“Shoot ’em all,” another one said. “If we’ve got a wolf problem, we should just get rid of ’em.”

“Bounty of a hundred dollars a tail would do it,” someone else chimed in.

“Hundred an ear!”

“Make it a paw, and I’ll start wolf hunting full-time!”

Ranger Brock felt sick to his stomach. There were plenty of laws against hunting wildlife such as wolves, but he knew as well as anyone that laws could be changed, amended, or even ignored. If everyone in town banded together in the hunt, the law would be almost powerless to stop them.

“Quiet down!” the mayor said, banging his gavel against the podium again. “Before we make any rash decisions, I think we should hear from Ranger Brock and Sergeant Martin about what steps they’re taking to ensure the safety of our citizens.” The mayor turned to Garrett. “Ranger Brock.”

Garrett, smiling politely at the mayor, approached the podium. The room was quiet again, in anticipation. He’d checked the forest ranger’s manual on the off chance there was something in it about wild werewolves, but he’d found it woefully lacking.

“What’s being done,” he said, stalling for time.

“Yeah,” someone shouted. “What’re you doing?”

He took a breath. “We’ve set a series of traps at the edge of town. When we have this pack’s alpha male, we’ll move it north, away from population. The rest of the wolves will follow.”

“That’s it?” came a call from the back of the room. “We’re losing our pets, livestock, and maybe even our children, and you’re playing catch and release?”

Another round of catcalls and jeers.

“I have to know my loggers are safe in the forest,” Michael Bines said. “I can’t send crews out to work in wolf-infested forests.”

The ranger thought that was funny, considering that even a full-grown werewolf was no match for a logger with a high-powered chainsaw.

“I’ve already had half a dozen guests check out of my lodge early,” Terry Houghton said. He and his wife, Halina, owned the Redstone Lodge on the eastern slope of the mountain. “After a woman from Vancouver said she saw a wolf out on Whitecap Run, that’s all anyone in the lodge wanted to talk about. Business won’t be good if people think the forest is swarming with killer wolves.”

“Hear, hear,” someone said.

Mayor Magill managed to get the room settled down enough to address the crowd. “I think we’re all getting a little too excited here,” he said. “Sure we’ve got animals in our forest. Lots of them. And if someone sees a wolf while they’re out skiing, maybe you should charge them extra for it.”

That got a laugh from the crowd.