Tobias looked at both of them. “I talked it over with the men. None of us have a good feeling about staying here. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll check the baggage room at the station to see if there are any packages for us to bring back. Then we’d like to put some distance between us and this town.”
“All right,” Joe said. “Won’t the humans returning on horseback need food and water? Should we purchase some here?” They’d carried food and water in the pickup, but most of it was gone now. He wanted to get away from this place as soon as possible, and he knew the other Wolves felt the same way, but humans were part of his pack for this trip and they weren’t as hardy as the terra indigene, who could do without food and water until they reached Prairie Gold.
“I’ll call Jesse, tell her we’re on our way back. She can send up another truck with supplies to meet us,” Tobias said. “We can make camp in the same place we did last night—on terra indigene land.”
<He wants to be away from here,> Tolya said.
<Let’s help him check for deliveries and get out,> Joe replied.
They carried out two boxes of books from Howling Good Reads, and eight boxes of goods from different parts of Thaisia, all addressed to Walker’s General Store. And all around them, humans who should have left the station by now stood around and stared, their hatred pulsing in the air.
Why so much anger, so much hate? Joe wondered. He looked at Tobias, whose hands were tight on the steering wheel as the pickup followed the Wolves and ranch hands on horseback out of town. “Has it always been like this between you and the other humans?”
“Not like this,” Tobias replied.
“Is it because of us? Because some of the terra indigene came into town with you?” Trains couldn’t go from one place to another without the tracks that ran through the wild country, and that right-of-way was predicated on the terra indigene’s being able to travel by train. So the Others had to come to town once in a while to pick up guests or packages. But they didn’t need to go beyond the train station. Even when Tolya asked to see the town during the last visit, Tolya and Jackson—and Tobias, for that matter—never got out of the pickup.
“There have been stories lately that the creek beds in those hills are filled with gold nuggets,” Tobias said. “That you can scoop them up by the handful.”
Wasn’t that easy, but he’d been told by the Wolves who had been living in the terra indigene settlement for a while that there were some places where the yellow pebbles were fairly easy to collect—a gift from the Elders that allowed the Others to trade with the Intuits.
But if humans invaded those hills . . .
Joe shuddered.
“You okay?” Tobias asked.
“Yes. I will be glad to get back to our own territory.”
“You and me both.”
Tolya said nothing, but when they stopped to rest the horses, he shifted to smoke and headed down the road as a scout. Joe stripped and shifted to Wolf, letting another Wolf ride in the cab for a while, along with one of the ranch hands.
Aware, aware, aware. They moved on, alert for anything and everything.
The Stewart was right; there was trouble on the horizon. As he trotted along, Joe thought about the Intuits. They had a few pups in their settlement, and no good places to hide if other humans turned rabid.
Joe didn’t like bringing himself to the Elders’ notice—he was a small shifter in comparison—but he would go up to meet them and ask them to allow the Intuits to hide in the hills if Prairie Gold was attacked.
CHAPTER 21
Moonsday, Juin 18
A vigorous debate between members of the Courtyard’s Business Association ended minutes before Jerry Sledgeman drove in from the train station, his livestock truck filled with bison. None of the Others had been happy about allowing Jerry so far into the Courtyard, but everyone agreed that unloading animals in the Market Square wasn’t a good idea, particularly if the bison stampeded down the access way and thundered into the traffic on Main Street.
That was the reason five yearlings were unloaded at the Pony Barn, and the female pack and Kowalski were on hand to witness the arrival of a future item on the menu.
Simon itched to shift out of his human skin and help herd the bison to the part of the Courtyard where they would be settled—once everyone decided exactly where that would be. Henry had just laughed, saying deer roamed throughout the Courtyard’s three hundred acres and the bison would do the same. Since Simon agreed with him, he didn’t offer any opinions. A full-grown bison would go where it chose, but most of the Others in the Courtyard hadn’t lived in the Northwest and had no experience with prairie thunder.
Meg looked at the bison and then at him. “You said we were getting little bison.”
“They are little bison,” Simon replied.
She waved a hand to indicate the female pack. “We thought you meant baby bison.”
“Yearlings are close to babies.”
“Don’t go there,” Kowalski muttered.
“Besides,” Simon continued, ignoring the man, “if we’d brought calves, we’d also have to bring the mothers, and they’re big.”
“Oh,” Meg said. She and the female pack stared at the bison.
“Even if they’re bigger than we’d expected, they are kind of cute,” Ruthie said. “And so docile.”
Jerry Sledgeman scratched his head and looked at the trees. Vlad pressed a fist against his mouth and stared hard at the ground. And Nyx gave everyone the complacent smile of a well-fed vampire.
Jackson was currently in Meat-n-Greens quieting a sharp appetite, but Nyx hadn’t gone hungry during the journey. Docile bison were testimony to that.
“What are you going to call them?” Meg asked.
“Lunch?” Simon offered.
The female pack gave him a look that made him think running away would be a good idea, if he wasn’t the leader and couldn’t back down.
“Simon? Shouldn’t you and Jackson be heading to the River Road Community to settle the other bison?” Vlad gave the female pack a pointed look. “And shouldn’t the rest of us be getting to work? I know some of you have to review the items Jackson brought from Prairie Gold.”
Ruthie and Theral rode off on bicycles. Meg and Merri Lee drove off in the BOW.
Simon looked at Kowalski, who was usually at work by now.
“Where are you going to put them?” Kowalski asked, nodding at the bison.
“Why?”
“Out of sight, out of mind. If they’re around where the girls see them every day, they’ll end up with names, and I don’t think the girls will forgive you if you put a platter of Fred or Henrietta on the table.”
Jerry nodded. “Oh, yeah. What he said.”
Simon thought this over. The Wolves wouldn’t be serving up their bison on any platters, but some of the meat would be sold at the butcher shop in the Market Square for the humans to buy. How would they know which bison had become a roast? Would it matter?
Humans were no end of trouble even before they did anything.
“Right,” he said. “Don’t name the food.”
“Jackson said males and females remain separate most of the time,” Nyx said. “We can keep the females in the Chambers. It’s fenced.”
It was also off-limits to everyone but the Sanguinati—not the best choice to establish the bison where they couldn’t be hunted. Then again, deer were plentiful, so there was no reason to hunt bison for another year or two, and the land inside the Chambers offered plenty of grazing and fresh water.