Chapter Two

  The wolf was walking down the Main Street sidewalk of Bettles like it had not a care in the world. It was even stopping to look into some of the various storefront’s windows, not just cursory glances either, it was taking long thoughtful looks at whatever happened to be on display at these stores. When the wolf got to Collin’s hardware store, it really seemed to be taking stock of what was on display.

  They had all sorts of things in that window, everything from fishing poles, to the latest Black and Decker cordless tools. Camping equipment, rifles, and even a couple of old truck parts were displayed in all their glory, and the wolf seemed to be looking at all of it.

  The beast seemed especially interested in an old Remington 30-30 bolt action hunting rifle, maybe it recognized it from when a hunter had taken out one his pack mates. On the other hand, if you were watching carefully, it looked like the beast was actually slowly and methodically checking out the different aspects of the weapon. Crazy as it may sound, the wolf wasn’t looking at the gun like it had killed his Pa, it was looking at the gun like it wanted to walk right in to Collin’s place, throw down $189.95, and walk back out with it.

  Just then the sounds of a siren could be heard all through the sleepy little town. Sirens weren’t heard very often in Bettles, so when you did hear one it was either a false alarm, or something big was going down. From seemingly out of nowhere, a crowd of people had started to gather across the street from the hardware store, silently watching the curious creature examining the goods in the storefront window.

 

  Bettles was an old frontier town so the streets weren’t all that wide, in some areas of town the roads were still paved with cobblestones. As narrow as the streets were, they didn’t provide all that much distance between the crowd and the beast. If the wolf were to all of a sudden take notice of his fan club, there’s no doubt he could have been in the middle of them in seconds flat. Aware of the imminent danger, they still didn’t seem to care, nobody had ever seen a wolf this big before, especially one brazen enough to walk down their streets in broad daylight.