BUFFALO RIVER VALLEY, WYOMING. OCTOBER 17.
12:30 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.
Beyond the Grand Teton National Park’s eastern boundary, where the valley floor began to incline slightly toward Togwotee Pass, the Youst cabin sat in its perpetual state of disrepair.
Dr. Eric Youst and his partner, Susan, were distraught. Over the loss of not only their pet but also their pet project.
Now it was just the alpha female, Luna, and her pup—a heartbreaking sight. To make things worse, the wolf was inconsolable. Wouldn’t eat. Barely slept. She spent most of her time pacing around and whimpering, wondering where her mate was.
“It’s almost a poetic analogy, how it happened. The pup was just born.” Eric wore a sullen smile. That was true, but it didn’t ease Susan’s mind. Plus, she hated when he sounded like such a smart-ass.
“We should have kept better track of him. He’d been snacking on roadkill there for three days. It was just a matter of time until he got hit.”
Eric shrugged and threw a bone to Luna, who sniffed it and let it lie.
They were eccentrics, wandering into town only occasionally to buy a truckload of groceries, mainly canned goods and organic dog food. They farmed what they could from their own land, but the harsh climate of Jackson Hole meant they never got enough to eat. To the folks in town, the word scarecrow came to mind. The reticent way they floated up and down the grocery-store aisles brought another word to mind: cagey. Rumors abounded. They were called communists, radicals, crazies, but the truth was that nobody really knew what they were all about.
Susan smiled from time to time, acknowledging strangers, but Eric only scowled. The townsfolk could feel his judgment upon them through that one simple facial expression.
“Are you sure this won’t come back to us?” Susan had asked Eric over and over again for the first twelve hours or so. She was a nervous, neurotic woman.
There was no way it could, he’d assured her. The hardware gave an identical signal to the tags used throughout the world. Unless someone decided to actually crack the device open and examine its innards, it was impossible to tell the difference.
“It was a victory for us, albeit in a morbid way. It shows that the programming and the hardware work. Plus, we were able to put Alfie out of his misery; that is a gift.”