Wolf Tracker (2 page)

She curried him as best she could and hobbled him so he could get to the dried-out grass growing inside the barn, but not run away. At least, not without taking baby steps. She wished there was something better for him to eat. Some oats or something. But it looked like they’d both be riding lean. After giving Freedom a final nose scratch, she dragged herself and the almost-empty saddlebag of supplies into the house.

The broken windows she’d noted earlier were the source of the dirt and dust swirled on the floors. Her hiking boots left damning tracks in the dirt drifts as she walked through the living room. Anyone could see she’d been here. She thought the assholes had given up looking for her, but if what they had told her was true, any man who saw her could try to capture her. Her husbands said that in spite of her advanced years and unattractively short hair she was a prize any man would be happy to take, women being, as they put it, “so scarce and all.” Advanced years? She was thirty-four, for crying out loud. They had been playing head games with her. They said plagues after the nuclear attacks fifty years ago had wiped out nearly all the women in the world so any woman of breeding age was a prize. They’d said all kinds of crazy things to try to make her dependant on them. The morons thought when planes crashed, they leaped fifty years into the future? Their brainwashing techniques hadn’t worked on her. She was crazy enough to talk to her horse and expect answers, but not crazy enough to believe anything those men told her.

Standing in this deserted house with her arms wrapped around herself wasn’t getting anything done. She should get the rope out of the saddlebag over her shoulder to make a snare. She should be checking out the rest of the house. She should be doing
something
. Instead, she stood quietly in the empty living room to give herself a minute of rest. Dust danced in the slanted light of the setting sun. It was cold in the house, but not freezing. Her watch said it was forty-nine degrees Fahrenheit and eight degrees Celsius. Thank God the weather had been unseasonably warm. A person could freeze to death sleeping in the open with only a couple blankets, even in mid-November—or least fall prey to hypothermia. The temperature hadn’t dropped below freezing, even at night, and the daytime highs were near sixty. She prayed the good weather would hold until she found safety. Which had to be soon. Right? Please. Let it be soon.

Tami stepped carefully through the narrow butler’s pantry toward the kitchen, avoiding the wide strips of wallpaper dripping in curling, crumbling sheets from the top of the wall to the floor. The layout of this house was pretty close to that of her uncles’ 1920s ranch house. She guessed it had been built around the same time. The tall floor-to-ceiling cabinets were empty except for mouse droppings. No canned goods, no jars of peanut butter, nothing. She would have to finish off the last of the bread she had taken from her captors and hope for a rabbit to eat. As she turned to leave the kitchen to set up her snare, something on the colorless, papered wall caught her eye. Stapled to the wall was a faded, age-yellowed calendar. For the year 2017.

For the first time since the plane crashed, Tami cried.

Chapter Two

It was the little things that kept a man alive. Tracker accepted the chair his potential customer offered and sat, ensuring the hilt of his long knife was easily reached from a habit so old he didn’t even think about it. He always expected trouble when he was away from the Clan, which was most of the time. He wasn’t expecting any special trouble from the mayor or members of the city council of Greasy Butte, but keeping his weapons easily accessible was just plain good sense. He’d never been to this house before, but within ten seconds of entering he had already mapped out three ways to leave in a hurry.

The mayor was a wide-shouldered man in a brown suit coat, about forty, brown hair receding from a tall forehead, with brown eyes slightly bloodshot, and a small pink mouth held tight. His three councilmen were seated side by side on a long sofa. Greasy Butte was not much more than a trading post with a transient population of thirty and a reputation for overcharging. The mayor and council were barely half a step up from thugs, but they dressed like affluent business men. Even so, Tracker knew each member of the council wore a pistol and at least one knife under his coat.

Morning light streamed into the living room through tall windows, right into Tracker’s face. He shifted in the chair to protect his eyes. All three councilmen were watching him like vultures. He had been sent for because Mayor Leach needed a tracker. Tracker didn’t have a job. But if folks needed his help to find precious things and if it was convenient, he’d do it. If folks wanted to pay him, he’d take their money or trade goods. Money was easier to carry. Chickens and cows didn’t travel well, and he didn’t like things to slow him down when he traveled. Besides, the ladies over at Gabe’s Place only accepted cash money if he wanted to buy some time with one of them.

