Hunter Moon (Lupine Moon Series)
HUNTER MOON
A Lupine Moon Novel
By Cait Lavender
A
Lupine Moon
Novel
Cait Lavender
Copyright © 2012
All Rights Reserved.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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Cover design © Copyright 2012
Cait Lavender
and
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First and foremost I must thank my mother. Without her inspiration, faith in my talent and loving support I would never have even dreamt of completing a novel. Thanks to my wonderful husband who put up with all my writer’s insanity, my daughter for her love, and the rest of my family for their support and encouragement. A big thank you to Liz Schulte, Elizabeth Sharp, Violet Leigh Jones, Mandie Stevens and the rest of my imaginary friends in the IC for your help, advice, commiseration, laughter and Wednesdays.
CONTENTS
My eyes shot open. Several seconds later I fought off disorientation and realized what was happening. I’d never had the valuable gift of being coherent right after I woke up; I usually needed a few cups of coffee and a hot shower before I became human.
The sound of mother cows bawling in fear and anger worked like a bucket of ice water down my back. I shot up out of bed, threw on my tennis shoes, grabbed my .270 hunting rifle and tucked my Glock .45 in my pants.
“Not again, dammit,” I muttered.
I sprinted out the door of my trailer toward my Honda four wheeler. Usually if I was checking on my cows I’d saddle up Roanie. He was my, you guessed it, red roan quarter horse my grandpa bought me when I was ten. Tonight, however, there was no time; I needed to get to my cows faster.
I hopped on the Honda, slammed my rifle into the gun rack on the front and gunned it with the lights off. With the waxing moon over my shoulder there was enough light to make out the trails the cattle liked to take to the spring fed water trough.
I had a pretty good idea where the cows were, but I slowed down enough so I would be able to hear them over the purr of the engine. They still sounded angry so there was a chance I’d get a shot at what was bothering them. I suspected it was the coyotes that had taken some calves earlier that fall.
Usually there were enough ground squirrels to keep the coyotes fat and happy, but for some reason they’d gone after the calves instead. I was not a happy camper. Most girls in their mid-twenties would see the sad, soft brown eyes of the dead baby calves and cry, but when I saw what was left, I saw a couple months of eating Ramen noodles.
I stopped the quad just shy from the crest of the hill. On the other side the cows were cloistered together, bawling. I grabbed my gun, jogged the rest of the way up, lay down and shouldered my rifle.
I scanned the outskirts of the little clearing. I could see the salt blocks, white and bright in the moonlight. This was a pretty popular hangout spot for the cows. The blocks were in a forty foot circle of bare ground because the hooves of the cattle trod the life out of anything that attempted to grow.
The moon was bright, and it gave me a clear view of my cattle and the surrounding area. I tried to slow my breathing down as much as I could. My heart pounded from the adrenaline. I looked through the scrub oaks and the manzanitas and tried to spot the coyotes. Most of the time they liked to circle the cattle and then find and separate the slower, more vulnerable calves from the rest of the herd. Picture a scene with lions on the African Savannah and you’d get the idea.
Movement caught the corner of my eye and I pulled the rifle around to look. California coyotes can vary in size, but the ones in Raymond Knowles grow to about fifty pounds and have buff colored fur. Usually either solitary or lurking with a buddy, they’re cowards, preferring to get a baby calf alone before it risks injury to itself to take it down.
What I saw in my scope was not a coyote. At first I wasn’t sure what it was, having never seen anything like it except maybe on the Discovery Channel. It was at least 250 pounds and it’s head would probably come to my chest if we were standing side by side. Its eyes glowed green in the moonlight, which wasn’t so unusual, but the power and intelligence I saw behind them was.
“I’ll be damned—” I breathed. “Grandpa’d never believe this.”
Still not about to let something,
anything
, take down one of my calves, I sighted the wolf in my scope. With it centered in my crosshairs, I took a slow breath, slid off the safety and gently pulled the trigger. The bullet went high and wide, just grazing the wolf’s hind end. I expected to hear a yelp of pain, but heard nothing.
I kicked myself for missing the shot, racked the empty cartridge out and slid a new one in, but in that short amount of time I had lost sight of the wolf. The cattle scattered and ran, opening up my view of the clearing.
I sat up, feeling uneasy about being alone with something that big and dangerous when I couldn’t see it. Plus, it was wounded and probably pissed off. I hustled back to the quad and put my rifle back in the rack, opting to pull out my Glock instead. I checked and made sure I had a bullet chambered before revving the Honda back to life and drove it down to where the cows had been.
My eyes searched in the darkness but I still saw no sign of the big beast, so I got off and went to check out the spot where I’d shot him. My footsteps were muted by the tarweed growing up through the brown dead remains of summer and I knew I’d be picking the stupid stuff off my socks in the morning. I kept my head on a swivel while I scanned the trees for the animal.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
I didn’t consider myself a tracker and I preferred to be on the back of a horse with a gun than on the ground with my nose in the dirt. But I liked to think that I’ve seen enough tracks to at least know what I was looking at. I could tell between coyote and dog prints, between bobcat and mountain lion, but I had never seen anything like these.
The prints were almost the size of my hand. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I shot a bear, but I’ve seen those tracks before, on pack mule trips in Yosemite. Whatever
this
was, it was massive. The last wolf spotted in California was in the thirties. Grandpa had told me about seeing a picture of it in the papers. I figured some wacko environmentalist had attempted to reintroduce some monster timber wolf into our ecosystem.
I sighed. That was just like those folks, the ones in Monterey who were trying to help reestablish great white sharks off the coast. That’s all we need, more big ass fish that want to eat you.
I looked around for blood, but didn’t spot much. A few drops where I had grazed him, but no trail. I’d hoped for a direction to follow so I could track him down and finish the job, not wanting the animal to suffer or live to go after my cattle again. I seldom miss twice. I fanned out, walking a spiral out from the initial drops and searched the ground. In the half light from the moon there wasn’t anything to see.
“Well shit, Shelby. Way to go.” Shaking my head I hopped back on the quad I’d left running.
I cruised around, taking stock of my cows and their babies, and didn’t think anyone was missing. Usually a momma who had just lost their baby wouldn’t quit bawling until one of two things happened: one, its voice would go out, or two, I’d skin the dead calf, buy a skinny little feeder calf from the cow auction and wrap the hide around it so the mother would adopt it. Unfortunately the last two times I’d lost a calf, I wasn’t left with enough to make the swap.
It sounds cruel, but would you rather see a mother bawl so much it lost its voice, or see it happily suckling a calf that lost
its
momma to McDonalds? That’s what I thought. And yeah, it might not be that ladylike to get down and dirty with a buck knife, but I did what I had to do.
Screw ladylike
.
I didn’t think the wolf would make a second go, seeing as it was wounded, so I drove back around to my trailer. It had been brand new when my Grandpa bought it thirty years ago, but now the beige vinyl siding and faux rock that surrounded the foundation showed its age. It had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room, and it had been home to me since I was six. I supposed I’d have to tow it out and buy a new one sometime, but it did just fine for now. A small part of me couldn’t part with it, not yet.