Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,167

Cooke or Charlie Webb. What she discovered was how few of those towns still had any human residents. The beings who had answered the phones growled or howled or screeched at her as they tried to form human words. She couldn’t understand any of them, but she gave them all the same message: if they needed help, they could call the sheriff’s office in Bennett. She wasn’t sure what assistance she or Virgil could give, but maybe, if someone was trying to be the law in those towns, just having someone talk them through procedure would be enough—assuming they could understand her better than she could understand them.

She made notes about the towns that still had a human population and humans upholding the law. When she finished her calls, she opened the map of the Midwest Region and circled those towns in red.

So few.

The men on the other end of the line had been relieved to get a call from Bennett and have confirmation that the town was coming back—and humans were coming back with it. The men were surprised when they learned that she wasn’t a dispatcher or secretary but an actual deputy calling on behalf of the sheriff. And she was surprised when she realized those men no longer cared about the gender of a police officer as long as the person who wore the badge was human and knew how to uphold the law—and had some ability to deal with the Others.

Namid’s teeth and claws had been viciously thorough about thinning the human herds in this part of Thaisia.

Still, those lawmen recognized the names of some of the visitors who had checked into the hotel yesterday and gave her a list of others who couldn’t be considered upstanding citizens.

The names and “occupations” made her think of the frontier stories she loved to read. In fact, she was certain that some of those names had been borrowed from frontier history. Sleight-of-Hand Slim was a cardsharp; Frank and Eli Bonney robbed banks, gas stations, and just about anything else for fun and profit and often had a handful of men riding with them; Durango Jones was often a gun for hire; William and Wallace Parker were cattle rustlers and horse thieves who might be more interested in horses than cattle right now since horses could travel where cars could not. And then there was the Blackstone Clan, who were suspected of a lot of things but had never been charged with anything.

Don’t go messing with Judd McCall. He likes his work too much.

Half the men who mentioned the Blackstone Clan had told her that. Deal with the clan if you must, but steer clear of McCall.

Would Abby be able to tell her something about the man?

When the phone rang, Jana answered it, still focused on the list.

“It’s Tobias. Do you have a minute?”

“For you, I have two.” Did that sound like she was flirting? She hoped not. She wasn’t in a flirting frame of mind.

“Lost some cattle last night or early this morning,” Tobias said. “I suspect rustlers tried to make off with some of the herd and then shot the animals when they realized there wasn’t anywhere they could go.”

“You already lost some of the herd during the HFL attacks, didn’t you? What will this do to Prairie Gold?”

“We’ll be all right. We’ve got plenty of bison in the freezers from—”

Jana heard shouting, people yelling for Tobias.

“Darlin’, I have to call you back.”

She let Rusty out of the crate so the pup could wander around the office, sniffing for Virgil and Kane. When she heard Rusty barking, the sound rising to a frustrated, agitated note, she abandoned the phone for a minute to find out what was in the cell area—and wondered who had locked Cowboy Bob in the Me Time cell, leaving the stuffie propped against the wall.

“Okay, okay, I’ll spring him,” she muttered, heading back to the hook that held the keys. But the phone rang again, and she rushed to answer it just as Virgil walked into the office. “Tobias?”

“Everything is fine here,” Tobias said.

“Except for the dead cattle.”

“Except for that. But I invited the terra indigene to make use of the meat. The Elders have been neighborly about not hunting and eating the cattle, so I wanted them all to know these cattle could be taken. I guess they decided to be neighborly too, because something just dropped one of those steers outside the ranch house. You like steak?”

“Yes, I like steak.” A sound