Mayor Leach must have lost something almighty important. The message said Leach was willing to pay gold coin for this job. So how come Leach was piddling around instead of coming right to the point? The low coffee table had a flowery china coffee set on it, and it wasn’t just for decoration. Tracker could smell the rich scent of fresh ground coffee. Real coffee, not the cheaper mixture of low-quality coffee beans cut with roasted barley and chicory most people used.

“Coffee?” asked Mayor Leach, his hand hovering over the fancy china coffee pot that was probably more than a hundred years old. Matching cups and other pretty doodads were on the coffee table, too.
What was this?
Tracker wondered with cool derision.
A tea party?

But Tracker let none of that show on his face as he dipped his chin a scant inch.

“Sugar?”

Derision shifted to surprise, but Tracker hid that, too, behind the same bland face. Sugar was expensive. So was real coffee. So how come the mayor was wasting it on a saddle bum with a knack for tracking? It didn’t make sense, and things that didn’t make sense made Tracker suspicious. He shook his head, and accepted the black coffee in its delicate little cup. It was a pretty thing, probably an heirloom from the Times Before. A cup and saucer wasn’t what he was used to, so he held them real careful. It bothered him that both his hands were occupied, leaving him vulnerable. He drank fast, one eye on the three council members.

The mayor smiled proudly at the coffee cups he handed around to all of them in the living room. “My wife is awfully proud of those cups,” he remarked.

Tracker hadn’t known the man had a wife. In fact, he thought the closest woman was Black Jack Baker’s wife, and she was twenty miles west of here. The cups were thin and delicate, so breakable that a full set rarely survived to reach this age intact. Could be the lady inherited them from her mother or some such, and she treasured them as a piece of her family history. For her sake he’d take extra care to not break the teeny little things. He finished the coffee in about four swallows and set the cup and saucer down, freeing his hands to lay them light and easy on his thighs. Then he fixed his eyes on the mayor.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you to come by,” the mayor began.

Tracker was apparently expected to answer. “Sure,” he said.

“Well, it’s a…” Leach shifted in his chair. “It’s a delicate situation, you understand.” All the councilmen nodded in perfect unison. “It’s about my wife, Tami. She’s gone. Well, kidnapped, I should say.”

Tracker didn’t move, but something grabbed hold of his gut. “Who took her?”

The mayor spread his soft hands. “I have no idea. I was at the store all day and when I returned in the evening my wife was gone.”

“When?”

“Almost a week ago. I sent my guards out to look for her, but they found nothing.” The mayor’s eyes got a little redder. “Please, Mister … uh, Tracker, help me find my wife. I miss her so.”

Tracker’s face didn’t show any emotion, but he felt a flicker of envy. A wife was a rare and precious thing. The woman stealers must have been bold devils to come right up to the house and carry a woman off. The house was a half mile or so from Greasy Butte itself, so maybe the thieves felt safe stealing a woman from her home, but he’d never heard of any thieves so daring. Why hadn’t Leach kept a couple of his guards at his house? Any man lucky enough to have a wife ought to take better care with her safety. Poor lady deserved a more protective husband than Leach. He’d do everything he could to bring her safely back to her home. Maybe Leach had learned a lesson in this.

The mayor pulled a small gold coin from his pants pocket. “I’ll pay one of these up front, and five more when you bring her back.”

One of those coins was more cash money than Tracker had ever had at one time in his life. Six of them would make him a rich man. With that kind of money he could buy him a turn with one of Gabe’s Girls once a month for the rest of his life. Maybe even a wife of his own… Naw, he couldn’t stay to one place, and he couldn’t drag a wife with him all over the plains. He nodded once, and slipped the coin into his waist pouch with a deft flip of his wrist. “I need something that belonged to her. Something with no one else’s scent on it.”

“Wait here,” the mayor said, and left the room, leaving Tracker with three hard-faced, suit-coated men who stared at him. In his buckskins and two blond braids that reached his waist, Tracker knew he looked like an uncivilized savage in this ritzy house. Like he cared. He considered the councilmen coolly.

“Did you know Mrs. Leach?” he asked. “Can you describe her for me?”

They shrugged. The black-haired one with the bushy beard said, “Kinda middle height for a woman, maybe, and bony. Not so young, either. Light brown hair cut too damn short, a nose too big, and a flat chest.”

