Jack nodded. “Our vet checked the herd and found nothing but healthy animals. In all my years running cattle, we’ve lost livestock to cougars, black bears, coyotes, even a bobcat or two. But I’ve never seen a cow’s carcass disappear. Even if the animals got at it, we’d find something.”
Winona picked up her coffee, clearly thinking this through. “Wolves are messy eaters. A pack of wolves will typically tear a kill apart, each wolf dragging its share to a different spot to feed, but they wouldn’t carry the entire animal away. You typically find bits of bone and other parts of the carcass around.”
Jason had never raised cattle, but he’d seen his share of dead animals in the desert. “I’ve seen cougar kills in the wild. There’s not much left, but there’s always something—antlers, hide, bone, viscera.”
“We found another steer killed yesterday morning. It rained the night before, so there are lots of tracks. I had Nate cordon off the area and cover it with a tarp to protect whatever sign is there. We bagged the head and set it aside. I thought maybe there’d be a way to determine what killed the animal.”
“Smart.” Jason drained his coffee mug. “When do we get started?”
Winona glared at him. “When I finish my cinnamon roll.”
Chapter 6
The pasture where the latest steer had been killed was a forty-minute drive on dirt roads through tall glades of aspen and stretches of towering pines. It was some of the most beautiful scenery Winona had seen in Colorado.
“This herd is headed for market in the spring.” Jack parked his truck near a gate. “I expect losses—every rancher does—but I can’t let predators pick off my profits one steer at a time.”
Winona climbed out of the truck. The sun was high in the sky now, but the wind was cold, the air carrying the unmistakable scent of autumn. In the distance, black cattle grazed on the last of the sun-dried summer grass. “It’s beautiful up here.”
The sound of an engine announced Nate’s arrival. He stepped out of his truck looking like the quintessential cowboy, brown hat on his head, denim and plaid on his body, cowboy boots on his feet.
He introduced himself to Jason and then shook Winona’s hand, a grin on his scarred face. “Good to see you again, Winona. I hear you’re an aunt now. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“Son, why don’t you show Chiago where you found the kill? I’ll stay here with Winona while she checks out the remains.”
“Sure thing.” Nate walked to a nearby gate, opened it. “This way.”
“I’ve got the head on ice in a cooler back here.” Jack opened the tailgate and reached for a plastic cooler. “There’s a box of nitrile gloves in the back seat.”
“I already grabbed a pair.” Winona slipped the gloves over her hands. “Just to be clear, I’m not a forensic specialist or an expert in bite marks.”
“No, but you know a hell of a lot about wolves.” Jack drew a plastic garbage bag out of the cooler. “This won’t be the prettiest sight you’ve seen—and it doesn’t smell good, either.”
Winona laughed, her gaze on Jason as he walked away with Nate. What was it about him that drew her like a magnet? “I take care of wild animals. Have you ever smelled skunk poo?”
“No, and I don’t think I want to.” Jack pulled the head out of the cooler, spread a plastic bag on the tailgate, and set the head on top of it. “All right, boy, let’s see what Winona has to say about you.”
There wasn’t as much flesh left on it as Winona had imagined, the skull intact, the bones unbroken but exposed, a few vertebrae still attached. She worked as methodically as she could, examining every surface.
She canted the head so Jack could see the left jawbone. “These are tooth pits where the animal bit down. These grooves are called scores.”
Jack pointed. “What about those deeper grooves?”
“Those were probably made by rodents.”
“Rodents?”
“They eat bones and antlers for calcium, and they’ve got those big front teeth. See how those marks are deeper at the bottom than the top?” She pointed with a gloved pinky finger. “I sometimes give bones to rodents at the clinic. Their bite marks look just like this. I bet these came from a squirrel.”
Jack leaned closer. “I had no idea.”
Winona went on with her examination. “I wish I’d taken more time to study the bones from the roadkill I fed Shota. Most of the time, he got frozen blocks of meat to gnaw on. There was nothing left by the time he’d finished.”
Still, the bite marks looked like they could be from a wolf, but she couldn’t be certain. For all she knew, they might just as easily come from a mountain lion or black bear. “It’s possible that these marks weren’t left by the predator that killed the steer. Kleptoparasitism is very common. A mountain lion kills an elk, feeds, and caches the rest. A black bear finds the cache, drags the kill away, and feeds on it for several days. While the bear isn’t looking, foxes or coyotes take their share.”
Nature wasted nothing.
She turned the skull to see what she could of the vertebrae. “A mountain lion typically attacks the neck and crushes the vertebrae and part of the skull. That didn’t happen here, but…”
She ran a gloved finger over a mark on the bottom of the lowest vertebra. It was too narrow to be scoring from a tooth. It was almost razor-thin, like a...
“I think this was made by a knife.” She held it out so Jack could see.
“A knife?” He leaned in, brow furrowed. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“It looks like a cut mark to me, but I don’t know enough about forensic science to be certain. I could be making this up.”
“I appreciate that disclaimer, Winona, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”
She set the remains down on the plastic. “I’d probably be more helpful to you if I took a careful look around the pasture. That’s where the story is.”
Jack bagged the remains and set the bag inside the cooler. “Let’s head out there and see what Chiago has for us.”
While Nate hung back so as not to tread on sign, Jason walked around the site of the kill, studying it, and snapping photos with his phone.
A large depression in the grass where the steer had fallen. Lots of dried blood and small bits of tissue drawing flies. Scattered sign—overlapping tracks from squirrels, coyotes, humans, and possibly a wolf.
Click. Click. Click.
Jason knelt beside a single clear print of a front paw that was as wide as his palm. It certainly looked like a wolf, but he needed to see a complete set of tracks to be certain.
Click.
He tried backtracking, following bent and broken grasses and the occasional partial print in a straight line back toward the fence. He hadn’t gone far when he found what he’d been searching for—tracks from both the front and hind paws—and beyond that, gray fur snagged on barbed wire.
This was where the animal crossed into the pasture.
But where had it gone afterward?
Click. Click.
He walked back to the site of the kill, looking for drag marks or places where the grass had been flattened. There were none, except…