

She continued to move through her pictures. She’d gotten a number of great shots of the pack’s alpha female. Sheila was thick bodied, short-legged, and generally smaller than the other females, but she had a temper and a doggedness about her that won her top position. Dark gray, with almost an indigo aura, she had the most intriguing blue eyes, as if she had husky in her gene pool. It wasn’t unheard of to have a sled dog break from its line and disappear into the woods, only to join a wolf pack.

Hence how Echo had gotten Granite—he’d been rescued by a trapper after the man had accidentally killed Granite’s mother, who’d mated with the man’s lead dog. The female had hung around her mate and was caught in a trap line and died. The trapper had found the den, retrieved the pups, and given them away to neighbors.

“Here’s the one of the bear.” She passed the camera to Peyton. “Hugh put up a good fight for that kill, but that big brown wasn’t having it.”

It was a battle, for sure. The grizzly had come practically out of nowhere, angry, ready for blood. He’d pounced on the kill, ripping the leg off the moose, then dropped it to swat away one of Hugh’s cohorts. Hugh had pounced then, grabbing at a back leg, and the bear roared and shook him off, rounding on him.

The battle raged for a good hour, the bear feasting between attacks. Finally, Hugh and his pack settled back on the shore, pacing, watching until the bear wandered off somewhere in the woods, probably close by, to sleep it off.

“He was definitely angry,” Peyton said, handing the camera back. “Hugh was smart to wait it out. My guess is that the pack has dismantled that moose and buried the parts in caches for later.”

Echo put down her camera. “I should radio my dad. He’s not sleeping, and I often find him up at night just staring at the telemetry, checking in on Elsa and the cubs.”

“I thought he was getting better.”