Garrett acknowledged his friend with a nod and then pulled up a stool to sit down.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Ernie said, walking past his chair and picking up his jacket and shotgun. “You’ve come to see what’s outside, so we might as well get to it so you and the sergeant can be on your way.”

The ranger and the sergeant got up and followed Ernie outside. All three of the men carried flashlights and were easily able to illuminate the tracks left behind in the snow. There were several sets of wolf tracks, but also other tracks that were larger, both in the size of the paw prints and the distance between them. The prints looked as if they could belong to a wolf, but the stride suggested the wolf was huge.

“Wow,” said the sergeant. “Those are the biggest I’ve seen for a wolf.” He turned to Ernie. “You sure it wasn’t a bear?”

The question angered the old man. “I’ve lived in these woods more than fifty years. Think I don’t know the difference between a bear and a wolf?”

“Just asking.”

Garrett nodded. The sergeant had been right to ask the question, since the tracks had many similarities with those of a bear. And whatever had made the tracks had been walking on two feet rather than four. Bears walked like that from time to time, but so did werewolves…

While the sergeant’s instincts were right, Garrett wasn’t about to help the man come to the correct conclusion. This was a problem that he and the pack had to handle on their own. The less the sergeant knew about the truth, the better.

“Wolf tracks,” the ranger said at last, with an exaggerated nod. “It’s a big one, for sure.”

“See!” said Ernie. “I told ya.”

Sergeant Martin looked over at Garrett with slightly narrowed eyes. He’d worked out of the Redstone detachment for some fifteen years and he’d spent enough time in the forest to know what different animal tracks looked like. Of course he would bow to the ranger’s expertise, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still be suspicious. “You sure about that?” he asked.

“Trust me” was all the ranger said.

The sergeant took a moment to consider that. “All right then, it was a wolf. Let’s go see the rabbit pens.”

Ernie led them to the stable. The door was still hanging by one hinge and had to be carefully pushed back to allow the three men inside. “There, look at that!”