Marked In Flesh (The Others #4) - Anne Bishop Page 0,18

didn’t recognize them as a predator and wouldn’t have been alarmed by a two-legged animal holding a stick—at least not until some of the bison started dying.

Joe looked at the salt lick that the neighboring rancher had left for the bison—supposedly a friendly gesture. Could someone have put that drug, feel-good, on the salt lick to make the animals passive? He’d been told that the drugs gone over wolf and feel-good hadn’t caused any trouble in this part of the Midwest Region, but that didn’t mean the drugs couldn’t find their way here now. Just because the Controller, the man who had made the drugs, was dead didn’t mean the supply had dried up completely. But how many humans beyond select police officers knew the drugs had been made from the blood of the cassandra sangue? Some of those girls were still being cared for by humans. Some were still living in the compounds, more than willing to trade a cut on their skin for having someone else take care of them. So the danger the two drugs posed wasn’t gone, just covered with a bit of dirt.

Joe asked.

Wolves and Coyotes all paused, then began sniffing again.

A Wolf tore into a smaller bison. After eating a couple of mouthfuls, he waited. They all waited.

the Wolf reported.

“How many of these can your meat freezers hold?” Joe asked Tobias, waving a hand at the carcasses.

“A few, but not enough,” Tobias said. “Floyd Tanner would know, since he’s the town’s butcher and has the big freezer. The ranch house is supposed to hold supplies for a month for everyone living there, but I don’t know if we’ve picked up this month’s supply of meat yet.”

“We have a springhouse where we cache some meat. That might hold one of the smaller bison if we cut up the carcass. And Floyd Tanner can cut up another carcass and distribute the meat to all the families in the town.” And maybe he could send some of the meat to Simon, trade it for things Simon could acquire more easily in Lakeside than he could here.

Tobias looked grim. “This was a third of the Prairie Gold bison herd. Even after we take what meat we can, most of it is going to rot where the animals fell.”

Joe caught a wild, dangerous scent in the air. So did the rest of the Wolves and Coyotes.

There won’t be as much meat left to rot as you think. The Elders are gathering for a feast. Joe looked at Wyatt. Like the rest of the shifters, the Grizzly was looking at the land beyond the dead bison.

“Let’s make use of what we can and get away from the kills,” Wyatt said in a quiet rumble.

Joe nodded. There were plenty of Ravens, Hawks, and Eagles circling overhead, waiting to descend for their share of the feast. They would keep an eye on what the humans were doing across the road.

“Let’s take the half-grown bison that were killed,” he said. “Easier for us to haul since we’re trying to use as much meat as we can.” Then he looked at Tobias. “Tell Truman to hitch up the horses.”

Tobias glanced over his shoulder, then turned away from the road and said softly, “The man standing a little apart from the others? That’s Daniel Black. He owns that ranch. If he offers you any meat from the cattle, don’t take it.”

Joe cocked his head. “You have a feeling?” Intuits reacted to things around them—weather, animals, humans—and when one of them was uneasy about something, it was best to pay attention.

“Not about the meat, but about us taking some.”

Tobias walked away at the same time Daniel Black crossed the road.

“Bad business,” Black said. “You have any thoughts about who did this?”

“Humans with guns,” Joe replied, although it should have been obvious to everyone that nothing with teeth and claws had killed the bison—or would want to waste so much food.

A change in the human’s scent. A lack of something that had been there a moment before. Fear. A lack of fear now. Which meant the rancher was glad the terra indigene didn’t know who had shot the bison.

“Look, we’ve both got the same problem—too much meat that’s going to rot. There’s no profit in that.” Black removed his hat, scratched his head, then resettled the hat.