went to the front door and looked across the street. Lights were still on at Jana and Barbara Ellen’s house, so someone was still awake.
“I’d better pay our deputy a visit,” Tolya said.
“Are you staying here tonight?” Yuri asked.
“Yes.” Unlike the humans in the town, he didn’t need to worry about crossing paths with one of the Elders, but he wanted to look at any information he could gather as soon as possible.
He strolled across the street. He’d seen Virgil at the end of block, and Virgil had seen him. The Wolf made no comment about him visiting the two females, and he offered no explanation.
Then Virgil howled, alerting the entire street and probably waking up half the humans who lived there. And then Rusty howled, responding to her pack leader and ignoring Jana’s command to hush.
And then something in the Elder Hills howled—and that sound made Tolya shiver.
Up and down the street, he heard doors that had been open to let in the cooler night air quietly close.
“Mr. Sanguinati?”
Jana stood at the door, looking at him through the screen.
Tolya smiled. “I apologize for showing up at your home, but Lila Gold suggested I talk to you about frontier stories.”
“Oh.” Grabbing Rusty’s collar, she opened the door. “I’m not a scholar like Lila, but I have some novels set during the frontier days.”
Entering the house, Tolya allowed the puppy to sniff him while he greeted Barbara Ellen, who blushed—a reaction he decided had more to do with her sparse amount of clothing than with him.
“You were preparing for sleep?” he asked when Jana led him to another room and turned on the overhead light.
“Why do you ask?”
“Barbara Ellen’s clothing.” And yours.
Jana nodded. “We weren’t expecting company.” She waved a hand at the bookcase. “What were you looking for?”
So they were going to pretend she was wearing her deputy clothes. He could do that. “A fight for dominance in a frontier town.”
“A fight that’s in a ‘this town ain’t big enough for the both of us’ kind of story or something else?”
“A fight between two packs.” Tolya watched the rapid beating of her pulse. Knew exactly where to place his mouth on her neck to drink deep.
Outside the window, he heard a soft growl. Virgil would never consider taking a human for a mate, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t protect a member of his pack even if she wasn’t terra indigene.
Jana hesitated, then selected a book and handed it to him. The cover was dominated by a badge and what humans called a six-gun. The background was land dominated by hills.
“This is the one.” She sounded unnerved for reasons he didn’t understand.
“Why?”
“The elements on the cover were part of a cryptic message that led me to Lakeside and the job fair. My foster father read this particular story a lot. It’s about a fight for control of a town. It wasn’t his favorite frontier story, but he thought it held an important lesson, especially for a girl who wanted to be a police officer.”
Tolya thought he knew what a father would tell a girl child. He smiled.“Justice prevails? The good guys win?”
Jana didn’t return the smile. “No. The lesson was that sometimes the good guys don’t win—or survive.”
CHAPTER 30
Windsday, Messis 29
Tobias looked at the dead cattle and swore fiercely until he remembered that the ranch hand who was riding with him today was a girl. Not that “Ed” Tilman would appreciate the label, but what he’d learned from his mother about what was proper when around the female sex wasn’t shrugged off just because Ed wanted to be one of the boys.
“Think the Elders did this?” Ed asked in an excited whisper.
“The Elders don’t use or need guns to bring down anything that lives out here or anywhere else,” Tobias replied, then added silently, Including us.
Ed frowned at the two dozen carcasses. “Why would someone shoot cattle and then leave them?”
“Meanness or just wanting to cause trouble.” Or maybe the intention had been to rustle the cattle until the thieves realized there was nowhere to go with them. All the cattle bore the Prairie Gold brand, so taking them up to Bennett to sell would be futile. A phone call to the sheriff would keep the cattle out of the stock cars connected to any outbound train. The rustlers couldn’t sell them to neighboring ranches because the people on those spreads all knew each other. Gods, the Skye Ranch was the next closest ranch, and Truman had worked for him