The black wolf—they had to be wolves, what else could they be?—bristled, raising its head and tail, and the smaller animal shrank in on itself, but when he weaved to evade her, she stepped into his path.
A soft crackle of shifting branches announced that they were not alone. I squinted, and barely deciphered the shadow of a third animal in the bush off the path. Was there an entire pack of them? Again, my brain flashed images of the carnage in that bison pasture. Another rustle had my gaze skipping through the darkness, searching for movement. More wolves? Or the settling of bushes in the wake of the deer? Real or not, the unseen watchers made me shiver.
The shadowy newcomer uttered a deep wuffing sound, as though to add its opinion to the vote. Opinion? These weren’t humans, they were wolves. I gave myself a mental shake and gathered Keen. My arm throbbed, but I lifted her like she weighed nothing. With my arms full of quaking dog, I left my walking stick where it lay and backed away from the wolves.
Two pairs of oddly shaped eyes watched me go, the third animal, and the remainder of the phantom pack, stayed out of sight. The black wolf no longer seemed as interested in me or Keen. I turned sideways, glancing ahead to see the dips in the ground, then back to ensure that the wolves remained where they were. When I looked back one final time, they had gone.
* * *
Being a vet had its perks, but I didn’t expect treating myself to be one of them. The long, shallow gash on my forearm needed ten stitches. I did them myself, one-handed and awkward with a shaking hand, before taking pills. An extra shot of antibiotic should hold me until the pills could take effect.
With that, I went to bed. I awoke the next morning feeling hungover and disoriented. A hot shower revived me somewhat before I called the clinic.
“Running late,” I told Ardyth, our receptionist. “I’m going straight to my first call, then I’ll be in.”
“No problem Liam,” Ardyth said. “I’ll let Darlene know.”
Darlene was my daytime partner at the clinic. Two other vets worked the evening shift, between the four of us we kept everything rolling pretty much twenty-four, seven.
An indeterminate period of time later I found myself in a stare-down with a ram.
“Isn’t he a lovely color,” Darice Weston crooned. “They call it shaela.”
Robust horns curled off the ram’s black face. I obediently shifted my gaze to the blue-gray shade of his fleece.
“Very nice.” I brushed the dirt off myself and prepared for round four of herding the sheep into the barn. Or round five. To tell the truth, I’d lost track.
Darice, a substantial woman in her fifties, dabbled in wool. She’d acquired a flock of Shetland sheep in an astonishing array of colors—a fact somewhat lost on me as I searched the mass of woolly bodies for a single limping form.
Daily up-close-and-personal experience had made me appreciate that vets should charge by the hour—I do as much wrangling as doctoring. Some clients round up their animals before I arrive, but just as many wait for me to participate in the rodeo. When I recently commented on it to Darlene, she’d offered her opinion. “They like to watch you. The women, anyway. Hell, maybe the men too. So get a buzz cut or rub dirt on your face. Don’t shower, maybe that’ll work. Or not—some appreciate that rugged look.”
Although her reference to my appearance made me squirm, I’d laughed at her usual pointed observations. In fairness to my clients, there exists normal time, around which the world revolves, and vet time, which often runs hours behind. Animals don’t get injured or sick on schedule; vets squeeze emergencies in between appointments. Having your prized bull—or in this case, ram—bashing apart your barn while you wait for the vet tends to discourage clients from containing the patient before your arrival.
Abandoning all thought of my day sticking to a schedule, I peered into the flock of twenty for a woolly girl with a sore foot.
“What does she look like?” I asked, blinking mud from my eyes. It didn’t help, they felt as though I’d thrown an entire sandbox into them, and my head had begun to ache ominously. I hoped I wasn’t coming down with the flu. With some effort and little enthusiasm, I focused on the task at hand.
I hadn’t been able to determine the ewe’s identity through observation, since the flock, led by their butthead—the name fit—leader, bolted from zero to sixty every time we tried to move them.
“She’s the moorit, at the back.”
“Moorit is?”
“Deep brown. Pink tag.”
I spotted her as she lifted her head for a better look at me. Getting my hands on her meant squishing the flock—sheep tended to do things as a unit—into a small area; in this case, the barn. So far, they’d outmaneuvered us, evading the barn door to which this pen connected. New to ovines, Darice didn’t have a proper handling arrangement. I considered myself fortunate they were in the paddock and not out in the twenty-acre pasture.
Which made me think. “Have they been out on pasture?” I asked her.
“Yes, although there isn’t much grass for them to eat, yet,” she replied.
“Might be an idea to bring them in every night,” I suggested. “There’s wolves in the area. Ted Andreychuk lost a couple of bison two nights ago.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I could shut them in the barn. I’m getting a donkey from Walter in a week.”
“Good.” Donkeys made excellent predator control for livestock. I thought of the shredded bison and swallowed.
