Chapter 2
MAGS
The permits are in order.
Federal authorization, land-use forms, my name on every line that matters. Dr. Margaret Kelly. Corridor Biologist, Northern Rockies Wolf Recovery Program. The argument is airtight.
I don't need a better argument.
I put the truck in gear.
The McAllister Ranch gate is about thirty minutes south of town on a county road that runs straight and flat until it doesn't, until the Absarokas push up through the sage like they're correcting something.
The gate is steel pipe, painted black, latched from the inside.
A wooden sign to the left. McAllister Ranch.
Est. 1947. Letters routed, not painted. Posts square and true. No give to any of it.
I pull over and sit with the engine running.
Last night was last night. It belongs to the category of things that do not affect my professional judgment, the way the full moon doesn't affect my data collection, the way a man's voice near your ear over bar noise is simply acoustics and not something I've been cataloguing since six a.m.
Except I knew exactly who he was before he said a word to me.
Gina had been thorough. Luke McAllister, she'd said, the one who stayed when his father died. Quiet. Capable. Blue eyes that track you before he decides whether to bother.
She hadn't mentioned the rest of it.
The way those eyes moved over me like they had time. The heat of him standing close enough that I felt it through my jacket, jaw dark with stubble, hair a little too long under a worn brown hat, the kind of hard-built body that comes from actual work and not a single hour of thinking about it.
Gina had given me the facts. The facts had left some things out.
That almost-kiss under the string lights happened to a version of me who knew his name, knew his land, and still couldn't make herself step back.
This version of me has permits.
I get out of the truck.
He's already there.
Not waiting. Working a wrench on the left gate hinge, not glancing up, which tells me he heard the truck from a quarter mile out and decided the hinge needed attention right now. Hat pulled low. Grease on his forearm that wasn't there last night.
Last night he was in a clean shirt.
I note that and then note it again, because it didn't take the first time.
"Mr. McAllister."
He straightens. Looks at me over the gate. Morning light on him. He doesn't squint into it, just lets it come, the way a man does when he's spent enough time outdoors that the sun stopped being a consideration. His expression is the same one from last night. Held. Waiting to see what I do with it.
"Dr. Kelly."
I hold up the folder. "I have the permits."
"I see that."
"Federal authorization, Section 7. The corridor exists whether you sign or not. Your signature is for the access log." I pull the top sheet and hold it across the gate. "The south pasture falls within the mapped buffer zone."
He takes the sheet and actually reads it. Most landowners skim one line and hand it back with an objection already loaded. He reads to the bottom, turns it over, reads the back.
"South pasture's the problem."
"The corridor requires the south pasture."
"I know what the corridor requires."
His voice is the same as last night. Level.
The kind of quiet that has weight behind it, the way a closed door has a room on the other side.
I watched him use it at the Rusty Spur to end three conversations without once raising his voice.
I registered it as competence, which was a mistake, because competence in a man I'm arguing with makes the argument harder.
"The pack is already using that terrain," I say. "Movement patterns through that geography going back eight months before I arrived. This isn't a choice I am making. It's what's already happening."
"On my land."
"On land that a wolf pack has been using as a travel corridor. The wolves don't read deed records, Mr. McAllister."
Something moves through his face. Not anger. Recognition. The way a man looks when someone says the true version of a thing he's been arguing against.
He looks past the gate to the south pasture.
The field runs south toward a ridge line that breaks blue against the sky.
Wide and long, grass pale gold in the early light.
Land that someone has refused to give up.
You can see it in the fence lines, the soil condition, the way the creek bank is managed all the way to the timber. This ground cost him something.
He went still when I said south pasture. Not surprised. A different kind. Like the words landed somewhere they weren't supposed to reach.
"I need to walk the eastern boundary," I say. "Place two cameras on the ridge approach, log the access. Camera placement is here and here." I pull the site map and hold it out. "Federal survey points. Neither aimed at your operation."
He looks at the map without taking it. Reads the ridge line on paper, then the actual ridge beyond the fence.
"You walk the fence line," he says. "You don't go past the marker post at the south end."
"If the corridor extends past?—"
"The fence line. Or you come back with a different map."
His jaw is set. No bluff in it, no performance, no waiting to be argued out of it. He knows where his line is and he's done me the courtesy of saying so plainly.
I take the map back. "I'll walk the fence line today. If the data requires the southern section, we'll have that conversation when I have the camera footage."
"Looking forward to it."
Not sarcastic. He means it the way someone means this isn't over, which is accurate.
I step through the gate. He doesn't move back to give me room that isn't there. Steel post on one side, six feet of McAllister on the other, morning air between us doing something it wasn't doing from a distance. I keep my eyes on the fence line and my pace even.
"Dr. Kelly."
I stop. Don't turn.
"Stay out of my cattle."
I turn around, because that earns a look. He's already got the wrench back in his hand, eyes on the hinge, like he knew I'd turn and decided not to watch it happen.
"Keep your cattle out of my data," I say, "and we won't have a problem."
He looks up. His eyes hold mine for two seconds. Not a challenge, not a concession. Just an acknowledgment that we've established something. Then he goes back to the hinge.
I face the fence line before I do anything about that.
I spend four hours on the south pasture.
The grass is deep here, soil loamy where the creek runs close.
Good riparian buffer. The wolves have been through.
Two sets of prints in the mud near the crossing, adult female and yearling, both east-southeast along the creek bank.
I match the female's collar data to this morning's timestamp. She came through at 4:47 a.m.
I photograph the prints, log the coordinates, and start up toward the eastern ridge.
It's steep and quiet up here, the valley spread below me in long gold sections divided by fence line and creek.
From this height the south pasture looks like something drawn carefully, every edge intentional.
I set up the camera mount and check the angle and for a few minutes I'm just a biologist on a hillside doing her work, which is the closest I've come to peace since I pulled up to that gate.
Then I check the GPS against the survey point.
The camera mark is forty meters south. Down the other side of the ridge. Past the marker post.
I stand there with my phone and look at where the data needs me to go and where Luke McAllister told me I couldn't.
The man is going to be a recurring problem. I've known that since the string lights.
I come back down, log the discrepancy, photograph the terrain, and note it in the access file: Southern section required. Landowner consent pending. The professional version of: that conversation is going to be unpleasant and I am going to win it.
My truck is where I left it. I sit with the windows down. Across the fence a ranch hand is moving cattle north. Good timing, good management. Somebody knows this land in the way you only know something you refused to let go of.
I wonder what the conversation was that got cut short out here when his father died. Whether he's been finishing it every morning since.
I don't wonder long. That's not my data.
My phone buzzes.
Collar alert. The female.
She was moving at 4:47. By now she should be deep in the timber, well north of here. But the GPS is showing a fixed point. Same coordinates for the last two hours.
Dead battery. Terrain interference. Found a kill and settled in.
Or a problem.
I zoom in. The fixed point is on the south pasture. Right on the eastern approach to the ridge.
My phone buzzes again.
Second alert. Different collar. The yearling. Fixed. Same location.
Two animals. Not moving. Same place.
I'm already reaching for my field pack.