Red Moon Rising

3. arrival

Chapter Song: Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot

XX

I force my shoulders down as I walk to the driver's side of the pickup, the metal tang of blood biting at the back of my throat. It belongs to a deer, whose dark wet fur and long, slim antlers are just barely visible on the truck bed. The driver's window rolls down, but no one moves to get out of the truck. It's good that they're scared of me, but I'm painfully aware of how alone I am right now. Why hasn't anyone followed them in from the gate? They shouldn't have been able to drive this far up the road without someone noticing.

"Lost?" I suggest, stepping closer as the driver removes his sunglasses to look at me. He's in his thirties, a touch of baldness creeping below the brim of his worn orange hat, and his face is suntanned and propped in a suggestion of congeniality. His eyes never leave my face.

"No, ma'am," he replies, and he licks his lips out of some nervous habit. He doesn't look like the kind of guy who is nervous very often, and he wears it awkwardly, like too-big shoes. "My buddy and I lost a deer on the edge of your territory. It couldn't have gotten far, but I wanted to ask permission to track it the rest of the way in."

"I didn't hear a shot. And it isn't deer season."

"Bow hunting, ma'am." Ma'am, like I'm his mother, despite the fact that he's probably ten years my senior. Ma'am, like he isn't asking to poach on our territory.

"We're still three weeks out from bow season."

He grins suddenly, and the gaze that was so fastened on me wavers as he looks at his friend in the passenger seat then back at me. "You a game warden?" That grin again, the nervousness starting to fade as irritation creeps in. Men hate being told no. "I thought you wolves kill all year round."

"Obviously, I'm not a game warden—but you should know better than to ask me to let you poach." I don't try to remind him about our treaty rights, or about how we're not allowed to hunt off-territory, ever. Men like them want everything to belong to them, even when our territory is all we have.

"You want the deer yourself then?"

"No," I reply in a low voice, aware that I am too tired to keep my anger contained. "I don't want boys with pointy sticks running around while our kids are still out there."

"Right, right," he says slowly, though I know he's not completely stupid—he knows exactly what day it is. "Full moon and all." And then I catch the click of his seatbelt as he opens the door and steps down onto the gravel in front of me. Another set of boots hits on the opposite side of the truck and I don't let myself show my own desire to take a step back. Where the hell is everyone? I don't miss the little piece strapped to the other man's arm—maybe it's just for protection, or maybe it's for bitches like me. Maybe they were planning on paying a visit to Rust Cove today, and maybe those leg hold traps were just the beginning.

"We won't bring weapons—the deer is surely dead by now. We're just going to drive to the border and pick it up, okay?"

"No, not okay—do you think I'm some kind of idiot? You want to roll onto our territory whenever you make a messy shot out of season, but if one of us accidentally stepped foot onto your property you'd pull the trigger before ever considering you were killing a person."

His face is stony, no grin or shifting nervousness. "You must be confusing me with someone else."

"You're going to say that to me while wearing that fucking hat?"

"The Northern Hunters Association is just—"

"The NHA is lobbying to protect hunters who 'accidentally' shoot one of us when we've shifted."