“Shut up, Dwight. She might not be pretty, but she’s a good lady,” the youngest one said. Bruises ringed his eyes, marked his jaw. Must have been in a fist fight. Tracker used his senses to test his mood. Sad? Guilty? Maybe ashamed. “I wish I could have done something for her,” the kid muttered.

Dwight glared, then turned his eyes back to Tracker. “You just find her and bring her back here. We’ll take better care with her from now on.”

The third one smelled impatient and … cunning? Tracker inhaled lightly and found he didn’t like the sour scent of him at all. “One thing the boss might not want to tell you is that T—his wife is touched. She don’t always make a lot of sense. But he wants her back, and he’s paying you a shitload of money to find her. A woman with small tits and a flat ass is better than none.”

The mayor was in the doorway, his face hard, eyes furious. “Steve, shut up! Talk that way about my wife again and you’re off the payroll, understand?”

“Sure, boss. Sorry.”

He didn’t smell sorry. Tracker kept his opinion to himself, but he wanted to make Steve sorry for talking about a woman that way. Leach should fire him for those words. The mayor handed Tracker a fist-sized wad of gray fabric. Tracker stood and took it. The texture was strange; it stretched when he held it up—an unevenly torn piece of fabric about the size of a dinner plate, with a curving hem at one side and an odd design smaller than a man’s fist painted in gold. He lifted it to his nose and took a small sniff. It took all his control not to growl like his wolf-born cousins. It was the most divine scent he had ever gotten a whiff of. And it belonged to another man’s wife. Damn.

“Bring my wife home, Tracker.” It might have been a command, but it sounded like a plea. Tracker could taste utter sincerity in him. “I want my Tami back.”

He nodded once. “I’ll find her.”

Chapter Three

Tracker wasn’t his real name. His mother and father had named him Daniel He Continues To Leaf Stensrud in hopes that, like a tree, he would put forth new branches and leaves to grow their family. His cousins sometimes called him “He Continues To Leave,” because he only visited the Clan for short periods before leaving to roam over the plains. His adult name, bestowed upon him after he completed his vision quest, was He Tracks the Wind. His mother was Lakota and his father, who had died when Tracker was a toddler, had been Norwegian American. His father’s blood explained his blond hair and blue eyes, and being born a member of the Clan explained his tracking ability.

The Wolf Clan was famous all over the northern plains. They were respected by most, feared by many, and hated by a few. They were warriors as their ancestors had been and they protected what was theirs fiercely. Fifteen years ago, some townie men had tried to steal their women. Most of the women were killed in the fighting. Only Tracker’s sister, Stands Tall Woman, had survived, and the Clan took terrible vengeance on the thieves. Not one had lived. That was one of the reasons the Clan was feared and hated, but it wasn’t the only reason. Many of Tracker’s cousins in the Clan could change their shapes from man to wolf. Some of the townies called them devil spawned werewolves, but they weren’t werewolves, and they weren’t evil. Some boys of the Wolf Clan were born with a wolf spirit inside them. At puberty, or soon after, the wolf would take over the boy and force a shape change. Tracker had been told it was like a brutal game of tug of war between two beings and whichever had the stronger will won. It took months for the boy to learn to control the wolf, but once he did he was considered a wolf warrior. Not all boys had a wolf but they were proud members of the Clan.

Tracker was one who didn’t have a wolf. He had sometimes felt an alien presence within himself, but if it was a wolf, the wolf wasn’t strong enough to come out. A few of the strengths that came from the wolf were his, like the ability to heal quicker than most and to not feel the cold the way humans did. His sense of smell was even sharper than his wolf-born cousins’ and he could sense emotions. His uncle Muddy Wolf thought it was connected to his sense of smell, that maybe he was actually scenting their emotions. Some of his cousins, like Wolf’s Shadow and Taye, could identify some emotions by scent, but Tracker’s ability far outstripped theirs. His stepfather, the Clan wakan or holy man, said it was spirit magic. It wasn’t the same as reading minds, but he could usually tell when someone was nervous, or scared, or happy, even if they didn’t show it on their faces. It was one of the reasons he stayed away from groups of people. It wasn’t right to invade other people’s privacy like that. Besides, it made him feel crowded. He hated that. But he’d use his ability when he needed to, like when a woman had been stolen and he had promised to find her and bring her safely home.